Karl Marx
Herr Vogt

Preface.

Under the date “London, 6 February 1860” I published in the Berlin “Volks-Zeitung”, the Hamburg “Reform” and other German papers a declaration beginning with the following words:

“I hereby give notice that I have taken preparatory steps towards bringing an action for slander against the Berlin ‘National-Zeitung’ on account of the leading articles No. 37 and No. 41 on Vogt’s pamphlet: ‘My Action against the Allgemeine Zeitung.’ A literary reply to Vogt I reserve for a later occasion.”

Why I resolved to reply to Karl Vogt in literary form, but to the National-Zeitung before the courts, will be seen from the present work itself.

In the course of February 1860 I brought the libel suit against the National-Zeitung. After the proceedings had passed through four preliminary instances, I received, on 23 October of this year, the ruling of the Royal Prussian Supreme Tribunal, by which my right of suit was cut off in the final instance, i.e., the case was quashed before it came to public hearing. Had the latter, as I was entitled to expect, actually taken place, I would have been spared the first third of the present work. The simple reprint of a shorthand report of the court proceedings would have sufficed, and I should have escaped the highly disagreeable task of replying to accusations against my person, hence of having to speak of myself. I have always so carefully avoided this that Vogt could expect some success for his lying fables. Nevertheless, sunt certi denique fines. Vogt’s concoction, as summarised in its own fashion by the National-Zeitung, accused me of a series of infamous acts which now, after the public judicial refutation has been definitively cut off for me, demand a literary refutation. But apart from this consideration, which left no choice, I had other motives for dealing at greater length, once I had to enter into the matter, with Vogt’s hunting stories about me and my party associates. On the one hand, the almost unanimous cry of triumph with which the so-called “liberal” German press greeted his alleged revelations. On the other, the opportunity which the analysis of the concoction offered for the characterisation of that individual who represents a whole trend.

The reply to Vogt compelled me here and there to lay bare a partie honteuse of the history of the emigration. In this I am only exercising the right of “self-defence”. In the rest, apart from a very few persons, nothing can be laid against the emigration except illusions, which were more or less justified by the conditions of the time, and follies, which necessarily sprang from the extraordinary circumstances in which it found itself unexpectedly placed. I am speaking here, of course, only of the first years of the emigration. A comparison of the history of governments and of bourgeois society, say from 1849 to 1859, with the simultaneous history of the emigration would be the most brilliant apology that could be written for the latter.

I know in advance that the same canny men who, when Vogt’s concoction appeared, gravely shook their heads over the importance of his “revelations”, will now be quite unable to comprehend how I could waste my time in refuting such childishness, while the “liberal” scribblers who, with malicious alacrity, peddled Vogt’s vulgar commonplaces and worthless lies through the German, Swiss, French and American press, will find my manner of dealing with them and their hero outrageously offensive. But never mind!

The political as well as the juridical part of this work need no special preface of their own. To avoid possible misunderstandings, I note only this: men who, even before 1848, were in agreement in upholding the independence of Poland, Hungary and Italy, not only as a right of these countries but also as the interest of Germany and Europe, advanced entirely opposite views concerning the tactics which Germany was to carry out on the occasion of the Italian war of 1859 towards Louis Bonaparte. This opposition of views arose from opposed judgements about factual premises, a decision on which must be reserved for a later time. I, for my part, have to deal in this work only with the views of Vogt and his clique. Even the view which he pretended to represent, and which, in the imagination of an undiscerning crowd, he did represent, actually falls outside the limits of my critique. I deal with the views he really represented.

Finally, I express my heartfelt thanks for the willing help given me in the composition of this work, not only by old party friends but also by many members of the emigration in Switzerland, France and England who were formerly distant from me and are in part still personally unknown to me.

London, 17 November 1860.
Karl Marx.

I. The Sulphur Gang.

Clarín: Malas pastillas gasta;
ha se untado
Con ungüento de azufre. (Calderón.)

The “well-rounded nature”, as Advocate Hermann, before the district court of Augsburg, tenderly characterised his globular client, the hereditary Vogt of Nichilburg—the “well-rounded nature” begins its monstrously clumsy historical fabrication as follows:

“Under the name of the Sulphur Gang, or also under the no less characteristic name of the Bürstenheimer, there was known among the refugee community of 1849 a number of people who, initially scattered in Switzerland, France and England, gradually gathered in London and there revered Herr Marx as their visible head. The political principle of these fellows was the dictatorship of the proletariat etc.” (p. 136. “My Action against the Allgemeine Zeitung” by Karl Vogt. Geneva. December 1859.) The “main book”, in which this important communication is slipped in, appeared in December 1859. Eight months earlier, however, in May 1859, “the well-rounded nature” had published an article in the Biel Handels-Courier, which must be regarded as the ground-plan of the more detailed historical fabrication. Let us hear the original text: “Since the reversal of the revolution of 1849,” thus the Biel commercial traveller cuts the story, “a clique of refugees has gradually gathered in London, whose members were known among the Swiss emigration under the name of the ‘Bürstenheimer’ or the ‘Sulphur Gang’ in his (!) time. Their chief is Marx, the former editor of the Rheinische Zeitung in Cologne—their watchword Social Republic, dictatorship of the workers—their occupation the spinning of connections and conspiracies.” (Reprinted in the “main book”. Third Section. Documents, No. 7, pp. 31, 32.)

The clique of refugees which was “known among the Swiss emigration” as the “Sulphur Gang” is transformed 8 months later, before a larger public, into a mass “scattered over Switzerland, France and England” which was known as the “Sulphur Gang” among the refugee community in general. It is the old story of the men in Kendal green, so cheerfully told by Karl Vogt’s prototype, the immortal Sir John Falstaff, who in his zoological rebirth has by no means lost in substance. From the original text of the Biel commercial traveller it emerges that the “Sulphur Gang” as well as the “Bürstenheimer” were Swiss local products. Let us look into their natural history.

