"Neue Rheinische Zeitung" – The Address Debate in Berlin

The Address Debate in Berlin

["Neue Rheinische Zeitung" No. 259, March 30, 1849]

*
Cologne, March 25. We confess to our readers that only with repugnance can we bring ourselves to look more closely at the debates of Berlin's so-called Second Chamber. The debates of the dissolved Assembly of Agreement, insignificant and feeble as they were, still always had the interest of topicality; they dealt with subjects that exercised no influence on the destinies of Europe, with laws to which no durability could be attributed from the very outset; but they did deal with our immediate interests, they offered a faithful mirror of the mounting reaction in Prussia. The debates of the present Chamber, on the other hand, have no other purpose than to legalise the already completed counter-revolution. It is not a question of the present – it has been excluded by the ban on interpellations – it is a question of the past, of the provisional interregnum from December 5 to February 26, and if the Chamber does not unconditionally recognise this interregnum, it will be sent packing, and its activity will once again have been in vain.

And we are supposed to take an interest in consultations of this kind, while in Hungary and Italy revolution and counter-revolution are measuring themselves with weapons in hand, while the Russians are standing on the eastern frontier, and while France is preparing for a new world-shaking revolution!

The address debate, moreover, numbers among the dreariest things we can ever recall having read. The whole debate naturally turns only on the recognition or non-recognition of the so-called imposed constitution. And what does it matter whether this Chamber – elected under the state of siege and the crushing effect of a successfully executed counter-revolution, deliberating under the state of siege in a corner of Berlin, a Chamber that dare not utter a peep if it does not want to be dissolved – whether such an assembly recognises this document or not? As if recognition or non-recognition would alter by the least trifle the course of the European revolution, which will grind to dust all now valid constitutions, imposed or not!

The only thing of any interest in the whole debate is the boyish arrogance of the Right and the cowardly collapse of the Left.

The royalist gentlemen are incorrigible. No sooner does their cause, with the aid of the obedient soldiery, momentarily stand better again than they imagine themselves transported back to the old promised land and adopt a tone that surpasses in insolence anything the police state has ever achieved.

The gentlemen of the Left, by contrast, lower their claims to the same extent that the Right screws up its own. Through all their speeches one can hear that brokenness which is the consequence of bitter disappointments, that dejection of the former member of the same assembly that first allowed the revolution to bog down and afterwards, sinking into the self-created morass, went under with the painful cry: The people are not yet ripe!

Even the resolute members of the Left, instead of placing themselves in direct opposition to the whole assembly, do not give up hope of achieving something in the Chamber and through the Chamber and of winning a majority for the Left. Instead of adopting an extra-parliamentary posture within parliament – the only one that is honourable in such a Chamber – they make one concession after another for the sake of parliamentary opportunity; instead of ignoring the constitutional standpoint as far as possible, they earnestly seek out the chance to coquet with it for the sake of dear peace.

The general debate turns on the recognition or non-recognition of the so-called constitution. The Left, which saw itself as the continuation of the tax-refusing majority of the ex-Assembly of Agreement, was bound to begin with the most decided protest against the coup of December 5. And what does it do? It declares itself ready to recognise the dissolution of the National Assembly as a fact that can no longer be altered, to drop the dispute of principle over the legal validity of the imposed bastard, to cover all kicks and insults with the mantle of charity and to proceed at once to revision!

The Right naturally rejects this cowardly offer with the contempt it deserves and forces the Left into the dispute of principle.

The Left gets exactly what it deserves. Why do the gentlemen get it into their heads that they have to push something through where nothing is to be pushed through! Why do they fool themselves into believing that they are called upon to push through by parliamentary means what can only be pushed through in a revolutionary way, by force of arms! But of course, the gentlemen have "risen to the height through parliamentary life", that height of which Deputy Waldeck can tell us such fine things, the height where esprit de corps <caste spirit> begins and revolutionary energy – s'il y en avait <if he ever had any> – evaporates!

The first speaker of the motley party that goes by the name of the Left is Herr
v. Berg
. Let no one imagine, however, that he will again find the sprightly little abbé of the previous year, who knew how to annoy the gentlemen of the Right so prettily with all manner of piquant little witticisms. Herr Berg no longer appears as an
abbé
, he appears as a pastor.

He opines that it would after all have been desirable to couch the draft address in such a way that "the largest possible majority could declare itself in favour of it". The Chamber ought to have shown the country "that its representatives are disposed not to sacrifice the weal of the country to
mere struggles of principle
". In conclusion, Herr Berg missed in the draft "the
spirit of reconciliation that
(?)
pervades us
", the striving for "mutual understanding". He prophesies to the Chamber that through the address debate it will not "establish
peace,
the
hope of a better future
in the fatherland".

