London, 24 November 1864 
1 Modena Villas, Maitland Park, 
Haverstock Hill 

My dear Countess, 

I have just informed you by telegraph* (to avoid all delay in 
reply) of my view that the two photograms of von R. et Co.? 
should, in no circumstances, appear together with Lassalle’s in the 
pamphlet. It would, on the one hand, dishonour the deceased, 
and, on the other, give the publication a gaudy appearance which 
should be avoided completely. Furthermore, as you know, ‘contra 
hostem vindicatio aeterna sit’ is my motto too, but, for revenge to 
be successfully executed, it is advisable not to initiate the public in 
one’s vindictive ‘intent’.*” 

‘Ex ossibus ultor’* would seem to me the best title for Lassalle’s 
portrait. They were also my last words spoken at the graveside 
of my never-to-be-forgotten friend W. Wolff*’ some six months 
ago. 

As regards ex-student Blind, that fellow who made himself 
known before 1848 by peddling Heinzen’s nonsense and as the 
homme entretenu* of the wife of the Jewish banker Cohen* (whom 
he later married in London), so I would ask you to remember that 
in my piece Herr Vogt (see pp. 58-69 and Appendices 9 and 11)‘ I 
do not merely describe this student Blind as a ‘deliberate liar’, but I 
prove by reference to legal documents that this wretched man 
fabricated ‘false witness’ to cast suspicion on myself and to extricate 
his neck from a noose that this creature had made for himself for 
the purpose of merely making himself look big (which is indeed this 
rascal’s sole purpose in every public step, or rather crawl, he 
undertakes).** 

Then Blind succeeded in deflecting the catastrophe of his 

a Janko von Racowita and Helene von Dénniges - > A paraphrase of an article 
from the Twelve Tables (a code of law of ancient Rome) which says: ‘Adversus 
hostem aeterna auctoritas [esto]’ (III, 7); Marx uses the word vindicatio in the sense 
of revenge. - « ‘Let the avenger rise’ (Virgil, Aeneid, IV, 625: ‘ex oriare aliquis 
nostrius ex ossibus ultor’),.- ¢ kept man - © Friederike Ettlinger, Cohen’s and later 
Karl Blind’s wife - £ See present edition, Vol. 17, pp. 116-32, 315, 317-20. 

political operations—by simply saying nothing. In this he was 
sustained firstly by the fact that Freiligrath (this entre nous*) 
unfortunately continued to parade publicly as his friend, and that 
Lassalle, although I had strongly urged him to do so, neglected to 
force my pillorying of Blind d’une maniére ou d’une autre’ on the 
attention of the German public.*” This appeared necessary to me 
because the liberal press in Germany instinctively took the side of 
a scoundrel like Blind, and therefore sought to hush up my attack. 
Lassalle considered Blind too insignificant. It was only later that 
he discovered that there are times when one cannot decline a 
‘combat with a flea’ 

When Lassalle was here in London,” he sought to enlighten 
Louis Blanc and Mazzini about Blind on his personal visits to 
them, but in vain. The man is exactly what Mazzini, Ledru, etc., 
had hoped, but failed, to find in the other Germans of standing, a 
servile lackey and sycophant. Through his relations with these 
people he makes the English think that he represents Germany, 
and he impresses the Germans by his boasting here. Yet the whole 
of this fellow’s activity consists in writing, in conjunction with 3 or 
4 South Germans,* from, for and about ‘Karl Blind’ and, at every 
possible opportunity, to force on the English, Germans and 
Americans his ‘unofficial judgment’ as the self-appointed rep- 
resentative of ‘German republicanism’ (a party, which is well known 
to exist only on the moon, since the German bourgeois is 
interested in a constitutional monarchy, the feudal lord in an 
aristocratic monarchy, and the worker in general not in mere forms 
of state, but in the form of state as the expression of economic 
social conditions, and, at all events, has never recognised 
ex-student Blind as representative). He is a true master of 
dictating letters to one of his 6 satellites,! in which they call on the 
said, etc., ‘Karl Blind’ to do this or that, or congratulate him on 
this or that, and then—by oversight or otherwise—the replies from 
the same Karl Blind gain entry to the press. 

