Neue Rheinische Zeitung – The Report of the Frankfurt Committee on Austrian Affairs

[Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 154, 28 November 1848]

*
Cologne
, 27 November. Some forty years ago there were people who depicted “Germany in its deepest humiliation”. It is well that they have already gone ad patres <to join their fathers>. They could not write such a book now; they would know no title for it, and were they to choose the old one, they would contradict themselves.

For there is always, with Germany, to speak with the English poet, “beneath the lowest deep a lower still” <John Milton, *Paradise Lost*>.

We believed that with the conclusion of the Danish armistice the greatest disgrace had been exhausted. After the appearance of the Reich envoy Raumer in Paris, Heckscher in Italy, the commissioner Stedtmann in Schleswig-Holstein and after the two notes to Switzerland, it seemed to us that nothing could surpass the humiliation of Germany. The appearance of the two Reich commissioners in
Austrian
affairs proves our delusion. How incredibly far German Reich commissioners can push Germany’s honour, what stupid incapacity, cowardice or treachery the gentlemen of the old liberalism can harbour in themselves, emerges amply from the just published “Report of the Committee on Austrian Affairs, etc.”, particularly from the 20 documents contained in it.

On 13 October Messrs Welcker and Mosle set out from Frankfurt on behalf of the Central Authority “to mediate in the
Viennese
affairs”. People unversed in the new central diplomacy expected within a few days news of the arrival of these gentlemen in Vienna. It was not known at the time that Reich commissioners possess their own travel itineraries. The Reich administrator’s Eisele and Beisele took the most direct route to
Vienna
via –
Munich
. With the well-known travel map from the “Jobsiade” in hand, they arrived there on the evening of the 15 October. Until midday on 17 October they now studied the Viennese events in the cosy company of the Bavarian ministers and the Austrian chargé d’affaires. In their first letter to Herr Schmerling they give an account of their preliminary studies. In Munich both have a lucid moment. They long most ardently for the arrival of a “third colleague”, a Prussian if possible, “because we would thereby be better equal to the great commission”. The Herr “Colleague” does not appear. The hope of a trinity founders; the paltry dualis has to venture out into the world alone. What will now become of the “great commission”? The great commission is driven in the pockets of Messrs Welcker and Mosle to Passau. Even before crossing the Austrian Rubicon, the “great commission” sends a proclamation on ahead. But over there it was frightful!

“Besides,” writes Welcker to Schmerling, “the population here on the Austrian frontier is in no way free from revolutionary and terroristic phenomena”, indeed “even the National Guards of Krems were only prevented by the pre-emptive military occupation of the bridge from breaking it down behind their Emperor and thus taking him captive, as it were.”

What reader would be callous enough not fully to appreciate these sentiments of a beautiful *Staatslexikon* soul! After the two gentlemen have refreshed themselves in Passau from midday on the 18th until the morning of the 20th, they proceed to Linz.

On 13 October they had set out from Frankfurt; by the evening of the 20th they are already in Linz. Does not this tremendous speed provide proof enough of the importance of their “great commission”? Could they have been driven to this enormous haste by special instructions? Enough, after a full seven days the gentlemen arrive in Linz. This town, which, with its “large factory population already worked upon by Viennese emissaries”, awakened anxious forebodings in Herr Welcker during his stay in Passau, shows absolutely nothing of the gibbets probably conjured up in his mind’s eye for himself and his second Herr Colleague. On the contrary:

“The whole National Guard with its officer corps and its band ... received us in ceremonial formation with the German flag flying, and together with the surrounding people with repeated cheers.”

Linz – the revolutionary Sodom – thus resolves itself into a well-disposed town possessing the bonhomie sufficient to receive our excellent Reich commissioners with ceremony. All the more gruesome, by contrast, does Vienna emerge in the Welcker-Mosle reports to Herr Schmerling as the most godless Gomorrha, as a cesspool of anarchy, etc.

On the 21st the gentlemen boarded the steamship and travelled to Krems. En route they reported to Frankfurt that they had had guards of honour in Linz, that the main guard had presented arms before them and similar equally important matters. At the same time they dispatch three letters: to Windischgrätz, Minister Kraus and to the presidency of the Reichstag.

Should anyone still not be completely satisfied by the more than eight days' activity of our Reich commissioners, let him now accompany them on the night of the 21st to the 22nd October to Stammersdorf, to the headquarters of Windischgrätz. Here the commissarial Central Authority beams forth at us in all its glory. “Windischgrätz,” say Welcker-Mosle, “rejected any influence on our part with
a certain brusqueness
.” In other words: They receive kicks and have to make themselves scarce. “Indeed, he would not even look at our authorisation,” Welcker complains to his Minister Schmerling. And to compound the affliction: Windischgrätz offers the personified Central Authority standing before him not a drop of wine, not even a schnapps.

