[London,] 31 August 1851 
28 Dean Street, Soho 

Dear Engels, 

One always miscalculates badly if one reckons on a definitive 
crisis among the democratic heroes. A row like the one a fortnight 
ago demands a recuperation of several weeks for these perrormers. 
Hence nothing of any moment happened the day _ before 
yesterday, Friday the 29th. 

Dvabord.” On Monday, 25 August, as I have already told you, 
Willich and Schapper threatened to resign from the Great 
Windmill refugee committee.” The following Tuesday they did in 
fact resign during an official sitting, and all in all the committee 
came to a satisfactory end. Harsh words were exchanged on this 
occasion. Willich moralised and pontificated, whereupon he was 
confronted with his iniquities. The main charge against him was 
that on this, as on an earlier occasion, when account had to be 
given of the twenty or so pounds invested in the brush-making 
business, matters had been so arranged that Mr Lissel, the 
manager responsible for same, had absconded. 

On Friday General Sigel had attended the general meeting of 
the agreement-seekers. He had counted on the appearance of the 

a A series of articles Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany.- > First of 
all. - © Franz Sigel 

‘inferior émigrés’, on whose behalf he broke a few mighty Jances 
with Willich, who gave free rein to his indignation over the herd 
of immoral louts he had once apotheosised vis-a-vis ourselves. 
Conspicuous by their absence, however, were the lumpen- 
proletariat. Those who had presented themselves before the gates 
of the Areopagus were too few in number to be able to count on 
success, and therefore withdrew. You know that they are cowardly 
rascals, and that every one of the rapscallions has too bad a 
conscience to appear before a gathering of any size and take the 
floor as public prosecutor. 

A few Rugians such as Ronge, 4 in number, had been elected to 
the refugee committee of the ‘united democrats’. These men 
announced their resignation. So the committee was dissolved. A 
new, provisional, one was elected, consisting of Mr Kinkel, Count 
Reichenbach,” Mr Bucher and Mr Semper from Saxony. 

From this you will see that they have entered a new phase. They 
have thrown themselves into the arms of the respectable ‘hommes 
détat;” since the former leaders are now compromised as being 
bourgeois scum. The ‘hommes détat—their nucleus—are the 
‘doughty men of the people’ Bucher (Berlin agreer*’), Count 
Reichenbach (Knight of the Spirit and compromised deputy to the 
Frankfurt Assembly, not the Berlin beard of the party‘) and that 
eminent stutterer ‘Rudolf Schramm’ (connu*). 

Because of his long-standing friendship with Countess Reichen- 
bach and her brother—also now in this country — Lupus now and 
again frequents the Reichenbach’s house, and yesterday found 
there Mr Techow, whom he had known in Switzerland. Not long 
afterwards Willich himself appeared, in company with the 
melancholy Eduard Meyen. Lupus left when these two great ones 
took their seats. 

Voila tout ce que j'ai a rapporter pour le moment“ With the help of 
the 160 pounds from America, Kinkel has clearly succeeded — 
partly himself and partly through his followers—in inducing in 
the ‘respectables’ and ‘hommes d’état’? a tremendous opinion of his 
power and connections. But with the dissolution of the Windmill 
committee, the precious Willich has broken the stoutest link that 
bound him to the ‘rascals’. 

Maintenant' as to yourself, there is no doubt whatever that 
Fischer expressly named you as one of the godfathers of the £160. 
General Sigel and Goegg told their friend Schabelitz about this, 

2 Oskar Reichenbach - © statesmen - © Eduard Reichenbach - 4 well-known - 
€ That’s all I have to report for the present. - £ Now 

ostensibly au secret,* but in fact, I believe, in order that it should 
come to your ears. In my opinion, all you should do is write to Mr 
Kinkel saying you have heard from New Orleans about the 
remittance and your role as co-advisor as to its disposal. You 
simplement ask him what has happened to the money, or what it is 
intended to do with it. Kinkel’s address is: Dr. phil. (that’s how he 
describes himself on his visiting cards) Kinkel, 1, Henstridge 
Villas, St. Johns Wood. Some time, just for fun, I’ll send you one 
of these visiting cards, in form and content exactly like a London 
advertisement for corn cures anp so FORTH. 

