8 54 KARL MARX: A BIOGRAPHYMy husband had to work the whole day right through into the
night. The whole thing is now a battle between the police on one
side and my husband on the other. He is credited with everything,
the whole revolution, even the conduct of the trial. A whole office
has been established in our house. Two or three do the writing,
others run errands, others scrape together pennies so that the writers
can continue to exist and bring against the old official world proof of
the unheard-of scandal. In the middle of it all my three faithful
children sing and pipe and often catch it from their dear father. Some
business!^75Their efforts succeeded in exposing the forgeries of the prosecution but
the jury nevertheless convicted the majority of the accused. 'A degrading
and completely unjust sentence',^76 wrote the Prussian diplomat Varnhagen
von Ense, who had no love for communists.
The episode also had a frustrating sequel: during the trial Marx had
begun to write an article putting the main facts of the case before the
public. Typical of Marx's drafts, this had grown into a small book to
which he gave the title Revelations about the Communist Trial in Cologne.
As well as extensively documenting Prussian police methods, he publicised
the split in the Communist League. For Marx felt compelled to dissociate
himself from the plots and conspiracies of the Willich-Schapper faction.
He explained that his group intended to build 'the opposition party of
the future'^77 and would thus not have any part in conspiracies to produce
immediate revolutionary overthrows. Two thousand copies, printed in
Switzerland, were smuggled across the border into Prussia and stocked
in a small village; but they were soon discovered and all confiscated by
the police. The book was also published in America in a smaller edition
but very few copies found their way back into Germany.
With the arrest of the Cologne Committee the League ceased to exist
in Germany in an organised form. The fifteen- to twenty-strong London
group had met regularly during 1851 - first in Soho on Tuesday evenings,
then in Farringdon Street in the City on Thursdays and finally (during
1852 ) in the Rose and Crown Tavern, Crown Street, Soho, on Wed-
nesdays.^78 Marx presided and the group was referred to by its members
as 'the Synagogue' or 'The Marx Society'.^79 Soon after the end of the
Cologne trial, the League dissolved itself on Marx's suggestion with
the declaration that its continued existence, both in London and on the
Continent, was 'no longer opportune'.^80 Willich's branch of the League
ceased to function shortly afterwards. For the next ten years Marx was a
member of no political party.