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Special pages :
Letter to Friedrich Engels, first half of November 1848
Written: first half of November 1848;
First published: abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, 1913 and in full in MEGA, 1929
To Engels in Lausanne
Cologne, first half of November 1848[edit source]
Dear Engels,
I am truly amazed that you should still not have received any money from me. I (not the dispatch department) sent you 61 talers ages ago, 11 in notes, 50 as a bill, to Geneva, enclosed in a letter to the address you gave. So make inquiries and write immediately. I have a postal receipt and can reclaim the money.
I had further sent 20 talers to Gigot and, later, 50 to Dronke for all of you, each time out of my cashbox. A total of some 130 talers.
Tomorrow I shall send you some more. But inquire about the money. The bill included a note recommending you to one of Lausanne’s financial philistines.
I am short of money. I returned from my journey with 1,850 talers; I received 1,950 from the Poles. I spent 100 while still on my journey. I advanced 1,000 to the newspaper (and also to yourself and other refugees). This week there are still 500 to be paid for the machine. Balance 350. And withal I haven’t received a cent from the paper.[1]
As regards your editorship, I 1) announced in the very first issue [Marx, Editorial Statement Concerning the Reappearance of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung] that the committee was to remain unchanged, 2) explained to the idiotic reactionary shareholders that they are at liberty to regard any of you as no longer belonging to the editorial staff, but that I am at liberty to pay as high fees as I wish and hence that they will be no better off financially.
It would have been, perhaps, more sensible not to advance so large a sum for the newspaper, as I have 3-4 court actions hanging over me,[2] can be locked up any day and then pant for money as doth the hart for cooling streams. But whatever the circumstances, this fort had to be held and the political position not surrendered.
The best thing — once you have settled the financial business in Lausanne — is to go to Berne and carry out your proposed plan. Besides, you can write for anything you want. Your letters always arrive in reasonably good time.
To suppose that I could leave you in the lurch for even a moment is sheer fantasy. You will always remain my friend and confidant as I hope to remain yours.
K. Marx
Your old man’s a swine and we shall write him a damned rude letter.
- ↑ The discontent of the bourgeois shareholders over the political fine of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung grew particularly strong after it defended the June proletarian insurgents in Paris. — These shareholders refused to finance arid support the newspaper any longer. So in August arid September 1848 Marx made a trip to Berlin and Vienna to raise funds for the further publication of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Wladislaw Kóscielski gave him about 2,000 talers on behalf of the Polish democrats.
The interruption in publication caused by the state of siege in Cologne aggravated the newspaper’s financial position. Marx was practically compelled to take upon himself most of the expenses arid he spent his share of the inheritance front his father — about 7,000 talers — to purchase an expensive quick printing press. - ↑ Early in July 1848 legal proceedings were instituted against Marx because of his article ‘Arrests’ Published in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, exposing the arbitrary actions of the Prussian authorities. At the beginning of October 1848 the Cologne Public Prosecutor started air investigation against Marx arid other newspaper editors for publishing anonymously Georg Weerth’s series of feuilletons Leben und Taten des berühmten Ritters Schnapphanski. At the end of October 1848 the Cologne Public Prosecutor began another investigation against Marx as the newspaper’s editor-in-chief for publishing the proclamation of the republican Friedrich Hecker. The ‘insult’ to the Public Prosecutor and ‘libel’ against the police officers contained in the article ‘Arrests’ were the main accusations levelled at Marx arid Engels at the trial held on 7 February 1849. The jury acquitted them.