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Friedrich Engels

Friedrich Engels ( ; 28 November 1820 – 5 August 1895) was a German philosopher, political theorist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He was also a businessman and Karl Marx's closest friend and collaborator, serving as a leading authority on Marxism.

Engels, the son of a wealthy textile manufacturer, met Marx in 1844. They jointly authored works including The Holy Family (1844), The German Ideology (written 1846), and The Communist Manifesto (1848), and worked as political organisers and activists in the Communist League and First International. Engels also supported Marx financially for much of his life, enabling him to continue writing after he moved to London in 1849. After Marx's death in 1883, Engels compiled Volumes II and III of his Das Kapital (1885 and 1894).

Engels wrote eclectic works of his own, including The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845), Anti-Dühring (1878), Dialectics of Nature (1878–1882), The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884), and Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy (1886). His writings on materialism, idealism, and dialectics supplied Marxism with an ontological and metaphysical foundation.

Early life
Friedrich Engels was born on 28 November 1820 in Barmen, Jülich-Cleves-Berg, Prussia (now Wuppertal, Germany), as the eldest son of Friedrich Engels Sr. (1796–1860) and of Elisabeth "Elise" Franziska Mauritia van Haar (1797–1873). The wealthy Engels family owned large cotton-textile mills in Barmen and Salford, England, both expanding industrial cities. Friedrich's parents were devout Calvinists and raised their children accordingly—he was baptised in the Calvinist Reformed Evangelical Parish of Elberfeld.

At the age of 13, Engels attended secondary school (Gymnasium) in the adjacent city of Elberfeld but had to leave at 17 due to pressure from his father, who wanted him to become a businessman and work as a mercantile apprentice in the family firm. After a year in Barmen, the young Engels was, in 1838, sent by his father to undertake an apprenticeship at a trading house in Bremen. His parents expected that he would follow his father into a career in the family business. Their son's revolutionary activities disappointed them. It would be some years before he joined the family firm.

While at Bremen, Engels began reading the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, whose teachings dominated German philosophy at that time. In September 1838 he published his first work, a poem entitled "The Bedouin", in the Bremisches Conversationsblatt No. 40. He also engaged in other literary work and began writing newspaper articles critiquing the societal ills of industrialisation. He wrote under the pseudonym "Friedrich Oswald" to avoid connecting his family with his provocative writings.

In 1841, Engels performed his military service in the Prussian Army as a member of the Household Artillery (Garde-Artillerie-Brigade). Assigned to Berlin, he attended university lectures at the University of Berlin and began to associate with groups of Young Hegelians. He anonymously published articles in the Rheinische Zeitung, exposing the poor employment and living conditions endured by factory workers. The editor of the Rheinische Zeitung was Karl Marx, but Engels would not meet Marx until late November 1842. Engels acknowledged the influence of German philosophy on his intellectual development throughout his career. In 1840, he also wrote: "To get the most out of life you must be active, you must live and you must have the courage to taste the thrill of being young."

Engels developed atheistic beliefs and his relationship with his parents became strained.

Manchester and Salford
In 1842, his parents sent the 22-year-old Engels to Salford, England, a manufacturing centre where industrialisation was on the rise. He was to work in Weaste, Salford, in the offices of Ermen and Engels's Victoria Mill, which made sewing threads. Engels's father thought that working at the Salford firm might make his son reconsider some of his radical opinions. On his way to Salford and Manchester, Engels visited the office of the Rheinische Zeitung in Cologne and met Karl Marx for the first time. Initially they were not impressed with each other. Marx mistakenly thought that Engels was still associated with the Berliner Young Hegelians, with whom Marx had just broken off ties.

In Manchester, Engels met Mary Burns, a fierce young Irish woman with radical opinions who worked in the Engels factory. They began a relationship that lasted 20 years until her death in 1863. The two never married, as both were against the institution of marriage. While Engels regarded stable monogamy as a virtue, he considered the current state and church-regulated marriage as a form of class oppression. Burns guided Engels through Manchester and Salford, showing him the worst districts for his research.

Engels was often described as a man with a very strong libido and not much restraint. He had many lovers and despite his condemnation of prostitution as "exploitation of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie" he also occasionally paid for sex. In 1846 he wrote to Marx: "If I had an income of 5000 francs I would do nothing but work and amuse myself with women until I went to pieces. If there were no Frenchwomen, life wouldn't be worth living. But so long as there are grisettes, well and good!" His most controversial relationship was with the wife of his rival Moses Hess, Sibylle, who later accused him of rape.

While in Manchester between October and November 1843, Engels wrote his first critique of political economy, entitled "Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy". Engels sent the article to Paris, where Marx published it in the Deutsch–Französische Jahrbücher in 1844.

Engels observed the slums of Manchester in close detail, and took notes of its horrors, such as child labour, the despoiled environment, and overworked and impoverished labourers. He sent a trilogy of articles to Marx. These were published in the Rheinische Zeitung and then in the Deutsch–Französische Jahrbücher, chronicling the conditions among the working class in Manchester. He later collected these articles for his influential first book, The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845). Written between September 1844 and March 1845, the book was published in German in 1845. In the book, Engels described the "grim future of capitalism and the industrial age", noting the details of the squalor in which the working people lived. The book was published in English in 1887. Archival resources contemporary to Engels's stay in Manchester shed light on some of the conditions he describes, including a manuscript (MMM/10/1) held by special collections at the University of Manchester. This recounts cases seen in the Manchester Royal Infirmary, where industrial accidents dominated, and which resonate with Engels's comments on the disfigured persons seen walking round Manchester as a result of such accidents.

Engels continued his involvement with radical journalism and politics. He frequented areas popular among members of the English labour and Chartist movements, whom he met. He also wrote for several journals, including The Northern Star, Robert Owen's New Moral World, and the Democratic Review newspaper.

Paris
Engels returned to Germany in 1844. On the way, he stopped in Paris to meet Karl Marx, with whom he had an earlier correspondence. Marx had been living in Paris since late October 1843, after the Rheinische Zeitung was banned in March 1843 by the Prussian government. Prior to meeting Marx, Engels had become established as a fully developed materialist and scientific socialist, independent of Marx's philosophical development.

In Paris, Marx was publishing the Deutsch–Französische Jahrbücher. Engels met Marx for a second time at the Café de la Régence on the Place du Palais, on 28 August 1844. The two quickly became close friends and remained so their entire lives. Marx had read and was impressed by Engels's articles on The Condition of the Working Class in England in which he had written that "[a] class which bears all the disadvantages of the social order without enjoying its advantages, [...] Who can demand that such a class respect this social order?" Marx adopted Engels's idea that the working class would lead the revolution against the bourgeoisie as society advanced toward socialism, and incorporated this as part of his own philosophy.

Engels stayed in Paris to help Marx write The Holy Family. It was an attack on the Young Hegelians and the Bauer brothers and was published in late February 1845. Engels's earliest contribution to Marx's work was writing for the Deutsch–Französische Jahrbücher, edited by both Marx and Arnold Ruge, in Paris in 1844. During this time in Paris, both Marx and Engels began their association with and then joined the secret revolutionary society called the League of the Just. The League of the Just had been formed in 1837 in France to promote an egalitarian society through the overthrow of the existing governments. In 1839, the League participated in the 1839 rebellion fomented by the French utopian revolutionary socialist, Louis Auguste Blanqui; as Ruge remained a Young Hegelian in his belief, Marx and Ruge soon split and Ruge left the Deutsch–Französische Jahrbücher. Following the split, Marx remained friendly enough with Ruge that he sent Ruge a warning on 15 January 1845 that the Paris police were going to execute orders against him, Marx and others at the Deutsch–Französische Jahrbücher requiring all to leave Paris within 24 hours. Marx was expelled from Paris by French authorities on 3 February 1845 and settled in Brussels with his wife and one daughter. Having left Paris on 6 September 1844, Engels returned to his home in Barmen to work on his The Condition of the Working Class in England, which was published in late May 1845. Even before the publication of his book, Engels moved to Brussels in late April 1845, to collaborate with Marx on another book, German Ideology. While living in Barmen, Engels began making contact with Socialists in the Rhineland to raise money for Marx's publication efforts in Brussels; these contacts became more important as both Marx and Engels began political organising for the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany.

Brussels
The nation of Belgium, founded in 1830, had one of the most liberal constitutions in Europe and functioned as refuge for progressives from other countries. From 1845 to 1848, Engels and Marx lived in Brussels, spending much of their time organising the city's German workers. Shortly after their arrival, they contacted and joined the underground German Communist League. The Communist League was the successor organisation to the League of the Just which had been founded in 1837 but had recently disbanded. Influenced by Wilhelm Weitling, the Communist League was an international society of proletarian revolutionaries with branches in various European cities.

The Communist League also had contacts with the underground conspiratorial organisation of Louis Auguste Blanqui. Many of Marx's and Engels's current friends became members of the Communist League. Old friends like Georg Friedrich Herwegh, who had worked with Marx on the Rheinsche Zeitung, Heinrich Heine, the famous poet, a young physician by the name of Roland Daniels, Heinrich Bürgers and August Herman Ewerbeck, all maintained their contacts with Marx and Engels in Brussels. Georg Weerth, who had become a friend of Engels in England in 1843, now settled in Brussels. Carl Wallau and Stephen Born (real name Simon Buttermilch) were both German immigrant typesetters who settled in Brussels to help Marx and Engels with their Communist League work. Marx and Engels made many new important contacts through the Communist League. One of the first was Wilhelm Wolff, who soon became one of Marx's and Engels's closest collaborators. Others were Joseph Weydemeyer and Ferdinand Freiligrath, a famous revolutionary poet. While most of the associates of Marx and Engels were German immigrants living in Brussels, some were Belgians. Phillipe Gigot, a Belgian philosopher and Victor Tedesco, a lawyer from Liège, both joined the Communist League. Joachim Lelewel, a prominent Polish historian and participant in the Polish uprising of 1830–1831, was also a frequent associate.

The Communist League commissioned Marx and Engels to write a pamphlet explaining the principles of communism. This became the Manifesto of the Communist Party, better known as The Communist Manifesto. It was first published on 21 February 1848 and ends with the world-famous phrase: "Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletariat have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working Men of All Countries, Unite!"

