[London,] 13 July 1851 
98 Dean Street, Soho 

Dear Engels, 

I have put off writing from day to day so as to send you 
complete the documents communicated below. But as they won’t 
be complete for several days, I am writing today so as not to keep 
you waiting any longer for an answer. 

4 Ferdinand Wolff 

D’abord? From your letter it would seem that, during your old 
man’s visit to Manchester, you did not hear that a second 
document had appeared in the Ké6lnische Zeitung under the 
heading ‘Der Bund der Kommunisten’.? This was the piece we 
wrote jointly, ‘Ansprache an den Bund’‘—aw fond,’ nothing less 
than a plan of campaign against democracy. From one point of 
view its publication was desirable, unlike Burgers’ document,‘* 
of which the form was absurd, plus ou moins and the content not 
very reassuring. On the other hand, certain passages will make the 
present prisoners’ position more difficult. 

From Louis Schulz‘ in Cologne I have heard that Burgers writes 
most dolefully from Dresden. On the other hand it is generally 
believed in Cologne that Daniels will be released, since there is 
nothing against him, and all the wailers in the Holy City have 
reacted in his favour. Naturally they consider him to be incapable 
of such ‘foolery’. 

Miquel has written from Gottingen. Has been subjected to 
several house searches. Nothing was found. Wasn’t locked up. Five 
new emissaries—ceENnTLEMEN—have left Géttingen for Berlin, etc. 
The persecution of the Jews **’ has, of course, stimulated both zeal 
and interest. 

The funniest thing is that that fatuous sheet, the Augsburg 
Allgemeine Zeitung, attributes paternity of our document to Messrs 
Mazzini and Ruge, beats its breast over and over again and can 
find no better way of expressing its shock at the enormity than by 
crying at intervals, ‘Madness! Madness! Madness!’ 

The Trier’sche Zeitung—i.e. K. Grün—has, of course, climbed 
onto its high horse and used the first document to prove 
the material, and the second, the ‘intellectual’ impotence of the 
party." Needless to say, neither the stock phrases of the friends 
of light nor the most extreme ‘anarchist’ catch-words are 
wanting. Everything to be done from above! Police state! All 
dissenters literally to be proscribed and expelled. Mon Dieu! That 
really is the limit. 

Now for the local storms—which customarily take place in a 
tea-cup. 

First. Father Willich has bolted from the barracks—the demise 

a First of all. - > ‘Der Communisten-Bund’, Kélnische Zeitung, No. 156, 1 July 1851, 
supplement. - © K. Marx and F. Engels, ‘Address of the Central Authority to the 
League’, March 1850. - 4 basically - ¢ more or less - £ The original has: Schüler. - 
8 ‘Der Communistenbund’, Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 186, 5 July 1851, supplement. - 
h ‘Kine Polizei-Ente?’, Trier’sche Zeitung, No. 158, 6 July 1851. 

of which, it seems, has been decided—and has become deeply 
involved in squabbles with most of his bodyguard. 

Second. The great Fickler has arrived here. A few days before 
he came to England he was in Strassburg with Lupus. Liebknecht 
has long been an intimate of his. Both, therefore, went to see him 
on 5 July. He chatted away most affably, spoke of the need for 
reconciling the parties, etc. Then they were joined by the great A. 
Goegg. He called Willich a ‘mere fantasist’, Schapper a ‘disgust- 
ing character’—having several times heard the fellows blustering 
in the Windmill,*' he had disassociated himself from them and 
hadn’t darkened their door again. Fickler and Goegg inveighed 
with exceptional vigour against the great Kinkel, who here plays 
the role of happy parvenu, thus bringing down on his head the 
ire of the other great men. Ruge, on the other hand, was regarded 
as a kind of lumen? 

Fickler asked for my address and Lupus and Liebknecht 
departed, duped by the worthies and their striving for ‘concord’. 

A few days later Freiligrath sent me the following letter which 
he had received: 

4 Brunswick Place, North Brighton, 
4 July 1851 

’ Dear Freiligrath, 

We are planning a kind of club or society which does away with the privacy of 
such organisations and excludes no one from the revolutionary social democratic 
party save him who desires to be exclusive or is debarred by his own character and 
antecedents. 

Fickler, Goegg, Sigel, Ronge and Ruge are promoting the affair and I have 
undertaken to inform you, and to invite you if, as I suppose, you are interested, to 
a meeting to be held for this purpose on 14 July (Monday week) at 11 in the 
morning at Fickler’s lodgings, 26 York Buildings, which form part of New Road © at 
the lower end of Baker Street. We have invited about 24 people whom we know to be 
reliable and to have remained true. At present we know of no more. 

