"Neue Rheinische Zeitung" — The Berlin Debate on the Revolution

The Berlin Debate on the Revolution

[“Neue Rheinische Zeitung” No. 14, 14 June 1848]

Cologne, 13 June. The Assembly of Agreement has at last pronounced itself decisively. It has disavowed the revolution and recognised the theory of agreement.

The facts on which it had to pronounce were as follows:

On 18 March the king promised a constitution, introduced freedom of the press with sureties and declared in a series of proposals that the unity of Germany was to be brought about through the absorption of Germany into Prussia.

Those were the concessions of 18 March, reduced to their true content. The fact that the Berliners declared themselves satisfied with this, that they marched to the palace to thank the king for it, demonstrates most clearly the necessity of the revolution of 18 March. Not only the state, but also the citizens had to be revolutionised. The subject could be cast off only in a bloody struggle for liberation.

The famous “misunderstanding” provoked the revolution. There certainly was a misunderstanding. The attack by the soldiers, the continuation of the fight for sixteen hours, the necessity for the people to force the withdrawal of the troops—all this is proof enough that the people had completely misunderstood the concessions of 18 March.

The results of the revolution were: on the one hand, the arming of the people, the right of association, the sovereignty of the people effectively won; on the other, the retention of the monarchy and the Camphausen-Hansemann Ministry, i.e., the government of the representatives of the upper bourgeoisie.

Thus the revolution had two sets of results which inevitably had to diverge. The people had been victorious, it had conquered freedoms of a decidedly democratic nature; but immediate power passed not into its hands, but into those of the big bourgeoisie.

In a word, the revolution was not completed. The people had allowed the formation of a ministry of big bourgeois, and the big bourgeois immediately demonstrated their tendencies by offering an alliance to the old Prussian nobility and the bureaucracy. Arnim, Kanitz, Schwerin entered the ministry.

The high bourgeoisie, always anti-revolutionary, concluded an offensive and defensive alliance with the reaction out of fear of the people, i.e., of the workers and the democratic citizenry.

The united reactionary parties began their struggle against democracy by calling the revolution into question. The victory of the people was denied; the famous list of the “seventeen military dead” was fabricated; the barricade fighters were blackened in every possible way.

Nor was that enough. The ministry actually caused the United Diet, which had been convoked before the revolution, to be assembled, and to manufacture the legal transition from absolutism to the constitution after the event. In doing so it directly denied the revolution.

Furthermore it invented the theory of agreement, thereby denying the revolution once more, and at the same time denying the sovereignty of the people.

The revolution, therefore, was indeed called into question, and it could be called into question because it was only a half revolution, only the beginning of a long revolutionary movement.

We cannot go into the question here of why and to what extent the momentary rule of the high bourgeoisie in Prussia is a necessary transitional stage towards democracy, and why the high bourgeoisie, upon its accession to the throne, immediately sided with the reaction. We shall merely report the fact for the present.

The Assembly of Agreement now had to pronounce on whether it recognised the revolution or not.

But under these circumstances to recognise the revolution meant to recognise the democratic side of the revolution in opposition to the high bourgeoisie, which wanted to confiscate it.

To recognise the revolution meant at this moment precisely to recognise the half-heartedness of the revolution, and with it the democratic movement which is directed against a part of the results of the revolution.

It meant recognising that Germany is in a revolutionary movement in which the Camphausen Ministry, the theory of agreement, indirect elections, the rule of the big capitalists and the products of the Assembly itself may indeed be unavoidable points of transit, but are by no means final results.

The debate in the Chamber on the recognition of the revolution was conducted on both sides with great length and great interest, but with remarkably little spirit. One can read little that is more unpleasant than this diffuse discussion, interrupted at every moment by noise or by reglementary quibbles. Instead of the great passion of party struggle, a cool tranquillity of mind that threatens to sink at any moment into a mere conversational tone; instead of trenchant sharpness of argument, wide-ranging, confused talk straying from the subject; instead of a telling reply, tedious moral sermons on the essence and nature of morality.

The Left did not particularly distinguish itself in this debate either. Most of its speakers repeat one another; none dares to tackle the question boldly and to come forward in an openly revolutionary manner. They are afraid of giving offence everywhere, of hurting, of frightening people away. Had the fighters of 18 March displayed no more energy and passion in the fight than the gentlemen of the Left in the debate, Germany would be in a bad way.