Engels's mother wrote in a letter to him of her concerns, commenting that he had "really gone too far" and "begged" him "to proceed no further". She further stated:"You have paid more heed to other people, to strangers, and have taken no account of your mother's pleas. God alone knows what I have felt and suffered of late. I was trembling when I picked up the newspaper and saw therein that a warrant was out for my son's arrest."

Return to Prussia
There was a revolution in France in 1848 that soon spread to other Western European countries. These events caused Engels and Marx to return to Cologne in their homeland of Prussia. While living there, they created and served as editors for a new daily newspaper called the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Besides Marx and Engels, other frequent contributors to the Neue Rheinische Zeitung included Karl Schapper, Wilhelm Wolff, Ernst Dronke, Peter Nothjung, Heinrich Bürgers, Ferdinand Wolff and Carl Cramer. Engels's mother gave unwitting witness to the effect of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung on the revolutionary uprising in Cologne in 1848. Criticising his involvement in the uprising she states in a 5 December 1848 letter to Friedrich that "nobody, ourselves included, doubted that the meetings at which you and your friends spoke, and also the language of (Neue) Rh.Z. were largely the cause of these disturbances."

Engels's parents hoped that young Engels would "decide to turn to activities other than those which you have been pursuing in recent years and which have caused so much distress". At this point, his parents felt the only hope for their son was to emigrate to America and start his life over. They told him that he should do this or he would "cease to receive money from us"; however, the problem in the relationship between Engels and his parents was worked out without Engels having to leave England or being cut off from financial assistance from his parents. In July 1851, Engels's father arrived to visit him in Manchester, England. During the visit, his father arranged for Engels to meet Peter Ermen of the office of Ermen & Engels, to move to Liverpool and to take over sole management of the office in Manchester.

In 1849, Engels travelled to Bavaria for the Baden and Palatinate revolutionary uprising, an even more dangerous involvement. Starting with an article called "The Magyar Struggle", written on 8 January 1849, Engels, himself, began a series of reports on the Revolution and War for Independence of the newly founded Hungarian Republic. Engels's articles on the Hungarian Republic became a regular feature in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung under the heading "From the Theatre of War"; however, the newspaper was suppressed during the June 1849 Prussian coup d'état. After the coup, Marx lost his Prussian citizenship, was deported and fled to Paris, then London. Engels stayed in Prussia and took part in an armed uprising in South Germany as an aide-de-camp in the volunteer corps of August Willich. Engels also took two cases of rifle cartridges with him when he went to join the uprising in Elberfeld on 10 May 1849. Later when Prussian troops came to Kaiserslautern to suppress an uprising there, Engels joined a group of volunteers under the command of August Willich, who were going to fight the Prussian troops. When the uprising was crushed, Engels was one of the last members of Willich's volunteers to escape by crossing the Swiss border. Marx and others became concerned for Engels's life until they heard from him.

Engels travelled through Switzerland as a refugee and eventually made it to safety in England. On 6 June 1849 Prussian authorities issued an arrest warrant for him which contained a physical description as "height: 5 feet 6 inches; hair: blond; forehead: smooth; eyebrows: blond; eyes: blue; nose and mouth: well proportioned; beard: reddish; chin: oval; face: oval; complexion: healthy; figure: slender. Special characteristics: speaks very rapidly and is short-sighted". As to his "short-sightedness", Engels admitted as much in a letter written to Joseph Weydemeyer on 19 June 1851 in which he says he was not worried about being selected for the Prussian military because of "my eye trouble, as I have now found out once and for all which renders me completely unfit for active service of any sort". Once he was safe in Switzerland, Engels began to write down all his memories of the recent military campaign against the Prussians. This writing eventually became the article published as "The Campaign for the German Imperial Constitution".

Back in Britain
To help Marx with Neue Rheinische Zeitung Politisch-ökonomische Revue, the new publishing effort in London, Engels sought ways to escape the continent and travel to London. On 5 October 1849, Engels arrived in the Italian port city of Genoa. There, Engels booked passage on the English schooner, Cornish Diamond under the command of a Captain Stevens. The voyage across the western Mediterranean, around the Iberian Peninsula by sailing schooner took about five weeks. Finally, the Cornish Diamond sailed up the River Thames to London on 10 November 1849 with Engels on board.

Upon his return to Britain, Engels re-entered the Manchester company in which his father held shares to support Marx financially as he worked on Das Kapital. Unlike his first period in England (1843), Engels was now under police surveillance. He had "official" homes and "unofficial homes" all over Salford, Weaste and other inner-city Manchester districts where he lived with Mary Burns under false names to confuse the police. Little more is known, as Engels destroyed over 1,500 letters between himself and Marx after the latter's death so as to conceal the details of their secretive lifestyle.

Despite his work at the mill, Engels found time to write a book on Martin Luther, the Protestant Reformation and the 1525 revolutionary war of the peasants, entitled The Peasant War in Germany. He also wrote a number of newspaper articles including "The Campaign for the German Imperial Constitution" which he finished in February 1850 and "On the Slogan of the Abolition of the State and the German 'Friends of Anarchy'" written in October 1850. In April 1851, he wrote the pamphlet "Conditions and Prospects of a War of the Holy Alliance against France".

Marx and Engels denounced Louis Bonaparte when he carried out a coup against the French government and made himself president for life on 2 December 1851. Engels wrote to Marx on 3 December 1851, characterising the coup as "comical" and referred to it as occurring on "the 18th Brumaire", the date of Napoleon I's coup of 1799 according to the French Republican Calendar. Marx later incorporated this comically ironic characterisation of the coup into his essay about it. He called the essay The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte using Engels's suggested characterisation. Marx also borrowed Engels' characterisation of Hegel's notion of the World Spirit that history occurred twice, "once as a tragedy and secondly as a farce" in the first paragraph of his new essay.

Meanwhile, Engels started working at the mill owned by his father in Manchester as an office clerk, the same position he held in his teens while in Germany where his father's company was based. Engels worked his way up to become a partner of the firm in 1864. Five years later, Engels retired from the business and could focus more on his studies. At this time, Marx was living in London but they were able to exchange ideas through daily correspondence. One of the ideas that Engels and Marx contemplated was the possibility and character of a potential revolution in Russia. As early as April 1853, Engels and Marx anticipated an "aristocratic-bourgeois revolution in Russia which would begin in "St. Petersburg with a resulting civil war in the interior". The model for this type of aristocratic-bourgeois revolution in Russia against the autocratic Tsarist government in favour of a constitutional government had been provided by the Decembrist Revolt of 1825.

Despite the unsuccessful revolt against the Tsarist government in favour of a constitutional government, both Engels and Marx anticipated a bourgeois revolution in Russia would occur, which would bring about a bourgeois stage in Russian development to precede a communist stage. By 1881, both Marx and Engels began to contemplate a course of development in Russia that would lead directly to the communist stage without the intervening bourgeois stage. This analysis was based on what Marx and Engels saw as the exceptional characteristics of the Russian village commune or obshchina. While doubt was cast on this theory by Georgi Plekhanov, Plekhanov's reasoning was based on the first edition of Das Kapital (1867) which predated Marx's interest in Russian peasant communes by two years. Later editions of the text demonstrate Marx's sympathy for the argument of Nikolay Chernyshevsky, that it should be possible to establish socialism in Russia without an intermediary bourgeois stage provided that the peasant commune were used as the basis for the transition.

In 1870, Engels moved to London where he and Marx lived until Marx's death in 1883. Engels's London home from 1870 to 1894 was at 122 Regent's Park Road. In October 1894 he moved to 41 Regent's Park Road, Primrose Hill, NW1, where he died the following year.

Marx's first London residence was a cramped flat at 28 Dean Street, Soho. From 1856, he lived at 9 Grafton Terrace, Kentish Town, and then in a tenement at 41 Maitland Park Road in Belsize Park from 1875 until his death in March 1883.

Mary Burns died suddenly of heart disease in 1863, after which Engels became close with her younger sister Lydia ("Lizzie"). They lived openly as a couple in London and married on 11 September 1878, hours before Lizzie's death.

Later years
Later in their lives, Marx and Engels came to argue that in some countries workers might be able to achieve their aims through peaceful means. In following this, Engels argued that socialists were evolutionists, although they remained committed to social revolution. Similarly, Tristram Hunt argues that Engels was sceptical of "top-down revolutions" and later in life advocated "a peaceful, democratic road to socialism". Engels also wrote in his introduction to the 1891 edition of Marx's The Class Struggles in France that "rebellion in the old style, street fighting with barricades, which decided the issue everywhere up to 1848, was to a considerable extent obsolete", although some such as David W. Lowell empashised their cautionary and tactical meaning, arguing that "Engels questions only rebellion 'in the old style', that is, insurrection: he does not renounce revolution. The reason for Engels' caution is clear: he candidly admits that ultimate victory for any insurrection is rare, simply on military and tactical grounds".

In his introduction to the 1895 edition of Marx's The Class Struggles in France, Engels attempted to resolve the division between reformists and revolutionaries in the Marxist movement by declaring that he was in favour of short-term tactics of electoral politics that included gradualist and evolutionary socialist measures while maintaining his belief that revolutionary seizure of power by the proletariat should remain a goal. In spite of this attempt by Engels to merge gradualism and revolution, his effort only diluted the distinction of gradualism and revolution and had the effect of strengthening the position of the revisionists. Engels's statements in the French newspaper Le Figaro, in which he wrote that "revolution" and the "so-called socialist society" were not fixed concepts, but rather constantly changing social phenomena, and argued that this made "us socialists all evolutionists", increased the public perception that Engels was gravitating towards evolutionary socialism. Engels also argued that it would be "suicidal" to talk about a revolutionary seizure of power at a time when the historical circumstances favoured a parliamentary road to power that he predicted could bring "social democracy into power as early as 1898". Engels's stance of openly accepting gradualist, evolutionary and parliamentary tactics while claiming that the historical circumstances did not favour revolution caused confusion. Marxist revisionist Eduard Bernstein interpreted this as indicating that Engels was moving towards accepting parliamentary reformist and gradualist stances, but he ignored that Engels's stances were tactical as a response to the particular circumstances and that Engels was still committed to revolutionary socialism. Engels was deeply distressed when he discovered that his introduction to a new edition of The Class Struggles in France had been edited by Bernstein and orthodox Marxist Karl Kautsky in a manner which left the impression that he had become a proponent of a peaceful road to socialism. On 1 April 1895, four months before his death, Engels responded to Kautsky: "I was amazed to see today in the Vorwärts an excerpt from my 'Introduction' that had been printed without my knowledge and tricked out in such a way as to present me as a peace-loving proponent of legality [at all costs]. Which is all the more reason why I should like it to appear in its entirety in the Neue Zeit in order that this disgraceful impression may be erased. I shall leave Liebknecht in no doubt as to what I think about it and the same applies to those who, irrespective of who they may be, gave him this opportunity of perverting my views and, what's more, without so much as a word to me about it."

