Letter to Friedrich Engels, July 8, 1853

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 8 July 1853


First published (except the text on the back of the letter) in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 1, Stuttgart, 1913 and in full in: Marx and Engels, Works, Second Russian Edition, Vol. 28, Moscow, 1962
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 39


MARX TO ENGELS

IN MANCHESTER

[London,] 8 July 1853 28 Dean Street, Soho

Dear Engels,

Dr Jacobi, the bearer of this note, was one of the accused at the 'communist trial in Cologne'.[1]

I'm at a loss to understand whether your continued silence is due to illness, pique, overwork or what.

Yesterday I drew £24 on Dana at Spielmann's in Lombard Street; Spielmann will pay me in 5 weeks as soon as the bill is returned. In the meantime I shall have another very bad spell to go through, the more so since a number of valuable things now in pawn will have to be repledged or else they will be forfeited, and that is, of course, impossible dans un moment[2] when the wherewith- al even for les choses les plus nécessaires[3] is lacking. However, I'm now well-accustomed to being in the soup and all that that entails.

In any case write and tell me why you're not writing. I hope, AT ALL EVENTS, that you are not ill.

Your

K. M.

[On the back of the letter]

Friedrich Engels. 48 Great Ducie Street, Manchester

  1. ↑ Members of the Communist League (see Note 15) were arrested by the Prussian police in May 1851 and accused of 'treasonable conspiracy'. The accused remained in detention for about eighteen months. Eleven Communist League members (Heinrich Bürgers, Peter Nothjung, Peter Röser, Hermann Heinrich Becker, Karl Otto, Wilhelm Reiff, Friedrich Lessner, Roland Daniels, Johann Jacob Klein, Johann Erhardt and Abraham Jacobi) were brought to trial which began in Cologne on 4 October and lasted till 12 November 1852. It was rigged by the Prussian police on the basis of fabricated documents and forged evidence which included the so-called Original Minute-book of the Communist League Central Authority meetings and documents stolen by the police from the Willich-Schapper group. The trial was accompanied by an anti-communist hue and cry in the official press of Germany and other countries. On the basis of forged documents and perjury seven of the accused were sentenced to imprisonment for terms of three to six years. Marx, Engels and their friends and associates in England, Germany and America supported the Cologne prisoners in the press and supplied counsel for the defence with documents and material exposing police fabrications. The provocative actions of the prosecution and the contemptible methods of the Prussian police state were exposed by Marx in his pamphlet Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne and by Engels in the article 'The Late Trial at Cologne' (see present edition, Vol. 11)
  2. ↑ at a moment
  3. ↑ the most necessary things