LETTERS
1) TO JULIUS FRÖBEL IN ZURICH
2) TO LUDWIG FEUERBACH IN BRUCKBERG
TO JULIUS FRÖBEL IN ZURICH
First published in German and Russian
Printed according to the original
in the journal Voprosy istorii KPSS No. 4
Translated into English by Jack Cohen for the Collected Works.
Paris, November 21, 1843
rue Vanneau, No. 31, Faub. St. Germain
Dear Friend,
Your letter has just arrived, but with some very strange symptoms.
1) Everything which you say you enclosed is missing with the exception of
Engels' article. This, however, is all in pieces and is therefore useless. It
begins with No. 5.
2) The letters for Mäurer and myself were wrapped up in the enclosed envelope
which is postmarked St. Louis. The few pages of Engels' article were in the same
wrapper.
3) Mäurer's letter, which, like mine, I found open in the enclosed envelope, is
also superscribed in a strange hand. I enclose the page with the writing.
Hence there are only two possibilities.
Either the French Government opened and seized your letters your packet. In
which case return the enclosed addresses. We will then not only initiate
proceedings against the French Post-Office but, at the same time, publicise this
fact in all the opposition papers. In any event it would be better if you
addressed all packets to a French bookshop. However, we do not believe that the
French Government has perpetrated the kind of infamy which so far only the
Austrian Government has permitted itself.
There thus remains the second possibility, that your Bluntschli and associates
have played this police-spy trick. If this is so, then (1) You must bring
proceedings against the Swiss and (2) Mäurer as a French citizen will protest to
the Ministry.
As far as the business itself is concerned, it is now necessary:
a) To ask Schuller not to issue the aforesaid document for the time being, as
this must be the principal ornament of our first number.
b) Send the whole of the contents to Louis Blanc's address. No. 2 or 3, rue
Taitbout.
c) Ruge is not yet here. I cannot very well begin printing until he has
arrived. I have had to reject the articles so far sent to me by the local people
(Hess, Weill, etc.) after many protracted discussions. But Ruge is probably
coming at the end of this month, and if at that time we also have the document
you promised, we can begin with the printing. I have written to Feuerbach, Kapp
and Hagen. Feuerbach has already replied.
d) Holland seems to me to be the most suitable place providing that your police
spies have not already been in direct touch with the government.
If your Swiss people have perpetrated the infamy I will not only attack them in
the Réforme, the National, the Démocratie pacifique, the Siecle, Courrier, La
Presse, Charivari, Commerce and the Revue indépendante, but in the Times as
well, and, if you wish, in a pamphlet written in French.
These pseudo-Republicans will have to learn that they are not dealing with
young cowhands, or tailors' apprentices.
As to the office, I will try to acquire one along with the new lodging into
which I intend moving. This will be convenient from the business and financial
viewpoint.
Please excuse this scraggy letter. I can't write for indignation.
Yours, Marx
In any case, whether the Paris doctrinaires or the Swiss peasant lads were
responsible for the trick, we will get Arago and Lamartine to make an
intervention in the Chamber. If these gentlemen want to make a scandal, ut
scandalum fiat. Reply quickly for the matter is pressing. Since Mäurer is a
French citizen, the plot on the part of the Zurichers would be a violation of
international law, with which the cowhands shall not get away.
TO LUDWIG FEUERBACH IN BRUCKBERG
First published in part in:
K. Grun, Ludwig Feuerbach in seinem Brietwechsel und Nachlass,
sowie in seiner Philosophischen Charaiterentwicklung
Bd. I, Leipzig und Heidelberg, 1874;
in full in:
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works,
second Russ. ea., Vol. 27, 1962.
Translated into English by Jack Cohen for the Collected Works.
Kreuznach, October 3, 1843
Dear Sir,
A few months ago while passing through [Bruckberg], Dr. Ruge informed you of
our plan to publish Franco-German Jahrbücher and asked at the same time for your
collaboration. It has now been already settled that Paris is to be the place for
printing and publication and that the first monthly number is to appear by the
end of November.
