Letter to Carl Siebel, May 15, 1860

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 15 May 1860


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, Second Russian Edition, Vol. 39, Moscow, 1966
Printed according to the original
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 41


MARX TO CARL SIEBEL

IN MANCHESTER

[London,] 15 May [1860]

Dear Siebel,

Herewith the answer from Berlin from which it appears that the criminal action has been dismissed. The civil action will never make any headway.[1] Kindly send the Mittelrheinische Zeitung a few lines setting forth the facts of the case. Let me have the letter back as soon as you've shown it to Gumpert and Lupus.

I have not yet approached a publisher about the pamphlet[2] and am wondering whether to try Leipzig or Hamburg.

Engels left here yesterday evening,[3] sain et sauf.[4]

I have not received the Sphinx[5] from you but it doesn't matter. I do not regard Boustrapa[6] as a sphinx, still less Mr Karl Grün as an Oedipus.

Salut.

Your

K. M.

Apropos.

If you were to send the Mittelrheinische Zeitung a note about the progress of my case, dated 'Berlin', you might take the opportunity of slipping in a word or two about the Eichhoff-Stieber case,[7] which was decided on 10 May in the Court of the First Instance in Berlin. For Eichhoff has been given an eighteen-month sentence for 'libelling' Stieber. The libel suit rested mainly on the denunciation of Stieber (in the London Hermann)) for perjury, theft, etc., perpetrated by him in the course of the Communist trial in Cologne (1852).2 Below I cite various instances that are characteristic of the proceedings in the Prussian law court.

1. Eichhoff's denunciation rested (except for my pamphlet,3 which he could not, of course, mention) on the reports printed by the Kölnische Zeitung during the proceedings in Cologne,1 the authenticity of which has never been challenged either by Stieber or by anyone else. The court declared these reports to be inadmissible evidence. Whenever it was in the interests of Stieber, the court allowed as authentic the reports in the Vossische Zeitungc (probably deriving from Stieber himself), because they had been declared 'authentic' by Signor Stieber. Whenever it went against the interests of Stieber's denunciator, the selfsame court declared the meagre record kept by the clerk of the court to be the only authentic source.

2. Goldheim, a police official, and Greif, a police lieutenant, Stieber's chief fellow-culprits and his subordinate tools in the Communist trial of 1852, were wholly exempted from CROSS-EXAMINATION because the court did not wish to expose these gentlemen to the alternative (as the presiding judge'1 frankly stated) 'of either committing perjury or testifying against themselves'. On the other hand, their statements were allowed as evidence for Stieber's defence.

3. In 1851, Stieber and Greif had got the Prussian police spy Reuter to break into Oswald Dietz's house and steal papers, which (although they were in fact quite irrelevant to the charge 1<>8) were produced in evidence by Stieber during the Cologne trial. This theft was one of the counts upon which Eichhoff's denunciation of Stieber rested. And now just listen to this! Drenkmann, the Royal Procurator, enunciated the following brand-new theory of theft:

'The question as to whether or not the papers were acquired by theft may,' he said, 'be left in abeyance; in forming an opinion of the accused, it is of no account. Had they in fact been acquired by theft, the police official who had thus obtained them could not be accused of theft in the legal sense, but at most of immoral conduct. A theft in the legal sense demands a dolus malus?[8] This, however, cannot be assumed of police officials who might have instigated such a theft, since they would have been acting, not for their private advantage, but in the interests of the State.'

Thus, if a Prussian police official breaks into a house in London and 'steals' from it, he is 'at most' committing an immoral action, but not a crime in law. This is a suspension of COMMON LAW imposed upon the English by the Prussian State.

4. Hirsch, in prison in Hamburg, had testified on oath that the minute-book 169 had been fabricated by himself and Fleury under Greif's supervision. Why wasn't Hirsch taken to Berlin to be cross-examined as a witness there during the trial?

[9] [10] [11] [12]

  1. ↑ See this volume, p. 129.
  2. ↑ K. Marx, Herr Vogt.
  3. ↑ Engels left for Barmen on about 12 May 1860. On his way there and back he stopped over briefly with Marx in London.
  4. ↑ safe and sound
  5. ↑ [K. Grün,] Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, die Sphinx auf dem französischen Kaiserthron, Hamburg, 1860.
  6. ↑ Boustrapa—nickname of Louis Bonaparte, composed of the first syllables of the names of the cities where he staged putsches: Strasbourg (30 October 1836), Boulogne (6 August 1840) and Paris (coup d'état of 2 December 1851, which culminated in the establishment of a Bonapartist dictatorship).
  7. ↑ In late 1859, the German socialist Eichhoff was brought to trial by the Prussian authorities for publishing in the London weekly Hermann a series of articles exposing the part played by Wilhelm Stieber, chief of the Prussian political police, in organising the trial of the Communist League members in Cologne in 1852. In December 1859, Hermann Juch, the editor of the weekly, asked Marx for information on the Cologne trial, which he needed for Eichhoff's defence (see Marx's letter to Engels of 13 December 1859, present edition, Vol. 40 and also pp. 80-81 of this volume). In May 1860 a Berlin court sentenced Eichhoff to 14 months imprisonment.
  8. ↑ evil intent
  9. ↑ Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne
  10. ↑ Reports on the Communist trial in Cologne were published in the Kölnische Zeitung from 5 October to 13 November 1852, under the title 'Assisen-Procedur gegen D. Herrn. Becker und Genossen. Anklage wegen hochverrätherischen Complottes'.
  11. ↑ Reports on the Cologne Communist trial were published in the Königlich privilegirte Berlinische Zeitung von Staats- und gelehrten Sachen (Vossische Zeitung) from 6 October to 16 November 1852, under the title 'Die Verhandlungen des grossen Kommunistenprozess vor dem Assisenhofe zu Köln.
  12. ↑ Göbel