[Paris, middle of November-December 1846] 

Dear Marx, 

The reasons for the brief letter I recently sent Gigot are the 
following. During the investigation into the disturbances in the 
Faubourg St. Antoine in October, a multitude of Germans were 
arrested and questioned, the whole of the second batch consisting 
of Straubingers.'*?” Some of these numskulls, who have now been 
sent across the border, must have talked a great deal of nonsense 
about Ewerbeck and myself; in ract, in view of their paltriness, 
nothing else could have been expected of the Straubingers than 
that they should have been scared to death and have given away 
all that they knew and more. On top of that, such Straubingers as 

a [K. L. Bernays,] Rothschild. Ein Urtheilsspruch vom menschlichen Standpunkte aus. - 
> from what writes - © There! - 4 Karl Ludwig Bernays - © company (literally: shop) 

I was acquainted with, secretive though they were concerning their 
own miserable affairs, shamefully sounded the alarm about my 
meetings with them. That’s how these lads are. 

At the Barriére, as I have already written and told you,* the 
noble Eisermann delivered himself of a further, detailed avis aux 
mouchards” in which he attacked me. Junge was also guilty of some 
gross indiscretions; the fellow is a trifle swollen-headed, he wishes 
to be sent to Calais and London at the expense of the French 
government. In short, M. Delessert set one spy after another at 
the heels of myself and Ewerbeck, who has long been under 
suspicion and has an expulsion order hanging over his head. 
These spies succeeded in following us to the marchand de vins,° 
where we sometimes foregathered with the Faubourg stalwarts. 
This was proof enough that we were the leaders of a dangerous 
clique, and not long afterwards I learned that M. Delessert had 
requested M. Tanneguy Duchatel to issue an expulsion order 
against me and Ewerbeck, and that there was a splendid pile of 
documents relating to the case in the Prefecture, almost next door 
to the place where the whores are medically examined. Needless to 
say, I had no desire to let myself be banished on the Straubingers’ 
account. I had already anticipated something of the kind when I 
noticed the nonchalance with which the Straubingers were holding 
forth for all to hear and arguing all over the place about who was 
right, Grün or I. I was sick and tired of the whole business, there 
was no putting the lads to rights; even in discussion they wouldn’t 
speak their minds frankly just like the people in London, and 
I had achieved my main object, the triumph over Grün. It was an 
excellent opportunity of honourably ridding myself of the 
Straubingers, vexing as the whole affair was in other respects. I 
therefore let it be known to them that I could no longer remain 
their tutor and that, furthermore, they should watch their step. 
Ewerbeck at once decided to go on a journey and appears, indeed, 
to have departed forthwith “*—at any rate, I haven’t seen him 
since. Where he has gone, I do not know. The police had also 
been looking for the littl man (Bernays) who, however, had 
withdrawn to his old place because of a variety of escapades (it’s 
remarkable what mad scrapes he gets into as soon as he sets foot 
in the civilised world). When he will return to Paris, I don’t know, 
but in no circumstances will he move into lodgings where he 
had intended to, hence the address that was given you is useless. He 

a See this volume, pp. 85-86. - » notification to the informers - © wineshop - ¢ i. e. 
Sarcelles 

has safely received his manuscript.” Meanwhile I can thank the 
noble police for having reft me from the arms of the Straubingers 
and reminded me of the pleasures life has to offer. If the 
suspicious individuals who have been following me for the past 
fortnight are really informers, as I am convinced some of them 
are, the Prefecture must of late have given out a great many 
entrance tickets to the bals Montesquieu, Valentino, Prado, etc., 
etc. I am indebted to Mr Delessert for some delicious encounters 
with grisettes and for a great deal of pleasure, car j'ai voulu profiter 
des journées et des nuits qui pouvatent étre mes derniéres a Paris. Enfin,’ 
since in other respects I’ve been Jeft in peace up till now, 
everything would appear to have quietened down. But in future 
address all letters to Monsieur A. F. K6rner, artiste-peintre, 29, 
rue neuve Bréda, Paris, with an envelope inside bearing my 
initials, taking care that nothing shows through. 

