Letter to Ferdinand Lassalle, November 13, 1848

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To Ferdinand Lassalle in Düsseldorf

Cologne, 13 November 1848[edit source]

Dear Lassalle,

At your democratic-monarchist club[1] you should resolve the following:

1. General refusal to pay taxes — to be advocated specially in rural areas;

2. Dispatch of volunteer corps to Berlin;

3. Cash remittance to the Democratic Central Committee in

Berlin.[2]

For the Rhenish Democratic Provincial Committee[3]

K. Marx

(Private)
Dear Lassalle,

If you could send me some money, whether it be the 200 talers or the amount for the loan certificates, you would greatly oblige me. Send it to my wife, Cecilienstrasse 7. I have had a summons[4] today and it is generally believed that I shall be arrested tomorrow.

Your
Marx

  1. on 1 November 1848 the King of Prussia transferred power to the openly counter-revolutionary Brandenburg-Manteuffel Government. It decided on a coup d'état which was successful and led to the dissolution of the National Assembly on 5 December. The very first steps of this government aroused a protest campaign in democratic circles, especially in the Rhine Province, which sought to unite the opposition forces. In Düsseldorf, in particular, for 14 November a joint meeting was announced for this purpose of the local People’s Club, the Union for the establishment of a democratic monarchy, the General Civil Union. and the civic militia (it was probably this meeting that Marx called the democratic-monarchist club). At this meeting Lassalle put forward Marx’s plan of actions.
  2. The Central Committee of German Democrats was set up in June 1848 at the first democratic congress in Frankfurt am Main convened with the am) of uniting the local democratic associations. The second all-German democratic congress in Berlin (26-30 October 1848) elected a new Central Committee.
  3. This refers to the Rhenish District Committee of Democrats set up at the first district congress of democrats of the Rhine Province and Westphalia (13-14 August 1848). The committee directed the activity of the democratic organisations in the Rhineland, Marx playing a prominent role in it.
  4. On 14 November 1848 Marx was summoned to the examining magistrate for ‘insulting’ the Cologne Public Prosecutor Hecker in the article ‘Public Prosecutor “Hecker” and the Neue Rheinische Zeitung’ published in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, No. 129, 29 October 1848.