Letter to Janos Bangya, December 3, 1852

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 3 December 1852


First published in MEGA, Abt. III, Bd. 1, Berlin, 1929
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 39


To János Bangya in London

[Rough copy]

London, 3 December 1852
28 Dean Street, Soho

Dear Bangya,

I have today received from Engels a letter containing some highly curious pieces of information.

Engels has not written to the address indicated by you for, as he points out, what is actually proved by an answer to a letter that is sent not direct but only poste restante, through the medium of a 2nd address?

Instead, Engels asked some business friends in Berlin to make inquiries. After the most painstaking investigations they now tell him that:

1. no such firm as Collmann exists; 2. no Collmann exists at the address indicated, 58 or 59 Neue Königsstr. and 3. no one at all by the name of Collmann is to be found in Berlin.

Engels further draws my attention to the fact that the two letters signed Eisermann and the letter signed Collmann[1] were written by the same hand, that all 3 possess the unusual quality of being loose bits of paper bearing no postmark, that in the first 2 Eisermann, and in the 3rd Collmann, figures directly as publisher, etc., and that on pretexts that are mutually incompatible the thing has been allowed to drag on for nearly 7 months. Now that Collmann has proved to be as much of an illusion as was previously the non-existent publisher of the Constitutionelle Zeitung, Eisermann, I ask you yourself, how can all these contradictions, improbabilities and mysteries over something so simple as the publication of a pamphlet be rationally explained?

'Trust' will not dispose of facts, nor do people who respect one another demand unquestioning faith of one another.

I confess that, the more I turn this matter over in my mind, the more I am compelled, even with the best will in the world, to find it damned obscure; also that, were it not for my feelings of friendship towards you, I would unhesitatingly echo Engels' concluding remark: Après tout il paraît pourtant qu'on a voulu nous jouer.[2]

Yours ever,

K. Marx

P.S. Engels finally draws my attention to the fact that, even were the manuscript in question to reappear for a few days in London,[3] absolutely nothing would be proved and nothing gained. What could it prove, save the existence and identity of the manuscript, of which nobody is in doubt.[4]

  1. ↑ The reference is to a letter of 28 October 1852 composed by Bangya in the name of Charles Collmann, a publisher invented by him, concerning the preparations made for publishing Marx's and Engels' manuscript The Great Men of the Exile. The letter was not written on a publishers' notepaper and had no post marks. It contained Bangya's note dated 3 November 1852 asking Marx to acquaint himself with Collmann's letter
  2. ↑ 'It looks as though they have been trying to hoodwink us after all.'
  3. ↑ In a letter to Bangya of 28 October 1852 the fictitious publisher Collmann (see Note 288) expressed readiness, for the authors' reassurance, to place the manuscript at their disposal for 48 hours
  4. ↑ See this volume, p. 252.