The film is based on letter and manuscripts of F. Engels from 1838 to 1842.
In spite of the Philistines* I've grown myself a moustache. Sending you my drawing. * who shaved their faces
THE YOUNG FRIEDRICH ENGELS a portrait in letters* * All in Vol 2 Marx-Engels works
Soyuzmultfilm, Moscow & DEFA animation, Dresden
written by Klaus & katya Georgy, script editors R. Thomas, Arcady Snessarev Consultants Kh. Ulrich, G Skambraks, N. Belousova
art directors: Vadim Kurchevsky, Vladimir Nahumov Music V. Pich, Narrator V. Tatarsky
animators: Maria Motruk, T. Kazantseva, Youry Klepatsky, M. Henke
cutter A. Yuve, Sound H Filipi camera M. Henke, V. Bensch executive producer Joseph Boyarsky, G Hammer
In summer of 1838 Friedrich Engels, son of a rich manufacturer, left Barmen (Wuppertal) to move to Bremen.
According to will of his father he was meant to receive a mercantile education in the trading house of consul Leupold.
Here, in Bremen, a correspondence of the seventeen-year old Engels with his sister Maria and his school friends begins.
Cari amici (dear friends)! One misses you a lot. Now one has to do with letters -
it's infamous. Here's a drawing showing me waiting for your letters.
Postman: Consul, sir, a letter for you!
Consul Leupold: A-ha, good.
Engels: None for me? No!
Five hundred boxes of sugar sold, thus, 250 000 pounds sold...a pound of coffee costs well... nine-and-a-half...which sums up to...
four silver groat, eight pfennig...
Dear Maria, in front of my desk there is a big window giving on to the hall. I'm drawing you the church as seen from the office.
Here in Bremen the merchants’ houses are all built in a very remarkable way. The roofs are very close together.
This is a scene from Weser riverside. One can observe the unloading of cargo here.
Interesting fellows, aren't they?
But old Roland, emblem of the city, is the best.
I've just returned from the daily parade on great square. The army make their exercise there. About forty soldiers. The parade lasts two whole minutes.
The soldiers come out, form lines, prepare their weapons and leave again.
A deserting soldier was caught yesterday. Now he will receive sixty lashes. Soldiers are always beaten with sticks here.
Oh, the boss is here! I'm going back to business... Five sacks of coffee, seventeen sack of sugar....
A broker called Jan Krusbecker has just arrived and I'll draw him for you.
There he is. He has eyes like rockets and an always half-melancholy, half-smiling air.
This is an old wine merchant tasting sour wine.
Next is the sales agent providing him this sourness.
This guy, dead drunk, yells every morning: I am Grazein what means - I am citizen of Bremen.
Engels to his friends Wilhelm and Friedrich Graeber
Carissimi! In vostras epistolers haec vobis sit respondentia. (My dearest ones, let this be an answer to your letters.)
Enough. No more Latin. Anyway, the best thing here is there are a lot of newspapers.
Dutch, French, English. Seizing the opportunity I learned Turkish and Japanese.
Thus I know twenty five languages and I am gonna write a multilingual letter to you soon.
I'll take now the English language
No, better my beloved Italian... Dolce Suave come el Saphiro
Or Spanish.... Langue come viento en los Arbores
Or Dutch.... Gelijk den damp uut einer pijp tobac sehr genüklich (genoeglijk)
A new newspaper "The Bremer Stattbote" just came out. It has a walking fellow on the first page. He looks like this.
Any nonsene is being printed in this Stattbote and I send pathetic lyrics there just for fun but they earnestly publish them.
Going on. First I used black ink, now there will be red.
So, the most important...my Spanish ballad failed.
I have more and more doubts about my poetry and its potential each day.
Nevertheless, I will continue writing.
I can't sleep at night ridden by ideas of this century. By the way, I've read various liberal publications here.
Especially....Ernst August, the king of Hannover.
There's plenty of ghosts in my side-street. Shiny ghosts attack me from all sides.
What should I, poor man, do? Become loyal? To hell with that! Hold on to Saxon moderateness? Dreadful! If only I could sort it out!
