Marx-Engels Correspondence 1868
Source: Karl Marx, Letters to Dr Kugelmann (Martin Lawrence, London, undated). Scanned and prepared for the Marxist Internet Archive by Paul Flewers.
Dear Kugelmann
D'abord [1] my best happy new years to your wife, Fr�nzchen and yourself. And then my best thanks for the Jupiter and for the interest you display in doing propaganda and fooling the German press. As our friend Weerth, [2] too early dead, used to sing:
Es gibt nichts sch�neres auf der Welt
Als seine Feinde zu beissen,
Als �ber alle die plumpen Gesellen
Seine schlechte Witze zu reissen! [3]
With all due respect to your medical authority, you have too low an opinion of the English, German and French doctors, whom I have consulted and still consult here, if you think that they cannot distinguish anthrax (carbuncles) from furuncles, particularly here in England – the land of carbuncles, which is actually a proletarian illness.
And even if the doctors could not distinguish between the two, the patient who knows both sorts of horrors, as I do, could do so; for the subjective impression they make is quite different, although, as far as I know, no doctor has as yet succeeded in making an exact theoretical diagnosis of the two. It is only in the last few years that I have been persecuted with the thing. Before that it was a complete stranger to me.
At the moment of writing to you I am not quite better and not yet able to work. Again several weeks lost and not even pour le roi de Prusse! [4]
The thing that appears most clearly in Herr D�hring’s criticism [5] is – fear. I should be very glad if you could get for me D�hring’s book Gegen die Verkleinerer Carey’s [6] and von Th�nen’s Der isolierte Staat mit Bezug auf die Landwirtschaft [7] or something like that (together with a note of the price). Such orders from here take too long.
Finally I would ask you to be good enough to send me about 12 copies of my photograph (only the full-faced one). About a dozen friends are plaguing me for them.
Enclosed, for Mrs Kugelmann, the photographs of my eldest daughter Jenny and of Eleanor, who sends her best greetings to Fr�nzchen.
Ad vocem Liebknecht: Let him play le petit grand homme. [8] for a little while. All that will turn out for the best in the best of all possible worlds.
I had all sorts of personal anecdotes to relate, but shall save them for the next time, when the writing position no longer troubles me.
Salut
Yours
K Marx
One of my friends here, who dabbles a lot in phrenology, said yesterday when looking at the photograph of your wife: A great deal of wit! So you see, phrenology is not the baseless art which Hegel imagined.
1. First of all – Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute.
2. Georg Weerth (1821-1856) – Revolutionary German poet; member of the Communist League and intimate friend of Marx and Engels, with whom he worked on the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (1848-49). Engels called him ‘the first poet of the German proletariat’ – Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute.
3. There’s nothing nicer in the world / Than foes of his to bite on, / Than all the fellows ponderous / To try his jokes so trite on!
4. For the King of Prussia – Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute.
5. D�hring’s review of Das Kapital appearing in the Erg�nzungsbl�tter zur Kenntnis der Gegenwart, Volume 3, no 3 – Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute.
6. Against the Belittlers of Carey – Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute.
7. The Isolated State in its Relation to Agriculture – Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute.
8. The great man in miniature – Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute.