The Democratic and Workers' Press on Marx's Expulsion and the Suppression of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written June 1849


First published in the journal Democratic Review, Vol. 1, June 1849, p. 25
Printed according to the journal
Source : Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 9
Collection(s): Democratic Review

TRIER'SCHE ZEITUNG

Cologne, May 18.... It is rumoured that all democrats who are not domiciled in Cologne will be deported by police action; this measure is said to be primarily aimed at the editorial personnel of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. It is a fact that Karl Marx was already yesterday served with such an order. At midday yesterday, Fr. Engels left for the Rhine Palatinate.[1]

NEUE KÖLNISCHE ZEITUNG

Cologne, May 19

From out of the dark did the fatal shaft fly,

From ambush blows fell thick and fast—

So now in the flower of my manhood I lie,

A proud rebel that's breathed his last!

F. Freiligrath

"Abschiedswort der Neuen Rheinischen Zeitung'"[2]

The Neue Rheinische Zeitung has ceased to exist.

Our issue therefore has a black mourning border.

The most interesting news items from south arid east pale against the sudden mournful tidings that the Neue Rheinische Zeitung has appeared today for the last time.

And what an appearance it has!!

Red, red, red was ever its batde-cry, but today the whole garb is red. The red print of the newspaper has greatly surprised its readers,—the spirit which once more blazes out from these breath-taking lines of print has made us profoundly lament that the newspaper has now ceased to exist!

No other newspaper can henceforth serve us as a substitute for this loss.—We shall seek in vain in the most brilliant periodicals of all countries for articles like those of the blood-stained June of 1848, nowhere shall we find again such conclusive documentation regarding the "good financial administration of Prussia",[3] or the "Silesian milliard",[4] or "Wage Labour and Capital".[5] It must be admitted that by the glorious downfall of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung democracy in the Rhineland has suffered a reverse. We mourn—but Freiligrath's poetry, which has attained its everlasting pinnacle in his "farewell word" today, does not leave us without consolation:

Farewell, brothers, but not forever farewell,

For the spirit they never can slay!

I'll rise up again soon with a rattling of mail,

I'll return better armed for the fray!

NEUE DEUTSCHE ZEITUNG

Cologne, May 19. The last number of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung printed in red ink has just been published here. At last it, too, has succumbed to the blows of divinely-graced Prussianism. Since the Government was unable to get at it by judicial proceedings, and in spite of all provocations it could not find a reason for imposing a state of siege, it finally had to have recourse to deporting its editor-in-chief,[6] and it prepared orders for the deportation or arrest of the other editors in case even that measure should not have the desired effect.—Day by day the German people will increasingly learn to appreciate the blessing which their representatives in Frankfurt intended to bestow on them by establishing a Prussian hereditary emperor.

DEUTSCHE LONDONER ZEITUNG

Cologne, May 19. The Neue Rheinische Zeitung has for the time being ceased publication; its last number today is printed entirely in red. The following order has been issued against its editor-in-chief:

"The tendency of the Neue Rheinische Zeitungto provoke in its readers contempt for the present government, and incite them to violent revolutions and the setting up of a social republic has become stronger in its latest pieces. The right of hospitality which he so disgracefully abused is therefore to be withdrawn from its editor-in-chief, Dr. Karl Marx, and since he has not obtained permission to prolong his stay in these states, he is ordered to leave them within 24 hours. If he should not comply voluntarily with this demand, he is to be forcibly conveyed across the frontier".

"Cologne, May 11, 1849

Royal Government. Moeller

To Herr Geiger, Royal Police Superintendent, here.[7]

Today a poster has been pasted up in the streets of Cologne, inviting attendance at a meeting to discuss the speedy establishment of a new democratic organ.

Such, you constitutional Germans, are your new achievements!—A German, a Prussian, is expelled from Germany "because he abuses hospitality"—a newspaper is suppressed because it spoke the truth, because Prussia's reactionary martial-law newspapers were unable to cope with the wit and stylistic acumen of the noble-minded Marx. Yes, Herr von Hohenzollern, the truth told you by the Neue Rheinische Zeitung is painful, very painful—(we shall reproduce in our next issue an article from the newspaper, "The Deeds of the Hohenzollern Dynasty")[8] —and when press trials, and all other acts of trickery, proved of no avail, for eight to ten times the tortures of the Prussian Inquisition came to naught in the face of the sound common sense of a Rhenish jury, recourse was had to the ultimate means—suppression of the newspaper. In vain did the bankrupt brains of Prussian reaction assail the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, they could not get at it by judicial measures. The martial-law newspapers of drunken Frederick William could not refute the exposition which Marx gave of the edicts of the hypocrite in Potsdam,[9] —and worst of all was the fact that the circulation of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung increased so quickly and was so extensive, and that the paper met with universal approval.