Before I leave for Paris in a few days time I feel obliged to make a brief
epistolary approach to you since I have not had the privilege of making your
personal acquaintance.
You were one of the first writers who expressed the need for a Franco-German
scientific alliance. You will, therefore, assuredly be one of the first to
support an enterprise aimed at bringing such an alliance into being. For German
and French articles are to be published promiscue in the Jahrbücher. The best
Paris writers have agreed to cooperate. Any contribution from you will be most
welcome and there is probably something at your disposal that you have already
written.
From your preface to the 2nd edition of Das Wesen des Christenthums, I am
almost led to conclude that you are engaged on a fuller work on Schelling or
that you have something about this windbag in mind. Now that would be a
marvellous beginning.
Schelling, as you know, is the 38th member of the [German] Confederation. The
entire German police is at his disposal as I myself once experienced when I was
editor of the Rheinische Zeitung. That is, a censorship order can prevent
anything against the holy Schelling [...indecipherable word here...] from
getting through. Hence it is almogt impossible in Germany to attack Schelling
except in books of over 21 sheets, and books of over 21 sheets are not books
read by the people. Kapp's book is very commendable but it is too circum"
stantial and rather inaptly separates judgment from facts. Moreover, our
governments have found a means of making such works ineffective. They must not
be mentioned. They are ignored or the few official reviews dismiss them with a
few contemptuous words. The great Schelling himself pretends he knows nothing
about these attacks and he succeeded in diverting attention from Kapp's book by
making a tremendous fiscal todo about old Paulus' soup. That was a diplomatic
master stroker
But just imagine Schelling exposed in Paris, before the French literary world!
His vanity will not be able to restrain itself, this will wound the Prussian
Government to the quick, it will be an attack on Schelling's sovereignty abroad,
and a vain monarch sets muck greater store by his sovereignty abroad than at
home.
How cunningly Herr von Schelling enticed the French, first of all the weak,
eclectic Cousin, then even the gifted Leroux. For Pierre Leroux and his like
still regard Schelling as the man who replaced transcendental idealism by
rational realism, abstract thought by thought with flesh and blood, specialised
philosopty by world philosophy! To the French romantics and mystics he cries:
"I, the union of philosophy and theology", to the French materialists: "I, the
union of flesh and idea", to the French sceptics: "I, the destroyeer of
dogmatism", in a word, "I ... Schelling!"
Schelling has not only been able to unite phllosopny and theology, but
philosophy and diplomacy too. He has turned philosophy into a general diplomatic
science, into a diplomacy for all occasions. Thus an attack on Schelling is
indirectly an attack on our entire policy, and especially on Prussian policy.
Schelling's philosophy is Prussian policy sub specie philosophiae.
You would therefore be doing a great service to our enterprise, but even more
to truth, if you were to contribute a characterisation of Schelling to the very
first issue. You are just the man for this because you are Schelling in reverse.
The sincere thought -- we may believe the best of our opponent -- of the young
Schelling for the realisation of which however he did not possess the necessary
qualities except imagination, he had no energy but vanity, no driving force but
opium, no organ but the irritability of a feminine perceptivity, this sincere
thought of his youth, which in his case remained a fantastic youthful dream, has
become truth, reality manly seriousness in your case. Schelling is therefore an
anticipated caricature of you, and as soon as reality confronts the caricature
the latter must dissolve into thin air. I therefore regard you as the necessary,
natural -- that is, nominated by Their Majesties Nature and History -- opponent
of Schelling. Your struggle with him is the struggle of the imagination of
philosophy with philosophy itself.
I confidently expect a contribution from you in the form you may find most
convenient."' My address is: "Herr Mäurer. Rue Vanneau No. 23, Paris, for the
attention of Dr. Marx." Although she does not know you, my ...
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