Neue Rheinische Zeitung – Berlin Debates on the Agreement

Legal Proceedings Against the
*Neue Rheinische Zeitung*

Contents

The
Ministry of Action

Page numbers refer to: Karl Marx – Friedrich Engels – Werke, Volume 5, pp. 178-183

Berlin Debates on the Agreement

[*Neue Rheinische Zeitung* No. 37 of 7 July 1848]

Cologne, 6 July. While in Berlin ministerial crisis No. 2 is taking its further course, let us for the time being – to speak with Deputy Mätze – withdraw “from these storms” back to the hitherto so “placid sea” of the conciliation debate. Say what you will, we have spent more than an hour here of comfortable cheerfulness –

Here discipline and decency still reign,
And many a quiet pleasure blooms
Here too, in our midst.

<H. Heine, *Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen*, Caput XXV>

The sitting of 30 June is the one at issue. Right from the very outset it opens with important, quite particularly characteristic occurrences.

Who has not heard of the great campaign of the fifty-seven Berg and Mark family fathers for the salvation of the fatherland? Who does not know with what contempt for death this flower of conservative petty-bourgeois philistinism set out, abandoning wife and child and business, in order to step into the breach, to deliver a life-or-death battle to the revolution, in a word, to march to Berlin and present the ministry with a petition against the subversives?

These fifty-seven paladins then likewise submitted a communication to the Assembly of Agreement, containing gently reactionary pious wishes. The communication is read out. Some gentlemen of the Right demand to hear the signatures as well. The secretary begins to read; an interruption ensues, cries of: “Enough, enough!”

Deputy Berg:

“The document just read out is either a motion or a petition. If it is a motion, I should like to know which member makes it his own. If it is a

petition, let it be handed over to the
appropriate committee and let us be bored with it no longer
.”

This laconic answer from Herr Berg disposes of the matter. The President stammers a few apologies and sets aside the communication of the fifty-seven family fathers.

Thereupon rises our old friend, and that of the Left, Deputy Schultz of Wanzleben:

“The day before yesterday I withdrew my motions on civil marriage, etc., with the explanation that the legislative drafts were to be formulated differently by me. In connection with this, I find noted in the stenographic reports: ‘
Laughter
’. It may be that one or other person laughed at this, but certainly
without cause
.” (fresh laughter.)

Deputy Schultz of Wanzleben now sets forth with the most thorough good-nature how he only wants the best and is quite willing to be instructed to the better; how he allowed himself to be instructed as to the imperfection of the legislative drafts submitted by him; how he now cannot after all submit amendments to his own proposals himself; and how he therefore considers it his duty not “to lay before” the Assembly the motion in the original form, but to withdraw it for the time being.

“I can find nothing laughable in this, and I must protest if, by the word ‘laughter’, my well-motivated course of procedure is represented as a

laughable
one.”

It goes with Deputy Schultz of Wanzleben as with Knight Tannhäuser:

When I think upon this laugher,
I weep sudden tears.

<H. Heine, “Tannhäuser”, Caput 2>

Deputy Brill remarks that, in the otherwise so excellent stenographic reports, a phrase by Minister Hansemann is missing – that the programme of the present ministry is a continuation of the speech from the throne. This had remained especially in his memory because, as a book-printer, he had been reminded of the phrase “to be continued” which he had so often printed.

This frivolous treatment of the most serious subjects enrages Deputy Ritz to the utmost. He storms to the rostrum and declares:

“Gentlemen, I believe it is required by the dignity of the Assembly that we abstain from
similes
in the speeches and from comparisons which are not appropriate to the time and place. They are also
unparliamentary
. (Great unease.) We spent the

previous sitting in
great hilarity
; I do not consider that suited to the dignity of the Assembly…. In the interest of the dignity of this Assembly, I would recommend a certain
sobriety
.”

“In the interest” of the “sobriety” recommended by Deputy Ritz, we would recommend to Deputy Ritz, “in the interest of the dignity of the Assembly,” to take the floor as seldom as possible, since “great hilarity” always follows close on his heels.

How greatly, however, the well-meaning intentions of such worthy men as Messrs. Schultz of Wanzleben and Ritz are always misunderstood in this wicked world was shown immediately. For President Grabow appointed the scrutineers and among them, for the Left Centre, Herr Schultz of Wanzleben (laughter), and for the Right Centre, Herr Brill (hilarity). As far as Herr Brill is concerned, our readers must know that this deputy, who belongs to the most determined Left, has seated himself in the Right Centre in the very midst of the Upper Silesian and Pomeranian peasants, among whom, through his popular talent for speaking, he has succeeded in bringing to naught many whispered insinuations of the reactionary party.

There follows the interpellation of Herr Behnsch regarding the Russian note which is said to have effected Wrangel’s withdrawal from Jutland. Auerswald, in spite of the *Morning Chronicle* and the Russian *Bee*, denies the existence of this note. We believe that Herr Auerswald is right; we do not believe that Russia sent an official “note” to Berlin. What, however, Nikolaus sent to Potsdam we can know just as little as Herr Auerswald.