Informed by friends that in the years 1849-50 there did indeed flourish a society of refugees in Geneva under the name of the “Sulphur Gang”, and that Herr S. L. Borkheim, established merchant in the City of London, could give closer information on the origin, growth and decay of that genial society, I turned, in February 1860, in writing to the gentleman, then unknown to me, and indeed, after a personal meeting, received the following sketch, which I have printed here unaltered.

“London, 12 February 1860.
18, Union Grove, Wandsworth Road.
Dear Sir!

Although, despite nine years’ sojourn in the same country and mostly in the same city, we were, until three days ago, personally unacquainted with one another, you have yet not wrongly assumed that I would not refuse you, as a co-émigré, the desired communications.

Well then, to the ‘Sulphur Gang’!

In the year 1849, soon after we insurgents had been bowled out of Baden, there came together in Geneva, partly sent thither by the Swiss authorities, partly through voluntary choice of residence, several young men who, students, soldiers or merchants, had already been friends with one another in Germany before 1848, or had become acquainted with one another during the revolution.

The mood among the refugees was no rosy one. The so-called political leaders mutually tossed the blame for the failure onto one another; military directors criticised each other’s retrograde offensive movements, flank marches and offensive retirades; people began to abuse one another as bourgeois republicans, socialists and communists; it rained pamphlets, which by no means had a calming effect; spies were sensed everywhere, and to crown it all the clothes of the majority turned into rags and on many a face one read hunger. In such tribulation the young men already mentioned stuck together in friendship. They were Eduard Rosenblum, born in Odessa, the son of German parents; he had studied medicine in Leipzig, Berlin and Paris.

Max Cohnheim from Fraustadt; he had been a commercial clerk and, at the outbreak of the revolution, a one-year volunteer in the guards artillery.

Korn, chemist and apothecary from Berlin.

Becker, engineer from the Rhineland, and I myself, who had, after having passed the Abiturientenexamen at the Werder Gymnasium in Berlin in 1844, stayed in Breslau, Greifswald and Berlin for the sake of study, and whom the revolution of ’48 found serving as a gunner in his native town (Glogau).

None of us was, I believe, over 24 years old. We lived near one another, indeed for a time even in the Grand Pré, all in the same house. Our chief occupation was, in the little country which offered so little opportunity for earning a livelihood, to not let ourselves be pulled down and demoralised by the general refugee misery and political hangover. The climate, nature were glorious—we did not disavow our Marchian antecedents and found the Gegend jottvoll. What the one of us possessed, the other had, and when we all had nothing, we found good-natured publicans or other dear people who took a pleasure in lending us something on the strength of our young, life-loving faces. We must all have looked really honest and mad! Let mention be made here with thanks of the cafetier Bertin (Café de l’Europe), who not only ‘pumped’ us, but also many other German and French refugees, in the true sense of the word, tirelessly. In 1856, after six years’ absence, I visited Geneva on my return from the Crimea, solely to pay my debts with the piety of a well-meaning ‘loafer’. The good, round, thick Bertin was astonished, assured me that I was the first who gave him this pleasure, but that he, regardless of this, did not at all regret having 10,000 to 20,000 francs outstanding among refugees, who had long since been chased into all the world. He inquired, aside from debt relations, with particular warmth after my closer friends. Unfortunately I had little to tell him.

After the foregoing interpolation I now return again to the year 1849.

We caroused gaily and sang merrily. Refugees of all different political nuances, including French and Italian, I remember having seen at our table. Cheerful evenings spent in such dulci jubilo seemed to all to be oases in the otherwise indeed

jämmerlichen Wüste des Flüchtlingslebens. Auch Freunde, die damals
Genfer Großräthe waren, oder es später geworden sind, fanden sich zur
Erholung mitunter bei unsern Gelagen ein.
Liebknecht, der jetzt hier und den ich in neun Jahren nur drei- oder viermal
gesehn, indem ich ihn immer zufällig auf der Straße traf, war nicht selten
von der Gesellschaft. Studenten, Doctoren, ehemalige Freunde vom Gym-
nasium und Universität her, auf Ferienreisen begriffen, tranken sich oft mit
uns durch viele Gläser Bier und manche Flasche des guten und billigen
Macon. Mitunter lagen wir Tage, ja sogar Wochen lang auf dem Genfer See
umher, ohne je ans Land zu steigen, sangen Minnelieder und schnitten’,
mit der Guitarre in der Hand, ‚die Cour' vor den Fenstern der Villas auf savo-
yischer und schweizerischer Seite.
Ich scheue mich nicht hier anzuführen, daß sich unser burschikoses Blut
mitunter in polizeiwidrigen Sprüngen Luft machte. Der so liebe, nun ver-
storbene Albert Galeer, Fazy's nicht unbedeutender politischer Gegner in
der Genfer Bürgerschaft, pflegte uns dann im freundlichsten Tone Moral zu
predigen. ‚Ihr seid tolle Bursche’, sagte er, Jedoch ist es wahr, daß in Eurem
Flüchtlingsjammer solchen Humor zu haben, man kein Schwächling sein
darf an Leib oder Geist—es gehört Elasticität dazu. ' Dem gutherzigen Manne
kam es hart an, uns härter anzulassen. Er war Großrath des Cantons Genf.
Von Duellen hatte meines Wissens damals nur eins Statt, und zwar mit
Pistolen zwischen mir und einem Herrn R ... : n. Die Veranlassung war aber
durchaus nicht politischer Natur. Mein Sekundant war ein Genfer nur
französisch sprechender Artillerist und der Unparteiische war der junge,
später in München als Student leider zu früh von einem Nervenfieber da-
hingeraffte Oscar Galeer, Bruder des Großraths. Ein zweites Duell, dessen
Veranlassung aber auch nicht politischer Natur war, sollte Statt finden
zwischen Rosenblum und einem flüchtigen badischen Lieutenant
v. F....., g, der bald darauf ins Vaterland zurückkehrte und, ich glaube,
wieder ins regenerirte badische Heer eintrat. Der Streit wurde, ohne daß es
zum äußersten kam, am Morgen des Kampftages durch Vermittlung des
Herrn Engels — ich vermuthe, es war derselbe, der jetzt in Manchester sein
soll, und den ich seit damals nicht wieder gesehen — in Freundschaft bei-
gelegt. Dieser Herr Engels war in Genf auf seiner Durchreise begriffen und
wir tranken der Flaschen Wein nicht wenige in seiner erheiternden Ge-
sellschaft. Das Begegnen mit ihm kam uns, wenn ich mich recht entsinne,
ganz besonders deswegen erwünscht, weil wir seiner Kasse erlauben konn-
ten, das Kommando zu führen.
Wir schlössen uns weder sogenannten blau- noch roth-republikanischen,
noch socialistischen, noch communistischen Parteiführern an. Wir erlaubten
uns das politische Treiben von Reichsregenten, Mitgliedern des Frankfurter