[“Neue Rheinische Zeitung” No. 15, 15 June 1848]

Cologne, 14 June. Deputy Berends of Berlin opened the debate by moving:

“The Assembly declares, in recognition of the revolution, that the fighters of 18 and 19 March have well deserved of the Fatherland.”

The form of the motion, the old Roman laconic form, taken up again by the great French Revolution, was quite appropriate.

All the more inappropriate, however, was the manner in which Mr. Berends developed his motion. He did not speak in a revolutionary, but in a conciliatory way. He was supposed to represent the anger of the insulted barricade fighters before an assembly of reactionaries, and he lectured quite calmly and drily, as if he were still speaking as a teacher of the Berlin Workers’ Association. He had a very simple and very clear case to defend, and his exposition is the most confused thing one can read.

Mr. Berends begins:

“Gentlemen! The recognition of the revolution lies entirely in the nature of the thing (!). Our Assembly itself is a speaking recognition of the great movement which has passed through all the civilised countries of Europe. The Assembly has emerged from this revolution, its existence is therefore in fact the recognition of the revolution.”

First. It is by no means a question of recognising “the great movement which has passed through all the civilised countries of Europe” in general as a fact; that would be superfluous and meaningless. It is rather a question of recognising the Berlin street fighting, which is passed off as an émeute, as a genuine, real revolution.

Second. The Assembly in Berlin is indeed, from one aspect, a “recognition of the revolution”, in so far as without the Berlin street fighting no “agreed” constitution, but at most an imposed one, would have come into being. But through the manner of its convocation, through the mandate given to it by the United Diet and the ministry, it has become an equally good denial of the revolution. An assembly standing “on the ground of the revolution” does not come to an agreement, it decrees.

Third. The Assembly had already recognised the theory of agreement in the vote on the Address <See “The Address Question”>, and it had already denied the revolution in the vote against the procession to the graves of the fallen. It has denied the revolution by the mere fact that it “sat” alongside the Frankfurt Assembly.

Mr. Berends’s motion had therefore already been rejected twice in fact. This time, when the Assembly was to pronounce itself openly, it was bound to be defeated all the more.

Since the Assembly was once and for all reactionary, since it was established that the people had nothing further to expect from it, it was in the interest of the Left that the minority in favour of the motion should be as small as possible and comprise only the most resolute members.

Mr. Berends therefore had no need to be embarrassed at all. He had to come forward as resolutely, as revolutionarily as possible. Instead of clinging to the illusion that the Assembly was a constituent one and wanted to be one, that it stood on the ground of the revolution, he had to declare to it that it had already indirectly denied the revolution, and to call upon it to do so openly now.

But not only he, but the speakers of the Left in general, did not follow this policy, the only one befitting the democratic party. They surrendered themselves to the illusion that they could persuade the Assembly to take a revolutionary step. They therefore made concessions, they softened, they spoke of reconciliation and thereby themselves denied the revolution.

Mr. Berends then continues, in a very cool manner of thinking and very wooden language, to discourse on revolutions in general and on the Berlin revolution in particular. In the course of his remarks he comes to the objection that the revolution was superfluous because the king had previously granted everything. He answers:

“To be sure, His Majesty the King had granted much… but was the satisfaction of the people achieved by this granting? Were we given the guarantee that this promise would really become truth? I believe this guarantee was… only achieved after the struggle!… It is well founded that such a transformation of the state can be born and firmly grounded only in great catastrophes of struggle. One great fact had not yet been granted on 18 March: the arming of the people…. Only when the people were armed did they feel secure against the possibility of misunderstandings…. The struggle is therefore (!), to be sure, a kind of natural event (!), but a necessary event… the catastrophe in which the transformation of public life achieves reality, truth.”

From this long, confused discourse, teeming with repetitions, it emerges quite clearly that Mr. Berends is completely in the dark as to the results and the necessity of the revolution. Of its results he knows only the “guarantee” of the promises of the 18th and the “arming of the people”; he constructs its necessity along philosophical lines by paraphrasing the “guarantee” once more in a loftier style and finally declaring stoutly that no revolution can be accomplished without a revolution.

The revolution was necessary – that, after all, presumably only means that it was necessary in order to attain what we have now attained. The necessity of the revolution stands in direct proportion to its results. But since Mr. Berends is in the dark about the results, he must naturally take refuge in effusive protestations in order to construct its necessity.

What were the results of the revolution? By no means the “guarantee” of the promises of the 18th, but on the contrary the overthrow of these promises.

