Letter to Hermann Becker, about February 1, 1851

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 1 February 1851


First published in Anklageschrift gegen P. G. Roeser, J. H. G. Bürgers, P. Nothjung, W. J. Reiff, H. H. Becker, R. Daniels, C. W. Otto, A. Jacobi, J. J. Klein, F. Freiligrath, Cologne, 1852
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 38, p. 273

TO HERMANN BECKER IN COLOGNE

[London, about 1 February 1851]


...You would very greatly oblige me by sending me Willich's letters.[1] Partly because we here by the rivers of Babylon[2] should also be vouchsafed a share of your Homeric laughter. And on the other hand because the man is exploiting the 'alleged' connection in order to brag in front of foreigners and, at the same time, make denunciations. Finally I feel it necessary that you should convey a note to him, either through me or direct, in which you most politely decline further correspondence on the grounds that, while humour may not greatly endanger him in London, for you in Cologne—and not for you alone but, by way of repercussion, for our party comrades in Germany—its effects may be dire. And what could be more ominous and at the same time more absurd than to be nailed to the cross as a result of a trick played through some mere whim of the 'carpenter's'[3] ...

  1. ↑ The original of the letter is not extant. The excerpt published here was quoted in the indictment of Hermann Becker and others at the Cologne communist trial (1852).
  2. ↑ Psalms 137:1
  3. ↑ Marx's reference to Joseph, the carpenter, husband of Mary, the mother of Christ, is an ironical allusion to August Willich who resigned his commission in the Prussian army just before the 1848 revolution and worked as a carpenter in Cologne.