Indeed! Is that why the electors of Jülich and Düren sent Herr Berg to Berlin – so that he should declare the struggle for the right of the people to give themselves their own constitution a mere "struggle of principle", so that he should preach "reconciliation" and "mutual understanding" in a pulpit tone, so that he should drivel on about "peace" when what is at stake is
war
?

You, Chaplain Berg, were elected not because you were a preacher, but because you were a
tax refuser
. Your election did not take place in the interest of
peace,
but was from the outset a
declaration of war
against the coup d'état. Not to offer reconciliation and mutual understanding, but to
protest
, were you sent to Berlin. And now that you are a deputy, you declare the struggle between the sovereignty of the people and the "full power of the Crown" to be a mere sterile struggle of principle!

Most of the gentlemen tax refusers were re-elected not because their entire activity from May to November 1848 satisfied the electors, but because, through the resolution on the refusal of taxes <See "No More Taxes!!!">, they had stepped onto revolutionary ground, because one might hope that the kicks with which the government treated them had at last opened their eyes as to how one had to behave towards the Crown and the government in order to get something through. One hoped that each of them would thereby have been moved at least one stage further to the left.

Instead of which it turns out that the chastisement in November has borne fruit. Instead of further to the left, the gentlemen have moved further to the right. With the most well-meaning whining pathos they preach reconciliation and mutual understanding. They declare themselves willing to forget and forgive the maltreatment they have received, they offer peace. They richly deserve to be repulsed with jeering laughter.

Next comes Count
Renard
, feudal lord from Silesia.

Herr Renard imagines that in March nothing was overthrown, but that only a new moment was added. The Crown remained Crown, only there appeared as a "determining moment" the
estate
(!) representation with the
consultative
voice of the people. Otherwise everything remained as before. (In fact, that is precisely what is to be imposed and revised upon us with God for king and fatherland.) The deputy, he said, has "to represent the constitution of the people in its totality, that is, the people
with
the prince, not, however, the people
against
the prince". (What is the prince still there for, then, if the deputies already "represent" him in any case?) After this new theory of the state, Herr Renard explains to the Chamber the following: It is by no means there "to
bargain
and
chaffer
with the Crown" – i.e. to reach agreement – "to dispute over words or,
as far as I am concerned, even over rights
"; the government and the Chamber are by no means "the advocates of two parties engaged in litigation". Whoever understands his mandate otherwise is "waging civil war in the realm of theories".

Herr Renard speaks plainly enough. In profane constitutional states the Chamber governs through its committee, the ministry, and the king has no other right but to say yea and amen and to sign. So it was with us, too, in the time of tribulation, the time of Camphausen, Hansemann and Pfuel. But in the royal Prussian constitutional monarchy by the grace of God things are exactly the other way round: the Crown governs through its ministers, and woe to the Chambers if they attempt to do anything other than say yea and amen to the divinely inspired effusions!

"The clearest proof", Herr Renard continues, "that no rift exists between Crown and people is provided by the present moment, when the
German question
resounds with universal enthusiasm through all the provinces ... The enthusiasm ... relates, for many, in large part to the dignity, to the greatness of our ancestral royal house by the grace of God, the
chivalrous
and" (especially in Champagne, at Jena and on March 18, 1848) "
victory-accustomed
line of the Hohenzollern (hilarity and bravo)."

To this enthusiasm testified the pereat hurled at the German Kaiser from five thousand throats at the Gürzenich on that same March 19, when Herr Renard spoke these words; testified a few days later the rejection of the Prussian hereditary emperorship in Frankfurt; testified the day before yesterday the Frankfurt beggarly majority of four whole votes for the hereditary Kaiser in general.

No, exclaims Renard, who, by the way, is no fox at all <pun: “Fuchs” means “renard” in French>, finally exclaims:

"Nobody shall or will succeed in killing the
fresh life
of the wound that is striving towards healing by means of caustic poison and in turning the fissure that has" (so there is one after all!) "arisen at all events into an unbridgeable gulf!"

Most honourable Renard! May ill-disposed persons never succeed in killing by means of caustic poison the "fresh life" of the wound that was dealt to your purse, swollen with feudal privileges, in the spring of the previous year, but which now, by means of the returning grace of God, "is striving towards healing", or in turning the "fissure that has at all events arisen" thereby between your income and your expenditure "into an unbridgeable gulf"!