On the 18th there was promised: a monarchy in which the nobility, the bureaucracy, the army and the parsons retained control, but allowed the high bourgeoisie supervision through a granted constitution and freedom of the press with sureties. For the people German colours, a German fleet, a federal German military obligation instead of the Prussian one.

The revolution overthrew all the powers of the absolute monarchy, the nobility, the bureaucrats, the army and the parsons. It brought the high bourgeoisie out of—

finally to domination. It gave the people the weapon of press freedom without sureties, the right of association, and at least partially also the material weapon, the musket.

But that is not yet the main result. The people which fought and conquered on the barricades is a quite different people from the one which marched before the Palace on 18 March in order to be instructed, by dragoon attacks, as to the meaning of the concessions it had received. It is capable of quite different things, it confronts the government quite differently. The most important conquest of the revolution is *the revolution itself*.

“I can say, as a Berliner, that it was a painful feeling” (nothing more!) “for us … to see this struggle reviled. … I tie in with the word of the Herr Minister-President, who … described that it is the business of a great people and of all representatives, to work for conciliation *with mildness*. This mildness I claim, by requesting of you, as a representative of Berlin, the recognition of 18 and 19 March. The people of Berlin have certainly behaved altogether very honourably and estimably throughout the whole period since the revolution. It may be that individual excesses occurred … and so I believe that it is *appropriate*, that the Assembly should declare etc. etc.”

To this cowardly, revolution-denying conclusion we need only add that after such a motivation the motion deserved to fail.

[*Neue Rheinische Zeitung* No. 16, 16 June 1848]

Cologne, 14 June. The first amendment opposed to Berends’s motion owed its brief existence to Deputy Herr Brehmer. It was a broad, well-meaning declaration in which 1. the revolution was recognised, 2. the theory of agreement was recognised, 3. all those who had contributed to the overturn that had taken place were recognised, and 4. the great truth was recognised that

Not horse, not horsemen
Secure the steep height
Where princes stand,

whereby the revolution itself was finally couched in a truly Prussian expression again. The worthy Herr senior teacher Brehmer wanted to please all parties, and none of them wanted to know anything of him. His amendment was set aside without discussion, and Herr Brehmer withdrew with all the resignation of a disillusioned philanthropist.

Herr Schulze (of Delitzsch) strode to the rostrum. Herr Schulze is also an admirer of the revolution, but an admirer not so much of the barricade fighters as of the people of the following morning, of the so-called “people” as distinct from the “fighters”. The “conduct of the people *after* the struggle” is to be specially recognised in addition, he desires. His enthusiasm knew no bounds when he heard

“of the moderation and circumspection of the people, when it no longer faced any opponent (!) … of the earnestness, of the conciliation of the people … of its conduct towards the dynasty … we saw that the people was well aware, in these moments, of looking history itself directly in the eye”!!

Herr Schulze does not enthuse so much for the revolutionary *activity* of the people *in* the struggle, as for its thoroughly unrevolutionary *inactivity after* the struggle.

To recognise the magnanimity of the people after the revolution can only signify one of two things:

Either it means to insult the people, for it would be an insult to the people to acknowledge it as a merit that *after* the victory it does not commit base acts.

Or it means to recognise the exhaustion of the people after the victory of arms, which gives the reaction the opportunity to rise again.

“Combining both”, Herr Schulze expressed his “admiration elevated to enthusiasm” for the fact that the people, firstly, conducted itself decently and, secondly, gave the reaction the opportunity to recover.

The “conduct of the people” consisted in its occupying itself, full of enthusiasm, “with looking history itself directly in the eye”, where it ought to have *made* history; in its not getting round, for sheer “conduct”, “moderation”, “circumspection”, “deep earnestness” and “inextinguishable consecration”, to preventing the ministers from spiriting away one piece of the hard-won freedom after another; in its declaring the revolution finished instead of continuing it. How completely differently the Viennese have behaved, who overwhelmed the reaction blow on blow and have now conquered a *constituent* instead of an agreement Reichstag.

Herr Schulze (of Delitzsch), therefore, recognises the revolution on condition that he does not recognise it. For this a resounding bravo was awarded him.

After a minor procedural interlude, Herr Camphausen

himself steps onto the stage. He remarks that according to Berends’s motion “the Assembly is to express an opinion on an *idea*, to pronounce a judgement”. For Herr Camphausen the revolution is only an “*idea*”. He therefore “leaves it”

to the Assembly whether it wishes to do this. In his view, “a difference of opinion on a substantial scale probably does not exist” on the matter itself, in accordance with the generally known fact that, whenever two German burghers quarrel, they are always au fond (at bottom) in agreement.