Engels to theology student Friedrich Greber.
You say lack of doubt is freedom of spirit? No, it is the greatest spiritual slavery.
Who gives us the right to blindly believe the Bible? Are we supposed to, because our parents tell us to?
I can only regard as divine a teaching which can stand the test of reason.
When it is a matter of defending the freedom of reason, then I protest against all compulsion. Man was born free. He is free.
In March 1839, in Telegraph fur Deutchland article "Letter from Wuppertal" was published. Its author was eighteen years old Friedrich Engels.
Terrible poverty prevails among the lower classes
in Elberfeld alone, out of 2,500 children of school age 1,200 are deprived of education and grow up in the factories
But the wealthy manufacturers have a flexible conscience, and causing the death of one child more or one less
does not doom a pietist’s soul to hell,
Oh, it seems like the article has caused a stir! Here's the scene in Barmen. What it means you can deduce for yourself.
Your Friedrich Engels
I add several strokes of my quill showing its facility and speed.
Dear Maria, there have been substantial improvements in our office.
You see a hammock which is occupied by my person smoking a cigar.
By the way, remind mother to send me the works of Goethe sooner. I really need them.
It is so hot today that, despite a cold in the head, I want to take a swim in Weser.
Recently I swam across the Weser four times in a row. Hardly anybody in Bremen could compete with me.
Besides, every Sunday I occupy myself with horseback riding.
Oh damn! His ancientness, mister Leupold, has arrived. As Shakespeare says, it's time to get to a serious tone...
Well, let's get back to the fine arts. I want to draw to you what haircuts young people here have.
These guys look like calves, I'll be damned!
Here's my neighbour, Georg, in english George. The first dandy in Hamburg.
Combine both drawings...
Add a skinny torso and long legs...
And you will get a full picture of this fool. He gets new nonsense in his head every day.
He's simply inexhaustible of distasteful and boring ideas.
Awake is this idler at least twenty hours, during which he wears me out me with his chattering.
Genius of latest fashion. Fool of latest fashion.
He who finds just letters and words in heaps of writings is not a wise man.
The meanings will remain foggy to him, even with his head full of phrases.
Embody your aspirations yourselves, look for new ways yourselves.
Following old steps won't lead to a final victory.
When I see the Prussian coat of arms the spirit of freedoms overtakes me.
This Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm the Just. I hate the bastard!
There is no time with more crimes of kings than the years from 1816 to 1830.
Almost every of kings of that era deserves the capital punishment.
Devote Charles X...
Ferdinand VII of Spain.
Franz of Austria.
The patricide Alexandr and his evenly guilty brother Nikolay.
I expect good from a monarch only when his head is spat upon by common folk and his windows are shattered by revolution!
Dear Maria, my musical lessons go on.
I've taken up composing a new choral.
There's no accompaniment yet. It's possible I will rewrite it here and there.
This winter I want to take up dance lessons in order to get some gracefulness to my legs.
Besides, we have lessons in fencing now. You can see me handling the sword here.
I fence passionately now and soon will cut you all in half.
Recently the tenth anniversary of the July Revolution was celebrated. The most beautiful representation of the people's will.
A storm is approaching us from France.
Its echo rises in the depths of our nation. Thrones are shaking and the kingly scepter is trembling.
Ernst August, I bravely gaze at you with angry look. You are just as calm on your throne as me in my boat in the eye of a storm.
I've grown myself a moustache and
amuse myself with the gentry who are stunned by my impertinence to show up in good society looking like that.
Yet, the ladies are exalted.
Some fools express themselves in excessive eloquence.
These gentlemen are incapable of developing their thoughts logically even for three seconds.
It's enough to ask them some innocent questions and they splendidly contradict themselves.
By the way, I too can preach, even without preparations.
Oh you, political patsies! Oh you, heroes!
The tide of time will drag you into politics all the same and drown your kingdom of ideals.
You will be standing like rams in a gateway then...
Dear Greber, I confess I don't have the desire for continuing our devout disputes.
