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Special pages :
Letter to Karl Marx, June 22, 1869
First published: in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Stuttgart, 1913.
To Marx in London
Manchester, 22 June 1869
Dear Moor,
I don’t know whether you have such fine weather there as we have here, but daylight has been so exhausted that, on the longest day, we had to turn the gas on at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. And it is devilish to read or write when you don’t know whether it is day or night.
Tussy is very jolly. This morning the whole family went shopping; tomorrow evening they want to go to the theatre. She has read right through Hermann und Dorothea[1], not without difficulty because of the idyllic philistines’ twaddle. Now I have given her the younger Edda, which contains several nice stories; then she can read from the elder one[2] the songs of Sigurd and Gudrun. She also plays the piano sedulously. I have also read Danish Kjämpeviser[3] with her.
So that is Wilhelm’s entire success: that the male-female line and the all-female line of the Lassalleans have united![4] He really has achieved something there. Schweitzer will naturally be re-elected in view of the precipitacy with which the business has been conducted — and then he will, once again, be the chosen one of general suffrage. Wilhelm is also preserving an obstinate silence about this event.
The Urning[5] you sent me is a very curious thing. These are extremely unnatural revelations. The paederasts [homosexual paedophiles] are beginning to count themselves, and discover that they are a power in the state. Only organisation was lacking, but according to this source it apparently already exists in secret. And since they have such important men in all the old parties and even in the new ones, from Rosing to Schweitzer, they cannot fail to triumph. Guerre aux cons, paix aus trous-de-cul[6] will now be the slogan. It is a bit of luck that we, personally, are too old to have to fear that, when this party wins, we shall have to pay physical tribute to the victors. But the younger generation! Incidentally it is only in Germany that a fellow like this can possibly come forward, convert this smut into a theory, and offer the invitation: introite[7], etc. Unfortunately, he has not yet got up the courage to acknowledge publicly that he is ‘that way’, and must still operate coram publico‘ from the front’, if not ‘going in from the front’ as he once said by mistake. But just wait until the new North German Penal Code recognises the droits du cul[8] then he will operate quite differently. Then things will go badly enough for poor frontside people like us, with our childish penchant for females. If Schweitzer could be made useful for anything, it would be to wheedle out of this peculiar honourable gentleman the particulars of the paederasts in high and top places, which would certainly not be difficult for him as a brother in spirit.
At the end of the week, Schorlemmer will be going to Germany for 4 weeks via Grimsby and Rotterdam.
The strikes here in the cotton factories[9] have been over since this morning, when the Oldhamites went back. So overproduction has no restraints any more.
Close of post. Best greetings.
Your
F. E.
- ↑ by Goethe
- ↑ Edda—a collection of epic poems and songs about the lives of the Scandinavian gods and heroes. It has come down to us in a manuscript dating from the 13th century, discovered in 1643 by the Icelandic Bishop Sveinsson—the so-called Elder Edda, and in a treatise on the poetry of the scalds compiled in the early 13th century by Snorry Sturluson (Younger Edda). T h e Eddas mirrored the state of Scandinavian society at the time of the disintegration of the tribal system and the migration of the peoples. They include plots and characters from Nordic folklore.
- ↑ epics
- ↑ J. B. Schweitzer, President of the General Association of German Workers, and Fritz Mende, President of the Lassallean General Association of German Workers which was under the influence of Sophie von Hatzfeldt (see Note 338), published in Der Social-Demokrat, No. 70, 18 June 1869 an address ‘Wiederherstellung der Einheit der Lassalle’schen Partei’, urging the two rival organisations to unite on the basis of Lassalle’s Rules drawn up in 1863. The address enjoined them, in categorical form, to hold a vote on this issue within three days and to elect a president of the united Association. Playing on the desire for unity voiced by the workers belonging to the two organisations Schweitzer succeeded in getting the more democratic forms of leadership evolved by the general congress in Barmen-Elberfeld in the spring of 1869 (see Note 311) abolished, in reorganising the Association along the principles proclaimed by Lassalle’s Rules, in accordance with which the President was invested with dictatorial powers, and in getting himself re-elected as President of the united Association. Schweitzer’s activities provoked indignation among the members of the Association and hastened the withdrawal from it of its more advanced elements. Leaders of the opposition in the General Association of German Workers, Wilhelm Bracke, Julius Bremer, Samuel Spier and Theodor Yorck, who consulted Liebknecht and Bebel on 22 June 1869, addressed the Association’s members in Magdeburg, urging them to convene a congress for the unification of all Social-Democratic workers in Germany. The address was published in the Demokratisches Wochenblatt, No. 26, 26 June 1869, and as a separate leaflet. On 27 June 1869, the Union of German Workers’ Associations officially supported the address, which was the first step in the practical, preparations for the congress in Eisenach (see Note 373).
- ↑ K. H. Ulrichs, ' Argonauticus'. Zastrow und die Urninge des pietistischen, ultramontanen und freidenkenden Lagers.
- ↑ War on the cunts, peace to the arse-holes
- ↑ enter
- ↑ rights of the arse-hole
- ↑ The strike of workers in the cotton yarns and goods industry in Preston (Lancashire) began in March 1869 as a response to the provocative decision of the manufacturers to cut wages by ten per cent. The General Council and the trade unions organised financial support by workers in other towns, as a result of which the strike lasted until August 1869, and ended in a compromise (wages were reduced by 5 per cent). Reports on the progress of the strike appeared regularly in The Bee-Hive.