Page 235 note 1 Of similar character are the other works by Soviet historians on this subject. See, for instance, the articles of the same E. P. Kandel and R. P. Konyushaya in the collective study: The Revolution of 1848–1849, edited by Prof. F. V. Potemkin and Prof. A. I. Molok (in the Library of World History series, published by the History Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Moscow, 1952, two vols.); the article by Stepanova, E. A. and Kandel, E. P., The Ideological Struggle in the German Democratic Movement of the Forties of the XIX Century, in: Problems of History, August, 1955, and others.Google Scholar

Page 235 note 2 This archive, which remained after the split of September 15, 1850, in the hands of one of the followers of the Schapper-Willich faction, was soon afterwards brought to the United States, where all trace of it disappeared. According to the unwritten story which persisted among the old German emigres, this archive came into the hands of Doctor Abraham Jacoby (1832–1919), one of the defendants at the Cologne Communist trial of 1852, who was throughout his long life a collector of materials on the early stages of the workers' movement in Germany. (An indirect confirmation of this may be found in a letter from F. Engels to L. Kugelman, dated April 18, 1895 see Marx, K. and Engels, F., Works, Russian edition, Vol. XXIX, p. 410, Moscow, 1948). In the last years of his life, he said that he was writing a history of the Communist League and its predecessors, but in 1919, as a very old man, he perished in a fire which destroyed his home near New York. This fire also destroyed all his collected documents (the story has it that he did not try to save himself because he did not want to abandon his manuscripts). Whether this story is true, we have not been able to verify.Google Scholar

Page 236 note 1 This organization of German workers in London was founded on February 7, 1840, under the name indicated in the text. It changed its name several times, but remained in existence until the end of 1917, when it was closed as a result of the policy of interning all German citizens. Parts of its library went to the International Institute of Social History, in Amsterdam, but the books of its minutes have not been found to this day. (A short history of the organization is provided by one of its active leaders during the final period of its existence, Weingartz, R.: Aus vergangenen Tagen. Erinnerung an den 7 Februar 1840, Vorwarts, Berlin, Feb. 7, 1928)Google Scholar. Excerpts from the records of the Society were published by M. Nettlau in vol. VIII and vol. X, of the Archiv fur die Geschichte des Sozialismus und Arbeiterbewegung, Leipzig, 1919 and 1921 (Speeches at the meetings of the organization by Marx and others in 1847, and discussion with W. Weitling in 1845–46). These documents are further supplemented by the report of A. L. [ehning], Discussions à Londres sur le Communisme Icarien, Bulletin of the International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, 1952, No. 2.Google Scholar

Page 236 note 2 In this manner were lost the documents of the Cologne Communist Trial of 1852, the large Berlin trial of Josef Ohm, of 1849, and others (attached to the latter were documents found in the possession of Karl Hätzel, representative of the Communist League in Berlin), the Dresden case of Peter Notjung (emissary of the Cologne Central Committee of the League, arrested in Saxony), and many others.

Page 236 note 3 Fr. Lessner and St. Born seem to have been the only members of the League to have written memoirs, but they cannot be considered as belonging to the group of principal leaders of the latter.

Page 236 note 4 Thus, no copy of the German edition of the Catechism of the Proletarian has been found to this day. It was the work of V. Tedesco (1821–97), a Belgian member of the Communist League. (The pamphlet was translated into German by Ferdinand Freiligrath. This fact remained unknown to the latter's biographers; it is revealed in the testimony of P. G. Röser. See Mänchen, O. und Nicolaevsky, B.: Karl und Jenny Marx. Berlin, 1933, s. 157). It was published secretly in 1849 by Karl Schapper, in one of the clandestine printing plants in Wiesbaden.Google Scholar

Page 237 note 1 It is not mentioned even by so serious a historian as E. Zobel, in his comprehensive work, Karl Marx: His Life and Activity (1818–83), published by the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute under the editorship of V. Adoratsky, Moscow, 1934, 442 p. (There is also a German edition). Its date of publication is given as July 4, 1934, while P. G. Röser's testimony, which describes the meeting at which Marx proclaimed the dissolution of the League, was printed in the appendix to the book by B. Nikolajewsky and O. Mänchen, Karl und Jenny Marx, Ein Lebensweg, Berlin, which appeared in January 1933; more-over, as may be seen in his book, Zobel was familiar with P. G. Röser's testimony in the original as well (there are references to it on pp. 51 and 66). Zobel himself is not to blame for this: a close collaborator of D. Riasanov, he was regarded as a politically unreliable personage in 1933–34, as a result of his historical writings; soon after that he disappeared entirely (he was evidently shot). However, this fact is generally characteristic as an indication of the conditions in which historical work is being done in the USSR.

Typical also is the fact that a German Communist historican, Karl Obermann, who in his recently published book Zur Geschichte des Bundes der Kommunisten 1849–52 (Dietz, Berlin 1955), stated that “zum erstenmal das Aktenmaterial des preussischen Polizeipraesidiums aus den Jahren 1849 bis 1852 benutzt worden” (p. 8) did not dare to mention that the bulk of Röser's deposition which he used in his book extensively, had been published in the book by B. Nicolaevsky and O. Maenchen-Helfen, referred to in this study, twenty-two years ago. Many historians benefited from the data preserved at the Berlin Polizeipraesidium (a preussisches Polizeipraesidium had never existed): Gustav Mayer, A. Fehling, Hans Stein and others.

Page 238 note 1 Marx, K., Enthüllungen über den Kommunistenprozess Zu Köln, 4. Ausg., Berlin 1914, 30 pp.Google Scholar

Page 238 note 2 Friedrich Engels' Briefwechsel mit Karl Kautsky. Hrsg. Kautsky, von Benedikt, Wien, 1955, p. 427.Google Scholar

Page 238 note 3 Ibid. pp. 445–457.

