MARX TO ENGELS \” 
[London,] 6 August 1852 
28 Dean Street, Soho 
Dear Engels, 

D’abord, then, the incident with Johann Gottfried Kinkel.* 
You will see from one of the enclosed letters from Cluss that Mr 
Kinkel stated in a sourczots circle in Cincinnati: ‘Marx and Engels 

a poor lad, you ought to see him in the throes of more or less virginal 
emotion - > However, I shall see. - © To begin with - 4 See this volume, pp. 138- 
39. 

are no revolutionaries, they're a couple of blackguards who have 
been thrown out of public houses by the workers in London’.'* 
Knowing my Gottfried, I began by sending him the following note 
in which I pretended to be not quite sure of the facts, thereby 

giving him fresh occasion for ambiguities: 

‘5 Sutton Street, Soho, Office of The People’s Paper, 
22 July 1852 
“To Dr Johann Gottfried Kinkel 

‘You are alleged, or so I am informed, to have ventured the 
following statement before Anneke or other Germans at Cincin- 
nati (the passage follows). I await your explanation by return of 
post. Silence will be regarded as an admission. 

Dr K. Marx’ 

Kinkel sent the following note by return: 

“To Dr Karl Marx 

Since the article about me was published under your auspices during my 
imprisonment, I have wanted to have nothing more to do with you. If you believe 
that you can, through the testimony of Anneke or other honourable men, rather 
than through anonymous insinuations, provide proof that I untruthfully said or 
published anything detrimental to your own or Mr Engels’ honour, I must point 
out to you, as [ would to anyone with whom I have neither personal nor political 
contacts, the usual way which, under the law, is open to everyone who feels himself 
insulted or libelled. Except in this way, I shall have no further dealings with you. 

Gottfried Kinkel 

Since it was evident from this scrawl that Mr Gottfried would 
neither accept letters bearing a Souo postmark nor admit messen- 
gers, I got Lupus to post a note to him from Windsor on paper of 
the kind used for a billet-doux, bearing a posy of roses and 
forget-me-nots printed in colour, and having the following 
content: 

‘To Dr Johann etc. Kinkel 

‘In juxtaposition 
with a written statement, now before me, by your guarantor Huzel 
whom you cravenly required at Cincinnati to give his word of 
honour to keep silent about your mendacious gossip there, a 
promise which, however, was given only conditionally by Huzel; 
‘with a letter, likewise before me, written some time earlier by Dr 
Gottfried Kinkel in his own hand to his ex-guarantor Cluss, in which 

the same Kinkel boasts of his intention to enter into political 
relations with me: 

‘your letter—and this is precisely why “it was provoked— 
provides a new and striking proof that the said Kinkel is a cleric 
whose baseness is only equalled by his cowardice. 

Dr Karl Marx’ 

This last was swallowed in silence by Mr Johann etc. who, since 
then, has carefully avoided letting us hear anything more from 
him, 

Kossuth’s secret circular, which Cluss speaks of in his last letter, 
you will find in English in tomorrow’s issue of Jones’ parer.'** 
Hence I am not enclosing it. 

The meeting of Kinkel’s guarantors took place on Tuesday 
3 August. The chief item was the following: Reichenbach is 
guarding the exchequer like a Cerberus. The £200 so far spent by 
Kinkel and Willich was received from Gerstenberg, etc., against 
the revolutionary deposits. Statutorily, they may dispose of these 
only after at least 3 people have been nominated by the 
guarantors. And Reichenbach insists on observance of this 
formality. To remedy the inconvenience, Kinkel and Willich had 
decided to have Techow as the third nominee. True, Techow is 
sailing for Australia in 3 weeks’ time. But, under the statutes of 
the loan, once the committee had its full complement of 3 
members, it could on its own authority propose two more. Hence, 
the sole purpose of Techow’s nomination was 1. to make 
Reichenbach hand over the exchequer, 2. to enable them later on 
to bring in 2 men of straw in Techow’s place. However, the 
meeting immediately decided against Techow on the grounds that 
he was only being used as a cover and was leaving for Australia. 
Kinkel and Willich were told that their conduct of affairs was 
unsatisfactory, that they inspired no confidence and that they must 
submit a detailed account concerning the expenditure of the £200 
before it could be ratified. This last and other decisions are to be 
settled today, Friday the 6th, at a further guarantors’ meeting. 

