Karl Marx

The General Mood in Berlin

From the English.

["New-York Daily Tribune" No. 5932 of April 28, 1860]

Berlin, April 10, 1860 If an intelligent foreigner who visited Berlin only two months ago and then left it, were now to return to this “metropolis of intellect,” the complete change in physiognomy, tone, and mood of “my dear Berliners” <“my dear Berliners”: in the “N.-Y. D. T.” in German and English> could not fail to strike him at once. Only a few months ago, vague talk was going the rounds in all strata of society in the metropolis. People congratulated one another in subdued tones on the worst being over, and on the spectre of a ten-years’ reaction having at last ceased to gag their spirit. This absurd theme was played in every key, with the inevitable aftertaste that the change had been brought about, not by the strenuous and salutary exertions of the Prussian subjects, but rather by the diseased state of the Prussian king’s head – that the change was thus a work of nature, and not of man. This uncomfortable aftertaste marred even the first joys of the New Era, which the blunt-pointed, arid pens of the Berlin daily press had triumphantly proclaimed. So great was the general faint-heartedness that, in order not to startle the Prince Regent out of his new-fangled liberalism, all candidates at the general election for the Second Chamber were subjected to this silly test: Do they profess confidence in the Hohenzollern cabinet installed by the Prince Regent? Are their names in no way prejudicial to the mild liberalism

of the new government? Instead of men who espoused the needs of the country, stirrup-holders with a willing voice for the cabinet were desired. That the new cabinet left entirely untouched the bureaucratic and police fetters forged by its predecessors, while its own professions of faith were marked by pliant double-dealing, anxious caution, and ambiguous reticence – these facts were blinked; and, beyond that, it was proclaimed a patriotic duty to blink them. All opposition newspapers, whether they called themselves constitutional or democratic, suddenly transformed themselves into government organs. After the Peace of Villafranca, when Herr von Schleinitz, the Prussian Foreign Minister, published a sort of Blue Book on the Italian war; when his despatches, true models of irresolute prolixity, showed him to be the worthy successor of the men who, in the last century, concluded the Peace of Basel, and in this century prepared the catastrophe of Jena; when we saw him meekly receive lessons in constitutionalism from Little Johnny <John Russell>, the British Jack-of-all-trades, creep in the dust before Prince Gortchakov, exchange billets doux <love letters> with the Man of December <Napoleon III>, and superciliously knit his brow at his Austrian colleague; until at last all his business friends turned against him – even then the Prussian press and our Berlin liberals worked themselves up into veritable ecstasies over the extraordinary intelligence displayed by the Prussian government, which, not content with doing nothing itself, contrived to prevent Germany too from taking any action. Soon afterwards, a meeting took place at Breslau between the Russian Tsar and Gortchakov on the one hand, and the Prince Regent with his ministerial satellites on the other. A new document on the vassal dependence of Prussia upon her Muscovite neighbour was legally signed – this was the first, but necessary, result of the Peace of Villafranca. Even in 1844 such an event would have provoked a storm of opposition throughout the country. Now it was extolled as a proof of far-seeing statesmanship. The nihilism of the Prince Regent’s foreign policy, together with the continued existence of the old reactionary feudal system, connected with the bureaucracy, which was only
in name
abandoned,

seemed to our friends, the Berlin liberals and the Prussian press of all shades, with the exception of the special organs of the old camarilla, reason enough to claim the imperial crown of Little Germany (i.e., Germany minus German Austria) for the representative of the Prussian dynasty. It is difficult to find in the historical annals a similar example of blindness, but we recall that after the Battle of Austerlitz, Prussia likewise crowed for a few days on her own dunghill, quasi re bene gesta <as if all had gone well>.

After the end of the Italian war, it was as pitiful as it was repulsive a spectacle to hear the Prussian press, with the Berlin papers at its head. Instead of venturing the slightest criticism of the stupid diplomacy of their own rulers, instead of boldly calling upon the “liberal” ministry at last to overcome in internal affairs the broad gulf between the professed and the real, instead of publicly denouncing the silent but stubborn encroachments upon civil liberty which the army of Manteuffel officials, still comfortably entrenched in their old strongholds, permits itself – instead of this, one heard them singing paeans to the splendour of a restored Prussia, saw them hurling their blunt arrows at humiliated Austria, stretching out their enervated hands for the German imperial crown, and, to the extreme astonishment of all Europe, behaving like lunatics in a fool’s paradise. All in all, it seemed as if the great international drama now being enacted on the European stage concerned our Berlin friends only as spectators, who from gallery or pit are to applaud or hiss, but not to act.

All this has now been transformed as by a magic wand. Berlin is at this moment, perhaps with the exception of Palermo and Vienna, the most revolutionary city in Europe. The ferment seizes all strata, and seems stronger than in the March days of 1848. How has this phenomenon come about, and, moreover, so suddenly? Through the coincidence of events, at the head of which stand, on the one hand, Louis Bonaparte’s latest exploits, and on the other, the new army reform proposed by the liberal government. Consequently, the state of blind trust and willing self-deception could naturally not last for ever. Furthermore, the incidents that forced the ministry to dismiss Police Director Stieber – that common

criminal who, together with his master the late Hinkeldey, had constantly wielded the highest power in Prussia since 1852 – have contributed, and, last not least, the publication of Humboldt’s correspondence with Varnhagen von Ense has done the rest. The fool’s paradise has vanished before the breath from beyond the grave.