Parlaments und andrer Sprechsäle, Revolutionsgeneralen oder Korporalen
oder Dalai-Lamas des Communismus frei und unabhängig — ich will nicht
behaupten stets richtig — zu beurtheilen und gründeten sogar für diesen und
andre uns belustigende Zwecke ein Wochenblatt betitelt: |

 Rummeltipuff

Organ der Lausbubokratie.*

Dies Blatt erlebte nur zwei Nummern. Als man mich später in Frankreich
verhaftete, um mich hierher zu senden, wurden mir von der französischen
Polizei meine Papiere und Tagebücher mit Beschlag belegt und ich erinnere
mich nicht mehr genau, ob das Blatt durch obrigkeitliches Verbot oder durch
Armuth zu Grabe getragen wurde.

.Philister’ — sie gehörten den sogenannten Bourgeoisrepublikanern und
auch den Reihen der sogenannten communistischen Arbeiter an — bezeich-
neten uns mit dem Namen ,Schwefelbande’. Mitunter ist es mir, als hätten
wir uns selbst diesen Namen beigelegt. Jedenfalls haftete er der Gesellschaft
lediglich an in dem gemüthlichen deutschen Sinne des Worts. In freund-
lichster Weise komme ich mit Verbannungsgenossen zusammen, die
Freunde des Herrn Vogt, und mit andern, welche die Ihrigen waren und es
wahrscheinlich noch sind. Aber ich freue mich auf keiner Seite je gefunden
zu haben, daß man von den Mitgliedern der von mir bezeichneten ‚Schwe-
felbande’, sei es in politischer oder privater Beziehung, mit Mißachtung
spricht.

Diese ‚Schwefelbande’ ist die einzige, deren Existenz mir bekannt. Sie
bestand von 1849—1850 in Genf. Mitte 1850 wurden die wenigen Mitglieder
dieser gefährlichen Gesellschaft, da sie zu den auszuweisenden Kategorien
der Flüchtlinge gehörten, gezwungen die Schweiz zu verlassen, mit Aus-
nahme von Korn. Somit hatte also das Leben dieser ‚Schwefelbande’ sein
Ende erreicht. Von andern ‚Schwefelbanden’, ob sie an andern Orten und
wo und zu welchem Zwecke sie bestanden haben, weiß ich nichts.

Korn blieb, glaube ich, in der Schweiz und soll daselbst als Apotheker
ansässig sein. Cohnheim und Rosenblum gingen vor der Schlacht bei Idstedt
nach Holstein. Ich glaube, sie haben Beide an derselben Theil genommen.
Später, 1851, segelten sie nach Amerika. Rosenblum kehrte Ende desselben
Jahres nach England zurück und ging 1852 nach Australien, von wo ich seit
1855 Nichts von ihm gehört. Cohnheim soll schon seit einiger Zeit Redacteur
des Newyorker Humoristen sein. Becker begab sich gleich damals 1850 nach
Amerika. Was aus ihm geworden, kann ich leider nicht mit Bestimmtheit
sagen.

* „Solcher Titel war, wenn mich mein Gedächtniß nicht täuscht, allen liberalen Parteien in

irgend einer der deutschen Duodezkammern oder im Frankfurter Parlamente beigelegt worden.

Wir wollten ihn verewigen.” (Borkheim.)

Ich selbst hielt mich im Winter 1850—51 in Paris und Straßburg auf und
wurde von der französischen Polizei, wie schon oben angedeutet, im Februar
1851 gewaltsam — drei Monate lang schleppte man mich durch 25 Ge-
fängnisse und meistens während des Marsches in schweren eisernen Ketten
— nach England verschickt. Hier wohne ich, nachdem ich das erste Jahr zur
Eroberung der Sprache verwandt, dem Geschäftsleben gewidmet, nicht ohne
stetes und reges Interesse für die politischen Ereignisse in meinem Vater-
lande, aber immer frei von jeglichem Treiben politischer Flüchtlingskliquen.
Es geht mir nun so leidlich oder wie der Engländer sagt: very well, Sir, thank
you. — Es ist Ihre eigne Schuld, wenn Sie durch diese lange, aber jedenfalls
nicht sehr wichtige Geschichte zu waden haben.

Mit Achtung verbleibe ich ihr ganz ergebener
Sigismund L. Borkheim.”

So weit Herrn Borkheim ’s Brief. Im Vorgefühl ihrer historischen Wichtig-
keit ergriff die „Schwefelbande” die Vorsichtsmaßregel ihr eignes
Civil|standsregister mit Holzschnitten in das Buch der Geschichte ein-
zukeilen. Die erste Nummer des „Rummeltipuff” ist nämlich mit den Bild-
nissen seiner Stifter geschmückt.

