Letter to Joseph Weydemeyer, June 8, 1850

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 8 June 1850


First published: in Die Gesellschaft, Jg. VII, Bd. 2, Berlin, 1930
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 38, p. 237
Collection(s): Die Gesellschaft

TO JOSEPH WEYDEMEYER IN FRANKFURT AM MAIN


[London,] 8 June[1] [1850]

64 Dean Street, Soho


Dear Weydemeyer,

How are things with our Revue? The money, especially? The question is becoming all the more urgent as the Prussians are making every effort to induce the British Government to expel me from England too.[2] Were I not stuck here sans le sou[3] I should already have withdrawn into the heart of England and the Government would have lost sight of me.

How are things with the 'red issue' ?[4] [5] We have orders for it from America. How much of it has been sold? How many copies have you left?

Your paper[6] seems to have joined the rest to form a conspiration du silence in regard to our Revue. However, I realise that, to the readers of the Neue Deutsche Zeitung, Raveaux must be more interesting.

Regards to Dronke and to your wife.[7]

Your

K. M.

  1. ↑ A slip of the pen in the original: May.
  2. ↑ This is an allusion to the campaign against German political refugees launched by the Prussian conservative newspapers and taken up by the English press. This campaign grew in intensity especially after an attempt on the life of King Frederick William IV of Prussia in Berlin on 22 May 1850 by the retired non-commissioned officer Max Sefeloge (he died in a lunatic asylum). The reactionary press, the Neue Preussische Zeitung in particular, spread the lie that the attempt had been prepared by Marx and other leaders in London of an extensive conspiracy. The Prussian authorities urged the British Government to deport the political refugees. Marx and Engels unmasked the organisers of this slander campaign in their letter to the Prussian Ambassador in London Bunsen and in other statements in the press (see MECW, Vol. 10, pp. 370, 378 and 386).
  3. ↑ without a penny
  4. ↑ Neue Rheinische Zeitung, No. 301, 19 May 1849
  5. ↑ The last issue, No. 301, of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung for 19 May 1849, printed in red, was published in a greater number of copies than usual. Later it was reprinted several times and used by the Communist League members, who remained in Germany, for propaganda purposes.
  6. ↑ Neue Deutsche Zeitung
  7. ↑ Louise