We have ceased to understand each other.
I am on a direct route to Hegelism. I study Hegel's philosophical history. Magnificent work!
His titanic ideas take my by terrible force. I...
Damn...as soon as I sit dow by the book, office work crumbles over...
“Your most respectful and obedient”, these were the last words I wrote in a business letter as I finished my work at the office today
Thank God that I too am leaving this dreary hole where there is nothing to do
but fence, eat, drink, sleep and drudge. Your Friedrich.
In autumn of 1841 Engels departs to Berlin to serve in the army.
At the same time he attends Berlin University as an unenrolled student.
Dear Maria, do you see how good-looking, but strictly against regulations., I have put on my uniform coat?
My uniform is most impressive and I'm worthy to be put on show.
Incidentally I have now been a bombardier for four weeks in the royal infantry-artillery company.
I was on parade drill this morning from 8 till half past eleven.
During this I got a very stiff telling-off from the Lieutenant-Colonel
I too have to suffer being growled and shouted at by my Captain and think to myself: who cares, and cock a snook at him.
By the way, it's time for me to go. Your brother Friedrich. Berlin, Doroteinstrasse 56.
From an 1842 article by Engels "Diary of a guest Student"
Berlin University enjoys the reputation, of standing in the mainstream of contemporary thought and of having made itself such an arena of intellectual battles.
Dear Maria, This tender little flower I hope, compensate for the long time which, I have kept you waiting.
Recently I shocked the poet Ruckert at University.
During his lecture I sat right in front of him and he looked at my shiny buttons for so long that he lost his train of thought.
Engels to his publisher Arnold Ruge. Enclosed please find an article for the [Deutsche] Jahrbücher.
I have put the Dante thing to one side for the time being.
Dear Maria!
You will certainly not have heard yet that Herr Liszt has been here I'm sending you his portrait.
there are pictures of the great, charming, heavenly, genial, divine Liszt in every house.
The Berlin ladies were so besotted by him that there was a free fight for possession of a glove which he had dropped.
Countess Schlippenbach poured the tea which the great Liszt had left in a cup into her Eau-de-Cologne bottle and is keeping it since like a holy relic.
The young ladies fought over him but he snubbed them frightfully, and preferred to go and drink champagne with a couple of students.
Engels to Arnold Ruge.
You ask me why didn't I send you my article "Shelling and Revelation"?
What I had in mind was to put out a pamphlet against him.
The "Schelling, the philosopher in Christ" article is also from my pen.
Meantime, in Berlin University a stormy polemic, around Hegelian dialectics, takes place.
It's greatest opposer was the philosopher Schelling.
The 22 year old Engels sharply took a stand against Schelling with articles,
Raising big interest not only in Germany but across its border too.
Continuation letter to Arnold Ruge.
Besides all this, I am not a Doctor and cannot ever become one. I am only a merchant and a Royal Prussian artillerist
so kindly spare me that title. Yours sincerely, Friedrich Engels (Oswald).
Dear Marie! Today I can tell you the glad news
that we are probably not going on parade tomorrow because His Majesty, the King has condescended to leave for Potsdam. All of which suits me very well.
Oh yes, I own a dog now. It’s a handsome young spaniel and quite crazy. Nevertheless, I have taught him one thing.
When I say “Namenloser” (his name) "there’s an aristocrat!” he goes wild with rage and growls hideously.
Engels to Arnold Ruge
This time I write you to announce that I won't be sending you anything anymore.
I have decided to abandon all literary work for a while.
I have learned enough to form my own viewpoint
and, when necessary, to defend it,
but not enough to be able to work for it with success and in the proper way.
my literary activities have so far been mere experiments from the outcome of which I was able to learn whether my natural capacities would allow me
to participate actively in the movement of the century.
In November 1842 Engels departs to Manchester.
Here a new period in his life begins.
In the struggling of the proletariat he saw that only force which was capable of changing the world.
October, 1844.
Dear Marx...
Subtitles by Eus, may 2018, reworking a dust-angel translation with the original letters translations Vol2 M.E.works