Herr Behnsch likewise interpellates concerning the note of Major Wildenbruch to the Danish government, according to which the Danish war was only a sham war, a piece of play-acting to occupy the patriotic excess of strength.

On this interpellation, Herr Auerswald finds occasion
not
to
reply.

After a long-winded and tortuous discussion on select committees, there at last occurs a really interesting parliamentary scene, a scene in which some indignation, some passion victoriously drowns out the stereotyped drum-beating of the Right. It is Deputy Gladbach to whom we have to thank for this scene. The Minister of War had promised to answer his interpellation today concerning the disarming and arrest of the returning volunteers. <See “Conciliation Debates”>

As soon as the President announces that this
subject is before them, Lieutenant-Colonel Griesheim, whom we have long known, straightway rises and begins to speak. This bureaucratic-soldierly obtrusiveness, however, is immediately rebuffed by violent interruption.

The President declares that, according to § 28 of the standing orders, ministerial assistants may only take the floor with the approval of the Assembly.

Griesheim: I am here as representative of the Minister of War.

President: I have
not been informed
of this.

Griesheim: If the
gentlemen
do not wish to hear me… (Oh! Unease.)

“The gentlemen!” For Herr Griesheim, “the gentlemen” are surely still a “high Assembly”! The President ought to have called Herr Griesheim to order for his repeated disregard of all decorum.

The Assembly wishes to hear Herr Griesheim. Before that, Herr Gladbach still has the floor to state the grounds for his interpellation. First, however, he declares that he interpellated the Minister of War and requires his presence – a power which belongs to the Assembly under the standing orders. The President, however, dismisses this, and, taking into account the urgency of the matter, Herr Gladbach goes into the interpellation more closely. He relates how the volunteers, after they had resigned and returned home because of the application of military despotism to their corps, were proscribed in Spandau with the brand of vagabonds by the “accursed police system that had crawled back out of its lurking-holes overnight”; how they were disarmed in Spandau, held, and sent home by means of a compulsory pass. Herr Gladbach is the first deputy who has succeeded in recounting such an ignominious act with all the appropriate indignation.

Herr Griesheim declares that the measure was taken on the requisition of the Berlin Police Presidency.

Herr Gladbach now reads out the honourable discharge, signed by Prince Frederick of Schleswig-Holstein, of one of the volunteers, and compares it with the utterly vagabond-like compulsory pass that was issued to the same volunteer “by ministerial decree” in Spandau. He points to the threat of
arrest
,
penal labour
, and
fine
contained in the compulsory pass, gives the lie to Herr Griesheim’s assertion that the measure originated from the Police President by means of an official document, and asks whether perhaps there is some special
Russian
ministry in Spandau?

For the first time, the ministry was caught in a direct untruth. The whole Assembly falls into the greatest agitation.

The Minister of the Interior, Herr Kühlwetter,
is at last compelled by necessity to rise and stammer a few excuses. After all,
nothing further
had happened than that 18 armed men had been deprived of their weapons – nothing further than an illegality! It had been impossible to tolerate armed bands roaming the country without permission – 22 volunteers, on their way home! (without permission!)

The first words of the Minister are received with unmistakable signs of disapproval. Even the Right is still too much under the crushing impression of the facts to do other than at least remain silent. But soon, as they see their unfortunate minister laboriously winding his way between the laughter and the murmuring of the Left, they pluck up courage, shout a loud bravo at his lame evasions, the Centre groups partly join in, and thus Herr Kühlwetter is finally emboldened to the point of saying: Not I, but my predecessor ordered the measure, but I declare that I fully approve it and would act in just the same way such cases arise.

The Right and the Centre groups crown the bravery of their heroic Kühlwetter with a thunderous bravo.

Gladbach, however, does not allow himself to be intimidated. Amid the noise and shouting of the conservatives, he mounts the rostrum and asks once again: How does it hang together that Herr Schreckenstein, who after all was already minister before the Spandau affair,
knew nothing of it
? How is it possible that
four

volunteers with advantageous certificates could endanger the security of the state? (Interruption – remarks on the standing orders from the gentlemen of the Centre.) The question is not settled. How can these people be forcibly sent home like vagabonds? (Interruption. Noise.) I have still received no answer to the question regarding the compulsory pass. These people have been maltreated. Why, then, is a pack of
tract-heroes
, who arrived from the Wupper valley bearing arms to the disgrace of the capital (loud noise) tolerated? <see
p. 178
> (Noise. Bravo.)

Kühlwetter finally comes out with the explanation that it was done under the pretext of doubtful legitimation! So the discharge signed by the Schleswig-Holstein general command is a legitimation that is “subject to doubt” in the eyes of Herr Kühlwetter's police bureaucrats? Strange bureaucracy!

A few more deputies speak against the ministers, until at last the President drops the matter, and Deputy Mätze steers the Assembly

out of the storms of this debate into the placid sea of
schoolmaster life, where we take leave of them, wishing them the fairest idyllic joys.

We are glad that, at last, a deputy of the Left has succeeded, by means of a well-founded interpellation and resolute demeanour, in making the ministerial gentlemen run the gauntlet and in provoking a scene reminiscent of French and English parliamentary debates.