Herr Jacoby mounts the tribune. Herr Jacoby, too, although he comes forward more resolutely than Berg and is clearer and more precise in his reasoning, cannot desist from diplomatising. The recognition of the constitution in the address was not
fitting,
because it must not be done
incidentally
, and not
timely,
because the constitution has not yet been revised, definitively sanctioned and sworn to. As if the recognition of such a constitution could ever be fitting or timely!

He too “does not want to rekindle the old quarrel” about the dissolution of the Agreement Assembly; whether it was a saving act or the final goal and culmination of a diplomats’ conspiracy, he wishes to “leave that to impartial history”. “Impartial history” will register that the people who spoke so loudly when they had the majority now, when they are in the minority, behave with the humility of chastened schoolboys.

“As far as the recognition of the constitution by the people is concerned, I have to counter that this Assembly of ours is the only lawful organ, the only one entitled to such recognition.”

No, Herr Jacoby, it is by no means your Assembly. Your Assembly is nothing more than the organ, brought about largely by government machinations, of the electors chosen on the basis of the imposed so-called electoral law by means of the famous “independence”. Your  
Assembly may recognise the constitution, but that would be only a recognition of the imposed constitution by the imposed constitution itself. The people will care little about that, and “impartial history” will shortly have to register that this so-called constitution — should it ever come to that — was trampled underfoot and disappeared in the course of the European revolution, no one knows how.

Herr Jacoby probably knows this as well as we do; the Right of the Chamber also knows that he knows it; what is the point, then, of all this legalistic frippery, especially when one wants to leave the legal ground of the dissolved Assembly in doubt!

Herr Scherer, lawyer and deputy from Düsseldorf-Elberfeld, is utterly horrified by d’Ester’s draft address. He thinks that the deputation that presents such an address to the King would have to “have the armed uprising in her train”. If one has the armed uprising in one’s train, Herr Scherer, one speaks to kings quite differently!

This draft “hurls the torch into the land”; but Herr Scherer believes, “it will not ignite, but only  
bring harm to its bearers”!  
One cannot speak more clearly. Herr Scherer gives the Left the well-meaning advice to withdraw the draft, otherwise they will know how to lay hands on them one morning, despite the paragraph on inviolability. Very philanthropic, Herr Scherer!

Now Herr  
Waldeck  
rises. We find him unchanged: left, but not further left than is permissible if one wishes to keep oneself in the running. Herr Waldeck begins by expressing his annoyance that the Right constantly tries to foist the fatal quarrel about the November coup d’état upon him. Herr Waldeck and “his party” have indeed “stated clearly enough that this quarrel of principle should never have been raised at all”. In his opinion, “the Assembly is in agreement” (bad enough!) “on what it should do with the constitution” — namely, to revise it. Herr Waldeck then expounds once more why the quarrel of principle is superfluous, and again appeals to the better feelings of the Right: “Cannot you  
very well let this question rest  
in the meantime? ... You lose nothing by your view;  
spare  
, however,  
the views of others!”

Worthy language of a dispersed “representative of the people” addressed to the same majority that rubs its hands with joy when it thinks of the successful dispersal.

“Do spare the views of others!” The great man begs for  
forbearance!

But then, when the work on the constitution is finished, the future minister “hopes”, “then this Assembly  
will, through parliamentary  
life, really have reached the height  
that is necessary  
fully  
to  
recognise  
the  
consequences  
of such a declaration” (on the validity of the constitution)!!

Truly! Do not our newly-baked knights of the tribune, who have barely seven months of parliamentary practice behind them, already act as precociously and wisely as if they had sat fifty years on the benches of St. Stephen’s and gone through all the Paris chambers from the Introuvable of 1815 to the Introuvable of 24 February!

But it is true. Our knights of the tribune have, in their short career, swallowed so much parliamentary self-sufficiency, have been so stripped of all revolutionary energy — si jamais il y en avait — as if they had grown grey amid the pathos of parliaments.

After Herr Waldeck, His erstwhile Excellency, the once all-powerful Herr von  
Bodelschwingh  
, puts himself on display.

Just like Herr Manteuffel, his former superior has also become constitutional “by order of His Majesty”. It is quite amusing to hear the last prime minister of absolutism defend the constitutional monarchy.

Before February, Herr Bodelschwingh used to be considered the best speaker of the ministry of that time. In the United Diet he had still muddled through most skilfully. But reading his present speech, one is alarmed, in his own interest, at the stupidity and the fadaise of this strange discourse. Herr Bodelschwingh has become constitutional by order; but apart from this phrase, he has remained — we do not know whether by order or without order — entirely the same old man. He excuses himself by saying that he has lived “in rural seclusion”; but one would really think he had had himself  
buried  
for the whole year.

