The Police File of Karl Marx

Introduction

The Belgian police file concerning Karl Marx provides an invaluable record of the intersection between state surveillance, international politics, and the revolutionary movements of the mid-nineteenth century. Based on reports from the Belgian security services, it documents Marx’s period of residence in Brussels between 1845 and 1848. This was a transitional moment: Marx had been expelled from France at the request of the Prussian government and had not yet found the relative stability of permanent exile in London. For the Belgian authorities, Marx represented a unique threat. He was categorized by the Minister of Justice Jules d’Anethan as a “dangerous communist democrat,” a phrase that reveals the unease provoked by an individual who combined theoretical sophistication, political activism, and growing international influence.

This essay reconstructs Marx’s Brussels years through the lens of the police dossier while embedding the account in wider historical scholarship. It considers his expulsion from France, his movements in Belgium, the conditions attached to his residence, his intellectual and organizational activity, the surveillance to which he was subjected, and finally his forced departure during the revolutionary spring of 1848. By situating the police record within its political context, the essay highlights both the limits of liberal constitutionalism in Belgium and the strategies by which Marx and his allies adapted to repression.

Historical Context: Belgium, Prussia, and the Politics of Exile

Belgium in the mid-1840s was a constitutional monarchy with one of Europe’s most liberal charters. The 1831 Constitution enshrined civil liberties, including freedom of the press and association, but the state also remained deeply cautious about harboring radical activists. Belgium’s independence had been guaranteed by international treaty in 1839, underwritten by the great powers, and the government was careful to preserve neutrality in continental politics. Hosting exiled revolutionaries created constant diplomatic risks, especially when those figures targeted neighboring regimes.

The case of Marx illustrates these dynamics. Prussia pressed France to act against him because of his writings in Vorwärts, a German-language newspaper published in Paris. French authorities complied and expelled him in January 1845. Marx immediately secured entry to Belgium with the help of the Prince of Liège, ambassador in Paris. This episode highlights both the precariousness of political refugees and the discretionary power of diplomats who could, on occasion, facilitate their passage across borders.

Belgian security culture in this period has been characterized by historians as a blend of constitutional liberalism and pragmatic repression. Police reports were meticulous in tracing the addresses and associates of foreign radicals. Yet Belgium also allowed considerable scope for intellectual and associational activity, so long as it did not appear to endanger public order or international relations. Marx’s experience exemplifies this ambivalence: tolerated as a scholar, targeted once he assumed a leadership role in transnational networks.

Marx in Brussels: Residency, Surveillance, and Intellectual Work

Movements and Surveillance

The police file tracks Marx and his family with extraordinary precision. Their lodgings changed repeatedly in the first months: from the Hotel of the Station on Rue Neuve, to the Hotel of Saxony, to a residence on Petit Sablon Square, and then to the Hotel of the Wild Ass on Sainte-Gudule Square. Later they leased a house on Rue de la Pépinière (then no. 35, now no. 95). In 1846 they spent a short period on Rue de l’Alliance in Saint-Josse before settling for sixteen months at 42 Rue d’Orléans in Ixelles. Each move was recorded by the police, reflecting the intensity of surveillance.

The Belgian Justice Ministry explicitly ordered that Marx be monitored. His activities were of concern not only for internal reasons but also to avoid friction with Prussia, whose government viewed him as a dangerous agitator. The file illustrates how exile was never private: even the most mundane details of family movement were construed as politically relevant.

Residency Under Conditions

On 7 February 1845 Marx wrote to King Leopold I requesting permission to settle with his family in Belgium. The request triggered concern. Belgian police referred to an arrest warrant issued in Prussia and feared that Marx might attempt to revive Vorwärts from Brussels. Yet the director of the sûreté, the knight Undt, expressed respect for Marx’s intellectual work and ordered an inquiry into his means of support. The report concluded that Marx was engaged in writing a manual of political economy for the publisher Leske of Darmstadt and was living on his wife Jenny’s private income.

Despite this, Undt remained cautious. He summoned Marx on 19 March 1845 and extracted from him a written promise, signed on 22 March, that he would not publish in Belgium on matters relating to contemporary politics. Such undertakings were a common administrative instrument: they allowed the state to tolerate residency while retaining leverage for expulsion should conditions be violated.

Intellectual and Organizational Activity

Despite these restrictions, Marx remained intellectually and politically active. He worked intensively on his economic manuscript, which represented a significant step toward his later critique of political economy. He also helped to establish a workers’ educational society in Brussels, delivering lectures that combined pedagogy with political theory. Through correspondence he maintained links with sympathizers across Belgium, France, and the German states, constructing a communication network that was the embryo of later international socialist organization.

Plans were even made to hold an international communist congress in Verviers, an industrial center with strong worker organization and ties to the Rhineland. Although never realized, the idea demonstrates the strategic importance Marx placed on Belgium as a crossroads of industrial Europe.