“If it is desired to reiterate that … a period has set in which must *result*” (hence has not yet resulted) “in the most substantial transformations, then no one can agree with that more than I.”

“If, on the other hand, it is intended to express that the state and the state authority have lost their legal foundation, that a violent overthrow of the existing authority has *taken place* … then I protest against such an interpretation.”

Herr Camphausen has hitherto sought his chief merit in having knotted up again the torn thread of legality; now he claims that it was never torn. Facts may slap him in the face; the dogma of the uninterrupted legal transfer of authority from Bodelschwingh down to Camphausen need not trouble itself about facts.

“If it is intended to indicate that we find ourselves at the threshold of conditions such as we know from the history of the English revolution in the 17th, of the French in the 18th century, conditions whose end is that power passes into the hands of a dictator,”

then Herr Camphausen must likewise protest.

Our thoughtful friend of history naturally could not let the occasion pass to bring to market, apropos of the Berlin revolution, those reflections which the German burgher loves to hear the more, the more often he has read them in Rotteck. The Berlin revolution may not have been a revolution, if for no other reason, because otherwise it would necessarily have had to produce a Cromwell or Napoleon, against which Herr Camphausen protests.

Herr Camphausen finally allows his agreement-mongers “to express their *feelings*

for the victims of a *fateful collision*,” but remarks that here “the essential thing, and much, depends on the expression,” and wishes to see the whole matter referred to a committee.

After a new procedural incident, a speaker finally appears who knows how to stir hearts and reins, because he goes to the root of the matter. It is His Reverence Pastor Müller of Wohlau, who speaks in favour of Schulze’s rider. The Herr Pastor

does not wish to “detain the Assembly long, but only to bring up *a very essential*

*point*.”

To this end the Herr Pastor submits the following question to the Assembly:

“The motion has led us onto the *moral* terrain, and if we take it not in its *surface*” (how does one go about taking a thing *in its surface*?), “but in its *depth*” (there is an empty depth, just as there is an empty breadth), “we shall not be able to avoid, however difficult this consideration may be, recognising that what is at issue is neither more nor less than the moral recognition of the insurrection; and I therefore ask: *Is an insurrection moral or is it not?*”

The question at issue is not a political party question, but something infinitely more important: a theological-philosophical-moral problem. The Assembly has to agree, not a constitution with the Crown, but a system of moral philosophy. “Is an insurrection moral or not?” Everything turns on that. And what did the Herr Pastor answer the Assembly, breathless with suspense?

“*I do not believe, however, that in this case we are called upon to decide*

*this lofty moral principle here*.”!!

The Herr Pastor has merely gone to the root of the matter in order to declare that he can find no root.

“It has been the object of reflection for many profound men, and yet they have arrived at *no definite decision* on it. Nor shall we attain this clarity in the course of a swift debate.”

The Assembly is as if thunderstruck. The Herr Pastor poses a moral problem to it with cutting sharpness and with all the earnestness the subject requires; he poses it to it, only to explain to it afterwards that the problem cannot be solved. In this oppressive situation the agreement-mongers must have felt as though they were truly already standing “on the ground of the revolution”.

But it was nothing more than a simple pastoral manoeuvre on the part of the Herr Pastor, to lead the Assembly to repentance. He has a little drop of balm ready for the downcast:

“I believe there is yet a third point of consideration which must here be kept in view: *Those victims of 18 March acted in a condition which admits of no moral decision*.”!!

The barricade fighters were not accountable.

“But if you ask me whether I consider them *morally justified*, I answer vigorously: ‘*Yes*!’”

We ask: When God’s word from the countryside gets itself elected to Berlin, purely in order to bore the whole public with its moralising casuistry, is that *moral* or is it *not moral*?

Deputy Hofer, in his capacity as Pomeranian peasant, protests against the whole affair.

“For who was the military? Were they not our brothers and sons? Just consider what impression it will make when the father on the shore of the sea (Wendish *po more*, i.e. Pomerania) learns how his son has been treated here!”

The military may have behaved as it pleased, it may have lent itself as the tool of the most infamous treason – all the same, they were our Pomeranian lads, and therefore three cheers for them!

Deputy Schultz of Wanzleben: Gentlemen, the Berliners must be recognised. Their courage was boundless. They not only overcame the fear of the cannons.