Die genialen Herren von der „Schwefelbande” hatten sich betheiligt an
Struve’s republikanischem Putsch von September 1848, dann im Gefängniß
von Bruchsal bis Mai 1849 gesessen, endlich mitgekämpft als Soldaten in der
Reichsverfassungscampagne, die sie über die Schweizer Grenze warf. Im
Laufe des Jahres 1850 langten zwei Matadore derselben, Cohnheim und
Rosenblum, in London an, wo sie sich um Herrn Gustav Struve „versam-
melten”. Ich hatte nicht die Ehre sie persönlich kennen zu lernen. Politisch
setzten sie sich mit mir in Beziehung, indem sie unter Struve’ s Führung gegen
das damals von mir, Engels, Willich und Andern geleitete Londoner Flücht-
lingscomité ein Gegencomité zu bilden suchten, dessen uns feindliches
Pronunciamento, unterzeichnet von Struve, Rosenblum, Cohnheim, Bob-
zien, Grunich und Oswald, unter andern auch in der „Berliner Abend-Post”
erschien.

In der Blüthezeit der heiligen Allianz bildete die Kohlenbande (Carbonari)
eine ergiebige Fundgrube für polizistische Thätigkeit und aristocratische
Phantasie. Gedachte unser Reichs-Gargantua die „Schwefelbande” in der
Weise der Kohlenbande auszubeuten zu Nutz und Frommen teutscher
Bürgerschaft? Die Salpeterbande würde die polizeiliche Dreieinigkeit voll
machen. Vielleicht auch ist Karl Vogt dem Schwefel abhold, weil er kein
Pulver riechen kann. Oder haßt er gleich andern Kranken sein specifisches
Heilmittel? Der Geheimarzt ilacfemacAerklassificirt bekanntlich die Krank-
heiten nach ihren Heilmitteln. Unter Schwefelkrankheit fiele damit, was

Advokat Hermann im Bezirksgericht zu Augsburg „die abgerundete Natur”
seines Clienten hieß, was Rademacher ein „trommelartig gespanntes Bauch-
fell” und der noch größere Doctor Fischart „den gewelbeten Wanst aus
Frankreich” nennt. Alle Falstaffsnaturen litten so in mehr als einem Sinn
an der Schwefelkrankheit. Oder sollte den Vogt sein zoologisches Gewissen

erinnert haben, daß Schwefel der Tod der Krätzmilbe, also ganz und gar
zuwider den Krätzmilben, die mehrmals die Haut gewechselt haben? Denn,
wie neuere Forschungen bewiesen, die gehäutete Krätzmilbe allein ist
zeugungsfähig und daher zum Selbstbewußtsein durchgedrungen. Artiger
Gegensatz, auf der einen Seite der Schwefel, auf der andern die selbst-
bewußte Krätzmilbe! Unter allen Umständen aber schuldete Vogt seinem
„Kaiser” und dem liberalen teutschen Bürger den Nachweis, daß alles Unheil
„seit dem Umschlage der Revolution von 1849” von der Schwefelbande zu
Genf herrührt und nicht von der Decemberbande zu Paris. Mich persönlich
mußte er zum Chef der von ihm gelästerten und mir bis zum Erscheinen des
„Hauptbuchs” unbekannten Schwefelbande erhöhn, zur Strafe für meine
jahrelang fortgesetzten Frevel gegen Haupt und Glieder der „Bande vom
10. December”. Um den gerechten Groll des „angenehmen Gesellschafters”
begreiflich zu machen, citire ich hier einige auf die „Decemberbande”
bezügliche Stellen aus meiner Schrift: „Der achtzehnte Brumaire des
Louis Bonaparte” New-York 1852. (Siehe daselbst S.31, 32 und 61,
62.)

„Diese Bande datirt noch vom Jahre 1849. Unter dem Vorwande eine
Wohlthätigkeitsgesellschaft zu stiften, war das Pariser Lumpenproletariat
in geheime Sectionen organisirt worden, jede Section von bonapartistischen
Agenten geleitet, an der Spitze des Ganzen ein bonapartistischer General.
Neben zerrütteten Roués der Aristocratie mit zweideutigen Subsistenz-
mitteln und von zweideutiger Herkunft, neben verkommenen und aben-
theuernden Ablegern der Bourgeoisie, Vagabunden, entlassene Soldaten,
entlassene Zuchthaussträflinge, entlaufene Galeerensclaven, Gauner,
Gaukler, Lazzaronis, Taschendiebe, Taschenspieler, Spieler, Maquereaus,
Bordellhalter, Lastträger, Tagelöhner, Orgeldreher, Lumpen|sammler,
Scheerenschleifer, Kesselflicker, Bettler, kurz die ganze unbestimmte,
aufgelöste, hin und her geworfene Masse, die die Franzosen la Bohéme
nennen; mit diesem ihm verwandten Elemente bildete Bonaparte den Stock
der Bande vom 10. December. ‚Wohlthatigkeitsgesellschaft’ — in sofern alle
Mitglieder wie Bonaparte das Bedürfniß fühlten, sich auf Kosten der ar-
beitenden Nation wohlzuthun.

Dieser Bonaparte, der sich als Chef des Lumpenproletariats constituirt,
der hier allein in massenhafter Form die Interessen wiederfindet, die er
persönlich verfolgt, der in diesem Auswurfe, Abfall, Abhub aller Klassen,

the only class upon which he can rely unconditionally, he is the real Bonaparte, the Bonaparte *sans phrase*, unmistakable even when, later, all-powerful, he discharges his debt to a portion of his old fellow-conspirators by transporting them to Cayenne alongside the revolutionaries. Old, crafty *roué*, he conceives the historical life of peoples and their main and state actions as a comedy in the most vulgar sense, as a masquerade in which the grand costumes, words and postures merely mask the pettiest rascality. Thus on his march to Strasbourg, where a trained Swiss vulture represented the Napoleonic eagle. For his invasion of Boulogne he put some London lackeys into French uniforms. They represented the army. In his Society of December 10 he assembled 10,000 lumpen fellows, who had to play the part of the people, as Nick Bottom did the lion.......