After Marx's death, Engels devoted much of his remaining years to editing Marx's unfinished volumes of Das Kapital, but also contributed significantly in other areas. Engels made an argument using anthropological evidence of the time to show that family structures changed over history, and that the concept of monogamous marriage came from the necessity within class society for men to control women to ensure their own children would inherit their property. He argued a future communist society would allow people to make decisions about their relationships free of economic constraints. Some of the best examples of Engels's thoughts on these issues are in his work The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. On 5 August 1895, Engels died of throat cancer in London, aged 74. Following cremation at Woking Crematorium, his ashes were scattered off Beachy Head, near Eastbourne, as he had requested. He left a considerable estate to Eduard Bernstein and Louise Freyberger (wife of Ludwig Freyberger), valued for probate at £25,265 0s. 11d, equivalent to £0 in.

Personality
Engels's interests included poetry, fox hunting and hosting regular Sunday parties for London's left-wing intelligentsia where, as one regular put it, "no one left before two or three in the morning". His stated personal motto was "take it easy" while "jollity" was listed as his favourite virtue.

Of Engels's personality and appearance, Robert Heilbroner described him in The Worldly Philosophers as "tall and rather elegant, he had the figure of a man who liked to fence and to ride to hounds and who had once swum the Weser River four times without a break" as well as having been "gifted with a quick wit and facile mind" and of a gay temperament, being able to "stutter in twenty languages". He had a great enjoyment of wine and other "bourgeois pleasures". Engels favoured forming romantic relationships with women of the proletariat and found a long-term partner in a working-class woman named Mary Burns, although they never married. After her death, Engels was romantically involved with her younger sister Lydia Burns.

Historian and former Labour MP Tristram Hunt, author of The Frock-Coated Communist: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels, argues that Engels "almost certainly was, in other words, the kind of man Stalin would have had shot". Hunt sums up the disconnect between Engels's personality and the Soviet Union which later utilised his works, stating: "This great lover of the good life, passionate advocate of individuality, and enthusiastic believer in literature, culture, art and music as an open forum could never have acceded to the Soviet Communism of the 20th century, all the Stalinist claims of his paternity notwithstanding."

As to the religious persuasion attributable to Engels, Hunt writes: "In that sense the latent rationality of Christianity comes to permeate the everyday experience of the modern world—its values are now variously incarnated in the family, civil society, and the state. What Engels particularly embraced in all of this was an idea of modern pantheism, or, rather, pandeism, a merging of divinity with progressing humanity, a happy dialectical synthesis that freed him from the fixed oppositions of the pietist ethos of devout longing and estrangement. 'Through Strauss I have now entered on the straight road to Hegelianism... The Hegelian idea of God has already become mine, and thus I am joining the ranks of the 'modern pantheists',' Engels wrote in one of his final letters to the soon-to-be-discarded Graebers [Wilhelm and Friedrich, priest trainees and former classmates of Engels]."

Engels was a polyglot and was able to write and speak in numerous languages, including Russian, Italian, Portuguese, Irish, Spanish, Polish, French, English, German and the Milanese dialect.

Legacy
In his biography of Engels, Vladimir Lenin wrote: "After his friend Karl Marx (who died in 1883), Engels was the finest scholar and teacher of the modern proletariat in the whole civilised world. [...] In their scientific works, Marx and Engels were the first to explain that socialism is not the invention of dreamers, but the final aim and necessary result of the development of the productive forces in modern society. All recorded history hitherto has been a history of class struggle, of the succession of the rule and victory of certain social classes over others." According to Paul Kellogg, there is "some considerable controversy" regarding "the place of Frederick Engels in the canon of 'classical Marxism'". While some such as Terrell Carver dispute "Engels' claim that Marx agreed with the views put forward in Engels' major theoretical work, Anti-Dühring", others such as E. P. Thompson "identified a tendency to make 'old Engels into a whipping boy, and to impugn him any sign that once chooses to impugn subsequent Marxsisms'".

Tristram Hunt argues that Engels has become a convenient scapegoat, too easily blamed for the state crimes of Communist regimes such as China, the Soviet Union and those in Africa and Southeast Asia, among others. Hunt writes that "Engels is left holding the bag of 20th century ideological extremism" while Karl Marx "is rebranded as the acceptable, post–political seer of global capitalism". Hunt largely exonerates Engels, stating that "[i]n no intelligible sense can Engels or Marx bear culpability for the crimes of historical actors carried out generations later, even if the policies were offered up in their honor". Andrew Lipow describes Marx and Engels as "the founders of modern revolutionary democratic socialism".

While admitting the distance between Marx and Engels on one hand and Joseph Stalin on the other, some writers such as Robert Service are less charitable, noting that the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin predicted the oppressive potential of their ideas, arguing that "[i]t is a fallacy that Marxism's flaws were exposed only after it was tried out in power. [...] [Marx and Engels] were centralisers. While talking about 'free associations of producers', they advocated discipline and hierarchy". Paul Thomas, of the University of California, Berkeley, claims that while Engels had been the most important and dedicated facilitator and diffuser of Marx's writings, he significantly altered Marx's intents as he held, edited and released them in a finished form and commentated on them. Engels attempted to fill gaps in Marx's system and extend it to other fields. In particular, Engels is said to have stressed historical materialism, assigning it a character of scientific discovery and a doctrine, forming Marxism as such. A case in point is Anti-Dühring which both supporters and detractors of socialism treated as an encompassing presentation of Marx's thought. While in his extensive correspondence with German socialists Engels modestly presented his own secondary place in the couple's intellectual relationship and always emphasised Marx's outstanding role, Russian communists such as Lenin raised Engels up with Marx and conflated their thoughts as if they were necessarily congruous. Soviet Marxists then developed this tendency to the state doctrine of dialectical materialism.

Since 1931, Engels has had a Russian city named after him—Engels, Saratov Oblast. It served as the capital of the Volga German Republic within Soviet Russia and as part of Saratov Oblast. A town named Marx is located 30 miles northeast.

In July 2017, as part of the Manchester International Festival, a Soviet-era statue of Engels was installed by sculptor Phil Collins at Tony Wilson Place in Manchester. It was transported from the village of Mala Pereshchepina in Eastern Ukraine, after the statue had been deposed from its central position in the village in the wake of laws outlawing communist symbols in Ukraine introduced in 2015. In recognition of the important influence Manchester had on his work, the 3.5-metre statue now stands in a prominent eatery district on Manchester's First Street. The installation of what was originally an instrument of propaganda drew criticism from Kevin Bolton in The Guardian.

The Friedrich Engels Guards Regiment (also known as NVA Guard Regiment 1) was a special guard unit of the East German National People's Army (NVA). The guard regiment was established in 1962 from parts of the Hugo Eberlein Guards Regiment and given the title "Friedrich Engels" in 1970.

Influences
In spite of his criticism of the utopian socialists, Engels's beliefs were influenced by the French socialist Charles Fourier. From Fourier, he derives four main points that characterise the social conditions of a communist state. The first point maintains that every individual would be able to fully develop their talents by eliminating the specialisation of production. Without specialisation, every individual would be permitted to exercise any vocation of their choosing for as long or as little as they would like. If talents permitted it, one could be a baker for a year and an engineer the next. The second point builds upon the first, as with the ability of workers to cycle through different jobs of their choosing, the fundamental basis of the social division of labour is destroyed and the social division of labour will disappear as a result. If anyone can be employed at any job that they wish, then there are clearly no longer any divisions or barriers to entry for labour, otherwise such fluidity between entirely different jobs would not exist. The third point continues from the second as once the social division of labour is gone, the division of social classes based on property ownership will fade with it. If labour division puts a man in charge of a farm, that farmer owns the productive resources of that farm. The same applies to the ownership of a factory or a bank. Without labour division, no single social class may claim exclusive rights to a particular means of production since the absence of labour division allows all to use it. Finally, the fourth point concludes that the elimination of social classes destroys the sole purpose of the state and it will cease to exist. As Engels stated in his own writing, the only purpose of the state is to abate the effects of class antagonisms. With the elimination of social classes based on property, the state becomes obsolete and a communist society, at least in the eyes of Engels, is achieved.

The Holy Family (1844)

This book was written by Marx and Engels in November 1844. It is a critique on the Young Hegelians and their trend of thought which was very popular in academic circles at the time. The title was suggested by the publisher and is meant as a sarcastic reference to the Bauer Brothers and their supporters.

The book created a controversy with much of the press and caused Bruno Bauer to attempt to refute the book in an article published in Wigand's Vierteljahrsschrift in 1845. Bauer claimed that Marx and Engels misunderstood what he was trying to say. Marx later replied to his response with his own article published in the journal Gesellschaftsspiegel in January 1846. Marx also discussed the argument in chapter 2 of The German Ideology.

The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845)
A study of the deprived conditions of the working class in Manchester and Salford, based on Engels's personal observations. The work also contains seminal thoughts on the state of socialism and its development. Originally published in German and only translated into English in 1887, the work initially had little impact in England; however, it was very influential with historians of British industrialisation throughout the twentieth century.

The Peasant War in Germany (1850)
An account of the early 16th-century uprising known as the German Peasants' War, with a comparison with the recent revolutionary uprisings of 1848–1849 across Europe.