Page 239 note 1 The history of this episode in Engels' biography is told by his biographer, Prof. Gust. Mayer: Friedrich Engels, Berlin, pub. by Ullstein, vol. 2, p. 197, etc. The destruction of the document by A. Bebel and Ed. Bernstein is related in the footnotes, ibid. pp. 544–45. The conversation between Prof. G. Mayer and Ed. Bernstein concerning this question took place in 1920. The author of the present lines had occasion to discuss this subject with Ed. Bernstein much later – in 1929 or even in 1930 – and Bernstein told him that he read all the documents in the packet that was destroyed, which included not only the rough draft of the memorandum he had prepared, but also the correspondence regarding this matter with P. Lafargue, as well as letters of a later date, when the question was brought out in the press (1891).

Page 239 note 2 Shortly before her death, Laura Lafargue-Marx consented, on the advice and request of K. Kautsky, to turn over all of Marx' materials in her possession to the archive of the German Social-Democratic Party. The organization of the materials was undertaken by D. B. Riazanov, who found among them the large package of correspondence between K. Marx and his wife. Riazanov glanced through it: the larger portion of this corresspondence was filled with accounts of public affairs and, in its frankness, was of exceptional interest (Riazanov compared it to the well-known letters from Marx to his daughters, adding that his letters to his wife were more detailed and frank). However, it often contained caustic references to various persons, including people whom Marx treated with sincere respect, but whose weaknesses he did not refrain from ridiculing in speaking to his wife. Such references were occasionally aimed even at Engels, especially in the letters of Marx' wife. D. Riazanov, of course, told Laura Lafargue about his discovery, and the latter immediately began to read these letters. When Riazanov came to continue his work on the following day, Laura Lafargue told him that, having read the correspondence, she decided to destroy it, since her “father would never have consented to permit the publication of these letters, and that she had already carried out her decision… D. B. Riazanov adds, half-jestingly, half-seriously, that he cannot forgive himself for speaking to Laura Lafargue of his find. “To save these documents, I should simply have stolen them.”

Page 241 note 1 Stieber, Wermuth u., Die Kommunisten Verschwörungen des XTX Jahrhunderts. Berlin, 1853, appendix XVII. — Several years ago, Problems of History (Moscow, pub, by the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Institute of History, No. II, 1948) offered a Russian translation of this document, accompanied by an extensive commentary by V. Radus-Zenkovich, in an article entitled, From the History of the Communist League (September 1850-August 1851). This document was printed as a new discovery, although it is well known to everyone who has written about the period in question. The only new element is found in the notes made by K. Marx on the margins of the new Statute of the League, prepared by the Cologne Central Committee. Radus-Zenkovich includes these notes in the text of the document, although his corrections were not only never adopted by any organ of the League, but, generally, there are not even any indications that Marx had ever brought them up for discussion in any organ of the League. We may note also that no other new documents bearing on the history of the Communist League have been published in the USSR during the past 15–20 years.Google Scholar

Page 241 note 2 This document has unfortunately survived in incomplete form: its ending is lost.

Page 241 note 3 This figure is offered by von Minutoli (1805–61), former police president of Berlin, who was sent to London after his retirement from this post to investigate the activities of the German Communist organizations there. His report, of August 3, 1848, was preserved in the archive of the Prussian Ministry of Internal Affairs (Preuss. Geheim. Staats-Archiv, R 77, 509. Ausl., 43. pp. 67–77).

Page 242 note 1 Ibid.

Page 242 note 2 Die politischen revolutionären Verbindungen in den Jahren 1814–52 und deren Revolutionen, p. 289 (Staatsarchiv Wien, Varia der Kabinettkanzlei, Fasc. 32).

Page 242 note 3 Lessner, Fr., Vor 1848 und nachher, Deutsche Worte, Wien, 1898, No. 3, p. 110.Google Scholar

Page 242 note 4 Fehling, A., Karl Schapper und die Anfänge der Arbeiterbewegung bis zur Revolution von 1848 (Diss. Maschinenschrift, p. 77).Google Scholar

Page 243 note 1 Mitteilungen des Königl. Polizei-Präsidii zu Berlin, Beilage zum Stuck 3428; also correspondence in Mannheimer Abend Zeitung of Feb. 28, 1849; Norddeutsche Freie Presse (Hamburg), of June 7 and 21, 1850, and others.

Page 243 note 2 Marx, K.: Enthüllungen, 1914 ed., pp. 52–53.Google Scholar

Page 244 note 1 Especially the letters from Aug. Willich to Hermann Becker in Cologne, of December 6 and 24, 1851.

Page 248 note 1 am Montag.

Page 249 note 1 selbst.

Page 249 note 2 einer.

Page 249 note 3 Centralschreiben der Centralbehörde.

Page 249 note 4 deutsch nationale.

Page 249 note 5 als Hauptsache der Revolution dargestellt.

Page 249 note 6 zu Proletariern.

Page 250 note 1 der Centralbehörde.

Page 250 note 2 können.

Page 250 note 3 unserer.

Page 250 note 4 derselben.

Page 250 note 5 feindselige.

Page 250 note 6 dieser 2.

Page 250 note 7 die Proletarier.

Page 250 note 8 trennen.

Page 250 note 9 nach Köln.

Page 250 note 10 sie.

Page 250 note 11 prinzipielle Spaltung.

Page 251 note 1 und Ihr geht allein.

Page 251 note 2 aber.

Page 251 note 3 Beziehung.

Page 251 note 4 diese.

Page 251 note 5 Centralbehörde.