Our commissioners therefore get back into the carriage, hum to themselves mournfully: “O du Deutschland, etc.” and drive to – Vienna? Heaven forbid! to Olmütz, “to the imperial court camp”. And they did well. The whole Reich joke would have lacked the punchline, the mediation comedy the last act. If they had been treated by Windischgrätz like stupid schoolboys, in Olmütz they found “on the part of the Emperor and the imperial family
a much more accommodating reception
” (cf. p. 11 of the Report, dispatch No. 6). They were invited to table, and “we have,” they further wrote to Herr Schmerling, “had to rejoice in the
most gracious
reception”. This is by no means the German lackey nature speaking here, but the most heartfelt gratitude, which finds its corresponding expression in the song: “After so many sufferings, etc.”

After all the eating and drinking there still remains the well-known “great commission” to be discharged. Our two commissioners address themselves in writing to Minister Freiherr von
Wessenberg
.

“Your Excellency” (begins the letter of 25 October), “we most humbly request
most kindly
to let us know an hour in which it would be agreeable to you to receive our thanks for the benevolent reception accorded to our mission and to ourselves on the part of His Imperial-Royal Majesty and Your Excellency, and to communicate to us in relation to the following points, still pertaining to the execution of our mission, your views and resolutions.”

The “following points” say in many words that the commissioners desire permission to proceed to Vienna for mediation.

The entire letter, like the second one to Wessenberg, is couched in such a tortuous chancery style of the previous century, so full of immoderate politeness and servility, that it does one actual good to be able to read Wessenberg’s replies immediately afterwards. The two commissioners stand opposite the Austrian minister in this correspondence like two loutish peasants before the high-bred nobleman, when they make their comical bows on the polished floor and seek to produce truly select expressions.

Wessenberg replies to the above letter:

“High Well-born Sirs! I must beg forgiveness if I answer your communication of today so late... As concerns your well-meaning intention to make a further attempt in Vienna to compose the discords there, it seems necessary to me to place you first in knowledge of the present conditions there. It is namely not a question of negotiating with a party, but solely of suppressing an insurrection, etc.” (cf. p. 16 of the Report).

With this reply he at the same time returns their authorisations to them.

They repeat their request under date of 27 October.

“We must,” they say, “hold it an urgent duty again
most earnestly to request
Your Excellency, and in you the Imperial Government, to send us post-haste with mild and conciliatory commissions and conditions under safe conduct to Vienna, in order in this terrible crisis to employ the calming and personal power that lies in us and in our mission.”

We have seen how this “calming and personal power” has worked in the 14 days since it drove out through Frankfurt’s gates.

It exercises upon Wessenberg the mighty influence that in his reply to their request he gives no reply. He imparts to them some news from Vienna, half of it untrue besides, and observes ironically:

“Moreover, that insurrections of the kind like those of the proletarians in Vienna cannot lightly be suppressed without the application of coercive means, has been proven yet recently by the events in Frankfurt!”

Such arguments Messrs Welcker and Mosle could impossibly withstand: They therefore desist from further attempts and bide their time with their “calming and personal power” waiting on the things that are to come.

On 28 October they report to Schmerling again concerning their “great commission”. At Wessenberg’s offer they hand their despatch to a courier whom the former is sending to Frankfurt. The courier departs, but not the despatch. It arrives in Frankfurt only on 6 November. Had they not been at the imperial table, had the imperial family and especially Archduke Charles not spoken so amiably with them – the commissioners would have had to have lost their high wits over so much bad luck.

Now follows a two-day silence. The “calming power” keeps its Sabbath rest after so much work.

Then, on 30 October, Wessenberg imparts to them the official tidings of the surrender of Vienna. Their resolve is taken. To be sure, they still opined on 28 October (p. 14 of the Report), “it appears that with him [Windischgrätz] just as here [in Olmütz] with the influential persons, the thought,
all too much
, prevails not only of subduing Vienna but also of allowing an avenging chastisement to ensue for past wrongdoing.” But since then Wessenberg has assured them – and how should a Reich commissioner still dare doubt there – he has assured them that “in the use of this victory the Austrian Government will be guided by principles apt to secure for it the affection of its subjects”.

“Thus we can assume,” exclaims Welcker-Mosle, full of Reich pathos, “that our proposals have
after all
had some influence.” After all? Oh surely! You have most splendidly amused Wessenberg, Archduke Charles, Sophie and consorts for eight days. You were the imperial-royal digestive powder,
Welcker-Mosle
!

“After that assurance of the minister, we now consider our task solved, and shall tomorrow (31 October) set out on our return journey via Prague.”

Thus closes the last despatch of Messrs Welcker-Mosle.

And in truth, you are right, your “great commission” of reconciliation and mediation was discharged. Why should you have gone to Vienna now, anyway? Were not the apostles of humanity, Windischgrätz and Jellachich, masters of the city? Did not the red-coats and the imperial-royal troops preach, by means of plunder, arson, murder and rape, the gospel of peace and constitutional liberty, intelligible for everyone?

How thoroughly your “placatory power” has come into its own,

how splendidly you have resolved your task—that is shown by the death-rattle of the murdered, the cry of despair of the violated, that is shown by the thousands in the prisons, that is taught us by the bloody shadow
of Robert Blum.

Your task was to help stage the satyr play in Olmütz, as accompaniment to the trilogy which Windischgrätz, Jellachich and Wessenberg were putting on. It has been worthily discharged by you: you have, if nothing worse, at any rate played out the role of the
“duped uncles”
with virtuosity to the end.