Herr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in Science (1878)
Popularly known as Anti-Dühring, this book is a detailed critique of the philosophical positions of Eugen Dühring, a German philosopher and critic of Marxism. In the course of replying to Dühring, Engels reviews recent advances in science and mathematics seeking to demonstrate the way in which the concepts of dialectics apply to natural phenomena. Many of these ideas were later developed in the unfinished work, Dialectics of Nature. Three chapters of Anti-Dühring were later edited and published under the separate title, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.

Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (1880)
In this work, one of the best selling socialist books of the era,   Engels briefly described and analyzed the ideas of notable utopian socialists such as Charles Fourier and Robert Owen. Engels pointed out their strongpoints and shortcomings, and provided an explanation of the scientific socialist framework for understanding of capitalism, and an outline of the progression of social and economic development from the perspective of historical materialism.

Dialectics of Nature (1883)
Dialectics of Nature (German: "Dialektik der Natur") is an unfinished 1883 work by Engels that applies Marxist ideas, particularly those of dialectical materialism, to science. It was first published in the Soviet Union in 1925.

The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884)
In this work, Engels argues that the family is an ever-changing institution that has been shaped by capitalism. It contains a historical view of the family in relation to issues of class, female subjugation and private property.

Commentaries on Engels

 * Royle, Camilla (2020), A Rebel's Guide to Engels, London: Bookmarks. ISBN 9781912926541

Fiction works

 * Square Enix (2017), Nier: Automata. Where a machine named Engels tries to overthrow the android species for the machines' sake.

Graphic novel
A biographical German graphic novel called Engels – Unternehmer und Revolutionär ("Engels – Businessman and Revolutionary") was published in 2020. ISBN 3948755493

title: Friedrich Engels


text:
Eadwig

Eadwig (also Edwy or Eadwig All-Fair, c. 940 – 1 October 959) was King of England from 23 November 955 until his death in 959. He was the elder son of Edmund I and his first wife Ælfgifu, who died in 944. Eadwig and his brother Edgar were young children when their father was killed trying to rescue his seneschal from attack by an outlawed thief on 26 May 946. As Edmund's sons were too young to rule he was succeeded by his brother Eadred, who suffered from ill health and died unmarried in his early 30s.

Eadwig became king in 955 aged about fifteen and was no more than twenty when he died in 959. He clashed at the beginning of his reign with Dunstan, the powerful Abbot of Glastonbury and future Archbishop of Canterbury, and exiled him to Flanders. He later came to be seen as an enemy of monasteries, but most historians think that this reputation is unfair. In 956, he issued more than sixty charters transferring land, a yearly total unmatched by any other European king before the twelfth century, and this is seen by some historians as either an attempt to buy support or rewarding his favourites at the expense of the powerful old guard of the previous reign.

In 957, the kingdom was divided between Eadwig, who kept the territory south of the Thames, and Edgar, who became king of the land north of it. Historians disagree whether this had been planned since the beginning of his reign or was the result of a successful revolt brought about by Eadwig's enemies. The following year, Oda, Archbishop of Canterbury, separated Eadwig from his wife Ælfgifu on the ground that they were too closely related. Edgar succeeded to the whole kingdom when Eadwig died in 959.

The Benedictine reform movement became dominant in Edgar's reign with his strong support, and monastic writers praised him and condemned Eadwig as irresponsible and incompetent. Their view was generally accepted by historians until the late twentieth century, but in the twenty-first century some historians have defended Eadwig, while others see his character and the events of his reign as unclear due to uncertain and conflicting evidence.

Background
In the ninth century Anglo-Saxon England came under increasing attack from Viking raids, culminating in invasion by the Viking Great Heathen Army in 865. By 878, the army had overrun the kingdoms of Northumbria, East Anglia, and Mercia, and nearly conquered Wessex, but in that year the West Saxons achieved a decisive victory at the Battle of Edington under King Alfred the Great. By 883, Æthelred, Lord of the Mercians, had accepted Alfred's overlordship, and in the 880s and 890s the Anglo-Saxons ruled Wessex and western Mercia, but the rest of England was under Viking rule. Alfred died in 899 and was succeeded by his son, Edward the Elder. In the 910s, Edward and Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, who was his sister and Æthelred's widow, conquered Viking-ruled eastern Mercia and East Anglia. Æthelflæd died in 918 and the Mercians installed her daughter Ælfwynn as the second Lady of the Mercians, but Edward seized her and established full control over Mercia. When he died in 924, he controlled all of England south of the Humber.

Edward was succeeded by his eldest son Æthelstan, who may have been king only of Mercia at first, but ruled the whole of his father's realm by the next year. In 927, he conquered Northumbria and thus became the first king of all of England. He died in October 939 and was succeeded by his half-brother and Eadwig's father, Edmund, who was the first king to succeed to the throne of all England. He almost immediately lost control of the north when Anlaf Guthfrithson, the Viking king of Dublin, crossed the sea to become king of York (southern Northumbria). He then invaded Mercia and Edmund was forced to surrender north-east Mercia to him, but Guthfrithson died in 941. By 944, York was ruled by two Viking kings, Anlaf Sihtricson and Ragnall Guthfrithson, and in that year Edmund expelled them and recovered full control of England. On 26 May 946, he was stabbed to death trying to protect his seneschal from attack by a convicted outlaw at Pucklechurch in Gloucestershire, and as his sons Eadwig and Edgar were young children, their uncle Eadred became king.

Like Edmund, Eadred inherited the kingship of the whole of England but soon lost it when York accepted a Viking leader as king. The sequence of events is unclear, but Eadred, Anlaf Sihtricson and Erik Bloodaxe ruled the kingdom of York at different periods until its magnates expelled Erik, and Northumbria became permanently part of England. Eadred then appointed Osulf, the Anglo-Saxon ruler of Bamburgh (northern Northumbria), as the earl of all Northumbria. Eadred died on 23 November 955, and Eadwig succeeded at the age of around fifteen. He was the first king since the early ninth century not to face the threat of imminent foreign invasion, although this could not have been known at the time. In his will Eadred left 1600 pounds to be used for protection of his people from famine or to buy peace from a heathen army, showing that he did not regard England as safe from attack.

Family and early life
Eadwig was born around 940. He was the elder son of Edmund and his first wife Ælfgifu, who died in 944. She and her mother Wynflæd were benefactors to Shaftesbury Abbey, where Ælfgifu was buried and venerated as a saint. Ælfhere, the ealdorman of Mercia, was acknowledged as a relative of the royal family, and his sister married the magnate Ælfric Cild, who is described in a charter of 956 as Eadwig's adoptivus parens. This term is generally taken by historians to refer to Ælfric's status as a relative of Eadwig by marriage, but he may have played a role in bringing up Eadwig. Eadwig and Edgar are not recorded in contemporary sources until 955, when they first attested charters, suggesting that they did not regularly attend court when they were young. King Eadred never married, and his attitude towards the claims of his nephews is uncertain. Eadwig attested Eadred's charters as ætheling or cliton (Old English and Latin respectively for prince), and while some give Edgar the same title, others show him as Eadwig's brother.

Reign
The evidence for Eadwig's reign is ambiguous and unclear, and historians differ widely both on his character and on the politics of his reign. The principal controversies concern his marriage and its dissolution in 958, and the division of the kingdom in 957 between Eadwig, who kept England south of the Thames, and Edgar, who became king of the land north of it.

Eadwig's marriage
Eadwig was crowned at Kingston-upon-Thames, probably in late January 956. After the ceremony, a feast was held for the king and his leading magnates, including Oda, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Dunstan, the Abbot of Glastonbury and a future Archbishop of Canterbury. According to Dunstan's earliest hagiographer, who identified himself only as "B", a well born woman and her adult daughter, who hoped to secure a marriage with Eadwig to one of them, were pursuing Eadwig with "indecent proposals", and he offended the assembled nobles by leaving the feast to "caress these whores". Oda urged that he should be brought back to the feast, but almost all the nobles feared to offend the king, and only Dunstan and his relative Cynesige, Bishop of Lichfield, had the courage to face his ire. B went on:

"As the nobles had requested, they went in and found the royal crown, brilliant with the wonderful gold and silver and variously sparkling jewels that made it up, tossed carelessly on the ground some distance from the king's head, while he was disporting himself disgracefully between the two women as though they were wallowing in some revolting pigsty. They said to the king: "Our nobles have sent us to ask you to come with all speed to take your proper place in the hall, and not to refuse to show yourself at this happy occasion with your great men." Dunstan first told off the foolish women. As for the king, since he would not get up, Dunstan put out his hand and removed him from the couch where he had been fornicating with the harlots, put his diadem on him, and marched him off to the royal company, parted from his women if only by main force."

"B" names one of the women as Æthelgifu, the mother of Eadwig's future wife, Ælfgifu, but he does not name the daughter in his account. "B" aimed both to show Dunstan in a favourable light and to present Eadwig as acting unregally at the coronation feast, thus demonstrating his unfitness to be king. Dunstan was exiled from England, and "B" said that he was driven out as a result of the machinations of Æthelgifu, and that Dunstan's own pupils sided against him. Dunstan's opponents probably included Æthelwold, Abbot of Abingdon and future Bishop of Winchester. Æthelwold supported the marriage, describing Ælfgifu in an Abingdon charter as "the king's wife", and she left him an estate in her will.

"B"'s version is accepted by Michael Wood, who describes Eadwig as "deeply unpleasant", but most historians are sceptical. Ælfgifu was a member of the highest West Saxon aristocracy and she appears to have been on good terms with Edgar after his accession. He described her as his relative in charters granting her property. The historian Rory Naismith sees the story of Dunstan's intervention at the coronation dinner as "essentially a piece of propaganda designed to blacken the reputation of Eadwig, Ælfgifu and her mother". Frank Stenton comments on the story:

"Even in its earliest form it has already assumed a scandalous colour which clashes with better evidence. It is known, for example, that the younger of the two ladies married the king and that she was honoured in one of the greatest of English monasteries. In the Liber Vitae of New Minster, Ælfgifu, wife of King Eadwig, appears in a list of "illustrious women, choosing this holy place for the love of God, who have commended themselves to the prayers of the community by the gift of alms". Churchmen of the highest merit were willing to come to court when both the ladies were present. All that can be safely inferred from the story is the high probability that Dunstan was exiled because he had affronted the king, the woman who became the king's wife, and her mother."

