"Neue Rheinische Zeitung" – A New Year's Greeting

A New Year's Greeting

["Neue Rheinische Zeitung" No. 190 of 9 January 1849]

*

Cologne, 8 January. That parson and cantor, sexton and bellows-treader, barber and night-watchman, field-keeper, grave-digger, etc., wish us a happy New Year is a custom as old as it is perpetually renewing, and leaves us indifferent.

But the year 1849 is not content with the traditional. It marked its entry with something unprecedented – with a New Year's greeting from the King of Prussia.

A New Year's wish has been produced, not addressed to the Prussian people, nor “To my dear Berliners,” but “To my Army.”

This royal New Year's epistle looks “with pride” upon the army, because it remained loyal
“when”
(the March)
“insurrection disturbed the peaceful development of the liberal institutions to which I intended soberly to lead My people.”

Formerly one spoke of March events, of “misunderstandings,” and the like. Now no cloak is required any longer: the March “misunderstandings” are flung in our faces as
“insurrection.”

Out of this royal New Year's greeting wafts the very same spirit as out of the columns of the “Kreuzritterin.” Just as that greeting speaks of “insurrection,” so the latter speaks of inglorious “March criminals,” of criminal rabble that disturbed the peace of Berlin palace life in March.

Should we ask why the “insurrection” is so exceedingly outrageous, the reply runs: “because it disturbed the peaceful development of the liberal (!!) institutions etc.” – If you were not sleeping in Friedrichshain, you insurgents of March, you would now have to be pardoned with “powder and lead” or life-long hard labour.

In your infamy you have indeed disturbed “the peaceful development of the liberal institutions”! Is any reminder really needed of that royal-Prussian development of “liberal institutions,” of the most liberal development of squandering money, of the “peaceful” expansion of bigotry and royal-Prussian Jesuitry, of the peaceful development of police and barrack rule, of espionage, of deceit, of hypocrisy, of arrogance, and finally of the most disgusting degradation of the people side by side with the most shameless corruption in the so-called higher classes? Such a reminder is all the less necessary in that we need only look around us, only reach out our hands, to see that “disturbed development” again before us in fullest bloom and to refresh ourselves with the doubled imposition of those same “liberal institutions.”

“My army,” it goes on in the royal letter of congratulation, “has proved its old fame and won new.”

Yes, indeed! It has won so much fame that at most the Croats may lay claim to a greater.

But where and how won? First, it “decked its colours with fresh laurels when Germany had need of Our arms in Schleswig.”

Major Wildenbruch’s Prussian note to the Danish government is the foundation upon which the new Prussian fame piled itself up. The entire conduct of the war fitted superbly with that note, which assured the Danish cousin <Frederick VII> that the Prussian government was not at all in earnest, that it was merely throwing a bait to the republicans and dust in other people’s eyes, simply in order to gain time. And time gained, all gained. Later one would reach an understanding in the merriest fashion.

Herr Wrangel, concerning whom public opinion was led astray for some time, Herr Wrangel left Schleswig-Holstein furtively, like a thief in the night. He travelled in civilian clothes so as not to be recognised. In Hamburg all innkeepers declared they could not lodge him. Their houses and the windows and doors therein they were much fonder of than of the laurels of the Prussian army which, though despised by the people, were embodied in this glorious gentleman. Let us also not forget that the sole success in this campaign of useless and senseless to-ings and fro-ings, which was thoroughly reminiscent of the procedure of the old Imperial courts (see our issues of that time <see Volume 5, pp. 34/35 and 256-259>), was a strategic blunder.

The only astonishing thing about this campaign is the nameless audacity of the
Danes
, who wantonly fooled the Prussian army and completely cut Prussia off from the world market.

To complete Prussian fame on this side there are, moreover, the peace negotiations with Denmark and the resulting Armistice of Malmö.

If the Roman emperor <Vespasian>, sniffing a coin that had come in as urine tax, could say: “Non olet” (it does not smell), on the Prussian laurels garnered in Schleswig-Holstein there stands, by contrast, in indelible characters: “Olet!” (It stinks!)

Secondly, “My army victoriously endured hardships and dangers when the insurrection in the Grand Duchy of Posen had to be combated.”