As one of the ‘younc men’ who were active in the service of 
F. Hecker, Blind learnt that art, which is by no means rare among 
the South Germans, of self-defamation and creating a spurious 
Pusuic Opinion about people who are essentially nonentities. In 
London he thought himself far enough advanced along the road 
or to have served long enough in the ‘Democratic cause’ to 

a between ourselves - > in one way or another - © Heinrich Heine, Atta Troll. Ein 
Sommernachtstraum, 11. - 4 Marx presumably has in mind, first and foremost, Eduard 
Bronner and Karl Heinrich Schaible. 

exploit for himself those arts he had acquired in the service of 
others. 

Regarding his education, it is, as I told Lassalle during his 
sojourn here, that of a Baden publican,* who has read Rotteck’s 
Weltgeschichte, Welker’s Staatslexikon and Mr Struve’s republican 
Almanac.° 

In his manoeuvres in Germany Mr Blind enjoys the particular 
support of Mr Gustav Rasch of Berlin. 

Bernhard Becker, as the former supervisor of the London 
Hermann, best knows how Blind composed with his own fair hand 
the paeans of praise to himself that appeared e.g. in the Hermann. 
He does this mostly and on average. By way of variation he will 
occasionally get a certain Dr Bronner in Bradford or his Schaible 
(see ‘Herr Vogt’) via London to put their names to his epistles. All 
the agitation of this person is nothing but a tissue of lies, 
self-deception and hot air. In this field, however, he has no rivals. 
He demonstrated the height of his dexterity when Garibaldi 
visited London.'* He first spread the rumour in the English 
papers that he was an intimate friend of Garibaldi. Imposing 
himself as is his custom, he issued ‘addresses’ to Garibaldi from 
London and you know that in his kind-hearted naivety Garibaldi 
will write a nice letter back to anyone. Then he descends on the 
Isle of Wight (before Garibaldi made his ceremonial entry to 
London), and ‘appoints’ with him the date on which Garibaldi 
would receive the German deputation (Blind, you see, had so 
arranged things as to get a few Germans, including Kinkel and 
unfortunately my friend Freiligrath as well, to elect him as the 
leader of a deputation) and at the same time sends mysterious 
hints to some London papers‘ that Garibaldi was ‘cLoserep’ with ‘HIS 
rriend' (Blind) and, of course, settled some very important affairs 
of state with him.” But Blind’s masterstroke is still to come. As 
serving-man to the European ‘kings of democracy’’ (for so he 
designates Mazzini, Ledru Rollin, Louis Blanc, and indeed comparrp 
with student Blind even they are ‘great men’*‘), our Baden trickster 
manages so to arrange things that he, as a member of the society 
and a leader, fetches Garibaldi from the Duke of Sutherland’s, 
where he is staying, and escorts him in the Duke’s State Carriage 

2 An allusion to Karl Blind’s father, Johann Adam Blind who was a publican in 
Mannheim. - > G. Struve, Die neue Zeit. Ein Volkskalender auf das Jahr 1. - © ‘Interview 
of Karl Blind with Garibaldi’, The Morning Advertiser, No. 22726, 11 April 
1864. - 4 Marx quotes Karl Blind - ¢ Cf. the title of Marx and Engels’ pamphlet: The 
Great Men of the Exile (present edition, Vol. 11, pp. 227-326). 