“What does it mean, the fear of being shattered by case shot, when set against the *danger* of being punished, as perpetrators of street disorder, with harsh, perhaps dishonouring penalties! The *courage* required to *take up* this struggle is so sublime that even courage in the face of open cannon mouths cannot be set against it *at all*!”

Before 1848, therefore, the Germans made no revolution because they were afraid of the police commissioner.

Minister Schwerin comes forward to declare that he will resign if Berends’s proposal is adopted.

Elsner and Reichenbach speak against Schulze’s rider.

Dierschke remarks that the revolution must be recognised because “the struggle of moral freedom is not yet finished” and because the Assembly, likewise, was “convened by moral freedom”.

Jacoby demanded “full recognition of the revolution with all its consequences”. His speech was the best of the whole session.

At last, after so much moralising, tedium, indecision and reconciliation, we rejoice to see our Hansemann mount the tribune. Now, at last, we hear something decided, something that has hands and feet – but no, Herr Hansemann too makes his appearance today in a mild, conciliatory manner. He has his reasons for this, he does nothing without having his reasons. He sees that the Assembly is wavering, that the vote is uncertain, that the right amendment has not yet been found. He wishes to see the debate adjourned.

To this end he exerts all his powers to speak as gently as possible. The fact is there, it is undisputed. Only some call it a revolution, others “great events”. We must

“not forget that what took place here was not a revolution such as in Paris, as formerly in England, but a transaction between the Crown and the people” (a strange transaction with canister-shot and rifle bullets!). “Precisely because we” (the ministers) “raise no objection in a certain respect against the essence of the matter, but on the other hand the expression must be so chosen that the basis of the government on which we stand remains possible” –

therefore the debate might be adjourned so that the ministers can consult.

What it must have cost our Hansemann to resort to such turns of phrase and to admit that the “basis” on which the government stands is so weak that it could be overturned by an “expression”! He was compensated only by the enjoyment of being able to turn the matter once again into a cabinet question.

The debate was accordingly adjourned.

["Neue Rheinische Zeitung" No. 17, 17 June 1848]

Cologne, 14 June. – Second Day. – The debate begins again with lengthy procedural discussions. After they are disposed of, Herr Zachariä steps forward. He has to propose the amendment that is to rescue the Assembly from its predicament. The great ministerial phrase has been found. It reads:

“The Assembly, considering that the high significance of the great March events, to which, in conjunction with the royal assent” (which was itself a “March event”, even if not a “great” one), “we owe the present constitutional situation, and that the merit of those who fought for the same” (for the royal assent, that is) “is undisputed (!!) and that, moreover, the Assembly does not recognise its task to be that of giving verdicts” (the Assembly is to declare that it has no verdict!), “but of agreeing upon the constitution with the Crown, passes to the order of the day.”

This confused, vacillating motion, which scrapes and bows in all directions, and of which Herr Zachariä flatters himself that “everyone, even Herr Berends, will find in it everything that he could have intended in the good sense in which the motion was made by him”, this sickly-sweet mess, is thus the “expression” on the “basis” of which the Camphausen ministry “stands” and can stand.

Pastor Sydow of Berlin, encouraged by the success of his colleague Müller, also ascends the pulpit. The moral question is going round and round in his head. What Müller could not do, he will be able to do.

“Gentlemen, allow me at this point at once” (after having already preached for half an hour) “to say what a sense of duty impels me to say: if the debate continues, then in my opinion no one may remain silent until he has discharged his duty of conscience. (Bravo!)

Permit me a personal remark. My view of a revolution is this” (To the point! To the point!), “that wherever a revolution occurs, it is only the symptom of guilt on both sides, on the part of the rulers as of the ruled. This” (this platitude, the cheapest way of disposing of the matter) “is the higher moral view of the matter, and (!) let us not anticipate the Christian-moral judgment of the nation.” (Why do the gentlemen think they are here?) (Uproar. Order of the day!)

“But gentlemen,” continues the intrepid champion of the higher moral view and the unprejudiced Christian-moral judgment of the nation, “I am not of the opinion that times cannot come when the political self-defence (!) of a people breaks forth with the necessity of a natural event, and … then I am of the opinion that the individual can take part in it in an entirely moral way.” (Thanks to casuistry, we are saved!) “Of course, possibly also in an immoral way, that is then a matter for his own conscience.”!!

The barricade fighters do not belong before the so-called National Assembly, they belong before the confessional. With that the matter is settled.

Pastor Sydow then declares that he has “courage”, speaks at greater length on popular sovereignty from the standpoint of the higher moral view, is interrupted three more times by impatient noise, and returns to his seat with the joyful consciousness of having discharged his duty of conscience. The world now knows what opinion Pastor Sydow is of and what opinion he is not of.