Lest I forget the big event. In the issue of 13 August, the 
unfortunate Heinzen announces that Otto has withdrawn his 
capital, thus leaving him on his own with his mental capital which 
will not, in industrial America, keep a newspaper going. Hence he 
writes an elegy on the premature fall of Hector. And in the same 
issue Hoff and Kapp invite readers to subscribe for shares in a 
newspaper which is to take the place of the Schnellpost. And, fate 
having strange quirks, the Staatszeitung has at the same time 
begun proceedings against the precious Heinzen—incidentally 
disclosing many of his financial villainies—for libel, proceedings 
which, he anticipates, will land him up in a ‘house of correction’. 
Le pauvre’ Heinzen! Moreover this great man is now morally 
outraged at America and the ‘unemotional Yankees’ and at the 
German Americans who take after them, instead of working for 
the ‘humanisation of society’ and going into raptures over 
A. Ruge’s politico-social revelations. 

In the said issue we read, for example: 

‘That free German spirit, which is to fill the world ... that spring which, for 
almost two millennia now, and in ever richer spiritual measure, has been flowing 
over the continents of the earth.’ 

‘For what purpose, then, are there Germans in the world? For what purpose a 
German heart, for what purpose the German tongue? To what purpose, e.g., this 
instrument, invented by the German Gutenberg, for the education and enlighten- 
ment of the mind? All this exists, and so does the very soil on which it is coming or 
should come to pass, this America, discovered by A German.’ 

‘The free communities,””° lusty German philosophy, magnificent German 
literature, transposed and brought into intellectual interaction with everything 
excellent and enduring that the country and its inhabitants possess,—from factors 
such as these there must arise an American-ness [Amerikanertum] of world-historical 
importance, an all-powerfully humane, spiritual and moral greatness, whose heart is 
activated by a never-ceasing influx of Teuton-ness [Teutschtum], its head by a 
refined Yankee-ness [Yankeetum] and its arm by both combined.’ 

4 in confidence - > simply - © of the Deutsche Schnellpost - 4 Poor 

‘Indeed, I maintain that the German people are more ripe for a democratic 
republic than the American.... Verily, were Germany to be freed of her fetters and 
bloodsuckers, she would be better equipped to “fix”, as the Americans say, a 
purely democratic republic and to bring it about more successfully than the 
Yankees, for in as much as even the politically most educated section of the 
Americans is still so much a prey to superstition, so unfree intellectually, and so 
remote from any humane education, how can the final goal of democracy, true 
humanity, the harmonious development of mankind, be realised politically, socially 
and morally or spiritually?’ 

Thus writes the German buffoon,* or gets someone to write, at 
the very time when the Americans have successfully made their 
way across the isthmus.‘ In the same issue the hooligan has 
himself addressed as follows: 

‘So aptly do you castigate American conditions, notably the German Americans, 
that any discriminating and unbiassed person must agree with you. You would be 
doing really praiseworthy work were you, through your paper, to help assure the 
refinement and education of Germans in America, and even if your voice should 
elude the untutored masses, enough would be achieved if you freed the individual 
German of the simian and pernicious urge to ape the Americans.’ 

And then, with all stops pulled out, the churl proceeds to vent 
the foul, morning-after-the-night—-before pecuniary jeremiads. 

You'll have undoubtedly long since learnt from the papers that 
Girardin has allied himself with Ledru-Rollin. He was already 
convinced he was the future Great Mogul of France. But now a 
Lamennais-Michel (de Bourges)-Schoelcher rival committee has 
been set up in Paris whose intention is to bring into being the 
‘United States of Europe’ with the help of the Romance peoples— 
French, Spanish and Italians—round whom the Germans, etc., 
will then crystallise. So the Spanish! are to civilise us! Mon Dieu, 
that even outdoes K. Heinzen, who wants to introduce Feuerbach 
and A. Ruge among the Yankees in order to ‘humanise’ them. 
Ledru’s Proscrit bitterly attacked the rival committee.“ They 
replied in the same coin. But what was still more bitter for the 
Great Mogul in partibus’ was this: a conclave of the entire press 
was held in Paris. The Proscrit, too, was represented by a delegate.° 
Purpose: to agree on a common President. The rejection of all the 
Proscrits proposals was followed by the unequivocal declaration 
that, let the gentlemen in London chatter as they would, what was 
necessary for France must emanate from France herself; Ledru 
was very much mistaken if he regarded himself as ‘the important 
personage’ Mazzini made him out to be. 

* Karl Heinzen - > My God - © ‘Cronique de lintérieur’, La Voix du Proscrit, No 18, 
23 August 1851. -4 In partibus infidelium—literally: in parts inhabited by infidels; 
figuratively; without any real power. - ¢ Ch. Delescluze [see Ch. Delescluze, ‘Le 
conclave démocratique’, La Voix du Proscrit, No. 19, 30 August 1851] 

For the rest, the conclave broke up amidst much uproar without 
having achieved anything. Unity-seeking democrats are 
everywhere as like as two peas. 

Adieu. 
Your 
K. M.