to Ledru Rollin and Louis Blanc. He seizes the opportunity to 
have the carriage stand for a while outside Mr Blind’s house for 
Garibaldi to ‘pay nis comptiments To Madame Karl Blind’. By skilful 
MANAGEMENT all this even appears in The Times,* and at the moment 
when Garibaldi is being idolized by all London. Perhaps you recall 
how ‘Rameau’, the nephew, in Diderot’s wonderful piece, bursts 
out in admiration at the genius of Bouret, the general tax- 
collector, who cunningly devised a way to disaffect his little dog 
from himself and make it prefer the minister! This Garibaldi-farce 
was Blind’s Bouret-prank! It is my belief that from that time on he 
began bona fide to think himself a great man! He has really got 
hold of something with Schleswig-Holstein! Did you not know 
then that for years Blind has been deriving his chief importance 
from acting as a ‘representative’ for Schleswig-Holstein against 
Denmark, saying ‘he’ had ‘forced’ the German tyrants into war 
against Denmark,’ and that was why friend Rasch dedicated his 
piece about the ‘orphaned’ kith and kin to him! Did you not 
know that in the Prussian House Prof. Virchow (probably at Mr 
Rasch’s instigation) cited Blind’s great influence in the Schleswig- 
Holstein affair as proof of what a single man can do by his own 
efforts for a whole nation! The shameless man had made those 
German jackasses believe that he had got the English to change 
their view of Schleswig-Holstein! His feeble leaflets about Schles- 
wig-Holstein are just about (and that is saying something) the most 
stupid thing that has appeared in this tine. (Incidentally, Mr 
ex-student’s best friend and associate is that lout Karl Heinzen in 
America, whose business for 20 years past has been to slander me 
in a manner such as even Lassalle never experienced. I have never 
thought it worth the trouble to reply to this fellow, but I was 
astonished that the Nordstern—for a long time also a major 
mouthpiece for student Blind—is constantly printing Heinzen’s 
filth, which is extremely hostile to the principles of the workers’ 
party, and generally makes propaganda for Mr Heinzen.) 

But Garibaldi, Schleswig-Holstein, America, Lassalle, all are for 
the ex-student only a pretext for puffing up his own self- 
importance! The modest fellow wrote in his own fair hand a short 
while ago to the ‘Glasgow Sentinel’ that the whole of Europe 

a ‘General Garibaldi’, The Times, 19 April 1864.-> G. Rasch, Vom verlassenen 
Bruderstamm. Das danische Regiment in Schleswig-Holstein, Bd. 1-3; Vom verrathenen 
Bruderstamm. Der Krieg in Schleswig-Holstein im Jahre 1864. Bd. 1-2. - © R. Virchow’s 
speech in the House of Representatives on 9 December 1863. In: Stenographische 
Berichte tiber die Verhandlungen der [...] beiden Hduser des Landtages, Haus der 
Abgeordneten, 13 Sitzung, Bd. 1. 

(literally) was not yet divided into two hostile camps with regard to 
‘Karl Blind’, but that a tiers parti existed in this respect, too!* In 
The Observer he describes himself as ‘THE ILLUSTRIOUS CHIEF OF THE 
German Repusiicans’.> 

A few more little touches to the description of this man, who, if 
one views him aright, is a highly comical character. 

After his success with Garibaldi Mr Kart Buinp joinep THE 
SHAKESPEARE Committee,”> aS was stated in the Athenaeum!* He had 
now clearly progressed to the status of ‘literary’ representative of 
Germany, too! 

During the skirmish in Baden (1849), Struve, as he himself 
recounts in a piece about the ‘Baden revolution’,* sent the ‘young 
man’, as he calls Blind, as Under-Secretary to Schiitz, who had 
been appointed Secretary, from Mainz to Paris, to rescue 
ex-student Blind from conflict with Brentano. The government to 
which Blind was directed as Under-Secretary to Secretary 
Schiitz,— the provisional government no longer existed when Secretary 
and Under-Secretary arrived in Paris. Nevertheless, in mysterious 
hints in English papers, he let it be understood that he held an 
important diplomatic post as agent of the German ‘republican 
government’ in Paris! 

