Lassalle

["Neue Rheinische Zeitung" No. 283, 27 April 1849]

* Cologne, 26 April. We have a fact to report, which shows that
en fait de justice
<
as far as justice is concerned
>

nothing is impossible any longer. Herr Procurator-General Nicolovius is well on the way to surpassing the laurels which Herr Hecker earned in his day.

It will be recalled from our earlier reports that in the criminal trial against Lassalle, the deputy Senior Procurator von Ammon I in Düsseldorf withheld from the examining magistrate for three weeks a letter by Lassalle in which he called upon a countryman from Schönstein <Stangier> to bring reinforcements of a few hundred men to Düsseldorf in the event of a struggle, only handing it over when the magistrate informed him that the investigation was closed. It will be recalled that because of this letter—which, incidentally, contained so little of a direct incitement to insurrection that neither the Council Chamber nor the Indictment Division included it among the grounds for the charge—the investigation had to be recommenced, and that this was the reason why Lassalle’s trial was not completed at the previous Assizes session.

Lassalle thereupon denounced this deliberate procrastination on the part of Herr von Ammon I to the Procurator-General.

Instead of sending any reply to Lassalle, the Procurator-General forwards Lassalle’s denunciation to the Düsseldorf Parquet with orders to institute an investigation on the basis of Article 222 against Lassalle on account of this denunciation, because in it Herr von Ammon is
insulted
!

Pends-toi, Figaro, tu n’aurais pas inventé cela! <Hang yourself, Figaro! You wouldn’t have invented that!>

A letter addressed to Herr Nicolovius is supposed to constitute an insult to Herr von Ammon within the meaning of Article 222! On the occasion of a press

trial which we had the pleasure of conducting against Herren Zweiffel and Hecker, we argued that Article 222 itself is applicable not to public insults offered through the press, but only to such insults as are flung in the personal presence of the officials to their faces <See “Der erste Preßprozeß der ‘Neuen Rheinischen Zeitung’”>.

But even if Article 222 were applicable to insults in
public
writings—surely nobody has yet ventured to claim that a letter to a third person could constitute an insult to an official. According to previous correctional practice, it was always required that the insulting document be addressed to the insulted person himself, or that it be publicly disseminated. Herr Nicolovius now discovers that it is an insult to an official if one writes to a
third person
in insulting terms about an official. So beware of speaking of officials in an irreverent tone in your private letters!

The fact that Lassalle’s letter was addressed to the
superior authority
of Herr von Ammon and was thus a
complaint
, a
denunciation
, makes the matter even more impossible.

For the law even makes it a duty to denounce derelictions of duty to the superior authority. If, therefore, the denunciation was true, it was perfectly in order; if it was untrue, the Procurator-General should have instituted proceedings on the basis of Article 373—on the basis of a
calumnious denunciation
. Then, however, Lassalle could have proved the truth of the denunciation in the easiest way in the world through the files, whereas in the case of a charge of insulting an official before the Correctional Tribunal this proof is not open to him.

The matter came before the Council Chamber in Düsseldorf. But this body also found that an insult must have been committed either publicly or in the presence of the person insulted, and dismissed the case. The Public Ministry opposed this, and our Cologne Indictment Division, already often tested and always found reliable, has actually decided on the basis of Article 222 to institute proceedings against Lassalle, who now happily finds himself encumbered with a correctional procedure!

What, if this goes on for a while yet, will not be made of Article 222?

Lassalle’s procedure comes before the Assizes, incidentally, on 3 May.