To Moses Hess in Paris
Cologne, 14 November 1848
My dear Hess,
Here I sit—not in a bower of roses, far from it—at half past one in the morning side by side with Marx at the newspaper's[1] editorial table correcting proof-sheets, but still find time to write to you, especially since, newly arrived and due (I hope) to depart for Paris tomorrow, I have heard that the philosopher Wolf[2] is in Paris. There is, I presume, no need for me to advise you as to how our club[3] should act vis-a-vis this man. My presence in Paris might be needed at this moment, lest the philosopher should prove troublesome with his nagging and taunting. So I am hastening thither. I could not come any sooner. Berlin has held me in thrall and I have got to spend one day in Cologne, especially since Marx has been summoned to appear in court tomorrow and is in danger of being arrested.[4]
The city of Berlin, in state of siege, will be severely wrangled.[5] It is a matter either of a republic or of Cossack rule.[6]
Do not let Wolf exert any influence. Neither Worcell nor anyone else must be allowed to listen to him. He seems to be corresponding with Marx. The latter is very enthusiastic about Engels, whom he describes as outstanding 'intellectually, morally and from the point of view of character'. The same Engels is in Switzerland for the good cause, says Marx.[7]
Farewell.
NB. Post the enclosed without delay.
- ↑ Neue Rheinische Zeitung
- ↑ Probably Ferdinand Wolff
- ↑ Presumably an allusion to the émigré German Union (Réunion allemande) organised in Paris in August 1848. Although it occupied the left flank of the democratic movement and followed on the whole the political line charted by the Communist League, this organisation was not free from petty-bourgeois influence. Moses Hess, who was in Paris at the time, tried to use it against Marx, Engels and their followers. On his initiative an attempt was made to split and change the organisation directed by the Communist League, in particular to set Marx and Engels at loggerheads. Ewerbeck, who came to Germany to attend the Second Congress of Democrats in Berlin, was to a certain extent involved by Hess in his political intrigues.
- ↑ Early in July 1848 legal proceedings were instituted against Marx because of his article 'Arrests' published in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (see present edition, Vol. 7, pp. 176-79), exposing the arbitrary actions of the Prussian authorities. At the beginning of October 1848 the Cologne Public Prosecutor started an investigation against Marx and other newspaper editors for publishing anonymously Georg Weerth's series of feuilletons Leben und Taten des berühmten Ritters Schnapphanski. At the end of October 1848 the Cologne Public Prosecutor began another investigation against Marx as the newspaper's editor-in-chief for publishing the proclamation of the republican Friedrich Hecker. The 'insult' to the Public Prosecutor and 'libel' against the police officers contained in the article 'Arrests' were the main accusations levelled at Marx and Engels at the trial held on 7 February 1849. The jury acquitted them.
- ↑ Ewerbeck coins a verb from the name Wrangel.
- ↑ A pun on Napoleon's words: 'In fifty years Europe will be republican or Cossack', cited by Las Cases in Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène.
- ↑ On 26 September 1848 the Prussian authorities, fearing the growing revolutionary-democratic movement, declared a state of siege in Cologne (it was lifted on 2 October). By order of the military command political organisations and associations were banned, the civic militia disbanded, democratic newspapers, including the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, suspended, and an order issued for the arrest of Engels and a few other editors. Engels and Dronke had to leave Cologne. For a time Engels lived in hiding in Barmen. On 5 October Engels and Dronke arrived in Paris after a short stay in Belgium whence they were expelled by the police. Dronke remained in the French capital and wrote to the Neue Rheinische Zeitung from there, while Engels started on foot for Switzerland via the south-west of France. About 24 October he arrived in Geneva and at the beginning of November moved to Lausanne (these facts served as a basis for establishing the date of this letter and those by Marx which followed and were not dated); Engels arrived in Neuchâtel on 7 November and in Berne on 9 November. He stayed there until mid-January 1849 when it was possible for him to return to Germany. Engels' letter written to Marx from Geneva has not been found.