Letters of Marx and Engels, 1849
Source: MECW Volume 38, p. 213;
Written: 23 August 1849;
First published: in Marx and Engels. Works, First Russian Edition, 1934.
Dear Weydemeyer,
After so many vicissitudes — after umpteen arrests in Hesse and the Palatinate,[288] after 3 weeks of sybaritic living in Kaiserslautern, after a glorious 4 weeks’ campaign in which, for a change, I buckled on my sword-belt and acted as Willich’s adjutant, after 4 weeks of tedious cantoning with the refugee detachment in the Vaud Canton, I am at last finding my feet here in Lausanne. The very first thing I shall do is sit down and compose a merry tale of the whole Palatinate-Baden frolic. But since I no longer have any contact with Germany and do not even know which towns are or are not under martial law, I don’t know what publisher to approach. I'm no longer acquainted with such folk. You are on the spot and hence will be better able to say which are the right publishers with whom to negotiate something of this kind; it will, of course, be quite innocuous and will not involve any risk of confiscation or prosecution. There might be such a one in Frankfurt. But he must have money. Please be good enough to write to me about this, if possible by return, so that I can take the necessary steps at once.
I recently saw your red [Max Joseph] Becker, very jaunty, in Geneva; he was tippling with the popular man, Esselen, and other easy-going diis minorum gentium [second-rate luminaries] in the country.
Warm regards to your wife and all our acquaintances
from your
Engels