The Hohenzollern on his throne, surrounded by "My glorious army" and with a legion of quill-drivers at his service, trembles before a single democratic newspaper; he cannot sleep in peace because it tells the naked truth —so it must be suppressed.

Things have come to such a pass with the monarchy that it has to proceed to use brute force to suppress a newspaper which, by the irrefutable pungency of its truth, threatened to give the miserable, ailing existence of the monarchy a still more wretched ending!

This is the Prussian guaranteed freedom of the press. Such is the interpretation of the Prussian Constitution—of the German Imperial Constitution!

DEMOCRATIC REVIEW[10]

...The German kings and princes—gore-dyed with the blood of their "subjects",—are labouring hard for the establishment of the Red Republic. The thrice-perjured King of Prussia[11] is determined to earn for himself the tide of "Most Infamous". On the 27th of April, the Prussian Chamber of Representatives was dissolved and the same evening, crowds having collected in the streets, the people were fired on and mercilessly butchered. From that time martial law has been the only law throughout Prussia, arrests are continually taking place, and the prisons are crowded. Early in May, insurrections broke out in the Rhine provinces. In some of the insurgent towns, the patriots have been put down, in others they have been sold by the bourgeoisie, and in others they yet maintain their stand.

That admirable journal, the New Rhenish Gazette, has been forcibly suppressed, and its chief editor, Dr. Marx, expelled from Cologne. The last number of the Gazette appeared on the 19th May, printed in red ink; it proclaimed in every line "war to the knife" against his Prussian kingship, and all the oppressors and betrayers of the German people....

  1. ↑ As the report of May 18 from Cologne published in the Trier'sche Zeitung indicates, the news of reprisals against the Neue Rheinische Zeitung was circulating among journalists before May 19, when the last issue of the newspaper appeared. A Cologne correspondent of the constitutional monarchist Deutsche Zeitung put out in Frankfurt am Main wrote as follows about this in a report also dated May IS: "The editor-in-chief of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, Herr Karl Marx, has received orders from our Regierungspräsident to leave Cologne within 24 hours, failing which the authorities will be obliged to resort to force. The reason given in the letter from the Regierungspräsident is that by the unbridled language predominating in recent numbers of his newspaper, by deriding and insulting the Royal Government and the authorities, as well as by openly working for the Social Republic, Herr Marx has shamelessly abused the hospitality extended to him.
  2. ↑ "Farewell Word of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung", first published in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 301, May 19, 1849.— Ed.
  3. ↑ Marx, "Prussian Financial Administration under Bodelschwingh and Co." and "Further Contribution on the Old-Prussian Financial Administration" (see present edition, Vol. 8, pp. 379-89, 418-20).— Ed.
  4. ↑ W. Wolff, "Die Schlesische Milliarde", Neue Rheinische Zeitung, March-April 1849.— Ed.
  5. ↑ See this volume, pp. 197-228.— Ed.
  6. ↑ Marx.— Ed
  7. ↑ See this volume, pp. 496-97.— Ed.
  8. ↑ The article was reproduced in the Deutsche Londoner Zeitung No. 218, June 1, 1849.— Ed.
  9. ↑ The reference is to a number of Marx's items and his speech for the defence at the trial against the Rhenish District ' Committee of Democrats on February 8, 1849. These were published in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung and proved that by effecting the coup d'état and dispersing the Prussian National Assembly on December 5, 1848, the Government of Frederick William IV had grossly violated the edicts sanctioned by the King after the March revolution introducing a constitutional system in the country. In his speech for the defence Marx pointed to the "Decision on Some Principles of the Future Prussian Constitution" adopted on April 6, 1848 and the electoral law for the convocation of the National Assembly adopted on April 8, 1848 (see Note 86).
  10. ↑ This is an excerpt from the section "Continental Europe" in "The Political and Historical Survey" published in several issues of the Democratic Review: The author of the "Survey" was obviously George Julian Harney, editor of the journal.
  11. ↑ Frederick William IV.— Ed.