Work began on the MEGA, the historical-critical edition of the complete writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, in Moscow and Berlin during the 1970s. The MEGA soon acquired a formidable reputation among experts and can now be found in all great libraries in the world. In the wake of the dramatic changes which led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic (GDR), schol­ars throughout the world pres­sed for the continued publication of the MEGA.

In 1990, Amsterdam's International Institute of Social History (IISH), whose archive holds most of the ori­ginal manuscripts, took the initiative of setting up the International Marx Engels Foundation (IMES) which assumed academic responsibility for the project. The politically independent IMES is an international network that includes, along with the IISH and the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW), the Social Research Institute of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Bonn and the Russian State Archive for Socio-Political History (RGASPI). The aim of the IMES is to complete the MEGA.

The extent of the MEGA has been reduced from the originally planned 164 to 114 volumes; 52 of these have already been published. At present, teams of scholars from Germany, Russia, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, the USA, and Japan are working on the MEGA, thus making it one of the most significant international projects of its kind. The MEGA also receives financial support from the European Union.

With the change of publishers in 1998 from Dietz Verlag to Akademie Verlag, and the publication of the first volumes edited according to revised guidelines, the reorganization of the project has been completed. Ulrich Raulff of the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung", commenting on the years of effort invested in promoting the continuation of its publication, emphasized the project's three new commitments: “Depoliticization, internationalization, and achievement of high scholarly standards. The first was accomplished by leaving the Dietz Verlag, which freed philology from its notorious affiliation with party interests. Realization of the third is guaranteed by its being integrated into the Akademie Verlag. Now the blue volumes rank with the complete works of Aristotle, Leibniz, Wieland, Forster and Aby Warburg—classics among classics.” (“Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”, October 7, 1998)

At present, eight scholars of the BBAW are working on twelve volumes. They also coordinate cooperation with international researchers in the editing of final drafts and typographical preparation of all future volumes.

After the restructuring of the project, the ten new volumes published by the Akademie Verlag met with extraordinary national and international acclaim, which reached beyond the academic world. For example, the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”, the important Japanese daily “Asashi Shimbun”, the London “Times”, and the Washington “Journal of Commerce”, all devoted detailed comments to these publications. In this context, “Die Zeit” (February 25, 1999) identified the continued publication of MEGA as an act of historical justice long overdue: “The MEGA is literally a century-long enterprise. Its origin, its failure, and its reincarnation mirror paradigmatically the historical tragedies of the 20th century. If it will be finished according to schedule around the year 2025 , then almost one hundred years will have been necessary to make the works of Marx and Engels accessible to the reading public in their original form, i. e. uncensored.”

The History of the MEGA

The project of a historical-critical edition of the complete works of Marx and Engels dates back to David Rjazanov (1870–1938). The Russian scholar started with the plan of editing 42 volumes in the 1920s in Moscow. Of these, only 12 were published in Frankfurt (Main) and Berlin. Hitler´s rise to power and the escalation of terror under Stalin in the 1930s put an end to this edition, which was the first to publish Marx’s “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts” from 1844 and “The German Ideology”. Eventually Rjazanov and other Russian and German editors were purged. Even though Rjazanov´s project was resumed in Moscow and Berlin in the period of the “thaw” after Stalin’s death; the concept for a new “second” MEGA, that would contain the complete literary estate of Marx and Engels in the original form, with detailed commentaries and the use of modern forms of text presentation, couldn´t be carried out before the 1960s, as high-ranking party courts were thoroughly critical of such an edition. By this time, since the non-partisan, historical-critical character of the Complete Works had been guaranteed, the International Institute of Social History (IISH) had already started supporting the project. The editorial guidelines of this “new”, second MEGA, were modelled on innovative concepts and first introduced in a sample volume in 1972. It soon found overall approval in the international academic community. Two-thirds of the indispensable original manuscripts have been in possession of the IISH since the 1930s; the other third had come to Moscow and is today stored in the Russian State Archive for Socio-Political History. Of the 36 volumes published before 1990, about one third of these each was edited at the following institutions: The Institute of Marxism-Leninism under the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Moscow), the Institute of Marxism-Leninism under the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (Berlin), and the Academy of Sciences in conjunction with various universities in the GDR (Berlin, Erfurt-Mühlhausen, Halle-Wittenberg, Jena and Leipzig).

After the autumn of 1989, the IISH and the Karl Marx-House of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Trier, together with the previous publishing institutions, took the initiative of creating the International Marx Engels Foundation, which was established in October 1990 in Amsterdam.

In February 1992, the Conference of the various Academies of Sciences in Germany entered into a contract of cooperation with IMES. Before the MEGA was admitted to the Academy Program of the German Confederation of States, it had to acquire the favorable assessment by the Scientific Advisory Council and the approval of the Confederation of States´ Commission  for Educational Planning and the Promotion of Reasearch. Following the proposal by the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences for its admittance, it was also necessary to get a positive evaluation by an international scientific commission headed by the Munich philosopher, Dieter Henrich. Since October 1993, for the first time in its history, the MEGA has found itself under the auspices of a German Academy of Sciences. The previously mentioned evaluation reported: “the editing has been carried out on a high scientific level and also meets with Western standards” (Henrich 1993, p. 20).

The same could have been said about the physical design of the MEGA volumes, laid out by the Leipzig book-designer Albert Kapr. The high quality typography and binding have been continued by the new publisher, Akademie Verlag.

The really new quality of the edition lies, however, in its depolitization, particularly in regard to the commentaries. The former, politically motivated, teleologically explanatory imperative of the edition has been replaced by the principle of a deliberate historization of the works. This means placing Marxian thought in the historical context of its times and of its historically relevant issues. It thus becomes clear that Marx has established a legitimate place in  different scientific disciplines notwithstanding the historical thrust of his thought. The encyclopedic approach of the MEGA goes beyond the mere scope of the economic and social sciences. It reaches up to philosophy, sociology, and to the history of culture.

