Letter to Joachim Lelewel, February 3, 1860

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Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 3 February 1860


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXV, Moscow, 1934
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 41
Keywords : Letter, Joachim Lelewel


MARX TO JOACHIM LELEWEL

IN BRUSSELS

[Draft]

London, 3 February 1860
9 Grafton Terrace, Maitland Park, Haverstock Hill

My dear Lelewel,

I have not had the pleasure of corresponding with you since 1848 when a letter of recommendation from you was brought to me in Cologne by a Pole.[1] I am writing to you today on a personal matter.

One Vogt, a professor at Geneva, has published a pamphlet[2] full of the most outrageous calumnies against my person and my political life. On the one hand, he represents me as a man of no account and on the other imputes to me the most infamous motives. He falsifies my entire past. Having had the privilege of enjoying a close relationship with you during my stay in Brussels—I shall never forget the embrace with which you honoured me on the occasion of the anniversary of the Polish Revolution on 22 February 1848—I would request you to address me a private letter in which you assure me of your friendship and testify to the nature of the honourable relations I maintained in Brussels with the Polish emigration.[3]

Fraternal greetings,

Yours

Charles Marx

Mrs Marx, who asks to be remembered to you, has made a copy of this letter for your benefit, my handwriting being illegible.

  1. ↑ Presumably Wladyslaw Koscielski
  2. ↑ C. Vogt, Mein Prozess gegen die Allgemeine Zeitung, Geneva, 1859.
  3. ↑ Marx reproduced Lelewel's reply, dated 10 February 1860, in the Appendices to his Herr Vogt (see present edition, Vol. 17, p. 322).
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