The marriage was politically important as part of Eadwig's efforts to strengthen his position as king, and it may have been seen as a threat by the circle around Edgar as it could have cut him out from the prospect of inheriting the crown. According to version "D" of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (ASC D), in 958 "Archbishop Oda separated King Eadwig and Ælfgifu, because they were too closely related". It is not certain what their relationship was, but Eadwig's wife has been identified as the Ælfgifu who made a will naming Æthelweard as her brother, and he has been identified as the chronicler Æthelweard, who was descended from King Æthelred I, which would have made her Eadwig's third cousin once removed.

Simon Keynes also questions "B"'s account of the coronation feast, suggesting that Oda may have objected to the marriage on the ground that it was against ecclesiastical law and that "B"'s version may have been based on an unsuccessful attempt by Dunstan and Cynesige to dissuade him from the marriage. In the view of Michael Winterbottom and Michael Lapidge "B's account [of the feast] is a lurid fabrication of Oda's implementation of the procedures of canon law". On the other hand, Sean Miller argues that objections to the marriage were political rather than religious, and Pauline Stafford sees the annulment as a result of the successful revolt of Edgar, which weakened Eadwig so much that his enemies felt able to act against him.

Byrhtferth, in his hagiographical Life of St Oswald, states that Eadwig, who was "leading a wicked life – as immoderate youth is accustomed to do – loved another woman as if she were his own wife"; he eloped with her, and Oda (Oswald's uncle) went on horseback to the house where she was staying, seized her and took her out of the kingdom. He then urged Eadwig to abandon his wicked ways, and henceforth the king "knelt before Oda with contrite visage". Some historians regard this story as a version of the account of Eadwig's marriage, but Keynes thinks that different stories about Eadwig and his women may have been conflated.

Historians almost all accept that the marriage between Eadwig and Ælfgifu was dissolved, but Stenton was an exception, pointing out that ASC D, which is a northern document dating to the second half of the eleventh century or the early twelfth, is the only source for the annulment. In his view it "is too late to have authority on a subject which invited legendary accretions".

Early reign 955–957
Eadwig's predecessor Eadred suffered from ill health which became much worse in his last years, and he relied on key advisers, including his mother Eadgifu, Archbishop Oda, Abbot Dunstan of Glastonbury, Ælfsige, whom he appointed Bishop of Winchester, and Æthelstan, Ealdorman of East Anglia, who was so powerful that he was known as the Half-King. Most surviving charters of the last two years of Eadred's reign were produced at Glastonbury Abbey, and almost all of these were not attested by the king, suggesting that Dunstan was authorised to issue charters in Eadred's name when he was too ill to carry out his duties. When Eadwig succeeded, the court was ruled by powerful factions. He appears to have been determined to show his independence from the previous regime from the start: the historian Ben Snook comments that "Eadwig, unlike his brother Edgar, was clearly his own man. Immediately on coming to power, he acted to put a stop to all this." However, in the view of Keynes, "whether Eadwig and Edgar were able to assert their own independence of action, or remained at the mercy of established interests at court, is unclear".

Eadred was buried in the Old Minster, Winchester even though his will suggests that this location was not his choice. He probably wished to be buried at a reformed Benedictine monastery such as Glastonbury, but Eadwig may have wanted to ensure that his tomb would not become a focus for opponents such as Dunstan. The main beneficiary in Eadred's will was his mother Eadgifu, and Eadwig was not mentioned. She does not appear to have received the bequest as she later complained that she had been "despoiled of all her property", on Eadwig's accession, perhaps because he resented her power. Eadgifu had frequently attested charters in the reigns of her sons Edmund and Eadred, but she attested only one of Eadwig's, whereas Edgar was prominent at his brother's court between 955 and 957, attesting many of his charters. The position of Æthelstan Half-King was too strong for Eadwig to be able to remove him, but in 956 Eadwig appointed several new ealdormen covering parts of the area in Æthelstan's jurisdiction, including Æthelstan's eldest son Æthelwold, perhaps presaging a rearrangement.

Historians have often been critical of Eadwig, portraying him as irresponsible or incompetent, and the key evidence cited for this view is the exceptional number of charters he issued in 956. His sixty-odd gifts of land in that year make up around five percent of all genuine Anglo-Saxon charters, and no other ruler in Europe is known to have matched that yearly total before the twelfth century. They were mainly in favour of laymen, and it is possible that some church land was being alienated, but only a few estates are known to have formerly been in religious ownership. Historians sometimes assume that he was giving away royal property in order to buy support, but again there is little evidence for this. He may have been selling privileges, allowing landholders to convert folkland, which they already owned as hereditary family estates which owed food, rent and services to the crown, into bookland which was exempt from most obligations, thus making money but reducing the income of the crown in the long term. However, many of the estates had recently been the subject of royal charters, which means they must have already been bookland, and suggests that in some cases he may have been seizing estates and selling or giving them to his favourites. Ann Williams observes that the large number of charters may indicate that Eadwig had to buy support, but too little is known about the background to be sure. The wealth of the crown was so great that the grants do not seem to have significantly depleted its resources.

Some of the hostility towards Eadwig was probably due to his promotion of his friends, especially Ælfhere, at the expense of the old guard, such as Dunstan. Ælfhere and his brothers were acknowledged by several kings as relatives, but the nature of the relationship is unknown. They were close to Eadwig and he made the eldest, Ælfheah, his seneschal. Ælfheah and his wife Ælfswith, who was also acknowledged by Eadwig as a relative, benefited from his generosity. Ælfhere, who was to become the pre-eminent lay magnate until his death in 983, was appointed an ealdorman in Mercia in 956. Other ealdormen appointed in the first year of Eadwig's reign were Æthelstan Rota in Mercia and Æthelstan Half-King's son Æthelwold in East Anglia, while Byrhtnoth, the future hero of the Battle of Maldon, became ealdorman of Essex. These were sound appointments of men from established families and Edgar kept them when he came to power, but the rivalries between the families of Ælfhere and Æthelstan Half-King's son Æthelwine were to destabilise the country and broke into open hostilities after Edgar's death.

The titles given to kings Edmund and Eadred in charters varied, with the most common being "king of the English". In Eadwig's charters issued before the division of the kingdom in 957, he was variously styled king of "the Anglo-Saxons", "the English", "Albion" and "the whole of Britain". Oda's attestations during Edmund's and Eadred's reigns had been longer and more boastful than those of the king, but these were cut down during Eadwig's time, no longer allowing him to overshadow his royal master.

Division of the kingdom 957–959
In the summer of 957, the kingdom was divided between Eadwig in the south and Edgar in the north, with the River Thames forming the boundary. According to "B", "King Eadwig was totally abandoned by the people north [of the Thames]. They despised him for his imprudent discharge of the power entrusted to him. The wise and sensible he destroyed in a spirit of idle hatred, replacing them with ignoramuses like himself to whom he took a liking."

Until the late twentieth century most historians blamed the division on Eadwig's incompetent rule. William Hunt in his entry on Eadwig in the original Dictionary of National Biography, published in 1889, stated that Eadwig carried on the government foolishly and provoked the Mercians and Northumbrians to rebellion by favouring the West Saxons. In 1922, J. Armitage Robinson saw the division as the result of a revolt by the Mercians against Eadwig's misrule, and in 1984 Henry Loyn attributed the division to Eadwig having "alienated responsible ecclesiastical opinion". Stenton commented that it was probably through "mere irresponsibility" that Eadwig lost the greater part of his kingdom, that in the society of his West Saxon friends it is likely that he lost touch with the aristocracy of remoter areas. In the twenty first century, Christopher Lewis sees the division as the solution to "a dangerously unstable government and a court in deep crisis", while Miller and Naismith attribute it to an unsuccessful attempt to promote a powerful new faction at the expense of the old guard.

Other historians reject the view that the division was caused by Eadwig's failures. Four versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle mention the division of the kingdom, and they all describe it as the "succession" of Edgar to the kingship of the Mercians, as if it was a normal and expected event. ASC D and ASC F date the division to 955, whereas ASC B and ASC C correctly date it to 957. In Barbara Yorke's view, the difference in dates may be because it was always intended that Edgar would rule Mercia as a sub-king, but he was unable to act in person until he came of age when he reached the age of fourteen in 957. The Worcester charter S 633 of 956 (see the "Charters" section below) describes Edgar as regulus (underking). Charters of 957 to 959 suggest that the division was a peaceful political settlement: ealdormen and bishops with jurisdictions south of the Thames stayed with Eadwig and those with northern ones with Edgar, including those who had been promoted by Eadwig. Almost all thegns who attested his charters before the division were loyal to him after it. Both Edgar's prominence as an attester of charters up to the division, and his retention as king of Mercia of ealdormen appointed by Eadwig, are evidence of continuity, and that the division of the kingdom was not a coup against Eadwig. Keynes considers both views of the division of the kingdom plausible, commenting that it may have been the result of dissatisfaction with Eadwig's rule north of the Thames, but on the other hand there would have been no presumption at that period that political unity was desirable for its own sake, and it may always have been intended that Eadwig would share the kingship with his brother.

Eadwig seems to have retained some seniority. He is described as "King of the English" in his charters, a title which Edgar only occasionally used; Edgar was mostly "King of the Mercians", and rarely also of the Northumbrians and the Britons. All coins, including those issued in Mercia, were in Eadwig's name until his death, and the historian Frederick Biggs comments that if Edgar had seized control of Mercia, it is unlikely that he would have allowed Eadwig to keep control over the area's coinage. Biggs sees the division as a survival of the early Anglo-Saxon tradition of joint kingship. Benedictine reformers such as Æthelwold opposed division because they wanted uniform monastic observance, which would be jeopardised if different kings supported different practices. Æthelwold criticised Eadwig for dividing the kingdom and praised Edgar for bringing it "back to oneness".

