Dedicated to the 150'th birthday of Friedrich Engels
You can see I was painted when I was furious
The cigar wouldn't puff, you see.
THE YOUNG FRIEDRICH ENGELS
a portrait in letters
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 M Wagner (or 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
Direction: Klaus Georgi, Fyodor Khitruk, 
Katja Georgi, Vadim Kurchevsky 
In summer of 1838 Friedrich Engels, 
son of the manufacturer Friedrich Engels, 
traveled from Barmen (Wuppertal) to Bremen.
to start a mercantile education
at the trading house Leupold.
Friedrich Engels was 17 at the time.
The film is based on letter and drawing of the young Engels
Cari amici (dear friends)!
One misses you a lot.
Now one has to do with letters 
- it's infamous. 
Here's a drawing, in a popular-book style
clearly showing me looking out for your letters.
Postman: Consul, sir, a letter for you!
Consul Leupold: A-ha, good.
Engels: None for me?
Postman: No!
Five hundred boxes of sugar sold, thus,
250 000 pounds sold...
mm... a pound of coffee costs...
nine-and-a-half...which sums up to...
four silver groat, eight pfennig...
123..stroke...
In front of my desk there is a
big window so I can see everything precisely. 
I'm drawing you the church as can be seen from the office.
Here in Bremen the merchants’ houses
are all built in a very peculiar way.
The roofs stand close together like this.
This is a scene from the street.
where the cargo is being unloaded.
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 big Hansean army make their exercise there.
About forty soldiers.
The soldiers come out, form lines,
present their weapon and leave again.
Yesterday such a Hansean was brought in who had deserted.
Now he probably will get sixty lashes.
Soldiers here always get lashed.
Oh, the boss is coming!...
Five sacks of coffee, seventeen sack of sugar....
A broker has just come in. 
He's called Jan Krusbecker
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 old lad, dead drunk every morning, yells:
Ik bin Burger, Ik bin burger 
which means - I am a citizen.
Engels to the theology students 
Wilhelm and Friedrich Graeber in Barmen
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 foreign newspapers.
Seizing the opportunity
I learned Turkish and Japanese.
Thus I know twenty five languages and I as I write
a multilingual letter.
I will take now the English language
No, better my beloved Italian...
Dolce Suave come el Saphiro
and Spanish....
Langue come viento en los Arbores
and Dutch.... Gelijk den damp
uut einer pijp tobac sehr genüglik
A new newspaper
"The Bremer Stattbote" just came out.
It has a walking fellow on the first page.
He looks like this.
Any nonsense is being printed in this Stattbote
so I write poems at the office that mockingly praise it.
but it then earnestly publishes them.
Going on. First I used black ink,
now there will be red.
So, to talk about something important now
...my Spanish ballad failed.
I have more and more doubts
about my poetry and its potential each day.
Nevertheless, I will continue rhyming.
I can't sleep at night
ridden by ideas of this century.
I've read ways of expressing here,
that wouldn't be aloud in print with us
quit liberal ideas etc..
Especially about the old Hannover goat
king Ernst August...Lovely!
My side-street is haunted from everywhere.
The apparitions laugh and cry.
What should I, poor devil, do?
Become loyal?
Hold on to Saxon moderateness?
If only I could sort it out!
Engels to the theology students 
Wilhelm & Friedrich Greber.
I occupy myself a lot with philosophy & critical theology
Not being able to doubt, you say
is freedom of spirit?
No, it is the greatest spiritual slavery. 
Whe one becomes 18, one should 
either read everything without thinking
Or start to doubt our Wuppertal' beliefs
Who gives us the right to blindly believe the Bible?
just because our parents say so?
Man is free! Is born free!
In March 1839, in Telegraph fur Deutchland was published
The article"Letter from the Wuppertal".
Its author was the 18 year 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
The wealthy manufacturers
have a flexible conscience,
Causing the death of
1 child more or 1 less
does no pietist’s soul doom to hell,
especially if it visits church twice a day
It seems like the article
caused quit a stir!
This scene is from Barmen.
I urge you to tel no one 
I wrote the article, understood!?
Your Friedrich Engels
I add several strokes of my quill
showing its facility and speed.
Here you see my hammock occupied
by my person smoking a cigar.