A Contemporary Portrait

The Russian intellectual Pavel Annenkov, who visited Marx in Brussels, left a description that has become widely cited. He emphasized Marx’s energy, willpower, and uncompromising conviction, as well as his brusque manners and commanding voice. For Annenkov, Marx epitomized the paradox of a “democratic dictator”: a theorist of emancipation whose personal authority dominated discussion. This portrait illustrates how contemporaries perceived not only Marx’s arguments but also his personality as a political force.

The Communist Manifesto and the Crisis of 1848

The period in Brussels culminated in the drafting of the Communist Manifesto. After a research trip to England in 1845, Marx and Engels attended the second congress of the League of Communists in London in December 1847. There they were commissioned to produce a programmatic statement of the League’s principles.

Marx bore the main responsibility for drafting, supported financially and intellectually by Engels. The London committee grew impatient and, on 26 January 1848, sent a telegram demanding the manuscript by 1 February. Marx and Engels completed revisions in Brussels at the Café du Cygne on the Grand Place, and the Manifesto was published in mid-February 1848. Its release coincided almost exactly with the outbreak of the February Revolution in Paris, which toppled King Louis-Philippe.

For Belgian authorities, this conjunction was alarming. On 26 February news arrived of the French monarchy’s fall; on 27 February Marx was elected head of the International by the London committee, which argued that Brussels was best placed to monitor events in France and Prussia. Security reports described meetings where workers, both German and Belgian, shouted “Long live the Republic!” in Marx’s presence. To the police, this indicated that he had violated his pledge of political restraint.

Expulsion and Arrests in March 1848

On 1 March 1848 the Belgian Council of Ministers approved Marx’s expulsion. He was notified at the Hotel of the Wild Ass that he must leave within twenty-four hours. On 3 March he convened the Belgian Committee of the League, formally dissolved it, and authorized its transfer to Paris. Immediately afterward, officer Daupibec and four policemen raided the hotel.

The official report described Marx found in his room, wearing a robe de chambre and packing his belongings. On the table were empty glasses of beer and wine, interpreted as signs he received visitors privately rather than in public spaces. When asked for his papers, Marx attempted to retract one and tore it; the police nevertheless retained them. They included a declaration transferring an organization’s seat from Brussels to Paris, an expired French passport, and the expulsion notice itself.

Jenny Marx was also arrested that evening on the technical charge of lacking identification papers. She was taken on foot to the Amigo prison and spent the night in a cell, temporarily held with women arrested for prostitution. The next day, 4 March, the family was brought to the courthouse, detained for several hours, and then released to allow compliance with the expulsion order. Marx requested a three-day extension for Jenny, but only an oral assurance was offered. She refused to rely on it, and that evening the family departed for Quievrain on the French border.

Public Reaction and Aftermath

The arrests of Karl and Jenny Marx provoked public controversy in Brussels. Their lawyer and allies, including the jurist Zotrán, lodged protests in the press and in municipal and parliamentary forums. The national government attempted to minimize the affair. Prime Minister Charles Rogier insisted that it was wrong to elevate a single police incident into a matter of national politics. Nonetheless, the Brussels Municipal Council took the case more seriously and dismissed officer Daupibec.

Friedrich Engels, who remained in Brussels until 21 March, arranged for the family’s possessions to be shipped. Marx spent the following month in Paris, where he became involved in the politics of the new Second Republic. By 1849 he had moved to Cologne, where his activities again led to expulsion, this time from the Prussian authorities. In May 1849 he left for London, which became his permanent base until his death in 1883. The Belgian police file concludes by noting that he never again clashed directly with the police during the thirty-three years of his London exile.

Conclusion

The Belgian police file on Karl Marx illuminates a crucial phase in the history of European radicalism. It shows how a liberal constitutional state balanced its formal freedoms with the perceived necessity of controlling political refugees. Marx was tolerated so long as he could be described as a scholar engaged in abstract study, but the moment he appeared as an organizer of transnational networks he was deemed intolerable.

The file also demonstrates the extent of police surveillance in mid-nineteenth-century Europe. Every address was logged, every association noted, every letter scrutinized. Yet repression was not absolute. Marx was able to lecture, write, and collaborate with Engels, and it was in Brussels that the Communist Manifesto—one of the most influential texts of modern history—was completed.

Finally, the file offers a portrait of Marx in the eyes of his contemporaries: a thinker of formidable energy and conviction, feared by officials, admired and sometimes unsettled by allies. His trajectory from Paris to Brussels to Cologne and finally to London illustrates both the precariousness of exile and the resilience of revolutionary networks. For historians, the Belgian police record remains not only a bureaucratic artifact but also a testimony to the collision of ideas and states in the revolutionary age.

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