There is no evidence of rivalry between the brothers, but there were disagreements. Soon after becoming king of Mercia Edgar recalled Dunstan from his exile, and he showed his disapproval of Eadwig's treatment of their grandmother by restoring her property when he acceded to the throne of England in 959. Æthelstan Half-King appears to have retired around the time of the division; he had been Edgar's foster-father and he may have thought it was the right time to hand over his responsibilities. As Ælfhere was a Mercian ealdorman, he served under Edgar when the kingdom was divided even though he had been appointed by Eadwig, and he became Edgar's senior ealdorman.

Little is known of Eadwig after the division of the kingdom. A man called Ælfric became an ealdorman in the south-east in 957, but he probably died in 958. Eadmund, probably Ealdorman of the Western Shires, had usually attested second among the lay magnates after Æthelstan before the division, and after it he moved up to first in Eadwig's charters until Ælfhere's brother Ælfheah was promoted from seneschal to Ealdorman of Central Wessex shortly before Eadwig died, and immediately went to the head of the lay attesters.

Charters
Most charters in the mid-tenth century were written in a style known as the "diplomatic mainstream", but there were also two other traditions, one associated with Dunstan, the Dunstan B charters, and the other with Cenwald, Bishop of Worcester, called the alliterative charters. Almost all charters of Eadwig's reign are mainstream. There are Dunstan B charters dating to the reigns of Eadred and Edgar, but none of Eadwig, while only one alliterative charter (S 633) of Eadwig is known, a grant to Worcester minster. His charters were probably drawn up by a central writing office in the king's household which had existed since the 930s. About ninety charters survive, an exceptionally large number, but analysis is limited because only seven are original documents, with the rest being later copies. The sixty dating to 956 seem to have been mainly issued on four occasions, on his coronation in late January, on around 13 February, on a third occasion which cannot be dated, and on about 29 November.

Coinage
The only coin in common use in late Anglo-Saxon England was the silver penny. The horizontal coin designs (with the moneyer's name horizontally on the reverse) in Eadwig's reign followed the three basic horizontal types of Eadred, HT1, HR1 and HR2. There were also additional horizontal types. Many HT1 coins were produced in the Midlands and South by some 35 moneyers, 17 of whom showed the mint town. There was an unexpectedly high number of HT1 coins from two York moneyers considering the shortness of Eadwig's reign, and 13 moneyers in the rest of north-east England.

Eadwig's reign saw several typological developments: especially the revival in London of the Bust Crowned, with a crude portrait of the king on the obverse, and in the south-west of the Circumscription Cross, with a cross on both sides of the coin in the centre and the inscriptions round the edge. These were both produced in very limited numbers, but foreshadowed more extensive use in Edgar's reign. East Anglian moneyers had generally used the Bust Crowned design since the reign of Æthelstan, but may have switched temporarily to Horizontal types under Eadwig. The weight of the coins continued a gradual decline since the reign of Edward the Elder. The high silver content in the period of 85–95% was generally maintained, but as under Eadred there were a few less fine coins produced.

There is no evidence that coins were struck in the name of Edgar during Eadwig's reign, and coins of Eadwig in Mercia and Northumbria were much more common than would be expected if some had been struck in Edgar's name in 957–959, indicating that all coins were struck in Eadwig's name throughout his reign.

Religion
During Edgar's reign, the Benedictine reform movement with monasteries following strict rules of celibacy and prohibition of personal property, became dominant in religion and politics. Kings before Edgar were sympathetic to its ideals, but they did not take the view of Bishop Æthelwold and his circle that it was the only worthwhile religious life, and that the secular clergy (clerks), who owned property and many of whom were married, were corrupt and immoral. Like Edmund and Eadred, Eadwig donated both to communities of Benedictine monks and of secular clergy, but he was later portrayed as an enemy of the movement who despoiled the monasteries and favoured the secular clergy. According to the Benedictine chronicler William of Malmesbury, writing in the twelfth century:

"For soon, with the support of his pitiful toadies, [Eadwig] plunged all men of the monastic order all over England into undeserved calamities, first stripping them of the support of their revenues and then driving them into exile. Dunstan himself as head of all the monks was sent packing into Flanders. That was a time when all monasteries wore an unkempt and pitiful air. Even the convent of Malmesbury, where monks had dwelt for over two hundred and seventy years, he made into a bawdy house for clerks. But you, O Lord Jesus, our creator and re-creator, a skilled artificer well able to reform our deformities, used these unruly and wandering persons to bring to light and public knowledge your treasure that for so many years lay hidden – I mean the body of St Aldhelm, which they themselves raised from the ground and established in a shrine. The prestige of those clerks was further enhanced by royal generosity, which gave the saint an estate admirably adapted both by its size and by its convenient position. All the same, even at this distance, it is horrible to remember how cruelly the king behaved to the other monasteries, being himself young and foolish, and moved too by the advice of his mistress, who constantly laid siege to his childish mind."

Eadwig gave land to Æthelwold's Abingdon in many charters, leading him to be later regarded by its monks as one of its greatest royal benefactors. He is also named as a benefactor of Abingdon in a charter of 993. The construction of a new church was commenced by Eadred and completed under Edgar, but a charter of Eadwig granting Abingdon a wood for building the church suggests that the work continued during his reign. Æthelwold sided with Eadwig over his marriage against Oda and Dunstan and Eadwig probably sent Edgar to be tutored by Æthelwold. Religious reform does not appear to have been an important issue for Edgar and his advisers in 958, when he granted estates to the unreformed house of secular clerks at the minster church of St Werburgh in Chester, but in the 970s Benedictine reformers rewrote the history of the 950s and presented Edgar's accession as a victory for the movement over the unfit rule of Eadwig. Æthelwold wrote that Eadwig "through the ignorance of childhood[...] distributed the lands of the holy churches to rapacious strangers". Eadwig's gifts to monasteries are numerous enough to show that he was not hostile to them, and his reputation as an opponent seems to be due to the fact that he regarded Dunstan as a personal enemy. Some early sources, such as Dunstan's biographer B and Byrhtferth, criticised Eadwig but do not list spoliation of the church among his crimes, and he was selected by some monastic forgers as the grantor of estates to their establishments, showing that he was considered a plausible benefactor.

In addition to Malmesbury and Abingdon, Eadwig gave land to Worcester Minster and Bampton Minster. Estates at Beccles and Elmswell which he gave to Bury St Edmunds were still in the abbey's hands at the time of the Domesday Book. He also gave land to the Bishop of London and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Southwell Minster was founded on a large estate which Eadwig gave to Oscytel, Bishop of Dorchester in 956.

Eadwig's close allies included Ælfsige, who had been appointed Bishop of Winchester by Eadred in 951. Ælfsige was a wealthy married man with a son, who had strong connections with the West Saxon aristocracy. He described Ælfhere's brother, Ælfheah, as "my beloved friend", and appointed him guardian of his son. Ælfsige was also close to another supporter of Eadwig, Wulfric Cufing, and left him an estate in his will. Ælfsige's lifestyle made him abhorrent to the reformers. He was an enemy of Oda, and Byrhtferth accused him of gloating over Oda's death and striking his tomb with his staff. When Oda died in 958, Eadwig appointed Ælfsige as Archbishop of Canterbury, but he froze to death in the Alps on the way to Rome to collect his pallium. Eadwig then translated Bishop Byrhthelm of Wells to Canterbury, but when Edgar succeeded he dismissed Byrhthelm in favour of Dunstan.

Death
Eadwig died on 1 October 959 and was buried in the New Minster, Winchester, which had been built by Edward the Elder to serve as a royal mausoleum. Alfred and Edward were buried there, but the only later royal entombment was that of Eadwig, associating his reign with that of his illustrious ancestors.

Reputation
"B"'s condemnation of Eadwig has influenced later opinion. From soon after his death, most judgements of him were harsh, amounting in the view of the historian Shashi Jayakumar to "a type of damnatio memoriae". The hostile views of Eadwig in the lives of Saints Dunstan and Oswald were adopted by post-Conquest hagiographers and monastic chroniclers. According to John of Worcester, "Eadwig, king of the English, since he behaved foolishly in the government entrusted to him, was abandoned by the Mercians and the Northumbrians with contempt". To William of Malmesbury he "was a wanton youth, and one who misused his personal beauty in lascivious behaviour".

Some contemporaries were more sympathetic. Æthelweard, who may have been Eadwig's brother-in-law, wrote that "he for his great beauty got the nickname "All-fair" from the common people. He held the kingdom continuously for four years, and deserved to be loved." The New Minster, where he was buried, also remembered him favourably, saying in its tenth century history that he was "mourned by many tears of his people". The Minster was a beneficiary of Ælfgifu's will, and its Liber Vitæ is one of the few sources to describe her as Eadwig's wife. In the late tenth or early eleventh century, a slave was freed in his memory at St Petroc's Church in Cornwall. Æthelred the Unready named his sons after his predecessors, and his fifth son was named Eadwig.

Modern historians generally reject "B"'s verdict. Williams sees his comments as "mere spite" from a partisan of Dunstan. Snook says that "B" "conducted a comprehensive hatchet-job on Eadwig's reputation, portraying him as an incompetent, lecherous, vengeful, impious tyrant". "B" and his successors wrote "all manner of puerile prattle about his impiety and his unsuitability for high office". In Keynes's view:

"Eadwig has acquired a reputation as a debaucher, an opponent of monasticism, a despoiler of the church, and an incompetent ruler, which derives from the account of him in the earliest life of St Dunstan [by B], written c. 1000, and from later sources which elaborate the same themes. It is the case, however, that Eadwig quarrelled with Dunstan, and sent him into exile; and it may be doubted whether a life of the saint would provide impartial evidence for the life of the king."

Stafford comments:

"Eadwig left no family to cultivate his memory, was too easy a target for the moralists-in-politics of the late tenth century. The circumstances of his brief reign were complex and some arguments against him must have been strictly contemporary, part of the debate about succession which took place between 955 and 957. At best we have received only half of those arguments, those used to bury Eadwig not to praise him."

Snook gives the most favourable modern verdict:

"Eadwig was an unusually generous king who appears to have managed the emerging factional rivalries amongst the English nobility with remarkable dexterity and political acumen, arguably preserving peace, if not unity, in the kingdom and avoiding the devastating infighting that would tear England apart during the reign of Æthelred the Unready[...] What seems clear is that, at this time, the kingdom's leading ecclesiastics, emboldened by the ideology of the monastic reform movement, were keen to enhance their personal and political influence at the expense of the king's authority."

