Vintage photograph, handwritten letter by Karl Marx fetches $678,000 at auction
IANS Beijing, December 18, 2014
A
handwritten letter by Karl Marx accompanied by a vintage photograph of
the author of "Das Capital" sold for $678,000 at an auction in China,
the China Daily newspaper reported.
Karl Marx in the letter covers a single page in which he refers to fellow philosopher Friedrich Engels
According
to the paper, the letter covers a single page in which Marx refers to
fellow philosopher Friedrich Engels, his co-author on "The Communist
Manifesto" and to the latter's wife.
He also
mentions other progressive thinkers of the nineteenth century. The
letter is dated June 1881, two years before Marx's death at the age of
63.
The paper noted
that documents from the final period of Marx's life tend to be scarce,
because his health had deteriorated so badly.
However, at an
auction that took place last July in Shanghai, another original Karl
Marx letter failed to fetch the $1.34 million minimum that was required
to open the bidding.
In the
photograph, the German philosopher appears with long grey hair and
beard, wearing a dark suit and white shirt on which hangs a monocle that
he is wearing around his neck, while he rests his right arm on a table.
The letter has
been published in the Chinese version of the Complete Works of Marx and
Engels and in a Russian monograph on the thinker, the China Daily said.
The auction was
held at the Xiling Yinshe Auction Hall, which specialises in original
documents of the Communist pioneers, in the city of Hangzhou in eatern
Zhejiang province.
In China,
studying the works of Karl Marx and the Marxist ideology they engendered
are compulsory in secondary and university education, as they are
considered the intellectual backbone of the Communist regime that came
to power in China in 1949.
Source : http://www.hindustantimes.com/
