Notes on the Arrest, Maltreatment and Expulsion of Wilhelm Wolff by the Brussels Police

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Karl Marx
Written March 1848


First published in Marx/Engels, Gesamtausgabe, I. Abteilung, Bd. 6, Berlin, 1932
Printed according to the manuscript
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 6

See this volume, pp. 567-68.—Ed.

Petits Carmes.[1] 5 étrangers, 34 Belge

Wolff's right eye is so injured it will hardly regain sight.

Sunday February 27, between 10 and 11 o'clock in the evening.

Real maltreatment in the Hôtel de Ville, blows with the fist from all directions. The real maltreatment first in the police station where there were a number of drunken gardes civiques. Police punched Wolff in the right eye so that the sight....

They tore off his glasses, spat in his face, kicked him, punched him, abused him, etc. One of the gardes civiques proved his valour by joining in these manifestations. They tortured him.

In the meantime Hody arrived, chef de la sûreté publique, notorious philanthropist, hypocritical scoundrel.

Wolff had an interview of <1> 1/2 [hours] with him in the presence of the scoundrel who had arrested him amidst frightful maltreatment.

Hody's indignation at Wolff's visiting him. Spoke furiously against the German Workers' Society.[2] "I knew," he said among other things, "that there would be about 2/3 Germans among those arrested tonight." Wolff said ironically: "Oui, insofar as they were already marked in advance for arrest."

Taken from the Permanence to the Amigo.[3] Wolff [..?.] evening [...?...]

The whole thing that evening was a provocation organised by the police. The Ministry needed prisoners at any cost, including also Germans.

At the Amigo: soon more arrested persons arrived: those who were placed with Wolff: a Belgian. He was so maltreated and injured by the police that he lost at least a quart of blood. A third person see p. 2.

On Monday etc. taken to the Petits Carmes.

On Wednesday the 6 arrested foreigners received their expulsion passports. But Wolff's was dated Sunday, February 27, before his arrest. In prison horribly maltreated.

  1. ↑ Petits Carmes — a prison in Brussels.
  2. ↑ See Note 208.
  3. ↑ Permanence — a police station at the Town Hall in Brussels open all round t he clock. Amigo — a preliminary detention jail in Brussels, situated near the Town Hall (it derived its name from the Flemish word "vrunte" — a fenced place, interpreted by the Spaniards during their domination in the Netherlands as "vriend" — friend, and rendered in Spanish as "amigo").