Other historians are more cautious. Williams comments that "much is still obscure about the politics of Eadwig's reign", and Richard Huscroft agrees, saying that "the evidence about Eadwig's reign remains obscure and ambiguous".

In art and literature
The story of Eadwig and Ælfgifu was a popular subject for artists, playwrights and poets in the second half of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth. Artists included William Bromley, who showed his The Insolence of Dunstan to King Edwy at the Royal Academy, William Hamilton (see image), William Dyce and Richard Dadd, while there were poems such as Edwy: a Dramatic Poem by Thomas Warwick in 1784. Another poem, Thomas Sedgwick Whalley's Edwy and Edilda, was published in 1779. Fanny Burney's play, Edwy and Elgiva, was performed at the Drury Lane Theatre on 21 March 1795 with Charles Kemble as Edwy and Sarah Siddons as Elgiva, but closed after one disastrous performance.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Eadwig


text:
Montpelier

Montpelier or Montpellier may refer to:

United Kingdom

 * Montpelier, Brighton, England
 * Montpelier Crescent
 * Montpelier, Bristol, England
 * Montpelier railway station
 * Montpellier, Cheltenham, England
 * Montpellier Quarter, Harrogate, England
 * Montpelier, London, England

United States

 * Montpelier, Idaho
 * Montpelier, Indiana
 * Montpelier, Iowa
 * Montpelier Township, Muscatine County, Iowa
 * Montpelier, Kentucky
 * Montpelier, Louisiana
 * Montpelier, a mansion in Thomaston, Maine
 * Montpelier, Maryland
 * Montpelier (Clear Spring, Maryland), a historic house
 * Montpelier Mansion (Fulton, Maryland), a historic house
 * Montpelier Mansion (Laurel, Maryland), a historic house
 * Montpelier, Mississippi
 * Montpelier, North Dakota
 * Montpelier, Ohio
 * Montpelier, Vermont, capital city of the state of Vermont
 * Montpelier station (Vermont)
 * Montpelier, Charles City County, Virginia
 * Montpelier, Hanover County, Virginia
 * Montpelier (Cabin Point, Virginia), a historic house
 * Montpelier (Orange, Virginia), a historic house
 * Montpelier (Sperryville, Virginia), a historic house
 * Montpelier, Wisconsin
 * Montpellier, U.S. Virgin Islands

Elsewhere

 * Montpelier (Queensland), a hill in Australia
 * Montpellier, Quebec, Canada
 * Montpellier, France
 * University of Montpellier
 * Montpelier, County Limerick, Ireland
 * Montpelier Hill, a hill in County Dublin, Ireland
 * Montpelier, Jamaica
 * Montpelier railway station, Jamaica

People

 * Lords of Montpellier
 * List of ladies consort of Montpellier
 * Constant Montpellier (born 1961), Canadian jockey
 * Luc Montpellier, Canadian cinematographer

Sports clubs

 * Montpelier Cricket Club, England 1796–1845
 * Montpelier F.C., an Irish football club
 * Montpellier Hérault Rugby, a French rugby club
 * Montpellier HSC, a French football club
 * Montpellier HSC (women), a French football club
 * Montpellier Water Polo, multiple winners of the Championnat de France (water polo)

Other uses

 * USS Montpelier, the name of several ships

title: Montpelier


text:
Talk:Native Esperanto speakers

Old talk
Esperanto speakers actually do not refer to children who learn Esperanto from birth as being a native speaker, but rather "from birth children" (denaskaj infanoj).
 * This is a very confused and confusing statement; the Esperanto term for "native speaker" is "denaska parolanto" (if you must translate literally, "speaker from birth"). In short, this usage of the English word "native" corresponds to this usage of the Esperanto word "denask(a)". In the term "denaska(j) infano(j)", consider "denaska(j)" to be an elided form of "denaska(j) parolanto(j) de Esperanto". Brion VIBBER, Monday, April 1, 2002

At first I thought this was a joke article: how can one be a "native speaker" of an artificial language? But it piqued my interest and I read it with pleasure. Let me only suggest that some better title be created for the article, lest others dismiss it as a joke. --Ed Poor

 * The title is accurate and "correct" and I don't think a better one could be found. We have a lot of articles on Wikipedia with titles that sound like jokes.

 * Okay. The natural language article says that constructed languages can still have "native" speakers, if children learn it at a young age from parents who have learned the language. --Ed Poor

I've heard the phrase "denaska Esperantisto" (I was repeatedly asked whether I am one of those when I attended a congress; I am not). "Denaska infano" is silly.

 * I do not like "denaska Esperantisto" because it seems to imply exactly what the Esperanto version states is not the case … (something like) "denaskaj parolantoj de Esperanto ne estas sklavoj al al movado." The decision to be an Esperantist must be a conscience one made by a person, not a birth thing. --Andrew Belisle

Why exactly would people think the article is a joke? Granted: many people aware of the existence of Esperanto are ignorant of the existence of native speakers of Esperanto, but being surprised to learn of something's existence is not the same as thinking it's a joke.

How was the "200 - 2000" figure arrived at? Michael Hardy 20:21 Jan 13, 2003 (UTC)

 * I arrived at that figure by reading http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=ESP How Ethnologue arrived at that number, I don't know...  --Chuck SMITH

Well, shouldn't the article's title stress that 200-2000 speak it 'as their mother tongue', not that they are "natives" of the language (of which there are none)? The difference might seem arbitrary, but it has a point. --Gabbe 21:07 Jan 13, 2003 (UTC)

 * Perhaps it would help if you explain the difference. --Brion

 * I'm going to hazard a guess as to what the difference is. Nobody is a "native speaker" of any language because nobody is born knowing how to speak any language.  Therefore nobody has a native language, but all of us who were not raised as Romulus and Remus were raised have a mother tongue.  If that's not what Gabbe meant, I'm at a loss.  A "native" of a place, on the other hand, does exist; it means someone who was born there.  Michael Hardy 21:56 Jan 13, 2003 (UTC)

 * Looking up the definition on [ http://m-w.com/ ] I see that the two (in my mind separate) defitions are given as synonyms. My bad... I retract my claim. --Gabbe 22:15 Jan 13, 2003 (UTC)

 * If, as you say, there is no "native speaker" in the litteral meaning, then we can always use the phrase in its broad meaning without any ambiguity, can't we?

Look at the definitions provided in [ http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=native%20speaker ]. Native speaker is "a person who has spoken the language in question from early childhood". It does not imply being born in a specific place. I think that this settles the question. Evallejr

Native speakers of Esperanto
I am highly suspicious of this concept. I highly suspect that people who teach this language to their children at a young age do so as a second language and retain their mother tongue and pass that on to their child - using it as thier primary way to convey the majority of their culture, intelligence, experience and personality. If I am simply ignorant of the extent to which Esperanto has loosed its tethers to its constructed language origin, excuse me. I would think that the individuals and movement that created the language would resist it becoming a Creole and then a natural language because then they would lose almost all control over it. From what I have seen there is a strict control exercised over this language and as such it is and always will be a constructed language. Pushing the age at which it is acquired down will not make it into a natural language with native speakers. Qaz

 * Yes, sorry but you're ignorant of the extent to which Esperanto has loosed its tethers to its constructed language origin. These children do actually learn Esperanto as one of their mother tongues. It's not that they have been taught the language as a second language, it's that they have acquired it through exposure since early childhood because their parents were Esperanto speakers who spoke the language at home (in many instances, the parents met thanks to Esperanto and Esperanto was the only common language among them, so it functioned as the "bridge" language internally uniting the family). For a language to acquire native speakers, the only required thing is that it is already fully functional and that a child is exposed to it during its early childhood; the history of how the language came into existence is irrelevant. Esperanto doesn't possess any inherently artificial feature; I mean, if suddenly all knowledge about the origin of Esperanto disappeared, we would have no means to differentiate it from a natural language merely by looking at its structure. Aymara, the mother tongue of more than a million Bolivians, has been said to look like an "artificial" language because of its amazing degree of regularity and its unexpected trivalent logic grammar; but just try to tell native Aymara speakers that they speak an "artificial" language because it looks too regular to be true. Besides, it's true that there is a conscious effort by Esperanto second-language speakers to prevent it from breaking up into a myriad dialects that would hamper communication between speakers from far away areas. But, on the one hand, this kind of control over the language is not exclusive nor definitory of artificial languages, and can be likened to that exercised by language academies and prescriptivist grammarians. And, on the other, this has not actually prevented the language from evolving: Esperanto is not the monolithical thing that you depict. There has been a continous evolution for over a century, affecting primarily the lexicon (some terms used in the early days have fallen out of use, and neologisms are constantly being introduced), and also some aspects of the grammar (such as the development of additional correlatives, like aliel, aliam..., "another way", "another time"..., and of additional verbal forms, like amantas and amatas, "is loving" and "is loved", for estas amanta and estas amata). Also, it is not unusual for the Esperanto spoken by its native speakers to be frowned on by its second-language speakers, precisely because the latter feel the former take "too much liberty" in using the language. This is because the native speakers feel "at home" with the language and use it "instinctively", unconsciously altering and developing it (just like native English speakers use and develop it instinctively without caring that much about what grammarians have enshrined as its "proper usage"), while second-language speakers are much more strict about using the language according to the rules they've consciously learned from books. Uaxuctum 21:43, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

 * I also question the concept, but I don't know enough about it to update the article. If both your parents are, say, Icelandic, and you live in, say France, you can easily acquire a fluency in Icelandic from your parents. However, the language you use with most of your friends, class mates and foreigners, will be French, and that is also the language you will learn to speak and write correctly in school. Thus your primary language would be French, even though Icelandic is native. I'm not here talking about big immigration groups, like Chinese in San Francisco or Turks in Berlin. Icelandic is a small language, and it would likely be limited to communication with your parents. My guess is that Esperanto falls into the case of the expatriate Icelander above. There may be people who use Esperanto at home, but to no one it will be their primary language. Could that be right? Mlewan 15:16, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