You will understand that, in the circumstances, I have had to 
leave W. Weitling entirely to his own devices. Having seen none of 
our people, I have no idea whether he has been or still is here. 
Nor does it matter. I don’t know the Weitlingians at all and, he’d 
get a fine welcome amongst those I know; because of their eternal 
clashes with his tailor friends, they feel the most frightful 
animosity towards him. 

The affair with the London people' is annoying precisely 
because of Harney and because they, of all the Straubingers, were 
the only ones with whom one could attempt to make contact 
frankly and without arriére-pensée. But if the fellows are unwilling, 
eh bien, let them go. In any case one can never know if they won’t 
produce another address as miserable as the one to Mr Ronge or 
to the Schleswig-Holsteiners."° On top of that, there’s their 
perpetual envy of us as ‘scholars’. By the way, we have two 
methods by which we can rid ourselves of them should they 
rebel: either make a clean break with them, or simply allow the 
correspondence to lapse. I would be for the latter, if their last 
letter admits of an answer which, without giving undue offence, is 
lukewarm enough to rob them of any desire to reply quickly. 
Then another long delay before answering—and two or three 
letters will be enough to consign this drowsy correspondence to its 
last sleep. For how and why should we ridicule these fellows? We 
have no press organ and even if we had one, they are no writers 

9 

@ See this volume, p. 88. - > since I wanted to take advantage of the days and nights 
which might well be my last in Paris. Anyway - © well, then 

5* 

but confine themselves to an occasional proclamation which no 
one ever sees, still less cares about. If we are to ridicule the 
Straubingers at all, we can always avail ourselves of their fine 
documents; if the correspondence finally does lapse, well and 
good; the rupture will be gradual and attract no great attention. 
In the meantime we shall quietly make the necessary arrangements 
with Harney, taking care that they owe us the final letter (which 
they will in fact do, once they have been made to wait 6-10 weeks 
for an answer), and then leave them to clamour. An immediate 
rupture with the fellows would bring us neither gain nor glotre. 
Theoretical disagreements are hardly possible with the fellows since 
they have no theory and, sauf for their possible unspoken 
misgivings, they wish to learn from us: nor are they able to 
formulate their misgivings, so that all discussion with them is 
impossible except, perhaps, face to face. In the case of an open 
rupture they would bring up against us all that generalised 
communist thirst-for-learning stuff: we’d have been glad to learn 
from the learned gentlemen, if they'd had something decent, etc. 
Practical party differences would—since there are only a few of 
them on the committee and a few of us too—soon degenerate into 
mere personalities and ill-natured exchanges, at least on the face 
of it. As a party we can enter the lists against literary men, but not 
against Straubingers. They are, after all, a couple of 100 strong, 
vouched for among the English by Harney, proclaimed in 
Germany by the Rheinischer Beobachter, etc., etc., a rabid and by no 
means impotent communist society; they are, furthermore, the 
most tolerable of the Straubingers, and can certainly not be 
bettered so long as there is no change in Germany. We have learnt 
from this business that, in the absence of a proper movement in 
Germany, nothing can be done with the Straubingers, even the 
best of them. It is better after all to let them quietly go their own 
way, attacking them only as a whole, en bloc, than to provoke a 
dispute which might only serve to sully our reputations. Vis-a-vis 
ourselves, these lads declare themselves to be ‘the people’, ‘the 
proletarians’, and we can only appeal to a communist proletariat 
which has yet to take shape in Germany. In addition, the Prussian 
Constitution is in the offing, and we might then be able to make 
use of the fellows’ signatures, etc., etc-—Anyway, my words of 
wisdom will doubtless arrive too late and you will already have 
passed and acted on a resolution in this matter. I would, by the 

a glory - > save 

way, have written earlier, but I was waiting to see what turn the 
affair with the police would take. 

