A Rebuttal by Oberlandesgerichtsrath Rintelen

Cologne, January 10. Oberlandesgerichtsrath Rintelen (at Paderborn) has sent to the editorial board of the *Neue Rheinische Zeitung* the “Rebuttal” printed below, with the “most humble request” that it be included in the “next” number, that “the place in which the attacking article appeared be assigned to it”—all this “with reference to the Press Law of March 17, 1848,” etc. We assign Herr Rintelen’s article a rank even higher than that claimed. *A tout seigneur toute honneur.* By no means, however, do we consider ourselves obliged to publish the entire rebuttal. The law obliges the press only to publish factual replies, but by no means to fill its columns with insults aimed at its own correspondents or with the pathetic effusions of its opponents. If, therefore, we give Herr Rintelen’s “Rebuttal” in its entirety, it is only because we have searched in vain for the part that might contain a factual refutation, and must therefore leave it to the public to discover it for themselves.

Herr Rinteln’s letter to the editors closes with the words:

“At the same time I request that the sender of the aforementioned article be named to me: failing which I should be obliged to hold a highly esteemed editorial board responsible for it.”

In his “Rebuttal” itself, Herr Rintelen declares that, personally, the general indignation provoked by the attacking article fully satisfies him. If he replies publicly, it is only out of regard for piety. He does not give the public even the remotest hint that he intends legal or other prosecutions against the deeply despised “anonymous”. The editorial board therefore appeals from Herr Rintelen’s private letter to his public letter, and makes the naming dependent on the discretion of its correspondent.

Now the document in question:

Rebuttal.

In No. 185 of the *Neue Rheinische Zeitung* of January 3 of this year, in an article headed “From Westphalia, December 30”, an attempt has been made to cast suspicion on the name Rintelen in a malicious manner. The undersigned, who may boast of bearing this name with honour, would allow such an abuse by an anonymous to rest upon its worthlessness, and would find fully adequate satisfaction in the general indignation which this article has provoked wherever the members of the Rintelen family are more intimately known, had not this libel sought to base itself mainly by casting suspicion on the integrity of his deceased father, the former Conservator Rintelen, and had not, therefore, considerations of piety compelled him to oppose it publicly in this connection, and indignantly to repudiate it as a malicious slander. To insult the dead is not the business of a man of honour: *de mortuis nil nisi bene*. To cast suspicion on them with the aid of lies, under the protection of anonymity, is—I leave it to the honoured reader to find the appropriate expression for it. It is, however, a gross distortion of the truth, and it is in this that the malicious, as well as the particularly insinuating nature, is manifested, that the deceased Conservator Rintelen is stated to have served Count Bochholz as General Rentmaster. He was indeed his General Mandatory: but he never had a cash-box to administer for him. In what manner he conducted his mandate, anyone who is interested can find out quite precisely from Count von Bocholz, now residing in Münster.

Paderborn, January 8, 1849.

Rintelen,
Oberlandesgerichtsrath.