 * I think you've got it, except for the fact that there are Esperanto speakers all over the world, and Icelandic speakers are concentrated into a relatively small area. I know of native Esperanto speakers whose Esperanto is very strong, as they have become an active Esperantists, and Esperanto becomes the dominant language in the brain when they are around it for extended periods of time. However I think you're correct, it would very rarely be used as a primary language. -- Andrew 12:24, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

I'd say you need to do some simple research to help assuage your suspicion. I think this article provides some links that could be interesting for you. Bilingualism is a useful tool, no matter what language it is. -- Andrew 20:27, November 25, 2005

 * Andrew, I don't understand your last phrase. "A useful tool"? Useful for doing what? If I'm perfectly bilingual in Xhosa and Tibetan, how would that be more useful than speaking an acceptable English and Chinese? Ok, next time I wander around Lhasa and see some lost South Africans trying to read the restaurant menu I might be able to help them, but I would be able to help them even with acceptable English and Chinese. Mlewan 08:51, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Bilingualism will all the more expand your sphere of influence and opportunity, even if miniscully. Especially if you are natively bilingual, it can help you more easily accomplish goals later in life; I'm thinking of the learning of other languages. I think you're under the impression that I said no language is more useful than another, which I did not. I believe a knowledge of practically any language is useful, but to say that to be bilingual in English and Hawaiian is just as useful as speaking both English an Chinese would be silly. If one thinks some language isn't useful in and of itself, I think it can be seen as a capital good. -- Andrew 12:24, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Esperanto schools and neighborhoods
I believe Timwi is mistaken in referring to "all-Esperanto neighbourhoods and Esperanto schools". To the best of my knowledge, no such places exist, so I removed the reference. Can anyone give evidence to the contrary? --tgeller 16:18, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

"panjo" and "paĉjo"
I know that the article hypothetically suggested that these might be the first word of a native Esperanto speaker, but from a development standpoint, it almost definitely wouldn't be - an affricate like "ch" or a palatal like "j" is difficult for a young child to say, and those sounds are usually mastered later than labial sounds (which is why "mama" and "papa" usually are first words, not because of their meaning).

 * Exactly my thoughts when I read it. I put a 'fact' tag there, but I think it should be removed. Jalwikip (talk) 13:26, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

 * Well certainly they may not be first words; there are plenty of children whose first words are not mommy or daddy, but I do know of children who have addressed the parents panjo and paĉjo as early as age 2, which seems fairly normal. Isn't the Japanese familial term for father chichi? I'm sure there are many examples from other languages. Andrew 03:45, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

 * Chi-chi is only what you refer to your father when you are referring to him to people outside your family. It is a term that chidren do not start using until they have developed a substantial social network outside their family, and long after they have have developed full ability in fricatives, et al. Malnova 22:52, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Citecheck template removed
The wrong template was added to this article. Citecheck is for articles that have citations, but whose citations are misrepresented or otherwise inappropriate. Please discuss cleanup templates on the talk page when adding them. Durova 01:50, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Highly Suspect
Can we name one person in the world who actually speaks this language? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Landerman56 (talk • contribs) 03:45, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

 * And can it be claimed that they are native speakers? There is no Esperanto education system, unlike the situation with revived Manx and Hebrew, and no surrounding community. Picking some up from your parents doesn't necessarily make you a native speaker.

 * "For this reason, some parents consider it important to regularly bring their children to Esperanto conventions." - Jesus - they'll be wearing anoraks by the age of ten! --86.136.179.179 (talk) 20:52, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Nonsense. With your "logics", minority languages couldn't be native languages either, if they're not taught in school. Picking up Esperanto from ones parents doesn't necessarily make you a native speaker, but it can do so. It worked several thousand times. — N-true (talk) 17:17, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
 * N-true, Did you read what you replied to? 86.136.179.179 wrote "Picking some up from your parents doesn't necessarily make you a native speaker." And then you reply that it is nonsense, while agreeing 100%: "Picking up Esperanto from ones parents doesn't necessarily make you a native speaker". 86.136.179.179 never with a word denied that it can make you a native speaker. S/he denied that it would prove anything.
 * The case for "native Esperanto speakers" is not made well in this article. There are very few sources in this article, and they do not look particularly reliable. None of them defines what "native" would mean in terms of knowledge or priority over other languages or any other criteria at all.
 * "Native language" does not require priority over anything, it just required fluency from a young age. If you learn mroe than one language from an early age, they're both/all native languages.24.84.80.28 (talk) 22:07, 4 June 2016 (UTC)
 * It is of course possible that there are speakers that are "native" according to some criteria, but the article in its current state, after more than six years of edits, in no way proves that it is the case. Mlewan (talk) 20:49, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Sources and Style
This article should have more than two sources for this amount of information, such as how native esperanto speakers are created. This also seems to be written from a somewhat biased and clearly first person perspective. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.69.217.144 (talk) 00:58, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Merge suggestion from "List of..."

 * Support. Both the article and the list are short; no reason to keep them separately. Simpler reading in one page. - Altenmann >t 18:08, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Support. For the reasons given.  Fell Gleaming ( talk ) 00:52, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Deletion request
This article should be deleted as WP:OR, due to the lack of authoritative sources concerning existance of this phenomenon or truth in inclusion of the listed persons. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.49.18.203 (talk) 08:09, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

 * I've completed this nomination on your behalf; it is now listed at Articles for deletion/Native Esperanto speakers. UltraExactZZ Said~ Did 17:11, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Statistics
I've deleted the stats, since Ethnologue abandoned them years ago, and never cited their source. — kwami (talk) 18:40, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

 * Update: Found sources citing 350 attested and 2,000 estimated total, so restored the stats.  — kwami (talk) 02:50, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

4th generation?
One of the sources I used says that there are 4th-generation Eo speakers, but they didn't seem particularly credible (it sounded like the authors repeated s.t. they had heard somewhere, not s.t. they had confirmed), so I didn't use it. And in the interview with the supposedly 3rd-gen Eo speaker, his father later wrote in to say that he was actually 2nd-gen (the grandfather had learned the language). It would be nice if we could confirm cases of 3rd- or 4th-gen speakers, though. — kwami (talk) 02:48, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Native grammar
There is a long section about supposed differences between standard and native Esperanto, but it should be noted that Lindstedt (who is cited in the article) claims that "In studies of the speech of Esperanto-speaking children it is difficult to find convincing examples of changes introduced by the process of nativisation. All examples proposed seem rather to be due to (1) transfers from the children’s other native languages, (2) differences between the spoken and written register of Esperanto and, in some cases, (3) incomplete acquisition." Maybe we should add a sentence or two about this to the section. I'm also not sure what the sentence Malheliĝas kaj ili ankoraŭ estas ĉe la plaĝo illustrates, because this sentence is definitely normal and correct in standard Esperanto. Mutichou (talk) 11:06, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I just added a remark about it. Also (if anyone is reading this page), I have some issues about some words presented in the "Word derivation" section:
 * triciklejo, dentumado, mukis, belos, perblove, ludeblo: to me they are perfectly normal words that a non-native speaker could say;
 * malmiksi, malstartas, malsandviĉiĝis, nazas, samante, "Ege halte, ege paŭze, ege salte", akve: they may sound a little weird but they are correctly formed and I can imagine someone using these words without raising eyebrows;
 * "Ene, from en 'in', is found in poetry but not in normal adult speech"?! Ene is a completely normal word to me, I use it and hear it frequently, it is found in PIV and ReVo and there are many hits in Tekstaro.
 * Mutichou (talk) 16:31, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Good additions. Mutichou, in your 2nd bullet point, I think that is the point: they are well formed because native speakers extend word-formation rules to novel situations. Yes, we could all imagine someone saying those things, but has anyone ever actually said them? Language isn't just what can be said, but what is said. — kwami (talk) 17:54, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

 * «but has anyone ever actually said them?» Yes. Tuvalkin (talk) 22:10, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

George Soros
Is George Soros (and by extension probably also his brother Paul) actually a native Esperanto speaker? According to, while his parents did teach him Esperanto at a young age, his only native language was Hungarian. Gephyra (talk) 22:50, 20 December 2015 (UTC)
 * What do you see as the difference between "native language" and "learned at a young age"? These are generally synonyms, so long as the learning is to a fluent degree.24.84.80.28 (talk) 22:11, 4 June 2016 (UTC)
 * A native language is one learned in the transition from being preverbal to being verbal. For most children, this would mean within the first couple years of life. To learn a language "at a young age" may mean age five or even ten. The concepts are quite distinct, though there may be a grey area between. Most sources agree that Esperanto was not Soros's native language, though he learned it in childhood from his parents. --Haruo (talk) 10:48, 27 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Is there any documentation for the claim that Paul Soros was a native Esperanto speaker? Frenezulo (talk) 21:55, 4 August 2021 (UTC) Creating a separate section for this below, as this is really a different question. Frenezulo (talk) 21:58, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

List of sources about the number of native speakers
https://denaskuloj.home.blog/2019/03/15/kiom-da-denaskuloj-estas-en-la-tuta-mondo/

Tuxayo (talk) 18:52, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

Verbs not following a standard?
I can see malmiksi in the infinitive form, but malscias in the present one. Should this be changed? RubenVerg (talk) 10:09, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Paul Soros
Is there any documentation for the claim that Paul Soros was a native Esperanto speaker? Frenezulo (talk) 21:58, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

composite families

 * In at least one instance, Esperanto was used as a bridge language for a family started by a couple who did not have a native language in common.

"Tiaj familioj ja multas," quoth eo.wp. —Tamfang (talk) 06:49, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Patrick Lagrange / Bernard Lagrange / Arno Lagrange (French, German)
 * N. Klünder (German, Polish)
 * Lilia Ledon da Silva (French, Brazilian)
 * Leo Sakaguchi (Polish, Japanese)
 * Klára Ertl (Hungarian, French)
 * Peter Weide and Eliza Kehlet (German, Danish) – they had at least one trilingual child
 * the children of Sen Rodin (Italian) and Júlia Sigmond (Hungarian)

title: Talk:Native Esperanto speakers