Engels & the search for Pilsner beer at the seaside
Both Marx and Engels were Pilsener drinkers but Engels in particular sought the beer out wherever he was staying.
In August 1884 he stayed with other members of his extended family at 48 Marine Parade Worthing, having had to switch lodgings because the previous landlady had banned him from smoking (cigars)
He wrote to Laura Lafargue on 6th August 1884 that there was ‘No Lager Beer as yet, but Percy is hunting some up in Brighton’
On 11th August 1884 he wrote to Paul Lafargue ‘our stock of Pilsener is almost exhausted and take two days from Brighton to be replenished. We are really out in the wilds here’.
A year earlier in August 1883 staying in what was his favourite seaside location in later years, Eastbourne, supplies of Pilsener had not proved a problem. He wrote to Laura Lafargue on 19th August 1883 ‘Pilsener beer is flourishing and even better than in London’.
Two years later Engels was in Jersey and wrote to Kautsky on 16th August 1885 that ‘a supply of Pilsener beer has been discovered and rapidly consumed’.
However Engels discovered while in Bridlington in 1881 (July 29th to Marx) that the Bitter Ale in the café on the pier was ‘excellent and has a head on it just like German beer’. The reference is to beer poured with a very large head often half of a glass of beer.
Engels often intimates that in order to do serious work having Pilsener to hand was essential. One wonders if he was familiar with the folk song John Barleycorn
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