In the first few years after 1849 he lived in Belgium with his 
present wife. Since this woman has children from her marriage to 
the dead banker (and they inherited) and she also has children by 
Blind (at that time still illegitimate), a court in Baden ruled that 
Cohen’s children should be taken away from his widow Cohen 
because of her ‘immoral’ relations with ex-student Blind. The 
court in Brussels gave this ruling legal force in Belgium, and this 
caused Blind to flee to England together with his wife and the 
children. He later got English papers to print (and was brazen 
enough to boast publicly of it on a visit to South Germany) that he 
had been expelled from Belgium for political reasons! © 

His next deed you will see from the enclosed cutting, which he 
had printed in many London papers. What provoked it was the 
report disseminated in some papers that Garibaldi had declared 
his support for the slave-owners! Blind used this to extort a short 
letter from Garibaldi with ‘corptat creerincs ror Mrs Bunn’. You can 
see what lies he told Garibaldi from his remark ‘I tHank you For Your 

a ‘M. Karl Blind’, North British Daily Mail, 30 March 1863. - b Marx refers to the 
reports on Blind’s meetings with Garibaldi published in The Observer, Nos. 3804, 
3805 and 3806, 10, 17 and 24 April 1864. - © The Athenaeum, No. 1902, 9 April 
1864. - 4 G. Struve, Geschichte der drei Volkserhebungen in Baden. - ¢ ‘M. Karl Blind’, 
North British Daily Mail, 30 March 1863. 

xa 

coop news’.” What on earth could this ‘coop news’ have been in 
October 1864? Blind was obviously writing Garibaldi the most 
monstrous lies about the progress of ‘republicanism’ in Germany, 
which is presumably just awaiting Blind’s arrival to lash out. 

The most splendid aspect of the affair is that the London paper 
to which Blind is a regular contributor, the mouthpiece of the 
publicans (a most appropriate context to a ‘Blind’), is a fanatical 
supporter of the Confederates!” And by the by, the paper— The 
Morning Advertiser—is at one and the same time the mouthpiece 
of spirits, the Low Cuurcu (English pietism),” the sweLt-mos which is 
concerned with gambling, pricericHts anp so forth, and the most 
lickspittling poodle of Palmerston’s. From A LITERARY STANDPOINT, it 
cannot be counted among the English daily press and is in general 
only read in tTaprooms. 

So much for the man. 

In Lassalle’s lifetime he issued an address casting doubt on the 
former’s integrity.*° But Lassalle—as far as I know—did not think 
it worth the trouble of a reply. I was only surprised that 
B. Becker, who is fully aware of Blind’s doings, did not then take 
the opportunity to blazon abroad my revelations about Blind‘ 

One of the reasons why I have joined the International Working 
Men’s Association here is to expose that man. After the statements 
I have made against Blind, branding him as a ‘deliberate liar’ and a 
‘falsifier of evidence’, I cannot of course further involve myself in 
polemic against the fellow. I reserve the right to treat him as a 
figure of comedy should the occasion arise. If I should now take his 
scrawl against Lassalle, which I have incidentally not seen, as 
grounds for an attack on him, people here, who know of my 
implacable hostility to Blind, will think that in fact I am only using 
Lassalle’s name as a pretext for personal spite. 

But do send me the (printed) declaration by the workers. I shall 
ensure that it gets into a German paper here and if student Blind 
then makes any further moves, perhaps he will give me the 
opportunity to let me fall upon him. 

At all events, you may depend on it that he will be shown no 
favours. In the meanume, the best thing you can do is to 
disseminate my revelations about Blind as a ‘deliberate liar’ and 
‘falsifier’ as far as possible in Germany. (If his scrawl about Lassalle 
had set any mice stirring here, a word or two about it at all events 

4 Blind published Garibaldi’s letter to him in The Morning Advertiser, 9 November 

1864. - 5 i.e. the southern slave-owning states - © Marx means his revelations about 
Blind in Herr Vogt.