What the national workshops were for the socialist workers, what the *gardes mobiles* were for the bourgeois republicans, the Society of December 10 was for Bonaparte—the fighting force peculiar to him as a party. On his journeys, detachments of it packed on the railway had to improvise a public for him, stage public enthusiasm, howl *vive l’Empereur*, insult and beat up republicans, naturally under the protection of the police. On his return journeys to Paris they had to form the avant-garde, forestall counter-demonstrations or disperse them. The Society of December 10 belonged to him, it was his work, his ownmost thought. What he otherwise appropriates, the force of circumstances hands over to him; what he otherwise does, circumstances do for him or he contents himself with copying the deeds of others; but he, with the official phrases of order, religion, family, property publicly before the citizens, and behind him the secret society of the Schufterles and Spiegelbergs, the society of disorder, of prostitution, and of theft—that is Bonaparte himself as the original author, and the history of the Society of December 10 is his own history ...

Bonaparte would like to appear as the patriarchal benefactor of all classes. But he cannot give to one without taking from another. Just as at the time of the Fronde it was said of the Duke of Guise that he was the most obliging man in France because he had turned all his estates into obligations of his partisans towards him, so Bonaparte would like to be the most obliging man in France and turn all property and all labour of France into a personal obligation towards himself. He would like to steal all France in order to give it away to France, or rather in order to be able to buy France back with French money, for as chief of the Society of December 10 he must buy what is to belong to him. And all state institutions become the institution of purchase: the Senate, the Council of State, the legislative body, the courts, the Legion of Honour, the soldier’s medal, the washhouses, the public buildings, the railways, the *état major* of the National Guard without privates, the confiscated estates of the House of Orleans. Every place in the army and in the government machine becomes a means of purchase.

But the most important thing in this process, in which France is taken in order to be given to it, are the percentages that fall to the head and members of the Society of December 10 during the turnover. The witticism with which Countess L., the mistress of M. de Morny, characterised the confiscation of the Orleans estates: *c’est le premier vol de l’aigle*, fits every flight of this eagle, who is more of a raven. He himself and his followers daily call out to one another, like that Italian Carthusian to the miser who boastfully enumerated the goods on which he still had years to live: *Tu fai conto sopra i beni. Bisogna prima far il conto sopra gli anni*. So as not to miscalculate the years, they count by the minute.

To the court, into the ministries, to the head of the administration and the army, there presses a swarm of fellows, of the best of whom one can say that no one knows whence he comes, a noisy, disreputable, plunder-loving Bohemia, crawling into gallooned coats with the same grotesque dignity as Soulouque’s grand dignitaries. One can visualise this higher stratum of the Society of December 10 if one considers that Véron-Crevel is its moral preacher and Granier de Cassagnac its thinker. When Guizot, at the time of his ministry, used this Granier in a small provincial paper against the dynastic opposition, he was wont to praise him with the phrase: *c’est le roi des drôles*—‘he is the king of buffoons.’ One would be wrong to recall the Regency or Louis XV in connection with the court and the clan of Louis Bonaparte. For ‘France has often already experienced a government of mistresses, but never yet a government of *hommes entretenus*..........’

Driven by the contradictory demands of his situation, and at the same time, like a conjurer, compelled to keep the eyes of the public fixed upon himself as Napoleon’s substitute by constant surprises, thus to carry out a *coup d’état* in miniature every day, Bonaparte throws the whole bourgeois economy into confusion, touches everything that seemed untouchable to the revolution of 1848, makes some patient for revolution and others eager for revolution, and produces anarchy itself in the name of order, while at the same time stripping the whole state machine of its halo, profaning it, making it at once nauseating and ridiculous. He repeats the cult of the Holy Coat in Trier at Paris in the cult of the Napoleonic imperial mantle. But when the imperial mantle finally falls on the shoulders of Louis Bonaparte, the iron statue of Napoleon will plunge down from the top of the Vendôme Column.

II. The Bürstenheimer.

“But, sirrah, there’s no room for faith, truth nor honesty, in this bosom of thine; it is all filled up with guts and midriff.” (Shakespeare.)

“Bürstenheimer”, or “Brimstone Band”, it says in the Biel Primitive Gospel (p. 31 of the Main Book. Documents). “Brimstone Band”, or also “Bürstenheimer”, it says in the “Main Book” (p. 136).

According to both readings, “Brimstone Band” and “Bürstenheimer” are one and the same identical band. The “Brimstone Band”, as we saw, had died, perished in mid-1850. So also the “Bürstenheimer”? The “rounded nature” is the Society of December’s attached civiliser, and civilisation, as Fourier says, distinguishes itself from barbarism in that it displaces the simple lie with the compound lie.

The “compound” Imperial Falstaff tells us (p. 198, Main Book) that a certain Abt is the “vulgarest of the vulgar”. Admirable modesty, with which Vogt puts himself in the positive degree, but his Abt in the superlative, appointing him, so to speak, as his Field Marshal Ney. When Vogt’s Primitive Gospel appeared in the Biel *Commis voyageur*, I requested the editors of the *Volk* to reprint the original screed without further commentary. The editors, however, appended to the reprint the remark: “The above screed originates from a seedy subject by the name of Abt, who eight years ago in Geneva was unanimously found guilty of various dishonourable acts by a court of honour of German refugees.” (No. 6 of the *Volk* of 11 June 1859.)

The editors of the *Volk* took Abt to be the author of Vogt’s original screed; they forgot that Switzerland had two Richmonds in the field, alongside an Abt a Vogt.