Herr Plönnis declares that the matter should be dropped. A declaration harried to death by so many amendments and sub-amendments, by so many debates and quibbles, would in any case be of no value any more. Herr Plönnis is right. But he could have done the Assembly no worse service than by drawing attention to this circumstance, to this proof of the cowardice of so many members on both sides.

Herr Reichensperger of Trier:

“We are not here to construct theories and to decree history; we are to make history, if possible.”

By no means! By adopting the reasoned order of the day, the Assembly resolves that, on the contrary, it is here to unmake history. To be sure, also a way of “making history”.

“I recall Vergniaud’s saying that the revolution is about to devour its own children.”

Unfortunately, no! It is rather about to be devoured by its own children!

Herr Riedel has discovered that the Berends motion is “to be understood not only as what the words simply say, but that concealed beneath it is a conflict of principles”. And this victim of the “higher moral view” is a privy archive councillor and professor!

Once again a most reverend pastor steps onto the stage. It is Herr Jonas, the Berlin ladies’ preacher. He seems indeed to have mistaken the Assembly for an audience of daughters of the educated classes. With all the pretentious pomposity of a true Schleiermacherian, he preaches an endless series of the flattest commonplaces on the so highly important difference between revolution and reformation. Before he had even finished the introduction to his sermon, he was interrupted three times; at last he burst out with the great sentence:

“Revolution is something that directly contradicts our present religious and moral consciousness. A revolution is a deed that may well have been deemed great and glorious in ancient Greece and Rome, but in Christianity ...” (Violent interruption. General confusion. Esser, Jung, Elsner, the chairman and countless voices join in the debate. At last the popular pulpit orator is again allowed to speak.)

“In any case, I dispute the Assembly’s right to vote on religious and moral principles; no assembly can vote on such matters” (? and the Consistory, the Synod?). “To attempt to decree or to declare that revolution is a lofty, moral example or anything else” (that is to say, anything at all), “strikes me just as if the Assembly were to decide that there is a God or that there is no God, or several gods.”

There we have it. The ladies’ preacher has happily dragged the question back onto the terrain of the “higher moral view”, and now it naturally belongs only before the Protestant councils, before the catechism manufacturers of the Synod.

Thank goodness! After all this miasma of morality, our Hansemann finally comes forward. With this practical mind we are perfectly safe from the “higher moral view”. Herr Hansemann dismisses the entire moral standpoint with the one contemptuous remark:

“Have we, I ask you, enough leisure to get involved in such conflicts of principle?”

Herr Hansemann recollects that yesterday a deputy spoke of breadless workers. Herr Hansemann uses this remark for a skilful turn. He speaks of the distress of the working class, deplores their misery, and asks:

“What is the cause of the general distress? I believe … everyone feels that no certainty is yet given for anything existing as long as our constitutional situation is not settled.”

Here Herr Hansemann speaks from the bottom of his heart. Confidence must be restored! he exclaims – and the best means of restoring confidence is the disavowal of the revolution. And now the speaker of the ministry, which “sees no reaction”, launches into a terrifying description of the importance of the friendly dispositions of the reaction.

“I adjure you to promote harmony among all classes” (by heaping insults upon the classes that made the revolution!); “I adjure you to promote harmony between the people and the army; bear in mind that on the army our hopes rest to maintain our independence” (! in Prussia, where every man is a soldier!); “consider the difficult circumstances in which we find ourselves – I need not elaborate on this to you; the attentive newspaper reader” (and the gentlemen are certainly all that) “will acknowledge

that these circumstances are difficult,
most difficult.
At this moment, to make a declaration that would sow the seeds of discord throughout the land I consider inappropriate … Therefore, gentlemen,

reconcile
the parties, take up no question by which you
provoke the opponents,
for that
would certainly happen.
The adoption of the motion
could have
the most sad consequences.”

How the reactionaries must have smiled when they saw how the ordinarily so resolute Hansemann talked not only the Assembly but even himself into a state of fear!

This appeal to the fear of the great bourgeois, lawyers and schoolmasters of the Chamber had more effect than all the sentimental phrases about the “higher moral view”. The matter was decided. D’Ester still threw himself into the fray in order to thwart the effect, but in vain; the debate was closed, and 196 votes to 177 adopted Zachariä’s reasoned order of the day.

The Assembly thereby pronounced its own verdict that it had no verdict.