Karl Marx

Berlin, March 15, 1859

Here war is regarded as inevitable, but the role of Prussia in the impending struggle between France and Austria is the subject of general discussion; neither the government nor the public seem to have arrived at a definite opinion. It will have struck you that the only warlike petitions sent to Berlin come, not from Prussia proper, but from Cologne, the capital of the Rhine Province. These petitions, however, should not be accorded too much significance, since they are obviously the work of the Catholic party, which in Germany, as in France and Belgium, naturally feels at one with Austria. In one respect, it is true, all Germany is pervaded by an extraordinary uniformity of feeling. No one raises his voice in favour of Louis Napoleon; no one feels sympathy for the "liberator"; on the contrary, a veritable torrent of hatred and contempt daily pours forth against him. The Catholic party regards him as a rebel against the Pope, and naturally curses the nefarious sword that is to be directed against a power which, by its Concordat with Rome, has again subjected a great part of Europe to the Papal See. The feudal party, which pretends to abhor the French usurper, in reality abhors the French nation, and imagines that the frightful innovations imported from the land of Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau might be swept away by a regular war. The commercial and industrial bourgeoisie, which used to praise Louis Bonaparte as the great "saviour of order, property, religion, and the family", now brings forward accusation after accusation against the nefarious peace-breaker, who, instead of contenting himself with keeping down the exuberant forces of France and silencing the socialist desperadoes by salutary employment in Lambessa and Cayenne, has hit upon the eccentric idea of making stocks fall, thereby disturbing the regular course of business, and reawakening the revolutionary passions. Finally, the great mass of the people is extremely glad that, after years of enforced silence, it is permitted to give expression to its hatred of the man to whom it ascribes the chief blame for the miscarriages of the revolution of 1848-49. Grim memories of the Napoleonic wars and the secret suspicion that a war against Austria represents a covert step against Germany, fully suffice to surround the philippics against Bonaparte, springing from so many different motives, with the appearance of a common national sentiment. The stupid lies in the *Moniteur*, the frivolous pamphlets penned by the literary condottieri of the Emperor, and the manifest signs of vacillation, anxiety, and even fear on the part of the fox who is compelled to play the lion, have done the rest to convert the general hatred into general contempt.

It would, however, be the greatest mistake to suppose that, because all Germany is incensed against Bonaparte, all Germany is therefore on the side of Austria. First of all, I need only remind you of the inveterate and inevitable antagonism between the Austrian and Prussian governments—an antagonism certainly not mitigated by the recollections of the Warsaw Congress, the bloodless battle of Bronzell, Austria’s armed promenade to Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein, or, perhaps, the Russo-Turkish war. You are acquainted with the cautious, lukewarm tendency of the latest manifestations of the Prussian government. They express that Prussia, as a European power, sees indeed no occasion to decide for one party or the other, and, as a German power, it reserves the right to examine how far the Austrian claims in Italy correspond with the true German interests. Prussia even went further. It declared that Austria’s separate treaties with Parma, Modena, Tuscany, and Naples, and consequently the mooted abrogation of those treaties, must be considered from a European point of view, and therefore did not at all lie within the scope of the German Confederation. It openly took sides against Austria on the Danubian question; it recalled its plenipotentiary, Bismarck, from the Federal Diet at Frankfurt, because he apparently espoused the interests of Austria too decidedly. Finally, Prussia, in order to meet the suspicion that it was acting unpatriotically, followed in the footsteps of the lesser German states and prohibited the export of horses. However, to deprive this prohibition of its anti-French sting, it was extended over the whole Zollverein, so that it is directed as much against Austria as against France. Prussia is still the same power that concluded the separate peace of Basel, and which in 1805 sent Haugwitz into Napoleon’s camp with two different dispatches; one was to be delivered if the Battle of Austerlitz went against Napoleon, the other contained servile congratulations for the foreign invader. Apart from the traditional family policy on which the House of Hohenzollern insists, it is intimidated by Russia, which, it knows, maintains secret relations with Bonaparte and drove him to his fatal declaration on New Year’s Day. When a paper like the *Neue Preußische Zeitung* pleads for the King of Piedmont against Franz Joseph, it requires no great gift of prophecy to guess which way the wind blows. To dispel all doubts, Herr von Manteuffel has published an anonymous pamphlet in which he recommends a Russo-French alliance against an Austro-English one.

But the essential question in this matter is not so much what intentions the government pursues, as on which side the sympathies of the people lie. Now I must tell you that, apart from the Catholic party, the feudal party, and a few stupid remnants of the Teutonic ranters of 1813-15, the German people in general, and the population of North Germany in particular, find themselves in a great dilemma. While they decidedly take the side of Italy against Austria, they cannot help taking the side of Austria against Bonaparte. Of course, if we went by the Augsburg *Allgemeine Zeitung*, one might arrive at the opinion that Austria is the idol of every German heart. The theory put forth by this paper is, in short, as follows: Every race in Europe, with the exception of the German, is on the verge of collapse. France is dying out; Italy must consider itself extremely privileged at being turned into a German barrack; the Slavonic races lack the ethical qualities to govern themselves; and England is corrupted by trade. Thus only solid Germany remains—and Austria is the European representative of Germany. With one hand it holds Italy, with the other the Slavs and Magyars, under the ennobling influence of German *Sittlichkeit* (it is impossible to translate this word). Austria protects the fatherland against the Russian invasion by keeping Galicia, Hungary, the Dalmatian coast, and Moravia occupied, and by intending to occupy the Danubian Principalities; and it defends Germany, that heart of human civilisation, against the defiling poison of French demoralisation, frivolity, and ambition, by keeping Italy in its clutches. I need scarcely tell you that this theory, beyond the frontiers of Austria, was welcomed by no one except a few Bavarian Krautjunker, whose claim to represent German civilisation is as well-founded as that of the ancient Boeotians to represent the Greek genius. But there was, and still is, another, more prosaic view of the matter, which stems from the same source. It is said that the Rhine must be defended on the Po, and that the Austrian positions on the Po, the Adige, and the Mincio form the natural military frontiers of Germany against a French invasion. When this doctrine was broached in 1848 by General Radowitz in the German National Assembly at Frankfurt, it prevailed and induced the Assembly to range itself on the side of Austria against Italy; but the decision of that so-called revolutionary parliament, which could stoop to endowing an Austrian archduke with the executive power, has long since been condemned. The Germans are beginning to understand that they were misled by a quid pro quo; that the military positions needed for the defence of Austria are by no means needed for the defence of Germany; and that the French can, with equal, and even greater, right claim the Rhine as their natural military frontier as the Germans can the Po, the Mincio, and the Adige.