We have evidence of this as early as the 1838-9 letters to his sister Marie (Engels was in the habit of using random bits of English even in his earliest letters).
And it becomes more prominent ofc once he moves to England and lives there. Marx himself used 'Fred' to refer to Engels often, including in this Dec. 6 1868 letter
Afaik this is the transcription of the original letter rather than a translation (it can be found in MEWBand32). I'm not a German speaker, but my guess would be that any weirdness is a combination of:
it being 19th century German;
it might have traits of 19th century Rhineland dialect;
it uses random English;
it's a speedily written letter so may have errors
Marx tends to use random English, French, Latin, Greek, Italian, etc words and grammar in his personal writings along with his own contractions in German, and just words he's made up
Engels translated his own name as Fred actually
We have evidence of this as early as the 1838-9 letters to his sister Marie (Engels was in the habit of using random bits of English even in his earliest letters).
And it becomes more prominent ofc once he moves to England and lives there. Marx himself used 'Fred' to refer to Engels often, including in this Dec. 6 1868 letter
What is this letter? This reads really poorly translated
Afaik this is the transcription of the original letter rather than a translation (it can be found in MEWBand32). I'm not a German speaker, but my guess would be that any weirdness is a combination of:
it being 19th century German;
it might have traits of 19th century Rhineland dialect;
it uses random English;
it's a speedily written letter so may have errors
Marx tends to use random English, French, Latin, Greek, Italian, etc words and grammar in his personal writings along with his own contractions in German, and just words he's made up
It's German, it sounds weird even on the best of days