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Workers of the world, unite! The definitive edition in the original German

Marx, Karl / Engels, Friedrich. Das kommunistische Manifest.

Leipzig, Verlag der Expedition des "Volksstaat" (at the foot of the last text page: printed by Friedrich Thiele), 1872.

Small 8vo (175 x 110 mm). 27, (1) pp. With a decorated rule on the title page and another above the colophon, both probably built up from typographic ornaments. Set in fraktur types, with headings in a bold fraktur and the 2 main words of the title in a textura. Side stitched, in a contemporary plain-paper wrapper.

Rare definitive third authorized edition in the original German of Marx's and Engels's Communist Manifesto, with a new preface by the authors that would remain a standard part of the book from this date on. Marx and Engels published the first edition at London in February 1848, just as the Revolution of 1848 was erupting in France and before it spread to the German states in March, under the title "Manifest der kommunistischen Partei". Marx quietly authorized a Cologne edition published for the new year 1851 with a false 1848 London imprint, but he did not revise the text. An unauthorized edition appeared at London and Berlin in 1866, but the present edition first gave this famous work the title and text as we know them today. Few works have had such an enormous influence on the course of world history, and the present edition shows it for the first time in its definitive form. In the new preface Marx and Engels note relevant events from the Second Congress of the Communist League in London (November 1847) to the Paris Commune (1871). The booklet ends with the famous words: "Die Proletarier haben nichts in ihr zu verlieren als ihre Ketten. Sie haben eine Welt zu gewinnen. Proletarier aller Länder, vereinigt Euch!".

Since the 1883 edition called itself the third authorized edition (ignoring that of 1850/51), the present one is usually called the second. It collates: 18 26 = 14 ff., and is printed on machine-made wove paper. Thiele had also printed the radical 1869 journal "Democratisches Wochenblatt". With a couple of faint pencil inscriptions at the head of the title page. Somewhat browned as usual, slight foxing in the final leaf and the edges of a few leaves slightly tattered (not approaching the text), but still in good condition. The definitive edition of a truly "revolutionary" book.

References

Marx/Engels Erstdrucke, p. 14. Wilfried Nippel, "Friedrich Engels", in: Zeitschrift für Ideengeschichte XI (2017), pp. 67-78, at pp. 70-71. Cf. PMM 326 (1848 ed.).