Karl Marx

The Berlin Conspiracy

From the English.

[“New-York Daily Tribune” No. 3745, April 18, 1853]

London, Friday, April 1, 1853

At last the fifth “Great Power”, Prussia, can enjoy the good fortune of having contributed, on its own account, to the great discoveries made by the Austrian police with regard to the “demagogic machinations” of the revolutionaries.

“The government,” so its official organs assure us, “having received proof that the leaders of the democratic party permanently maintained relations with the revolutionary propaganda, ordered house searches to be carried out in Berlin on March 29, and succeeded in arresting 40 persons, among them Streckfuß and the former deputies of the Prussian National Assembly, Berends, Waldeck, etc. House searches were carried out in the houses of 80 persons suspected of participation in a conspiracy. Arms and ammunition were found.”

Not content with publishing “these sensational facts” in the official papers, the Prussian government thought fit to communicate them by telegraph to the British Foreign Office.

In order to unveil the secret of this new police farce, we must go back a little. Two months after Bonaparte’s coup d’état, Herr Hinckeldey, the Police President of Berlin, and his subordinate, Herr Stieber, the Police Counsellor, conspired, the one to become a Prussian Maupas, the other a Prussian Piétri. Perhaps the sublime omnipotence of the French police disturbed their slumber. Hinckeldey turned to the Minister of the Interior, Herr von Westphalen, and fed this weak-headed and fanatical reactionary (since Herr von Westphalen is my brother-in-law, I had ample opportunity to become acquainted with this man’s mental powers) false reports in order to ground the necessity of concentrating the entire police power of the Prussian state in the hands of the Police President of Berlin. He claimed that, in order to enable quicker intervention, the police must be made independent of the Minister of the Interior and subordinated exclusively to himself, namely Hinckeldey. The Minister, Herr von Westphalen, represents the ultra-Prussian aristocracy, while Herr von Manteuffel, the Prime Minister, represents the old bureaucracy; the two are rivals, and the former saw in Hinckeldey’s proposal, although it obviously restricted the sphere of activity of his own ministry, a means of striking a blow at his rival, whose brother, Herr von Manteuffel, Under-Secretary of State in the Ministry of the Interior, was especially charged with the control of the entire police. Therefore Herr von Westphalen submitted his proposal to a Council of State, at which the King Friedrich Wilhelm IV himself presided.

The discussion was very heated. Manteuffel, supported by the Prince of Prussia, attacked the plan of setting up an independent ministry of police. The King inclined to Herr von Westphalen’s proposal and ended the debate with the Solomonic dictum that he would follow Bonaparte’s example and create a ministry of police, “if the necessity of this step were proved to him by facts”. Now Hinckeldey and Stieber selected the affair of the Cologne Communists to supply the facts. The heroic bearing of those men in the Cologne trial is well known. After its conclusion, the Prussian government resolved to promote the openly perjured Stieber—the man who was hissed everywhere he showed himself in the streets of Cologne—to the post of police director of Cologne. However, Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg and other well-disposed conservative deputies of Rhenish Prussia intervened, warning the ministers that such an open insult to the public opinion of that province could have very fatal consequences, at a moment when Napoleon was coveting the natural frontiers of France. The government gave way, contenting itself with appointing Stieber police director of Berlin as a reward for his perjuries in Cologne and his thefts committed in London.

Here, however, the affair ended. It was impossible to fulfil the wishes of Herr Hinckeldey and to create for him an independent ministry of police on the basis of the Cologne trial. Hinckeldey and Stieber bided their time. To their good fortune, the Milan insurrection occurred. Immediately Stieber carried out 20 arrests in Berlin. But the affair was too ridiculous to be pursued further in the courts. But then came Libényi’s attack, and now the King was ripe. Overwhelmed by dreadful forebodings, he immediately recognised the necessity of creating an independent ministry of police, and Hinckeldey saw his dreams realised. A royal decree made him the Prussian Maupas, while the brother of Herr von Manteuffel tendered his resignation.

The most astonishing part of the comedy, however, was yet to come. Scarcely had Herr Hinckeldey been helter-skelter elevated to his new dignity, than the “great Berlin conspiracy” was straightway discovered. This conspiracy was called into existence for the exclusive purpose of proving the necessity of a Herr Hinckeldey. It was the gift which Herr Hinckeldey presented to the imbecile King in exchange for his newly gained police autocracy. Hinckeldey’s assistant, the inventive Stieber, who had discovered at Cologne that wherever letters ending with the words “greeting” and “fraternity” were found, a communist conspiracy was unquestionably involved, now made the discovery that for some time past a suspicious number of “Calabrian hats” had been appearing in Berlin, and that the Calabrian hat was unquestionably the “rallying signal” of the revolutionaries. Spurred on by this momentous discovery, Stieber carried out several arrests on March 18, chiefly among workers and foreigners, who were charged with wearing Calabrian hats. On the 23rd of the same month, a house search was carried out at the home of a Magdeburg merchant, Karl Delius, the brother of a deputy of the Second Chamber, who also had an unfortunate fondness for Calabrian hats. Finally, as I already informed you at the commencement of this article, the great coup d’état against the Calabrian hats was carried out in Berlin on the 29th of last month. All those who know anything of the milk-and-water opposition of Waldeck, Berends, etc., will laugh at the “arms and munitions” found in the possession of these most harmless Brutuses.

But however senseless this whole police comedy may appear, staged by Messrs. Hinckeldey & Stieber from purely personal motives, it is not without significance. The Prussian government is exasperated by the passive resistance which it encounters everywhere. It scents the breath of revolution amidst an apparent apathy. It despairs of finding a tangible form of this spectre, and feels as though relieved of an oppressive nightmare every time the police give some kind of bodily shape to this ubiquitous but invisible adversary. It attacks, it will continue to attack, and it will successfully transform the passive resistance of the people into active resistance.

Karl Marx