Letter to Wilhelm Liebknecht, October 29, 1889

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 29 October 1889


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXVIII, Moscow, 1940
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 48


ENGELS TO WILHELM LIEBKNECHT

IN BORSDORF NEAR LEIPZIG

London, 29 October 1889

Dear Liebknecht,

I can tell you very little about the Prophet Gottschalk, having long since forgotten the creature. Moses Hess brought him into the League531 prior to 1848 and made him out to be a veritable prodigy. In Cologne early in March 1848 he posed as a working men's leader.[1] For the conditions as they then were, he was the perfect demagogue who flat- tered the masses at the very moment of their awakening and pandered to all their traditional prejudices—but apart from that he was a complete numskull, as befits a prophet, and for that reason actually regarded himself as a prophet. Moreover, as a genuine prophet he was above all scruples and thus capable of every kind of dirty trick. Whether he ever uttered the words you cite[2] seems to me doubtful; he would systemat- ically invent legends about himself. In short, he played a certain role in Cologne at the beginning of March and had quite crazy schemes, the details of which I have forgotten, that were supposed to work miracles overnight. All this was before our time. When we arrived in Cologne in April his star was very much on the wane and, when we foregathered there again, having finally decided to publish the paper,[3] it had all but set. The paper and our Workers' Association[4] placed him in a quandary; either he went along with us or he opposed us. Luckily for him, he and Anneke were arrested at the beginning of July—on account of speeches of some sort, I believe. They were acquitted at the end of 1848 or the beginning of 1849 (I have been vainly searching through the Neue Rheinische Zeitung for the date, etc., and shall have to discontinue the search if this letter is to go off). Thereupon the Prophet Gottschalk went into voluntary exile in Paris in the expectation of being recalled by gigantic demonstrations. But no one lifted a finger. After our departure Gottschalk returned to Cologne (it might even have been just before we left) and, having gained his former popularity on the strength of his medical practice in the poorer districts, went back into harness with a will at the outbreak of the cholera epidemic, treated his proletarian patients free of charge, contracted cholera himself, and died.

That is all I know. In Paris things would seem to have settled down again. Laf argue is by no means as bad as you make him out to be—Jourde is no Boulangist; rather, he masqueraded as a Boulangist in Bordeaux with the consent of the local party comrades, which I, of course, definitely disapprove of. The man has blundered and will have to pay for it, at any rate for the time being. If, however, he is all right in other respects, and that is some- thing I don't know, he may be restored to grace later on.

I'm very sorry that the Volks-Bibliothek[5] should have involved you in such losses. But in view of your lack of business experience it was only to be expected that Geiser would land you in the cart. After all, the rotten stuff he published was made no better by having your name on it, while the Schlesingeriad must inevitably have proved the last straw. That, I think, explains it all quite naturally, without your needing to seek the reason in the ill-will of others. You surely can't expect the party to enthuse over this Volks-Bibliothek. I too am having a bad time. Percy has gone bankrupt and the whole family is living here so as to avoid execution at their house; nothing has been decided yet. Negotiations are going on with the old man[6] but he maintains that he himself is in a mess—and he's really a bit cracked. In short Augustine is in a mess—O my darling Augustine, everything's gone.[7] H o w it will all end I don't know.

Warm regards from Lenchen and

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ On 3 March 1848, a mass demonstration took place in Cologne, called by the local representatives of the Communist League. On behalf of all those taking part, Andreas Gottschalk handed a petition to the town magistrate with demands for democratic freedom and for protection of working men's rights. The police dispersed this demonstration; A. Gottschalk, Willich and F. Anneke were arrested and brought to trial. However, under a royal pardon, the three men were released from custody on 21 March 1848.
  2. ↑ On 26 October 1889, W. Liebknecht wrote to Engels and asked if he knew when A. Gottschalk could have made the following statement: T am here on behalf of 20,000 proletarians who do not care at all whether we have a republic or a monarchy'.
  3. ↑ Neue Rheinische Zeitung
  4. ↑ The Cologne Workers' Association was a workers' organisation founded by Andreas Gottschalk on 13 April 1848. The Association was led by the President and the committee, which consisted of representatives of various trades. After Gottschalk's arrest Moll was elected President. He held this post till a state of siege was proclaimed in Cologne in September 1848, when he had to emigrate under threat of arrest. On 16 October Marx agreed to assume this post temporarily at the request of Association members. In November Rbser became acting President and on 28 February 1849, Schapper was elected President and remained at this post until the end of May 1849. The majority of the leading members (Gottschalk, Anneke, Schapper, Moll, Lessner, Jansen, Roser, Nothjung, Bedorf) were members of the Communist League. During the initial period of its existence, thorkers' Association was influenced by Gottschalk who, sharing many of the views of the 'true socialists', ignored the historical tasks of the proletariat in the democratic revolution, carried on the sectarian tactics of boycotting indirect elections to the Federal and Prussian National Assemblies, and came out against supporting democratic candidates in elections. He combined ultra-left phrases with very legalistic methods of struggle (workers' petitions to the Government and the City Council, etc.) and supported the demands of the workers affected by craft prejudices, etc. From the very beginning, Gottschalk's tactics were resisted by the supporters of Marx and Engels. Under their influence, at the end of June a change occurred in the activities of the Workers' Association, which became a centre of revolutionary agitation from the autumn of 1848 onwards, also among the peasants. Members of the Association organised democratic and workers' associations near Cologne, disseminated revolutionary literature, including the 'Demands of the Communist Party in Germany', and studied Marx's writings. The Association maintained close contacts with other workers' and democratic organisations. When, in the spring of 1849, Marx and Engels took steps to organise the advanced workers on a national scale and actually started preparing for the creation of a proletarian party, they relied to a considerable extent on the Cologne Workers' Association.
  5. ↑ On 26 October 1889, W. Liebknecht informed Engels that he had declined to take part in the publication of the Volksbibliothek (see note 400), a move that incurred significant material losses.
  6. ↑ Percy Rosher's father
  7. ↑ An allusion to the song O du lieber Augustin.