Karl Marx

["Belletristisches Journal und New-Yorker Criminal-Zeitung", May 5, 1853]

Hirsch’s “Self-Confessions” have, it seems to me, value only in so far as they are confirmed by other facts. Already because they mutually contradict one another. Upon his return from his mission to Cologne, he declared in a public workers’ meeting that Willich was his accomplice. It was, naturally, scorned to have this alleged confession entered in the minutes. Various persons, I do not know whether with or without Hirsch’s instruction, thereupon signified to me that Hirsch was willing to make a full confession to me. I declined. Later I learned that he was living in the direst poverty. I therefore do not doubt that his “very latest” confessions are written in the interest of the party that at this moment
pays
him. Strange that there are people who find it necessary to take refuge under the protection of a Hirsch.

For the present I shall confine myself to a few marginal notes. We have had several self-confessions from spies, from Vidocq, Chenu, de la Hodde, etc. In one point they all agree. They are none of them ordinary spies, but spies in a higher sense, mere continuations of “Cooper’s Spy”. Their self-confessions are of necessity as many self-apologies.

Thus Hirsch, for example, also seeks to suggest that not he, Hirsch, but Colonel Bangya denounced the day of the meeting of my party comrades to Greif, and through Greif to Fleury. Our meetings took place on a Thursday during the few sessions which Hirsch attended, but on a Wednesday after he had been expelled from them. The false minutes of the meetings, before as after Hirsch’s attendance, are dated from a Thursday. Who, if not Hirsch, could have committed this “misunderstanding”!

On another point Hirsch is more fortunate. Bangya is supposed to have repeatedly given data concerning my correspondence with Germany. Since all the data relating to this, and contained in the Cologne court records, are false, it is admittedly impossible to decide who fabricated them. Now as to Bangya.

Spy or no spy, Bangya could never become dangerous to me and my party comrades, since I never spoke to him about my party affairs, and Bangya himself – as he reminds me in one of his written justifications – scrupulously avoided turning the conversation to these matters. So, spy or no spy, he could betray nothing because he knew nothing. The Cologne records have confirmed this. They have confirmed that the Prussian police, apart from the confessions made in Germany itself and the documents seized in Germany itself, knew nothing of the party to which I belong, and therefore saw itself compelled to dish up the most absurd old wives’ tales.

But Bangya sold a pamphlet by Marx “on the emigrants” to the police?

Bangya learned from me, in the presence of other persons, that Ernst Dronke, Friedrich Engels and I intended a publication on the German emigration in London, which was to run to several numbers. He assured me that he could procure a bookseller in Berlin. I urged him to look around at once. Eight or ten days later he announced that a bookseller, by the name of Eisermann, in Berlin, was willing to undertake the publication of the first number, on the condition that the authors remained anonymous, since otherwise he would have to fear confiscation. I accepted this, but on my side imposed the condition that the honorarium be paid immediately upon delivery of the manuscript, as I did not wish to repeat the experiences I had had with the “Revue der N[euen] Rh[einischen] Zeitung”, and that the manuscript be printed after delivery. I travelled to Engels in Manchester, where the pamphlet was worked out. In the meantime Bangya brought my wife a letter from Berlin, in which Eisermann accepted my conditions, with the remark that the publication of the second number would depend on the sale of the first. On my return, Bangya received the manuscript and I the honorarium.

But the printing was delayed under various plausible pretexts. I became suspicious. Not that the manuscript had been handed over to the police so that they might print it. I am prepared today to deliver my manuscripts to the Emperor of Russia if he on his part is prepared to print them tomorrow. On the contrary. What I feared was the embezzlement of the manuscript.

The bawlers of the day were attacked here, naturally not as state-dangerous revolutionaries, but as counter-revolutionary straw men.

My suspicion was confirmed. Georg Weerth, whom I had asked to make inquiries in Berlin about Eisermann, wrote that no Eisermann was to be found. I went with Dronke to Bangya. Eisermann was now merely a manager for Jacob Collmann. As it was important to me to have Bangya’s statements in writing, I insisted that he repeat his statement in my presence in a letter to Engels in Manchester, and give Collmann’s address. At the same time I addressed a few lines to Bruno Bauer with the request to find out who lived in the house of Collmann indicated to me by Bangya, but received no answer. The alleged bookseller answered my reminders by saying that I had not fixed a definite date for printing by contract. He himself must know best when the suitable moment had arrived. In a later letter he played the injured party. Finally Bangya told me that the bookseller refused to print the manuscript and would return it. He himself disappeared to Paris.

The Berlin letters and Bangya’s letters, which contain the whole negotiations, together with Bangya’s attempted justifications, are in my possession.

But why did the suspicions which the emigration had spread against Bangya not make me waver? Precisely because I knew the “prehistory” of these suspicions. For the present I leave this prehistory in the befitting darkness.

Because I knew that Bangya as a revolutionary officer had performed meritorious services in the Hungarian war. Because he corresponded with Szemere, whom I esteem, and was on friendly terms with General Perczel. Because I saw with my own eyes a diploma in which Kossuth appoints him his police president in partibus, countersigned by Count Szirmay, Kossuth’s confidant, who lived in the same house as Bangya. This position of his with Kossuth also explained his necessary intercourse with policemen. If I am not mistaken, Bangya is at this very moment still Kossuth’s agent in Paris.

The Hungarian leaders must have known their man. What did I risk compared to them? Nothing but the embezzlement of my copy, the original of which I retained in my hand.

Later I inquired with bookseller Lizius in Frankfurt a.M. and other booksellers in Germany whether they would print the manuscript. They declared it impossible under present circumstances. Just recently a prospect has opened up of having it printed in a non-German country.

After these disclosures, which I naturally give not to Herr Hirsch, but to my countrymen in America, there remains no “open question”: What interest did the Prussian police have in suppressing a pamphlet against Kinkel, Willich and the other “Great Men of the Exile”?

Solve me, O Oerindur,
This dissonance of nature!

Karl Marx

London, 9 April 1853.