Marx-Engels Correspondence 1859
Source: MECW Volume 40, p. 461;
First published: abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Stuttgart, 1913 and in full in: Marx and Engels, Works, Moscow, 1929.
Dear Frederick,
Two manuscripts received today. One of them splendid — yours on ‘fortification’, though I must say I feel some twinges of conscience about having made such demands on the little spare time you have. One grotesque, viz. Lassalle’s reply to myself and you respecting his Sickingen. A whole sheaf of closely written pages. Incredible that at this season and in the present historical circumstances, a man should not only find time to produce stuff of this kind himself, but actually presume that we have time to read it.
Ad vocem Volk. Should your booksellers actually deliver the little paper to you, which I doubt, you and Lupus will be surprised to see in tomorrow’s issue an announcement that there is some ‘prospect’ of our, etc., collaboration. The diplomatic reasons which decided me to take this step will be communicated by word of mouth.
Duncker: Nothing yet received, neither money nor copies. Tell Lupus about this; he'd already have had one otherwise.
Ad vocem Schramm: This great man was a failure in Berlin. His wife’s family council therefore decided that he should take a minor commercial post in Krefeld. Thereupon the ‘failure’ addressed a long scrawl to the Ministers in Berlin saying he had considered it his political duty to join combat with Minister Manteuffel, whom he abhorred, but now, having fulfilled that duty, and finding that Prussia was not à sa hauteur à lui [good enough for him] requested to be released from the commonwealth of subjects. Granted, and Schramm arrived in London along with the other parcels. Now intends, as he warned the Hohenzollern cabinet, to get himself ‘naturalised’ an Englishman. The worst blow that has befallen Prussia since the battle of Jena.
Ad vocem Lassalle In reply to his gigantic manuscript, wherein, by the by, he also mentions the ‘anonymous’ pamphlet he wrote ‘in the name of the party’, I sent him (today) a letter about 1/3 as long as the present one. As regards the pamphlet, all I said was: ‘Not our view at all. No point in writing about it, as we should be expressing our opinion publicly in print.'
Salut.
Your
K. M.