Letters of karl Marx to Karl Blind
Marx met the then 22 years old Blind) for the first time in May 1848, when he and Engels made their appearance in the revolutionary state of Baden (Germany), after the Neue Rheinische Zeitung had been suspended. At that time they declared to the members of the republican committee at Karlsruhe (Landesa usschuss), that they considered the revolt in the South-West of Germany irretrievably doomed to failure, if no decisive moves in Hungary or another revolution in Paris should come to its rescue. The only members of the committee who supported this opinion were, as stated by Engels), Karl Blind and Amand Gögg. Soon afterwards Marx and Blind met again in Paris. On September 5 Marx gave Blind's address to Freiligrath as his own. Blind had been sent to France by the revolutionary governments of Baden and the Palatinate as one of the members of the legation, which these two shortlived republics intended to establish there. But Louis Napoleon's government ignored this legation, and consequently did not respect Blind's diplomatic immunity, when the latter, soon after his arrival, proved to be involved in the abortive coup of Ledru-Rollin of June 13. Blind was placed under arrest and expelled from France on the same day, on the ground that his presence was “such as to disturb public order and calm”.