Letter to Eugen Oswald, August 7, 1870

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 7 August 1870


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, Second Russian Edition, Vol. 33, Moscow, 1964
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 44


MARX TO EUGEN OSWALD

IN LONDON

London, 7 August 1870

Dear Oswald,

Iterum Crispinus.[1]

Frederick Engels gives you permission to add his name to the Address,[2] but notabene on the express condition that you print the same reservation word-for-word as under my name.[3]

Yours,

K. M.

H. J. Rothschild, commerçant[4] (a German, i.e. a Prussian), gives the same permission on the same condition. Apropos. I take it that you did allow the passage to stand which hints at the defensive character of the war on the German side, albeit in an extremely diplomatic way?

  1. ↑ Ecce iterum Crispinus—Behold, this Crispinus again (Juvenal, Satires, IV, 1). In a figurative sense the words mean: 'the same man again' or 'the same (thing) again'.
  2. ↑ In his letter of 18 July 1870, Eugen Oswald, a German refugee, asked Marx to sign an Address on the Franco-Prussian War drawn up by a group of French and German democratic refugees. The Address was published as a leaflet on 31 July 1870; the editions that followed were signed by Marx, Engels, Liebknecht, Bebel and other members of the International. Marx and his associates agreed to sign it on conditions outlined by Marx in his letter to Oswald of 3 August 1870 (see this volume, p. 34).
    Oswald enclosed with his letter an excerpt from Louis Blanc's letter in which he called for the Address on the Franco-Prussian War to be signed by as many people as possible.
  3. ↑ See this volume, p. 34.
  4. ↑ trader