An Unpublished Letter of M.A. Bakunin to R. Solger

[ presented by ] Robert M. Cutler [Email author]

[ Introduction ]     >> [ Letter-image with transcription and translation ] <<     

First published in International Review of Social History 33, no. 2 (1988): 212–217.

[ Letter-image with transcription and translation ]

Negative photo of letter

[Transcription]

[Translation]

29 Nowember 1861. Bostona

29 November 1861. Boston

     Mein Lieber — Ich komme
     My dear [friend]  — I am coming
erst Montag abends, aber sicher,
only on Monday evening, but for sure,
und Dienstag werde ich das Vergnügen
and on Tuesday I will have the pleasure
haben Sie zu begrüssen — Ich bin wir-
of greeting you — I am quite
-klich zufrieden in Boston gewesen
pleased to have been in Boston,
zu sein, es ist eine gute Stadt — Heute
it is a good city — Today
bin ich bei Ihrem alten, sehr alten
I have been to see your old, very old
Freunde Forster gewesen — Halb
friend Forsterd — Half
blind, ganz taub, an allen Gliedern
blind, totally deaf, altogether
gebrochenb, lässt er doch den tüchtigen
fragile, he still projects a dynamic
Geist herausfühlen — Ebenso Quincy —
spirit — Quincye likewise —
Mein Liebster, wenn es möglich ist,
My dearest [friend], if it is possible,
arrangiren Sie dass ich Bötcher
arrange for me to see Bötcherf
in New-York irgend wo treffen könnte —
somewhere in New York —
Der Mann interessirt mich sehr, und
I am very interested in the man, and
ich höre dass er Ihr Freund ist. — Thec
I hear that he is your friend — The
Butterflich Snelling ist die Liebenswür-
butterfly Snellingg is kind-
-digkeit selbst, und Kennard ist eine
ness personified, and Kennardh is a
tüchtige, edle Seele.
dynamic and noble soul.

Adieu — Grüssen Sie Kapp.

Adieu — greetings to Kappi

M. Bakunin

M. Bakunin

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DR. ROBERT M. CUTLER was educated at MIT and The University of Michigan, where he earned a Ph.D. in Political Science, and has specialized and consulted in the international affairs of Europe and Eurasia for twenty years. He has held research and teaching positions at major universities in the United States, Canada, France, Switzerland, and Russia, and contributed to leading policy reviews and academic journals as well as the mass media in three languages.

    Notes to the Document and Its Translation

  1. The original orthography is preserved. [ Return to transcription. ]

  2. Sic for: gebrechlich. [ Return to transcription. ]

  3. English in the original. [ Return to transcription. ]

  4. Karol Forster (1800–1879) left Poland after the 1830 Congress, in which he participated, and settled to Paris. There, using the name Charles de Forster, he wrote in French popular histories of Poland and commentaries on contemporary social and political life. In 1848 he moved to Berlin, where he remained active in belles lettres. In the late 1860s and early 1870s, still in Berlin, he wrote his memoirs and edited a twenty-volume series of books on social, philosophical, and political themes; in one of these latter, he republished in Polish translation an 1862 pamphlet by Bakunin (see note 5 above). [ Return to translation. ]

  5. Josiah Quincy (1772–1864), called "the Elder" in distinction from his grandson Josiah P. Quincy, was a pillar of Boston society in his day. A member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1805 until 1813, he spent the decade following in the Massachusetts State Legislature before becoming mayor of Boston, to which post he was reelected annually for five years. As mayor in the 1820s, Quincy established a reputation as a municipal reformer by renovating waterfront slums, introducing water and power systems throughout the city, and building Quincy Market. After leaving the office of mayor, he spent a decade and a half as president of Harvard University, of which he wrote a history, before retiring to an active literary and social life. [ Return to translation. ]

  6. According to testimony cited by Nettlau (The Life of Michael Bakounine, 1, p. 140), Bakunin saw "many German 'forty-eighters" in New York, including refugees from Dresden. A radical republican lawyer from Chemnitz named Carl Theodor Böttcher died on the barricades during the May 1849 revolution in Dresden, in which Bakunin played an important part. The Bötcher in this letter is most likely a brother or other male relative of Carl Theodor Böttcher, whom Bakunin knew during those years. Since Bakunin mentions Bötcher in this letter after saying he had seen Forster—whose own connection with Solger dates from the same period—it is plausible that Forster himself mentioned to Bakunin that Solger knew Bötcher. On C. Th. Böttcher, see Rolf Weber, Die Revolution in Sachsen 1848/49: Entwicklung und Analyse ihrer Triebkräfte (Berlin, 1970), pp. 265, 276; and Bakunin, Sobranie sochinenii i pisem, 4, p. 527n. On Bakunin's association with him, see Josef Pfitzner, Bakuninstudien: Quellen und Forschungen aus dem Gebiete der Geschichte (Prague, 1932; reprint ed., Berlin, 1977), p. 195. [ Return to translation. ]

  7. George H. Snelling (1810?–1891) was a member of the Bostonian Society and a political and social reformer active in the city's affairs. The sobriquet "butterfly" means, in the New England idiom of the time, one who moves from one kind of work to another. One type of work in which Snelling engaged was translation; he rendered into English Józéf Hordynski's account of the 1830-31 Polish insurrection. [ Return to translation. ]

  8. Martin P. Kennard (1818–1903) was an abolitionist and political reformer in Boston. By profession a jeweler, he later became Assistant Treasurer in charge of the United States Sub-Treasury in Boston. [ Return to translation. ]

  9. Friedrich Kapp (1824–1884) was born in Hamm, Westphalia, and studied law at Heidelberg and Berlin. A friend of Solger, he fled the reaction to the Frankfurt revolution, in which he participated as a journalist, and arrived in the United States in 1850 via Paris. Founder of a law firm in New York, he was also correspondent for the Kölnische Zeitung. As commissioner of immigration for New York State from 1867 to 1870, Kapp gained a reputation as a social reformer. That experience shows in his several historical monographs on the German community in America. (Kapp also published, in both German and English, biographies of the American generals Kalb and von Steuben.) In 1870 Kapp returned to Germany, where he served as member of parliament from 1872 until his death. [ Return to translation. ]

Manuscript letter: In public domain
Other material: Copyright © International Institute for Social History
Reproduced under fair-use provision, intended for personal use only
This Web-based compilation: Copyright © Robert M. Cutler <rmc@alum.mit.edu>
Document location (URL): http://www.robertcutler.org/bakunin/ar88irx2.htm
First Web-published: 29 March 2000
Content last modified: 29 March 2000
Document last reformatted: 29 March 2000