Letter to Friedrich Adolph Sorge, December 20, 1890

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 20 December 1890


First published abridged in Briefe und Auszüge aus Briefen von Joh. Phil. Becker, Jos. Dietzgen, Friedrick Engels, Karl Marx u. A. an F. A. Sorge und Andere, Stuttgart, 1906 and in full in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXVIII, Moscow, 1940
Printed according to the original
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 49


ENGELS TO FRIEDRICH ADOLPH SORGE

IN HOBOKEN

[London,] 20 December 1890

Dear Sorge,

Have had your letters up to the 9th of this month. Use my letters as you think fit.[1] I am glad that you consulted Schlüter about the question of the feeb and that all is now settled. As things go in Germany, what they offer is very respectable. Schoenlank, by the way, who wrote and told you this, is a most depraved fellow who in fact does not hesitate to seize on any and every opportunity to extort money from the party. Of this he again gave proof at the Halle Congress.

I am greatly overworked, hence just a postcard today. I have taken on Mr Brentano who must now be disabled 'good and proper'.[2]

Louise Kautsky has decided to stay with me for good. I am, of course, absolutely delighted and deeply grateful to the sweet child. She is giving up a great deal for my sake, but luckily I am in a position to offer her in return much that would not be available to her in Vienna. Besides keeping house for me, she does a fair amount of secretarial work—just what I needed. So as you will see, I cannot for the present accept your kind invitation to move to Hoboken 108; I am engaged in renewing my lease for another three years.2

I hope that, by the time this arrives, your wife will have completely recovered. Schorlemmer will again be unable to visit us this Christmas because of his persistent aural catarrh; otherwise he might go deaf. So more anon. A Happy Christmas to you.

Your old friend,

F. E.

  1. ↑ In a letter of 2 December 1890, Sorge asked Engels' permission to make use of his letters in articles for Neue Zeit.
  2. ↑ In his preface to the fourth German edition of Volume I of Capital in June 1890 (see present edition, Vol. 35) Engels described in detail Marx's 1872 polemic with the German economist Lujo Brentano, who had accused Marx of misquoting a passage from Gladstone's parliamentary speech of 16 April 1863 in reproducing it in the Inaugural Address of the Working Men's International Association and in Volume I of Capital. Brentano's reaction to Engels' presentation of the case was the pamphlet Meine Polemik mit Karl Marx, Berlin, 1890, the introduction to which was published in Deutsches Wochenblatt, No. 45, 6 November 1890. On 4 December this journal carried a note containing two passages from Gladstone's letters to Brentano of 22 and 28 November 1890 in which Gladstone asserted that Brentano was right. Engels replied in a brief article, 'In the Case of Brentano Versus Marx' (Die Neue Zeit, 9. Jg., 1890/91, 1. Bd., Nr. 13) and, at greater length, in a pamphlet of the same title, published in April 1891, which contained a large number of documents, including the above-mentioned article (see present edition, Vol. 27).