At the sitting on the 3rd, Reichenbach proposed that the £1,000 
be deposited in the Bank of England and left untouched until the 
outbreak of the revolution. Léwe (in alliance with Ruge) proposed 
that the money be handed over to the Revolutionary League in 
America.'” 

And although Kinkel himself stated, in the enclosed note to 
Huzel, that Ruge falsely suspected him of being an agent of the 

Prince of Prussia,” and although he, upon the strength of that, 

pledged his word at the guarantors’ meeting last May that he would 
never sit on the same committee as Ruge, our Gottfried now 
declares himself ready, for the sake of the cause, to act in concert 
with Goegg, Ruge, etc. and to administer the money in concert 
with them, in order to get a hand in the administration at all. 
Willich, however, now convinced that the £1,000 will not, like the 
200 already spent, produce any further windfalls for him is said to 
have decided to emigrate to America, whither he has already been 
preceded by the trusty Gebert and Dietz. 

Last week Papa Goegg again convened his Agitation Club.”° An 
exact count revealed that it consisted of exactly 8 people, the place 
of Sigel and Fickler, who had disappeared, being taken by the 
newly-joined Oswald and Dralle. In addition it was found that, 
though Goegg had in the meantime acquired great fame as 
Kossuth’s servant and has rendered ‘sterling service’ as an agitator 
for the Revolutionary League, he had otherwise not brought back 
even enough cash to cover the debts ‘incurred to defray travelling 
expenses’. In these doubtful circumstances the agitators* felt 
compelled to attempt an alliance with Kinkel, in order that they 
might with decorum get at the £1,000. Kinkel likewise sees therein 
the last chance of avoiding an irreversible divorce from the 
£1,000. With the secret purpose of furthering this design, Goegg 
has convened a general meeting of refugees for tomorrow, the 7th, 
at Scharttner’s. Ostensibly to report on his grands wuvres.” In fact, 
to be swept by general acclaim into an alliance with Kinkel and the 
£1,000. This may now not be accomplished. 

But a third complication arises now, whose immediate effect is 
to debar both sides, Kinkel and Goegg, from the ‘exchequer’. To 
be precise, on the one hand, our Eduard Meyen is agitating for the money 
to be used to launch a big Lonvon werkcy paver. And, on the other, the 
‘critical’ Edgar Bauer, who had barely heard of the predicament in 
which the £1,000 found itself, before he too crept forth and, 
taking up position behind Schily, Imandt, Schimmelpfennig, etc., 
also solicited a newspaper for himself. Imandt, etc., see this 
as the only means of rescuing the money from Kinkel and 
Goegg. Edgar Bauer adopts towards these people the appearance 
of a ‘harmless humorist’. 

I shall obtain an exact account of today’s sitting since Imandt is 
now an L.M.° To revert to the one of the 3rd, I would mention 
the following: After questions of high policy had been dealt with, 

4 members of the Agitation Club - © great works - ©° Communist League member 

the chivalrous Schimmelpfennig arose; certain persons had, he 
said, put it about that the Brtiningk woman was a spy and he now 
declared them to be vile calumniators. Kinkel denied that he for 
his part had ever made any such assertion. (He had in fact made it 
to the whoreson Kamm of Bonn when the latter passed this way.) 
Willich, on whom all eyes were turned, sat tight and said nothing. 
Techow declared that it was even more vile when such suspicions 
were bandied about by persons who, for a whole year, had 
enjoyed the Briiningk woman’s hospitality. It was their duty rather 
to refute such a talk whenever they got wind of it. 

All eyes were turned on Willich. Willich did not stir, but 
throughout the whole of this sitting, which saw the fading of so 
many ‘golden’ dreams, is said to have been the very personification 
of ‘unhappy consciousness’. 

Well, enough of that crap for today.’ 

I have just received the enclosed letter from Freiligrath, from 
which it appears that cur Johnson remains adamant.* Hence J am 
utterly at a loss what to do and my position is becoming 
abominable. 

So honest Goegg has sent Freiligrath an invitation! He’s one 
they can still never do without, but in the end they will have to. 

My regards to the mandrake.? 

Your 
K. M. 

It seems unlikely that your letter will arrive today, it being 
already 2 in the afternoon. 
Enclosed letters from Cluss: 

1. 20 June. 

2. 4 July. 

3. 8 July, with Kinkel’s circular. 

4. Kinkel’s circular of 2 August. 

5. Cincinnati, 6 February,‘ letter from Kinkel to Huzel. 

6. Letter from Hillgartner to Huzel. 

7. Letter from Cluss of 22 July.