Letter to Sophie von Hatzfeldt, November 26, 1864

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 26 November 1864


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, Second Russian Edition, Vol. 31, Moscow 1963
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 42


MARX TO SOPHIE VON HATZFELDT

IN BERLIN

[London,] Saturday, 26 November 1864

My dear Countess,

These few lines in the greatest of haste (there being just time before the last post goes) to inform you that I have been fortunate enough to be vouchsafed the opportunity to get a hold on Blind immediately and deliver him a vigorous kick for his attack on our Lassalle.[1]

I shall send you my attack on him on Monday which will appear in the form of a short letter to the Stuttgart Beobachter.[2] You will then learn of the circumstances of the case, too.[3]

Yours very respectfully

K. M.

  1. ↑ Der Beobachter, No. 268, 17 November 1864 carried an anonymous report from Bradford, which was a reply to the criticism of Blind in the newspaper's leading article 'Bescheidenheit—ein Ehrenkleid' published on 21 October 1864 (see Note 38). The anonymous writer exaggerated Blind's role in the political life of the USA. He also attempted to dispute the reference of the leader's author to the description of Blind by Marx in his Herr Vogt, and to refute the pamphlet's revelations concerning Blind's cowardly attitude towards Vogt's slanderous campaign against proletarian revolutionaries (see Note 48). All this prompted Marx to write a letter to the editor of Der Beobachter on 28 November 1864 (see present edition, Vol. 20, pp. 23-25). At the request of Sophie von Hatzfeldt, a friend of Ferdinand Lassalle, Marx also came out in this letter against Blind's attacks on Lassalle.
  2. ↑ K. Marx, 'To the Editor of the Stuttgart Beobachter.'
  3. ↑ See this volume, p. 30.