The International Marx Engels Foundation

Philological Principles

The task of this complete new historical-critical edition of the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels is to provide comprehensive and reliable basic source material for the use of scholars in all disciplines and for all other language editions of their works. With regard to this fundamental purpose the guiding principles of the MEGA are as follows:

Completeness

The MEGA is the first edition of the works of Marx and Engels to present their literary heritage in full, that is, comprising all of their surviving written material. Together with the papers, articles and letters already known, the MEGA includes a number of never yet published or newly discovered works. More-over, all extant manuscripts, drafts, notes, excerpts as well as marginal notes in books, etc., will be included. In addition to this, not only the letters written by Marx and Engels themselves will be included, but also those letters addressed to them by third parties. Each volume is actually a double volume: the text proper, on the one hand, and the relevant commentary and the index section, on the other, are bound separately, thus making it easier for the reader to use the different parts simultaneously.

High fidelity

 All texts published in the MEGA are published in the language in which they were originally written. The writings are reproduced in exact conformity with the authors’ original texts, all copy being checked against the manuscripts, whenever accessible, or authorized printed versions. Unfinished manuscripts are presented in the stage in which they were left by the authors. Such an approach involves a critical textual revision with a view to eliminating obvious errors; but interference in the authors’ texts is always made with extreme caution and is exactly indicated to the reader.

Presentation of the texts in the various stages of their preparation

In line with modern methods of editing, the MEGA clearly and comprehensively displays—insofar as the relevant drafts are available—the textual develoment of the various works of Marx and Engels from the first sketching out of their thoughts to the final version. In the text volume either the manuscript version or a printed authorized version is reproduced in its entirety. But the textual development from the manuscript to the various authorized printed versions is always completely documented in a listing of variants. Thus for the first time all versions drafted or corrected by the authors are made available for study.

Exhaustive commentary

The complete edition of Marx and Engels’ literary bequest includes, more-over, intensive critical annotation. The comprehensive commentary is a product of the research carried out by the institutes involved and provides all data necessary for scholarly purposes. This commentary builds upon the scientific findings of international scholarship, at the same time enriching it by the further knowledge gained in the direct preparation of this historical-critical edition. The presentation of a critical commentary in relation to each individual work begins with a record of the origin and the history of the text, including proof of authorship and authentication of date, as well as an exact description of the surviving manuscripts and authorized printed versions. This is followed by the already indicated variants, showing the development of the text and the record of subsequent editorial changes by the authors. Extensive annotation will provide all other pertinent data and necessary references for the scholarly reader. An introduction to the entire material contained in a volume is also furnished. Finally, each MEGA volume includes separate bibliographies of the works cited by Marx and Engels and of those utilized by the editors in the preparation of the text and commentary. This is followed by both a subject and name index, the latter including essential biographical information.

Structure and Present Situation

The MEGA is divided into four sections (Abteilungen): First Section: Works, Articles, Drafts; Second Section: "Capital" and preliminary studies; Third Section: Correspondence; Fourth Section: Excerpts, Notes, Marginalia. Out of 114 planned volumes, 52 volumes have been published (in the table in bold) and 35 are currently being edited (in italics).

AdW Berlin  =  Academy of Science of the GDR, Berlin.
BBAW  =  Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Science and Humanities, Academy Project MEGA.
Berlin  =  Humboldt University.
Bremen  =  University of Bremen.
D/I  =  German-Italian Team of Scholars, Mar­burg and Venice.
DK/RGASPI  =  Danish-Russian Team of Scholars, Copenhagen and Moscow.
D/NL  =  German-Dutch Team of Scholars, Berlin and Amsterdam.
Erfurt  =  University of Erfurt.
FR  =  French Team of Scholars, Paris.
Halle  =  University of Halle/Wittenberg.
IMLB  =  Institute of Marxism-Leninism under the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Berlin.
IMLM  =  Institute of Marxism-Leninism under the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Moscow.
JH  =  Japanese Team of Scholars, Hokkaido.
JS  =  Japanese Team of Scholars, Sendai.
JT  =  Japanese Team of Scholars, Tokyo.
JW  =  Western Japanese Team of Scholars.
Jena  =  University of Jena.
Leipzig  =  University of Leipzig.
RGASPI  =  Russian State Archiv for Socio-Political History, Moscow.
RGASPI/FR  =  Russian-French Team of Scholars, Moscow and Toulouse.
USA/RGASPI/NL  =  American-Russisan-Dutch Team of Scholars, New York, Moscow and Amsterdam.

First Section: Works, Articles, Drafts

The volumes of this section include all of Marx and Engels’ philosophical, economic, historical and political works, pamphlets and articles except for Capital and those writings directly connected to it. All material is reproduced in the original language and in all versions (including translations) approved by their authors. Surviving manuscripts including sketches of plans, drafts, frag-ments, etc., are likewise included. An appendix to the text volume contains in an appropriate form a) writings by Marx and Engels from the period covered which were altered without their consent, b) material written by other authors but revised by Marx and Engels or written with their direct collaboration, c) writings of which Marx or Engels’ authorship is presumed but not conclusively proved; also included are documents signed by them. Of 32 volumes seventeen have already been published (in the table below in bold) while ten volumes are currently being edited (in italics) and five more remain to be edited:

BBAW  =  Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Science, Academy Project MEGA, Berlin.
RGASPI/FR  =  Russian-French Team of Scholars, Moscow and Toulouse.

Second Section: Capital and preliminary studies