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   I had never read Marx or Engels in my whole life, even though Birmingham is well-known as a centre of Marxism. But after that I bought a couple of booklets, the main works of Marx and Engels. I began to read them and noticed that they were constantly dealing with literature. They were really full of quotations that were not identified as quotations, but if you had any knowledge of European literature of the time, you would recognize them as such right away. I explained this to the students the next time – and they had no idea. I was already interested then in the history of reception and so I bought the entire works and letters of Marx for myself and had it sent over to England. After that we got on quite well together. But in my whole life I have never again taught as badly as I did then in Hamburg. It was really nice, however, that in England I began to systematically find out about Marx.
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