"Neue Rheinische Zeitung" – Lassalle

The Counter-Revolutionary Plans in Berlin
Contents
The Prussian Kick for the Frankfurters

Page numbers refer to: Karl Marx – Friedrich Engels – Werke, Volume 6, pp. 454-458  

Lassalle

["Neue Rheinische Zeitung" No. 287 of 2 May 1849]

Cologne, 1 May. The day after tomorrow the charge against Lassalle on account of direct incitement to arm against the royal power will be heard before the Assizes at Düsseldorf.

It will be recalled that last November, when the state of siege was imposed on Düsseldorf, Lassalle, Cantador (chief of the Düsseldorf civic guard) and the colporteur Weyers were arrested and the investigation against them on account of the above-mentioned “crime against Art. 87 and 102 of the Code pénal” was opened. <See “N.Rh.Ztg.” No. 237, “Lassalle”>

The investigation proceeded as slowly as possible. While the tax-refusal trial against the Rhenish District Committee of the Democrats, which was brought at the same time, was already heard on 8 February in Cologne, assizes after assizes came and went in Düsseldorf before even the Cologne indicting chamber referred the case to the jury. But Marx, Schneider and Schapper were walking about free, while Lassalle sat in the Düsseldorf house of detention, and the Code d’instruction criminelle prescribes, after all, that the case of a person under arrest is to be given priority!

Lassalle was treated in prison with quite particular solicitude. The “N[eue] Rh[einische] Z[ei]t[un]g” has often enough had occasion to publish samples of the tenderness with which the myrmidons of royal Prussian justice attended to him. <See “N.Rh.Ztg.” No. 219, “Lassalle”> While Cantador was granted every possible favour—for Cantador, despite his political stance, had a large number of friends among the Düsseldorf bourgeoisie—Lassalle once again had to experience the tyrannical arbitrariness to which a prisoner under investigation by royal Prussian justice is exposed. We recall, not to mention the petty chicaneries, only the brutalities which Herr Morret, the prison director, permitted himself against him in the presence of the examining magistrate, Herr Ebermeyer (whom we now have the good fortune to possess here in Cologne). Lassalle submitted a complaint to the parquet; the General Public Prosecutor, Herr Nicolovius, decided: The act in question constitutes neither a crime nor a misdemeanour and can therefore not be prosecuted!

We further recall the drives which the physician deemed urgently necessary for Lassalle’s health, for which the public prosecutor’s department gave its consent, while the government refused it, even though a prisoner under investigation is, by law, subject not to the government but solely and exclusively to the public prosecutor.

The difficulties involved in gaining access to Lassalle in prison, the prevarications, the hide-and-seek, etc., are known to everyone who has ever attempted to penetrate the interior of the Düsseldorf “establishment”.

At last the investigation was concluded and the case was to go to the council chamber. At that time there was still time to bring the case before the last assizes, which were held in February and March. But that was to be prevented at all costs. When the files were submitted to the deputy Senior Public Prosecutor, the “gracious” Herr von Ammon I, for him to formulate his final submission, Herr Ammon suddenly produced a letter from Lassalle to a certain Stangier, an agriculturalist in the Altenkirchen district <See “N.Rh.Ztg.” No. 283, “Lassalle”>, in order to base a new charge upon it. Yet this letter had already lain quietly in Herr Ammon’s desk for several weeks without it ever having occurred to him to add it to the files as a fresh count of complaint. Now, when everything was ready and the assizes were at the door, now he appears with the letter. Now, of course, new witness interrogations had to be held, the case was delayed by several weeks, and this time was exactly sufficient to make it impossible to hear Lassalle’s procedure at the assizes then imminent.

The letter which Herr Ammon, as he himself admitted, had kept in his desk for some time was, in any case, so insignificant that neither the council chamber nor the indicting chamber took any notice of it nor cited it as a ground of complaint!

Enough, the assizes were happily circumvented, and the next ones did not begin until May. Deputation after deputation went to the General Public Prosecutor, Herr Nicolovius, and begged for the speeding up of the case or the convocation of an extraordinary assize. Herr Nicolovius promised to do everything possible and declared that, in no case, would Lassalle sit for six months. And now! Hardly a fortnight is wanting of the six months.

At last the council chamber decided  . . All three defendants were referred to the indicting chamber. But now a difficulty presented itself: It was firmly believed, that no jury could have been found in the entire district court jurisdiction of Düsseldorf that would have convicted Herr Cantador. In order, therefore, to get Cantador free, Lassalle would have been acquitted along with him, even by people who would otherwise have convicted him. And it was precisely on the conviction of Lassalle that the government in Düsseldorf, the ministry, and even the highest and most exalted camarilla set such store. The enmity towards Lassalle “does not halt even before the throne”.