The “vulgarest of the vulgar”, then, invented the “Bürstenheimer” in the spring of 1851, which Vogt filched from his field marshal in the autumn of 1859. The sweet habit of plagiarism pursues him instinctively from the natural-historical book-making over into the political. The Geneva Workers’ Association was for a time presided over by the brushmaker Sauernheimer. Abt halved Sauernheimer’s trade and name, the one from the front, the other from the back, and from both halves he thoughtfully composed the whole “Bürstenheimer”. With this title he originally designated, besides Sauernheimer, his immediate circle, Kamm from Bonn, brushmaker by trade, and Ranickel from Bingen, journeyman bookbinder. He appointed Sauernheimer general, Ranickel adjutant of the Bürstenheimer, and Kamm Bürstenheimer *sans phrase*. Later, when two refugees belonging to the Geneva Workers’ Association, Imandt (now professor at the seminary in Dundee) and Schily (formerly lawyer in Trier, now in Paris), brought about Abt’s expulsion before a court of honour of the association, Abt published a scurrilous pamphlet in which he raised the entire Geneva Workers’ Association to the rank of “Bürstenheimer”. One sees, then: there were Bürstenheimer in general and Bürstenheimer in particular. “Bürstenheimer” in general encompassed the Geneva Workers’ Association, the same association from which the cornered Vogt stealthily obtained a *testimonium paupertatis* published in the *Allgemeine Zeitung*, and before which he crawled on all fours at the Schiller celebration and the Robert Blum celebration (1859). “Bürstenheimer” in particular were, as stated, the completely unknown to me Sauernheimer, who never came to London; Kamm, who, expelled from Geneva, travelled to the United States via London, where he sought out not me, but Kinkel; finally the Ranickel, who remained in Geneva as Bürstenheimer adjutant, where he “rallied” around the “rounded nature”. He in fact represents in his own person Vogt’s proletariat. Since I must return to the Ranickel later, here some preliminary remarks on the monster. Ranickel belonged to the refugees’ barracks in Besançon commanded by Willich after the ill-fated Hecker campaign. He took part under him in the imperial constitution campaign and later fled with him to Switzerland. Willich was his communist Mohammed, who was to establish the millennium with fire and sword. Vain, garrulous, foppish melodramatist that he was, the Ranickel over-tyrannised the tyrant. In Geneva it raged in red fury against the “parliamentarians” in general and threatened in particular, like another Tell, “to strangle the Landvogt”. When, however, it was introduced by Wallot, a refugee from the 1830s and a youthful friend of Vogt, to the latter, Ranickel’s bloodthirsty disposition curdled into the milk of human kindness. “The knave was Vogt’s,” as Schiller says.

The Bürstenheimer adjutant became adjutant to General Vogt, whose war glory only failed to materialise because Plon-Plon, for the task his “Corps de Touristes” had to perform in the Italian campaign, considered the Neapolitan Capitani Ulloa (also a general by courtesy) bad enough, but keeps his Parolles in reserve for the great adventure with “the lost drum” that will play out on the Rhine. In 1859 Vogt transferred his Ranickel from the proletarian estate to the bourgeois estate, arranged a business for him (art objects, bookbinding, writing materials) and procured him on top of that the clientele of the Geneva government. The Bürstenheimer adjutant became Vogt’s “maid of all work”, cicisbeo, house friend, Leporello, confidant, correspondent, errand boy, informer, but especially, since the fall of fat Jack, his eavesdropper and Bonapartist canvasser among the workers. A Swiss paper recently announced the discovery of a third species of hedgehog, the Ran or Rhine hedgehog, which combines the nature of the dog-hedgehog and the pig-hedgehog and was found in a nest on the Arve, the country seat of Humboldt-Vogt. Was this Ran-hedgehog aimed at our Ranickel!

Notabene, the only refugee in Geneva with whom I kept up a connection, Dr. Ernst Dronke, formerly co-editor of the _Neue Rheinische Zeitung_, now a merchant in Liverpool, held the opposite stance towards the “Bürstenheimer affair”.

By way of preface to the following letters from Imandt and Schily, I need only remark that at the outbreak of the revolution Imandt left the university in order to take part in the war in Schleswig-Holstein as a volunteer. In 1849 Schily and Imandt led the storming of the arsenal at Prüm, from where both of them, with the captured weapons and their men, forced their way through to the Palatinate in order to join the ranks of the Imperial Constitution army. Expelled from Switzerland in the early summer of 1852, they came to London.

“Dundee, 5 February 1860
Dear Marx,

I do not understand how Vogt can involve you in the Geneva affairs. It was known among the refugee colony there that of all of us only Dronke was in contact with you. The Sulphur Band was in existence before my time, and the only name belonging to it that I recall is Borkheim.

The Bürstenheimer were the Geneva workers’ association. The name owes its origin to Abt. At that time the association was a nursery for the Willich secret league, in which I served as president. When, on my motion, Abt was declared by the workers’ association, to which many refugees belonged, to be infamous and unworthy of associating with refugees and workers, he shortly afterwards published a lampoon in which he accused Schily and me of the most absurd crimes. Thereupon we brought the whole matter up again in another locality and before entirely different persons. Called upon to produce proof of the slanders he had written, he rebuffed our request; and without Schily or myself needing to say anything in our defence, Dentzer moved that Abt be declared an infamous slanderer. The motion was carried unanimously for the second time, this time in a refugee assembly composed almost exclusively of former parliamentarians. I am sorry that my report is so extremely meagre, but it is the first time in eight years that I have thought of the dirt again. I would not wish to be condemned to write about it, and I shall be most astonished if you should find it possible to dip your hand into such sauce.

Farewell.

Your Imandt”

A well-known Russian writer, during his stay in Geneva a close friend of Herr Vogt, wrote to me in the spirit of the closing lines of the letter above:

“Paris, 10 May 1860
My dear Marx,

I learned with the liveliest indignation of the calumnies that have been spread about you and of which I became aware through an article in the _Revue Contemporaine_, signed Edouard Simon. What particularly astounded me is that Vogt, whom I believed to be neither stupid nor wicked, could have fallen into the moral degradation which his pamphlet reveals. I needed no testimony to be certain that you were incapable of base and dirty intrigues, and it was all the more painful for me to read these defamations since at the very moment when they were printed, you were giving to the learned world the first part of the fine work which is destined to renew economic science and to found it upon new and more solid bases. My dear Marx, pay no more attention to all these wretched affairs; all serious men, all conscientious men are for you, but they expect something other than sterile polemics from you; they would like to be able to study the continuation of your fine work as soon as possible. — Your success among thinking people is immense, and if it may be agreeable for you to learn of the resonance which your doctrines find in Russia, I can tell you that at the beginning of this year Professor — gave a public course in political economy in Moscow whose first lecture was nothing other than a paraphrase of your recent publication. I send you a number of the _Gazette du Nord_, in which you will see how highly your name is esteemed in my country. Farewell, my dear Marx, keep yourself in good health and continue, as in the past, to enlighten the world, without troubling yourself about petty stupidities and petty cowardices. Believe in the friendship of your devoted ——”

Szemere, the former Hungarian minister, also wrote to me: “Is it worth your while to bother with all these Bavarian beer-pots?”

