Letter to Joseph Weydemeyer, June 1, 1849

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After the Neue Rheinische Zeitung had ceased publication on 19 May 1849, Marx and Engels left for Frankfurt am Main where they tried to persuade the Left-wing deputies to the all-German National Assembly to take decisive action in support of the uprising in South-Western Germany at the time in defence of the Imperial Constitution drawn up by the Assembly but rejected by the German sovereigns. Having failed to achieve their aim they left for Karlsruhe and then Kaiserslautern — capitals of insurgent Baden and the Palatinate. Convinced that the petty-bourgeois democratic leaders of the Provisional Governments in Baden and the Palatinate lacked revolutionary energy and were helpless, Marx and Engels left at the end of May for Bingen, where they parted. Early in June Marx went to Paris, and Engels returned to Kaiserslautern to join the Baden-Palatinate revolutionary army.

Bingen, 1 June 1849

Dear Weydemeyer,

I beg you in my own and Freiligrath’s names to take the printer of Freiligrath’s poem [Freiligrath’s ‘Abschiedswort der Neuen Rheinischen Zeitung’ published in the newspaper’s last number, 19 May 1849, printed in red ink] to court for piracy and sue him for damages.

My general attorney is St. A. Naut in Cologne, and I should be much obliged if you would write to him about this matter.

Vale faveque.'

K. Marx