He confesses that, through the extremely innocent draft address of the Left, he has been “enlightened as to their views in a way and to an extent of which, before his appearance in the Chamber, he  
had not even a suspicion”.

Quel bonhomme! <What a simpleton!> When Herr Bodelschwingh was still governing Prussia, his numerous spies, paid with our money, must have kept him remarkably badly informed for him now to believe that things of this kind have suddenly shot up out of the ground since then!

The Left had declared that it was here not on the basis of the imposed  

martial-law charter, but on the basis of universal suffrage. What is Herr Bodelschwingh’s reply?

“If we derive our seat from the universal franchise, all these formalities” (the scrutiny of elections) “are unnecessary.  
We need only step into the market-place and say: Elect me!  
I do not know how many little particles of universal suffrage you consider necessary to claim entry into this House. Take as many as you like; enough votes could easily be drummed up in this way; with the recognition of this right, the space in this House would soon be so full that there would be no room for us; for my part, I would in any case give up my seat the sooner the better.”

If a Westphalian peasant, or if Herr v. Bodelschwingh at the time when he was still minister, had come out with this profundity about universal suffrage, we would not be surprised. In this sense, the above passage is interesting in that it proves how one could be Prussian prime minister and direct the whole examined bureaucracy without having “even a suspicion” of the very nearest questions of European interest. But that, after universal suffrage has operated  
twice  
in France, after what the  
Left  
calls universal suffrage has operated twice in Prussia and has even imposed Herr Bodelschwingh’s own seat on him in the Chamber — that one can still indulge in such fabulous fantasies about universal suffrage, for that one must have been an antediluvian Prussian minister! However, let us not forget, Herr Bodelschwingh was buried and has only risen again to enter the Chamber “by order of His Majesty”!

Afterwards he says:

“Although we are by no means of the opinion that this constitution first obtains its validity through the revision, we  
are nevertheless completely confident  
that the Crown will not withhold its sanction from the  
wishes  
(!) ... of the Chambers ... with the  
conviction  
that we need not quibble and dispute with the government as though we were confronting enemies, but with the conviction that we are confronting the Crown, which like us  
has only the good of the fatherland in view  
... in good and evil days to stand firmly together with our princes. Foundations of the fear of God, respect for the law, public spirit, etc.”

Herr Bodelschwingh believed he was still speaking in the United Diet. He stands, now as before, on the  
ground of confidence  
. But the man is indeed right! The so-called universal suffrage of the Left has, by means of independence paragraphs, indirect elections and Manteuffel’s manoeuvres, brought into being a Chamber that need not be at all ashamed to be addressed as “High United Diet”.

After an insignificant speech by Deputy Schulze-Delitzsch, His erstwhile Excellency Count Arnim appears. Herr Arnim has  
not  
slept through the last year like Herr Bodelschwingh. He knows what he wants.

Why we want to recognise the constitution now, lock, stock and barrel, he says, is clear.

“Is it, then, so certain  
that the business  
of revision  
will lead to a result  
? How so? What then counts as a basic law? Precisely because we are in the situation that an agreement between the three powers on the points of revision is uncertain, precisely for that reason it matters to us that the people should have a constitution  
even in this case.”

Is that clear? That is already the second gentle hint in this one sitting.

Deputy d’Ester speaks further against the commission’s draft. D’Ester’s speech is by far the best that has been made by the Left in this general debate. The boldness and vivacity with which the deputy from Mayen attacks the gentlemen of the Right makes a pleasant impression in the midst of this dreary and leathery debate. But d’Ester, too, cannot speak without diplomatic concessions and parliamentary circumlocutions. He says, for example, that he too fully agrees that the revolution must be ended. If this remark may perhaps be excused in the deputy on grounds of parliamentary tact, a member of the Democratic Central Committee ought never to have uttered such a thing, nor should the man who immediately afterwards began, with Vincke, the debate on the respective “level of civilisation” have brought upon himself the appearance of being capable of such nonsense. Besides, nobody believes him anyway.

Finally, Deputy  
Riedel  
strikes up a song of triumph over the fact that  
“the Crown has again taken the right of legislation into its own hands”  
. An ironical “Bravo” draws his attention to the fact that he has blurted out what he had better kept to himself. He is startled and adds: “Provisionally, of course!”

Third gentle hint for the honourable deputies!

The Assembly proceeds to the special debate. We shall save that for tomorrow.