Why, in spite of these and similar admonitions, I dipped my hand — to use Imandt’s forceful language — into Vogt’s sauce, is briefly indicated in the preface.

So back to the Bürstenheimer. The following letter from Schily I print verbatim, including the part which does not refer to the “mutton”. I have, however, abridged the communications about the Sulphur Band already anticipated by Borkheim’s letter and reserved other passages for a later place, since I must treat “my pleasant subject” with a certain artistic touch and therefore may not blurt out all secrets at once.

“Paris, 8 February 1860
46, Rue Lafayette
Dear Marx,

It was a great pleasure to receive a direct sign of life from you through your letter of the 31st ult., and you find me all the more ready to give you the information you request about the Genevan doings in question because I was minded to write to you about them _proprio motu_. That Vogt, as you write, throws you together with persons entirely unknown to you was, in fact, not only my first thought but also that of all the acquaintances from Geneva here when we chanced to discuss the matter; and so I undertook, in the interest of truth, to communicate to you the appropriate details about the ‘Bürstenheimer’, the ‘Sulphur Band’, etc. From this you will therefore understand that your two questions: ‘1) Who were the Bürstenheimer, what did they do? 2) Who was the Sulphur Band, of what elements did it consist, what did it do?’ came just at the right moment. First, however, I must call your attention to an offence against chronological order, for on this score priority belongs to the Sulphur Band. If Vogt wanted to paint the devil on the wall for the German philistine or even to brand him with sulphur upon the head and at the same time ‘have a lark’, then he should surely have taken more diabolical figures as types than those harmless, jolly tavern geniuses whom we seniors of the emigration in Geneva jokingly and without any disagreeable secondary thought lumped together under the name of the Sulphur Band, and who accepted this designation just as guilelessly. They were cheerful sons of the Muses who had passed their _examina_ and _exercitia practica_ in the various south German putsches, most recently in the Imperial campaign, and were now strengthening themselves in the Red House in Geneva against the failure they had suffered with their examiners and drill-masters for a later resumption of business. It goes without saying that whoever either never arrived in Geneva at all or only arrived after the band had been burst asunder remains excluded from it. It was, namely, a purely local and ephemeral bloom (sublime flower of sulphur would actually be the proper name for it), but its revolutionary-scented ‘Rummeltipuff’ probably had too strong an odour for the nerves of the Swiss Confederacy, for: Druey blew and the flower was scattered to all the winds. Only a good while later Abt came, and several years after him Cherval, to Geneva, where they gave off their fragrance ‘each after its kind’, but by no means, as Vogt asserts, in that bouquet long since torn apart, long since exuded, long since forgotten.

The doings of the band can be fairly well summed up in the words: working in the vineyard of the Lord. In addition they undertook the editorship of the ‘Rummeltipuff’ with its motto: ‘Bide in the land and feed thyself reddishly’, in which they, with wit and humour, made merry over heaven and earth, exposed false prophets, castigated parliamentarians (inde irae), and in doing so did not spare themselves or us, the guests, but caricatured all and everything, friend and foe, with laudable conscientiousness and impartiality.

That they stood in no connection with you, that they did not wear your Bundschuh, I need not tell you. Yet neither can I conceal from you that this footwear would not have been to their taste. As freebooters of the revolution they were for the time being lounging about in the slipper of the armistice until the revolution should reactivate them and re-equip them with its own buskin (seven-league boot of decided progress), and ill would he have fared who had wanted to disturb their siesta with Marxian political economy, with the dictatorship of the workers, etc. Good Lord! The work that they did required at most a tavern president, and their economic studies revolved around the pot and its reddish contents. ‘The right to labour’, the guest Backfisch, a worthy farrier from the Odenwald, once opined, ‘was quite right, but they had better keep the duty to labour off his back.’

Let us therefore let the tombstone of the Sulphur Band, so sacrilegiously lifted, fall back again. A Hafiz would really have to sing the band its _Requiescat in pace_ in order to banish any further desecration of its grave. In the absence of such, let it receive herewith, _pro viatico et epitaphio_, the valediction: ‘They all have smelt powder’, whilst their sacrilegious historiographer has got no further than sniffing at sulphur.

The Bürstenheimer first emerged when the Sulphur bandits were living on only in legend, in the registers of Geneva philistines and in the hearts of Geneva belles, by tradition. The brush and bookbinder Sauernheimer, Kamm, Ranickel, etc. fell into a quarrel with Abt; warmly taking the part of the former, Imandt, I and others were also attacked by the latter. Abt was accordingly summoned before a general assembly for which the refugee colony and the workers’ association had come together as a _cour des pairs_, or rather as a _haute cour de justice_; there he did indeed appear, and not only failed to sustain the accusations he had hurled against this or that person, but declared roundly that he had plucked them purely out of thin air, as reprisals against the accusations, concocted out of the same element, levelled by his opponents. ‘Sausage for sausage, reprisals hold the world together!’ — was his opinion. After he had now valiantly pleaded this sausage system right through and had thoroughly convinced the high peers of its practical value, and after evidence had thereupon been brought concerning the charges directed against him, he confessed to malicious slander, was found guilty of the other misdeeds imputed to him, and was accordingly placed under ban and anathema. _En revanche_ he now called the high peers, originally only the aforesaid guild companions, ‘Bürstenheimer’ — a happy combination, as you see, of the name and the trade of the first-named of them, whom you must therefore venerate as the ancestor of the house of Bürstenheim, without, however, being able to insert yourself or even to attach yourself to this lineage, be it that it comprises the guild or the peerage. For know that those among them who occupied themselves with the ‘organisation of the revolution’ did so not as your adherents but as your adversaries, in that they revered Willich as their God the Father, or at least as their Pope, whereas they decried you as their Antichrist or antipope; so that Dronke, who was regarded as your sole adherent and _legatus a latere_ in the diocesan seat of Geneva, was kept away from all councils, with the exception of the oenological ones, where he was _primus inter pares_. But the Bürstenheimer affair, too, like the Sulphur Band, was a purest ephemeron and burst asunder before the mighty blast of Druey.

