Letter to Ferdinand Lassalle, March 7, 1861

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 7 March 1861


First published in: F. Lassalle. Nachgelassene Briefe und Schriften, Bd. III, Stuttgart-Berlin, 1922
Published in English in full for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 41


MARX TO FERDINAND LASSALLE[1]

IN BERLIN

7 March 1861 Zalt-Bommel, Holland (c/o L. Philips)

Dear Lassalle,

As I've already written and told you,[2] I intend to proceed from here to Berlin in order to discuss with you personally the possibility of joint politico-literary enterprises, but also and more especially to see you again.

Now, however, I should like you to tell me exactly how matters stand as regards the following point. The only passport I have is an old one issued by the French when I was expelled in 1849.[3] I could not bring myself to approach the Prussian Embassy in London. Nor did I wish to become a naturalised Englishman (like Freiligrath, Bucher, Zimmermann, etc.) and travel on an English passport. The following question arises: In 1845, when pursued in Belgium by the Prussian government,[4] I obtained through my brother-in-law[5] a Prussian expatriation permit. On the pretext of my having ceased to be a Prussian subject, I was, as you know, expelled by the Prussian government in 1849. However, in the eyes of the law, all refugees who had spent 10 years outside the country would equally have ceased to be Prussian 'subjects'. I have never been naturalised abroad. Further, in accordance with the resolution passed by the Preliminary Parliament[6] of 1848—a resolution that was regarded as virtually binding by all German governments on the occasion of the elections to the Frankfurt parliament[7] —all refugees, even though, like Vogt, etc., they might have been naturalised abroad, could avail themselves of their German citizenship and everywhere qualify for election to parliament. I invoked this when, in 1848, I requested that my Prussian citizenship be reinstated. This was refused by the Prussian ministry of the day, though they didn't venture to treat me as a foreigner until all was up with the revolution.

In practice, the only importance that attaches to this question just now is whether I shall be able to get to Berlin unimpeded. If only I can succeed in crossing the border, I shall have nothing to fear in Berlin; on the periphery, however, it's a more ticklish matter.

As you know, I am here with my uncle[8] (who looks after my mother's affairs and has, in the past, frequently made me substantial advances against my share of the inheritance) in order to put my parlous finances in order. He's a stubborn man, but the fact of my being a writer greatly appeals to his vanity. So, when you write to me, you must refer to the success (lucus a non lucendo[9] ) of my recent anti-Vogt pamphlet, our joint plans for a newspaper, etc. and, above all, so couch your letter that I can demonstrate my 'confidence' in my uncle by giving him the letter to read. Nor should you omit to mention something about politics. Vous m'entendez, mon cher?[10]

With kindest regards to you and the countess.[11]

Your

K. Marx

(Zalt-Bommel is near Nymwegen. I don't imagine that the name is familiar to you. However, it attracted some attention as a result of the recent floods.)

The conspiration de silence, with which the entire German press has greeted my last piece,[12] precisely as it did the previous ones, I really find most flattering, however detrimental it may be to sales. I trust your health has improved.

  1. ↑ An excerpt from this letter was first published in English in The Letters of Karl Marx. Selected and Translated with Explanatory Notes and an Introduction by Saul K. Padover, Prentice-Hall Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1979.
  2. ↑ See this volume, p. 263.
  3. ↑ Following an abortive coup by petty-bourgeois democrats on 13 June 1849, a state of siege was proclaimed in Paris, bringing in its wake reprisals against democrats and socialists. On 19 July, the French authorities notified Marx that he was being expelled from Paris to Morbihan, a marshy and insalubrious region in Brittany. Rather than go there, Marx decided to emigrate to England and settle in London. He left Paris on 24 August.
  4. ↑ This refers to the pamphlet Juchhe nach Italia!, written by Bamberger in Paris and published, with Vogt's help, anonymously by Reinhold Solms in Frankfurt am Main, but marked 'Bern und Genf, Vogts Verlag, 1859' on the title page. It contained no direct polemic against Engels' articles on the Italian campaign in the Volk (see present edition, Vol. 16).
  5. ↑ Wilhelm Robert Schmalhausen
  6. ↑ The Preliminary Parliament, or Preparliament met in Frankfurt am Main from 31 March to 4 April 1848. A council of representatives of the German states, it set up a Committee of Fifty to prepare the ground for the convocation of an all-German National Assembly (see Note 282) and produced a draft of the 'Fundamental Rights and Demands of the German People'.
  7. ↑ When writing this letter, Marx evidently had not yet received Vogt's pamphlet. What he calls the introduction was actually the second section. The first contained a verbatim report of the court proceedings against the Allgemeine Zeitung in Augsburg in October 1859. Vogt had sued the newspaper for reprinting, in June of that year, Karl Blind's anonymously published pamphlet Warnung zur gefälligen Verbreitung, which exposed him as a Bonapartist agent (Marx calls it, for brevity, Zur Warnung; for details of it see his polemic Herr Vogt, present edition, Vol. 17, pp. 111-32). Marx likens Vogt's piece to the petty-bourgeois democrat Müller-Tellering's libellous pamphlet Vorgeschmack in die künftige deutsche Diktatur von Marx und Engels (Cologne, 1850).
  8. ↑ Lion Philips
  9. ↑ Literally: 'a grove from not being light'. The expression, first used by Quintilian in De institutione oratoria (I, 6, 34), illustrates the practice ascribed to ancient Roman etymologists of deriving words from their semantic opposites, as lucus ('grove') from lucere ('to shine, be light'), because a grove is not light.
  10. ↑ You take the point, my friend.
  11. ↑ Sophie von Hatzfeldt
  12. ↑ Herr Vogt