The text itself was written by Marx and Engels in Brussels in 1845 and 1846 but it was not published until 1932. The Preface and some of the alterations and additions are in Marx's hand. The bulk of the manuscript is in Engels' hand, except for Chapter V of Volume II and some passages of Chapter III of Volume I which are in Joseph Weydemeyer's hand. Chapter V in Volume II was written by Moses Hess and edited by Marx and Engels. The text in German runs to around 700 pages.[2]
Recent research for the new Marx Engels Gesamtausgabe (MEGA) indicates that much of the "system" of the "materialist conception of history" in the first part of the book was created afterwards by the Marx-Engels Institute.[3][4]
Through the publication of the first volume of "Marx Engels Gesamtausgabe" it was possible to show that "Marx and Engels did not write the manuscripts on the “German ideology” as part of a book project, but rather as part of a magazine project in which other authors (Moses Hess, Georg Weerth, Wilhelm Weitling, etc.) were also involved. For this reason, a manuscript written by Roland Daniels, which was edited by Marx and Engels for the planned quarterly publication, is being printed in this volume for the first time. In terms of content, it was not initially the systematic elaboration of one's own theoretical positions that was the concern, but instead the polemical debate with young Hegelian and socialist contemporaries. However, the focus of the criticism of Marx and Engels was not on Feuerbach (as was mostly assumed up to now), but on Max Stirner, the author of the radical individualist work “The Unique One and His Property”. It could be proven that the majority of what the recipients of the last century saw as chapter “I. Feuerbach” was originally written in controversy with Stirner. This also applies to the genesis of such central concepts as "ideology" and "petty bourgeois". In addition, there are numerous digressions in which Marx and Engels present their own positions (depictions of the historical development of the German bourgeoisie, the relationship between intellectual and material rule and the history of private property). It was only during the course of this discussion that Marx and Engels made the decision present their views in a separate chapter and combine them with a critique of Feuerbach. To this end, they removed central parts of the text of the Stirner and Bauer criticism from the context of their composition. These text developments are documented in detail in the apparatus volume. The text-critical apparatus with its discursive presentation of variants makes the drafting process transparent and, in particular, the intensive collaboration between Marx and Engels on the manuscripts comprehensible."[5]