I have just received a reply from the Swiss publisher.* The 
Jetter, enclosed herewith, only confirms my belief that the fellow’s 
a scoundrel. No ordinary publisher would accept so amiably after 
keeping one waiting x weeks. Now we shall have to see what the 
Bremen man? says, and then we can always do as we think fit. 
Then again: there’s the fellow at Belle-Vue near Constance; 
perhaps something might be arranged with him'*'; I could try 
him again if the Bremen man’s not agreeable. Meanwhile I’ll make 
some more enquiries in Herisau—if only we had a decent fellow 
in Switzerland to whom one could send the manuscript‘ with 
instructions to hand it over only against payment in cash.‘ But the 
only one there is that thirsty paterfamilias Pittmann! 

During the recent bad spell, one of my innocent, incidental 
pastimes, besides girls, has been to concern myself to some extent 
with Denmark and the other northern countries." What an 
abomination! Rather the smallest German than the biggest Dane! 
Nowhere else is the misére of morality, guilds and estates still 
carried to such a pitch. The Dane regards Germany as a country 
which one visits in order to ‘keep mistresses and squander one’s 
fortune on them’ (imedens at han reiste 1 Tydskland, havde han en 
Maitresse, som fortdrede ham den bedste del af hans Midler,° we read in 
a Danish school book). He calls the German a tydsk' windbag, and 
regards himself as the true representative of the Teutonic 
soul—the Swede in turn despises the Dane as ‘Germanised’ and 
degenerate, garrulous and effete—the Norwegian looks down on 
the Gallicised Swede and his aristocracy and rejoices in the fact 
that at home in Norge exactly the same stupid, peasant economy 
is dominant as at the time of the noble Canute, and he, for his 
part, is treated en canaille by the Icelander, who still continues to 
speak exactly the same language as the unwashed Vikings of anno 
900, swills whale oil, lives in a mud hut and goes to pieces in any 
atmosphere that does not reek of rotten fish. I have several times 
felt tempted to be proud of the fact that 1 am at least no Dane, 
nor yet an Icelander, but merely a German. The editor of the 
most advanced Swedish newspaper, the Aftonbladet, has twice been 
here in Paris to seek enlightenment on the organisation of labour, 

a Johann Michael Schlapfer - Kihtmann - © K, Marx and F. Engels, The German 
Ideology. - 4 Engels here uses the Dutch: baar Geld. - ¢ while travelling in Germany, 
he had a mistress who ran through the better part of his fortune - f German - 
& Norway -  scornfully 

has for years taken the Bon Sens and the Démocratie pacifique; he 
solemnly conferred with Louis Blanc and Considérant, but found 
himself out of his depth, and returned home none the wiser. Now 
as before he loudly advocates free competition or, as the Swedes 
have it, freedom of nourishment or else sjalfforsorjningsfrihet, 
freedom of self-supply (which sounds even better than freedom to 
pursue a trade). Of course, they’re still up to their necks in the 
guild nonsense and, in the parliaments, it’s precisely the bourgeois 
who are the most rabid conservatives. Throughout the whole 
country there are only two proper towns, a 80,000 and 40,000 
inhabitants respectively, the third, Norrköping, having only 
12,000 and all the rest perhaps 1,000, 2,000, 3,000. At every post 
station there’s one inhabitant. In Denmark things are scarcely 
better, since they have only one solitary city there, in which the 
guilds indulge in the most ludicrous proceedings, madder even 
than in Basle or Bremen, and where you aren’t allowed on the 
promenade without an entrance ticket. The only thing these 
countries are good for is to show what the Germans would do if 
they had freedom of the press, viz., what the Danes have actually 
done, immediately found a ‘society for the proper use of the free 
press’, and print almanacs full of Christian good intentions. The 
Swedish Aftonbladet is as tame as the Kélner Zeitung, but considers 
itself ‘democratic in the true sense of the word’. On the other 
hand the Swedes have the novels of Fröken* Bremer and the 
Danes of Councillor of State (Eta traad) Oehlenschlager, Command- 
er of the Order of the Dannebrog.’” There’s also a terrific 
number of Hegelians there and the language, every third word of 
which is filched from the German, is admirably suited to 
speculation. 

A report was begun long ago and will follow within the next few 
days.'** Write and tell me if you have Proudhon’s book.” 

If you wish to make use of Proudhon’s book, which is bad, for 
your own book,? I will send you the very extensive excerpts I have 
made. It’s not worth the 15 francs it costs.