London, 14 March 1883 
Dear Liebknecht, 

You will all have learned from my telegram to Mrs Bebel 78+ — the 
only address I have got — of the terrible loss suffered by the European 
socialist revolutionary party. Only last Friday the doctor*—-one of 
the leading medical men in London—had told us that there was 
every prospect of getting him as well as he had ever been, provided 
only he sustained his strength by taking food. And from that very mo- 
ment he began eating with a better appetite again. Then, just after 
two o'clock this afternoon, I found the household in tears and was 
told he was terribly weak; Lenchen called out to me to come upstairs, 
saying he was half asleep, and, when I got there — she had been out 
of the room for barely two minutes — he was sound asleep, but it was 
for ever. The greatest intellect of the second half of this century had 
ceased to think. What the immediate cause of death was, I would not 
venture to guess without medical advice, the whole case being so 
complex as to require pages if it were to be described adequately, 
even by a doctor. And, indeed, it is no longer of any real importance. 
I have suffered anxiety enough over the past six weeks, and all I can 
say is that, in my opinion, the death, first of his wife, °1% and then, in 
a most critical period, of Jenny, *°° helped to bring on the final crisis. 

Although I have seen him this evening laid out on his bed, his fea- 
tures rigid in death, I simply cannot conceive that this man of genius 
has ceased to fructify the proletarian movement of both worlds with 
his stupendous ideas. We all of us are what we are because of him; 
and the movement is what it is today because of his theoretical and 
practical activities; but for him we should still be in a welter of confu- 

sion. 
Your 

F. Engels