As regards the “victorious hardships,” they are as follows: Prussia first exploited the high-hearted illusion of the Poles, nourished from Berlin with smooth words, who saw in the
“Pomeranians”
German comrades-in-arms against
Russia
, and therefore peacefully dissolved their army, allowed the Pomeranians to march in, and only reassembled their scattered cadres when the Prussians were most vilely brutalising persons incapable of resistance. And now the Prussian heroic deeds! Not
during
the war,
after
the war do the heroic deeds of the “glorious” Prussian army play out. When Mieroslawski was presented to the June victor, Gavaignac’s first question was how the Prussians had gone about getting beaten at
Miloslaw
. (We can prove this from ear-witnesses.) Three thousand Poles, scarcely armed with scythes and pikes, beat them twice and twice forced twenty thousand Prussians, well organised and amply supplied with artillery, to retreat. The Prussian cavalry in wild flight even overthrew the Prussian infantry. The Polish insurrection holds Miloslaw, after twice beating the counter-revolution out of the town. More ignominious even than the
defeat
of the Prussians at
Miloslaw
was their final
victory at Wreschen
, prepared by a defeat. When an unarmed but Herculean opponent confronts a coward armed with pistols, the coward flees and fires the pistols from a safe distance. That is what the Prussians did at
Wreschen
. They fled to a distance from which they could fire case-shot, 150-ball grenades, and shrapnel shells on pikes and scythes, which notoriously do not hit at a distance. The shrapnel shells had previously been fired only by the English

against East Indian semi-savages. First the brave Prussians, in fanatical fear of Polish bravery and conscious of their own weakness, applied the shrapnel shells against so-called fellow-citizens. Naturally they had to find a means of killing the Poles en masse from a distance. The Poles at close quarters were too fearsome. That was the
glorious victory at Wreschen
. But, as said,
after
the war the heroic deeds of the Prussian army really begin, just as the heroic deeds of gaolers begin
after
the sentence is pronounced.

That
this
fame of the Prussian army will live on in history is vouched for by the thousands of Poles murdered by Prussian betrayal and black-and-white perfidy with shrapnel shells, pointed bullets, etc., and later sent to the casemates!.

Of this second bundle of laurels of the counter-revolutionary army, sufficient testimony has been borne by the villages and towns set alight by Prussian heroes, the Polish inhabitants battered and massacred in their houses with rifle butts and bayonets, the plundering and Prussian brutalities of every kind.

Immortal fame for these Prussian warriors in Posen, who paved the way along which the Neapolitan executioner’s lackey soon afterwards strode when he shot his loyal capital to pieces and handed it over to the soldiery for twenty-four hours’ plunder. Hail and fame to the Prussian army from the Posen campaign! For it shone before the Croats, the Seressaner, the Ottochaner and the other hordes of Windischgrätz and consorts with an example that, as Prague (in June), Vienna, Pressburg, etc., prove, inspired them to the most worthy emulation.

And ultimately even
this
courage of the Prussians against the Poles occurred only from fear of the Russians.

“All good things come in threes.” Thus “My army,” too, had to win a threefold fame. The occasion for this was not lacking. For “its collaboration in preserving order (!) in South Germany earned the Prussian name new recognition.”

Only malice or a mania for disparagement could deny that “My army” rendered the most excellent services as a bailiff and gendarme to the Federal Diet – which, in rebaptising itself, modernised itself and had itself called Central Power. It is just as little to be denied that the Prussian name has earned the fullest recognition in devouring South German wine, meat, cider, etc. The starveling Markers, Pomeranians, etc., have fattened themselves a patriotic little paunch; the thirsty have refreshed themselves, and in general everything

placed before them by their South German quartermasters they have known how to devour with such heroic courage that the Prussian name today finds the loudest recognition everywhere. A pity the billeting tickets have not yet been paid: the recognition would be still louder.

The fame of “My army” is really inexhaustible; yet it must not be passed over that “wherever I called, it stood ready, in full fidelity,
in full discipline
,” and it is equally remarkable to convey to posterity that “My army opposed abominable calumnies with its excellent spirit and
noble manly discipline
.”

How flattering is the greeting for “My army,” when in it “full discipline” and “noble manly discipline” – and with them once again its heroic deeds in the Grand Duchy, as well as the laurels in Mainz, Schweidnitz, Trier, Erfurt, Berlin, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Aachen, Koblenz, Münster, Minden, etc. – are recalled to pleasant memory. We others, however, who do not belong to “My army,” are thereby enabled to broaden our limited subject-conceptions. To shoot down old men and pregnant women, to steal (officially recorded in the vicinity of
Ostrowo
), to maltreat peaceful citizens with rifle butts and sabres, to demolish houses, to go out at night with weapons concealed under one’s coat against unarmed people, highway robbery (one recalls the adventure near Neuwied) – this and similar heroism goes by the name, in Christian-Germanic parlance:
“full discipline”
,
“noble manly discipline”
! Long live manly discipline and discipline, since those murdered under that label are once and for all dead.

The few passages from the royal-Prussian New Year's greeting which we have touched upon show us that this document, in its significance and its spirit, stands on the same level as the Duke of Brunswick’s manifesto pro 1792.