It would be boring after dinner to throw oneself 
at ones desk when one is such a lazy person
By the way, remind mother to send me 
the works of Goethe. I really need them.
It is so hot today that,
despite a head cold,
I want to take a swim in the Weser.
Recently I swam across the Weser
4 times in a row.
Hardly anybody in Bremen
could compete with me.
Besides, every Sunday
I occupy myself with horseback riding.
Oh damn! I just heard 
another 500 boxes of sugar have been sold.
Sugar...500 boxes...
Well, let's get back to the fine arts.
I want to draw you the
haircuts young gentlemen 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'll have a full picture of this rascal.
He's inexhaustible
in distasteful and boring ideas.
The idler has already been guilty of
at least 20 hours of wearing me out.
A genius of the latest fashion.
A fool of the 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.
Our union caused many a king to be afraid
Monarchs saw in horror 
how German's youth stood together.
When I see the Prussian coat of arms
the spirit of freedoms overtakes me.
This Prussian King Wilhelm III, "the Just",
I hate him! I hate him until death!
There is no time with more crimes of kings
than the years from 1816 to 1830.
Almost every monarch
deserved capital punishment.
Devote Charles X...
Malicious Ferdinand VII of Spain.
Franz of Austria.
Patricide Alexandr of Russia &
his evenly guilty brother Nikolay.
From that monarch I expect good only,
who's getting his ears boxed by his people
and whose windows are shattered by revolution!
Dear Maria, singing and composing 
are kept in steady practice.
I've taken up writing 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 everyone in half.
Recently the tenth anniversary of the
French July Revolution was celebrated.
A storm is approaching us from France.
Its echo rises in the depths of our nation.
Thrones are shaking like boats in a storm 
and the kingly scepter is trembling.
Especially to you,Ernst August, 
I turn my eyes with a heart in anger.
Do tell, are you resting as safely 
on your golden throne
as me in my swaying boat.
I've grown myself a moustache these days and
The Philistines* just can't be stunned enough
*(who had shaved faces)
that I have the nerve, unshaven like that, 
to show up in good society 
Yet, the ladies are exalted.
Some fools here founded a club
where they hold discourses.
The gents 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 flood your idyllic economy
You will be standing like rams before 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 now.
I study Hegel's Philosophy of history.
A magnificent work!
His titanic ideas take my with terrible force.
I am...
Damn...as soon as I sit down with the book,
the fat is in the fire...
“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
the appalling bad weather almost brings me to despair
Thank God that I now 
can leave 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 un-enrolled student.
Dear Maria, 
here you see me in uniform,
as I very romantic and picturesque, 
but strictly against regulations,
have put on my uniform coat?
My uniform is most impressive
and I'm worthy to be put on show.
I hardly know what to write you
That I was on parade drill this morning
from 8 till half past 11?
That I during this got a very stiff
telling-off from the Lieutenant-Colonel
Also I let myself 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.
Sincerely, 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
this 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
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 ladies
were so besotted by him, 
that there was a fight for possession
of a glove he had dropped.
the tea which the
great Liszt had left in a cup
was poured by the Countess Schlippenbach 
into her Eau-de-Cologne bottle.
She had it sealed 
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.
All the best, your brother Friedrich
Engels to Doctor Ruge.
You ask me why didn't I send you my
article "Shelling and Revelation"?
I had in mind to put out
a pamphlet against him.
"Schelling, the philosopher in Christ"
is also from my pen.
the 22 year old Engels participated
in a stormy polemic at the Berlin University ,
around Hegelian dialectics.
It's greatest opposer was the philosopher F.W. Schelling.
Engels sharply took a stand against Schelling 
taking the lead of the young Hegelians opposition,
(Continuing letter to Arnold Ruge)
...Besides 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.
Engels to his sister Marie.
Today I can tell you the glad news
we probably will not go on parade tomorrow
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 to him "That's an aristocrat!”
he goes wild with rage toward the one 
I pointed out and growls hideously.
To Doctor 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 for it to work
with success and in the proper way.
my literary activities have so far been experiments
from the outcome of which, I
would be 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 recognized the only force
that solely was capable of
changing the world.
[October, 1844.]
Dear Marx...
Subtitles by Eus, januari 2019, sometimes using 
Volume 2, Marx-Engels works, English translation
