Sold for €62,500 (£54,825) by German auction house Kiefer (20% buyer’s premium) in a June 30-July 1 sale in Pforzheim was an 1867, Hamburg first edition of the first volume of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital. It was the only one of the three parts of his famous ‘Kritik der politischen Oekonomie’ to be published in his lifetime.
The other two, edited by his friend and supporter, Friedrich Engels, appeared in 1885 and 1894.
The only copy of that key first volume to have made more – £115,000 at Bloomsbury Auctions in 2010 – was one that Marx inscribed for Prof ES Beesley, a historian and founding editor of the Fortnightly Review, whom he had hoped might help get a notice of the book published in England. Beesley co-operated, but the then chief editor of the magazine turned down his critique.