Marx and Engels: the Valentine’s Day conundrum
Before the current commercialised Valentine’s Day, which dates from the 1950s, there was a peak in the nineteenth century. Ronald Hutton in Stations of the Sun notes that by 1825 the London Post Office handled 200,000 more letters on 14th February than any other day. In the 1840s the decorated Valentine’s card had arrived and by the 1860s could be found across the country. In the 1870s low cost coloured Valentine’s cards were available and in 1880 the Post Office handled one and half million of them, a peak.
Marx and Engels were not perhaps the romantic type though both had affairs as well as long term partners and Marx had children. I haven’t made a comprehensive search of their collected correspondence (which runs to quite a few of the 50 volumes of the Collected Works) but I have checked each year in the 1870s,the Victorian Valentine’s peak. There is no mention of 14th February and cards sent or indeed received. Of course neither Marx or Engels were young in the 1870s but Valentines then as now went wider than just young lovers.
The pair may have thought the matter not worthy of mention, although given what they did write about in the letters (aside from politics obviously) that doesn’t seem that likely. Alternatively it might be suggested that as Germans they weren’t interested in British customs. That however is far from the reality. In fact they were frequent wry observers of them..
A conundrum…
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