Abstract

ABSTRACT This article draws attention to a neglected aside in the debate over whether Marx fathered an illegitimate child. In 1898, Louise Freyberger wrote a controversial letter in which she claimed Engels had confessed on his deathbed that Frederick Demuth was Marx’s son. The letter, however, only came to light in 1962 when Werner Blumenberg first discussed it in his biography of Marx. Blumenberg’s revelation provoked an on-going debate over the plausibility of Freyberger’s allegations. Several scholars went so far as to dismiss the letter as a forgery, noting that it only existed in the form of a typed copy that Blumenberg had discovered in the archives of the International Institute of Social History (IISH). In 1963, Jacob-Peter Mayer published a review of Blumenberg’s biography in which he stated he had known of the letter in the 1930s, but few if any scholars took note of Mayer’s claim. In 2019, a copy of the letter in Mayer’s own hand was found among his papers. This article argues that Mayer copied his version, not from the IISH typescript, but from the original letter, which he had come across while working in the archives of the German Social Democratic Party in the 1930s.