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Special pages :
Letter to Karl Marx, January 8, 1849
Written: 7-8 January 1849;
First published: in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, 1913.
To Marx in Cologne
Berne, 7-8 January 1849[edit source]
Dear Marx,
Having recovered, after several weeks of sinful living, from my exertions and adventures,[1] I feel, firstly, a need to get down to work again (striking proof of this being the enclosed Magyar-Slav article [The Magyar Struggle]) , and, secondly, a need for money. The letter is the more urgent and if by the time this arrives, you haven’t yet sent me anything, do so forthwith, for I've been sans le sou these past few days, and it’s impossible to touch anyone in this rotten town.
If only something worth writing about happened in this rotten country. But it’s all local rubbish of the rottenest kind. However I'll shortly be sending a few general articles about it. If I have to stay abroad much longer I shall go to Lugano, particularly if something blows up in Italy, as seems likely.
But I keep thinking that I shall soon be able to return. This lazing about in foreign parts, where you can’t really do anything and are completely outside the movement, is truly unbearable. I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that detention for questioning in Cologne is better than life in free Switzerland. So do write and tell me if there isn’t some chance of my being treated as favourably as Bürgers, Becker, etc., etc.[2] Raveaux is right: even in grace and favour Prussia[3] one is freer than in free Switzerland. Every little nonentity here is at one and the same time a police spy and an assommeur.[assassin] I saw an example of this on New Year’s Eve.
Who the devil was responsible for inserting recently that boring religio-moral article from Heidelberg [Ein Aktenstück des Märzvereins, Neue Rheinische Zeitung, 29 December 1848] on the March Association[4]. To my pleasure I have also noticed that Henricus occasionally exhales an article — witness the sighs extending over 2 issues on the subject of the Ladenberg circular. [H. Bürgers, ‘Hr. v. Ladenberg und die Volksschullehrer’, Neue Rheinische Zeitung, 30 December 1848]
Our newspaper is now much quoted in Switzerland, the Berner Zeitung borrows a lot as does the [Schweizerische] National-Zeitung, and this then goes the rounds of all the other papers. Also much quoted, more so than the Kölnische, according to the National, etc., etc., in Swiss papers in the French language.
You'll have included the advertisement. [re daily publication of the Berner Zeitung as from 1 January 1849 printed in Neue Rheinische Zeitung, 3, 5, and 7 January] Herewith a copy of ours in the Berner Zeitung. Greetings to the whole company.
Your
E.
Missed the post yesterday. Today, then, I'll merely add that since 1 January the Neue Rheinische Zeitung has no longer been arriving here. Do ascertain whether it’s being regularly dispatched. I've looked into the question of a subscription, but it’s no good. I'd have to subscribe for a 1/2 year; I shan’t be staying as long as that and anyway I haven’t any money. As I said, it’s important it should arrive here, not simply on my own account, but mainly because the Berner Zeitung, which is well disposed towards us and edited by a communist, [Niklaus Niggeler] is doing everything to make it en vogue here.
- ↑ On 26 September 1848 the Prussian authorities, fearing the growing revolutionary-democratic movement, declared a state of siege in Cologne (it was lifted on 2 October). By order of the military command political organisations and associations were banned, the civic militia disbanded, democratic newspapers, including the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, suspended, and an order issued for the arrest of Engels and a few other editors. Engels and Dronke had to leave Cologne. For a time Engels lived in hiding in Barmen. On 5 October Engels and Dronke arrived in Paris after a short stay in Belgium whence they were expelled by the police. Dronke remained in the French capital and wrote to the Neue Rheinische Zeitung from there, while Engels started on foot for Switzerland via the south-west of France. About 24 October he arrived in Genoa and at the beginning of November moved to Lausanne (these facts served as a basis for establishing the date of this letter and those by Marx which followed and were not dated); Engels arrived in Neuchâtel on 7 November and in Berne on 9 November. He stayed there until mid-January 1849 when it was possible for him to return to Germany.
Engels’ letter written to Marx from Geneva has not been found. - ↑ Engels received news, probably on 11 or 12 January, that he could return to Germany without running the risk of being arrested. He immediately undertook all the formalities necessary to obtain an exit permit from Switzerland, and obtained it on 18 January 1849 (see Record of Engels' Residence Permit for the Canton of Berne and His Departure for Germany). Shortly after this Engels returned to Cologne and resumed work as editor of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung.
- ↑ By ‘grace and favour (oktroyierte) Prussia’ Engels means Prussia after the counter-revolutionary coup d'état which resulted in the dissolution of the National Assembly on 5 December 1848 and the proclamation of the so-called imposed constitution. The Constitution introduced a two-chamber parliament: the First Chamber consisting of privileged aristocrats and the Second Chamber elected in two stages. Under the law of 6 December a considerable proportion of the workers had no right to vote. The King was invested with wide powers, including the right to convene and dissolve both Chambers, to repeal their decisions, to appoint Cabinets and to revise the Constitution itself.
- ↑ The March Association, thus named after the March 1848 revolution, was founded in Frankfurt am Main at the end of November 1848 by the Left-wing deputies of the Frankfurt National Assembly and had branches in various towns of Germany. Fröbel, Simon, Ruge, Vogt and other petty-bourgeois democratic leaders of March associations confined themselves to revolutionary phrase-mongering and showed indecision and inconsistency in the struggle against the counter-revolutionaries, for which Marx and Engels sharply criticised them.