Letter to Karl Marx, July 25, 1865

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 25 July 1865


First published in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 3, Stuttgart, 1913
Printed according to the original
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 42


ENGELS TO MARX

IN LONDON

[Manchester,] 25 July 1865

Dear Moor,

How do you like our Prussian Mirabeaus in—the Zoological Gardens} Harkort and Co. as wild animals, Bismarck himself could not have thought that up.[1]

By the by, it seems certain to me that Mr Bismarck decidedly wants to have a collision. For me the most convincing evidence of this is the behaviour of Schweitzer's shit-rag,[2] which is being confiscated every day now. The workers are now suddenly expected to take the part of the Deputies, after being called on for 6 months not to get excited; there are to be mass meetings, etc., and every effort is to be put into agitating against the government. Further corroboration is provided by the unanimous refrain from the reactionary press, which is comparing the banquet with the February banquets in Paris,[3] and finally the government's whole proceeding, the pointless provocations, etc. Meanwhile, it was to be expected that Bismarck would come a cropper. Wasn't cleverly enough organised anyway.

On the other hand, Schweitzer-Becker seem to want to take the opportunity to make a decent EXIT. The Social-Demokrat and the Association[4] are to be suppressed so that those gentlemen can be whitewashed. I've stopped reading that rag as of 1st inst., incidentally. Bismarck seems to have had his fill of paying for it, and so have I. So, if anything should happen, I shall have to rely on you for information.

32° Reaumur in the shade in Germany! They say people are still only living in the cellars. It's as sultry as the tropics here, too.

Kindest regards.

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ A banquet of the opposition liberal majority of the Chamber of Deputies, organised by the Rhineland men of Progress (see Note 99) headed by the Town Councillor Classen-Kappelmann, was scheduled for 22-23 July 1865, in Cologne. On 17 July the Bismarck government forbade the banquet. Despite numerous protests on the part of the workers in the various towns of Germany against this arbitrary measure, most opposition members did not dare to show open resistance. Only some 80 delegates out of the 250 invited arrived in Cologne. The banquet's organiser, Classen-Kappelmann, fearing arrest, left for Belgium. Since the hall where the banquet was to take place had been closed by the police, the deputies tried to hold the banquet in the Zoological Gardens, but were driven out of it by soldiers and policemen.
  2. ↑ Der Social Demokrat 8 1196
  3. ↑ The reference is to a series of banquets in favour of electoral reform that took place in France from July 1847 to January 1848 and became a prelude to the February bourgeois-democratic revolution of 1848.
  4. ↑ General Association of German Workers p. 158)