I would have liked to talk to you. If the plan comes off, this will be possible in 
any case. Even if you are not going to remain in London, you still ought to come. 

With regards and a handshake. 

Your 
A. Ruge 

Qu’en dis-tu?° 
Freiligrath has made the great mistake of not sending off his 
answer until yesterday, 12 July, so that Ruge won’t even get it 

a luminary - / Now Marylebone Road - ¢ What do you make of that? 

before leaving Brighton for London. Freiligrath was altogether too 
lackadaisical over the matter. Mais enfin chacun a sa maniére dagir’ 
Lupus, to whom I communicated the letter, immediately wrote to 
Fickler: 

10 July 1851 

Citizen Fickler, 

On the 5th of this month Liebknecht and I came to visit you. From the manner 
in which you addressed us, I could not possibly have inferred that only the pre- 
vious day the following letter had been sent to Freiligrath. (The above letter 
follows.) 

If, on the 5th of this month, 1 had so much as remotely suspected that such a 
connection existed between yourself and A. Ruge, that fatuous, insolent, rapscal- 
lion, I would certainly not have set foot inside your lodgings. 

Since I perceive from the above, however, that you consort with a person ‘whe is 
debarred by his own character and antecedents’ (e.g. by his own cowardly flight from 
Berlin, etc.) from any truly revolutionary party, and who has already been sent to 
coventry by the whole communist party in Germany, I would hereby inform you 
that I neither will nor can have anything to do with people who move so intimately 
within the orbit of an individual such as Ruge. 

W. Wolff 
3 Broad Street, Golden Square 

P.S. You can make whatever use you like of this note. I for my part shall bring 
it to the notice of my comrades in the party. 

The above 

To this Lupus received the following answer: 
London, 11 July 1851 

Dear Citizen Wolff, 

So feeble indeed are my powers of prescience that they never remotely led me 
to fear the loss of your goodwill and of your company, should I associate with that 
‘rapscallion’ Ruge.— More, I was not even aware of being subject in this respect to 
the tutelage of one section of the party and to police rule by the men of the future. 
It is to this want of percipience as also to what I have learned in twenty years 
of political activity, namely that there is not one political party able to 
avoid co-operating with rapscallions—that I owe my resolve to offer my hand 
to any qualified man desirous of treading the same revolutionary path as 
myself; whether he goes no more than half way to the goal I have set myself; 
—whether he accompanies me all the way there, or whether he continues 
beyond it. 

4 But after all, everyone has his own way of doing things. 

Anathemas, whether political or religious, are anachronisms, even if emanating 
from Emperor or Pope;—how infinitely more ridiculous do they appear when 
hurled by the kinglets and popelets of a party which, to judge by public avowals, is 
as inconsistent as your own, and which today transforms into ‘rapscallions’ those in 
its own midst to whom only yesterday it accorded almost divine honours! 

In the course of my life I have encountered disproportionately more 
‘rapscallions’ than upright people, and have been disproportionately less deceived 
by the former than by the latter. I therefore waste no time in drawing distinctions 
of this kind, but rather look for those qualities which may be put to use in the most 
diverse ways. 

Should you desire, therefore, together with Marx and Liebknecht—whom I 
would beg you to inform—to take part in the said ‘meeting’, I hereby invite you to 
it, only pointing out that it will be no more than a preliminary discussion and that 
the chief disadvantage for you, as for half the company in general, will probably be 
the absence of accommodation for the grosser portions of the anatomy—a fact 
which, however, should contribute materially to expediting the proceedings. 

With warm regards 

Yours 
Fickler, ete. 

The most comical thing about the whole business is and will 
remain the unending efforts of Ruge and his clique to thrust 
themselves on the public by constantly changing the combination. 
If it doesn’t work as ABCDEF, it will assuredly do so as FEDCBA. 
Just try calculating how many variations and permutations of this 
kind are possible. Has there ever been a more impotent, 
ludicrously pretentious clique of barren jackasses? 

Your 
K. M. 

Apropos, have received the 5 pounds. They arrived like a deus ex 
machina, for circumstances are ‘’orrible’, and it’s hard to see how to 
extricate oneself. Write direct to Klose (6 Upper Rupert Street, Near 
Princes Street, Soho), since the jackass will otherwise think that the 
letter he addressed to you, the one about the £10, remember? hasn’t 
reached you.