"Neue Rheinische Zeitung" – Arrests

Arrests

Contents

Agreement Debates

Page numbers refer to: Karl Marx – Friedrich Engels – Werke, Volume 5, pp. 166-168

Arrests

["Neue Rheinische Zeitung" No. 35, July 5, 1848]

Cologne, July 4. We promised our readers yesterday
to return to the arrest of Dr.
Gottschalk
and
Anneke.
So far, we have received further details only concerning Anneke’s arrest.

Between six and seven o’clock in the morning, six or seven gendarmes entered Anneke’s lodgings,
immediately maltreated the maidservant in the hallway and stole quietly up
the stairs. Three remained standing in the anteroom, four forced their way into the bedroom, where Anneke and
his wife, who was far advanced in pregnancy, were sleeping. Of these four pillars of justice, one
was staggering more or less, already at such an early hour filled with “spirit”, the water of
true life, burnt water.

Anneke asked what they wanted. – He was to come along! was the laconic answer. Anneke begged
that they would at least spare his sick wife and go into the anteroom. The gentlemen of the Holy
Hermandad declared that they would not leave the bedroom, hurried Anneke to
dress quickly, and did not even allow him to speak to his wife. This hurrying
turned into physical violence in the anteroom, in the course of which one of the gendarmes smashed the glass door
to pieces. Anneke was pushed
down the stairs
. Four
gendarmes led him off to the new prison, three remained with Mrs. Anneke to guard her until the
arrival of the state prosecutor.

According to legal regulations, at least one
officer of the
judicial police
– a police commissioner or the like – must be present at an arrest. What is the point of such
formalities, now that the people have two assemblies for the representation of its rights,
one in Berlin and one in Frankfurt?

Half an hour later, State Prosecutor
Hecker
and Examining Magistrate

Geiger
arrived to search the house.

Mrs. Anneke complained that the
state prosecutor had left the arrest to the brutal gendarmes, who were unchecked by the presence of any municipal officer.
Herr Hecker declared that he had given
no order
for brutalities.
As if Herr Hecker could order brutalities?

Mrs.
Anneke
: It seemed that the gendarmes had been sent ahead
alone
in order not to have to take responsibility for their brutality. Moreover, the arrest had
not taken place in the legal form, since no gendarme had presented an arrest warrant,
one merely pulled a scrap of paper out of his pocket which Anneke was not allowed to read.

Herr
Hecker
: “The gendarmes had been ordered to carry out the arrest
by judicial authority.”
And the command of the judges, is it not subject to the command of the law?
State prosecutor and examining magistrate confiscated a mass of papers, pamphlets,
among them the entire portfolio of Mrs. Anneke, etc. Incidentally, Examining Magistrate Geiger is
designated
police director.

In the evening Anneke was interrogated for half an hour. The reason for his arrest was said to be
a seditious speech which he had delivered at the last public meeting on the Gürzenich.
Art. 102 of the Code pénal speaks of public speeches which

directly
incite to plots against the Emperor and his family or which
aim at disturbing the public peace by civil war, by the unlawful use of
armed force, by public devastation and plunder. The
Code does not recognise the Prussian “arousing of discontent”. In the absence of
the Prussian Code, Article 102 will for the time being be applied wherever
its application belongs to juridical impossibilities..

For the arrest itself, a large military force was deployed – as of four o’clock
confinement of the troops to barracks. Bakers and artisans were allowed in, but
not out again. The hussars advanced from Deutz to Cologne
around six o’clock and rode through the whole town. The new prison was occupied by 300 men. For
today four new arrests have been announced, of Jansen, Kalker, Esser, and a fourth person.
Jansen’s poster, in which he exhorted the
workers to keep calm,
was, as
eye-witnesses
assure us, torn down
by the police
last night.
Was this done in the interest of order? Or was a pretext being sought to carry out long-cherished
plans in the good city of Cologne?

Senior Prosecutor Zweiffel is said to have inquired earlier at the High Court of Appeal in Arnsberg
whether he should arrest Anneke on account of his former conviction and transport him to
Jülich. The royal

amnesty seems to have stood in the way of this well-meaning intention. The matter went to the
ministry.

Senior Prosecutor Zweiffel is also said to have declared that within 8
days he would put an end to the 19th of March, to the clubs and press freedom and other excesses
of the wicked year 1848 in Cologne on the Rhine. Herr Zweiffel
does not belong to the sceptics.

Does Herr Zweiffel perhaps combine executive and legislative power? Are the laurels
of the senior prosecutor to cover the nakedness of the people’s representative? Once more
we shall go through our much-loved stenographic reports and present the public with a
faithful picture of the activities of the people’s representative and senior prosecutor
Zweiffel.

These, then, are the deeds of the
Ministry of Action
, the ministry of the Left
Centre, the ministry of transition to an old-aristocratic, old-bureaucratic,
old-Prussian ministry. As soon as Herr Hansemann has fulfilled his transitory vocation,
he will be dismissed.

The Left in Berlin, however, must see that the old power can safely leave it small parliamentary
victories and large constitutional drafts, if only it
seizes all really decisive positions in the meantime. It can safely recognise the
revolution of the 19th of March in the Chamber, if only the latter is disarmed outside
the Chamber.

The Left might find one fine morning that its parliamentary
victory and its real defeat coincide.
German development perhaps
requires such contrasts
.

The Ministry of Action recognises the revolution in principle, in order to carry out the
counter-revolution in practice.