What happens? “The indicting chamber drops the proceedings against Cantador and sets him free, while Lassalle and Weyers remain in custody and are referred to the jury.”

And yet the case against Cantador was exactly the same as that against Lassalle, with the exception of a single speech which Lassalle had delivered in Neuss.

And it is precisely this speech in Neuss that is seized upon, and on the strength of it Lassalle is sent before the assizes.

Let us briefly recall the whole course of events.

When open conflict between the late National Assembly and the crown could break out any day, Düsseldorf, as is well known, was one of the most agitated towns in the Rhine Province. Here the civic guard was entirely on the side of the National Assembly and, moreover, was led by a democrat. It was ready to transform passive resistance into active resistance as soon as the signal for it was given from Berlin. Arms and ammunition were available. Lassalle and Cantador stood at the head of the whole movement. They not only called upon the citizens to arm against the Manteuffel ministry, they actually armed. Here in Düsseldorf was the centre of their activity. Here, if a crime really existed, this crime must have been committed. And where is it supposed to have been committed? Not in Düsseldorf, but—in Neuss!!

Lassalle had been in a meeting in Neuss and had called for armed reinforcement at Düsseldorf. This call did not even have a result, for no fighting occurred at all. And it is in this that Lassalle’s crime is supposed to consist!

Thus it is not on account of his main activity, not on account of the actual arming, not on account of the actual uprising which was on the point of breaking out in Düsseldorf, that Lassalle is referred to the jury: in that there is no “crime”. The indicting chamber itself, decrepit though it is, has to admit it. The alleged crime lies in an entirely incidental, surreptitious act, totally dependent on the main action in Düsseldorf and completely senseless without it, not in the organisation of an armed force against the government in Düsseldorf, but in the call upon the people of Neuss to support this organisation!

But, of course, Cantador was not in Neuss when Lassalle delivered this terrible speech; Cantador did not call upon the people of Neuss to armed resistance; Cantador merely—organised the Düsseldorfers for armed resistance and called upon the civic guard there, which is itself a part of the armed forces of the government, to resist the government. That is the difference, and therefore Cantador was released and Lassalle was kept in custody until the present assizes.

Better still. Lassalle also directly called upon the agriculturalist Stangier to proceed armed to Düsseldorf. The letter is among the files and is quoted verbatim in the indictment. (See No. 277, second edition, of the “N[eue] Rh[einische] Z[ei]t[un]g”.) Did the indictment find in this a reason to refer Lassalle to the assizes? It never occurred to it. Even the council chamber, which did after all formulate nine counts of indictment against Lassalle, of which the indicting chamber dropped eight, did not think of including this letter among the indictment counts. And yet this letter contains exactly the same alleged “crime” that Lassalle committed in Neuss.

Something more inconsistent, more contradictory, more incomprehensible than this committal order of the indicting chamber has rarely been fabricated.

But one thing in it is indeed worthy of recognition: According to the judgment of the Cologne senate itself, in the whole agitation, as it was carried on last November in Düsseldorf, in the direct call for resistance against the ministry, in the arming, in the procuring of ammunition, in the direct and open opposition of the civic guard to the government, in the oath which the civic guard swore, to fight with arms in hand against the government and for the National Assembly—in all of that there is no crime. The Cologne indicting chamber has said so.

And it agrees on this point with the Cologne council chamber, indeed with the Cologne parquet. In the investigation against the Rhenish District Committee, both calmly passed over the call to arm against the “enemy”, left the criminal case aside, and confined themselves to the correctional fact of rebellion, which was tried before a jury only because it had passed through the press.

In Lassalle’s case, however, they have been much more cunning. They first initiated criminal proceedings and reserve the correctional proceedings for themselves. For in the event that Lassalle is acquitted on account of the Neuss speech, they have referred him to the police court for incitement to resist the officials (rebellion), which is supposed to be contained in two Düsseldorf speeches.

Here we need only recall the trial proceedings against the Rhenish District Committee. The case is entirely analogous. There it was demonstrated that either a crime (the same one of which Lassalle is accused) existed, or there was nothing at all; that one cannot call for armed resistance against the government without calling for resistance also against all the individual officials who constitute the government. The jury acquitted.

Lassalle will be in the same position if, after his undoubtedly imminent acquittal by the jury, he comes before the correctional court. But in the meantime they have a pretext to apply for prolongation of his detention, and then the correctional court is, after all, not so fastidious as the jury!

Tomorrow we shall go into the indictment itself and also demonstrate from it the absurdity of this whole procedure.