That a pupil of Agassiz should now have been able to lose himself among these Geneva emigration-fossils and bring to light such fabulous natural-history tales as those dished up in his brochure must be all the more astonishing with regard to the species Bürstenheimerana, as he has at his disposal in his zoological cabinet a magnificent specimen of precisely this, in the shape of a mastodon from the order of Ruminants, in the person of the original Bürstenheimer, Ranickel. The rumination, therefore, appears not to have proceeded correctly or not to have been correctly studied by the said pupil.

Here you have everything you asked for, et au-delà. Now I should like to ask something of you, namely your opinion on the introduction of a succession quota pro patria, vulgo the state, as the main source of finance, with the abolition of the taxes burdening the unpropertied classes and of course directed only against large inheritances.... Besides this succession quota, two German institutions are occupying my mind: ‘consolidation of parcels’ and ‘mortgage insurance’, which I should like to make understood in this country, where understanding is utterly lacking, as indeed the French, with few exceptions, see nothing beyond the Rhine but nebulosities and sauerkraut. An exception was made some time ago by the Univers when, lamenting the fragmentation of landed property beyond all measure, it correctly added: “Il serait désirable qu’on appliquât immédiatement les remèdes énergiques, dont une partie de l’Allemagne s’est servie avec avantage: le remaniement obligatoire des propriétés partout où les propriétaires d’une commune réclament cette mesure. La nouvelle répartition facilitera le drainage, l’irrigation, la culture rationnelle et la voirie des propriétés.” Thereupon comes the Siècle, somewhat shortsighted in general already, but in its consideration of German conditions totally stone-blind, by virtue of its chauvinism, complacently paraded à la Diogenes with the tattered coat, which mouse it warms up daily for its subscribers as patriotism; this same Chauvin, after having given the Univers, its bête noire, the obligatory morning greeting: “Propriétaires ruraux, suivez ce conseil! Empressez-vous de réclamer le remaniement obligatoire des propriétés; dépouillez les petits au profit des grands. O fortunatos nimium agricolas — trop heureux habitants des campagnes — Sua si bona — s’ils connaissaient l’avantage à remanier obligatoirement la propriété!” As if, in a vote of property owners by head, the large ones would prevail over the small ones.

For the rest, I let God’s water run over God’s land, render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and unto God that which is God’s, respectively even ‘the devil’s share’, and remain thus in old friendship

Yours, Schily.

From the preceding communications it follows that if in Geneva in 1849–50 a “Sulphur gang”, and in 1851–52 “Bürstenheimer” existed, two societies that had nothing in common with each other and nothing in common with me, then on the other hand the existence of the “Sulphur gang or Bürstenheimer” unveiled by our parliamentary clown is stuff of his stuff, a lie to the fourth power “Bergdick wie der Vater, der sie gebar”. Just imagine a historian shameless enough to report: at the time of the first French Revolution a number of people were known by the name of the “cercle social” or also by the no less characteristic name of the “Jacobins”.

As for the life and deeds of his “Sulphur gang or Bürstenheimer”, which he composed himself, our Brother Lustick avoided all expenditure of production costs. I will cite a single example:

“One of the chief occupations of the Sulphur gang,” the Rounded One recounts to his astounded philistine public, “was to compromise people in the fatherland in such a way that they could no longer resist the attempts at exploitation and had to pay money” (also a fine region, “they could no longer resist the attempts at exploitation”) “so that the gang might keep the secret of their compromising. Not one, hundreds of letters were written by these people (namely Vogt’s homunculi) to Germany, containing the undisguised watchword that participation in this or that act of the revolution would be denounced if by a certain date a certain sum did not reach a designated address.” (p. 139 of the “Main Book”.)

Why did Vogt not have “one” of these letters printed? Because the “Sulphur gang” wrote “hundreds”. If threatening letters were as cheap as blackberries, Vogt would swear that we shall have no threatening letter. If summoned tomorrow before a court of honour of the Grütli Union to provide information about the “hundreds” of “threatening letters”, he would, instead of a letter, pull a wine bottle from his belt, click his tongue, snap his fingers, and, with belly-shaking Silenus laughter, cry out with his Abt: “Sausage for sausage, reprisals keep the world together.”

III. Police Matters.

“What new, unheard-of thing has Vogt
Devised!” (Schiller.)

“I speak it out unvarnished,” says Vogt, throwing himself into his most solemn roguish posture, “I speak it out unvarnished: Anyone who gets involved with Marx and his associates in any kind of political intrigues falls sooner or later into the hands of the police; these intrigues are from the very beginning betrayed to the secret police, known to them and hatched by them (the intrigues, it seems, are eggs and the police is the brood-hen that hatches them) as soon as the time seems right. The instigators Marx and Co. are of course sitting out of reach in London (while the police is sitting on the eggs). I am not embarrassed for proofs of this assertion.” (pp. 166, 167 of the “Main Book”.) Vogt is not “embarrassed”, Falstaff was never “embarrassed”. “Verlogen” (mendacious), as much as you like, but “verlegen” (embarrassed)? So your “proofs”, Jack, your “proofs”.

1) Self-Avowal.

“Marx himself says in his brochure, ‘Revelations concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne’, published in 1853, p. 77: ‘After 1849, as before 1848, only one path stood open to the proletarian party—the path of secret connection. Since 1849, therefore, a whole series of secret proletarian connections arose on the Continent, discovered by the police, condemned by the courts, broken through by the prisons, constantly re-established by circumstances.’ Euphemistically (says Vogt) Marx here calls himself a ‘circumstance’.” (p. 167 of the “Main Book”.)

Thus Marx says “the police have, since 1849, discovered a whole series of secret connections” which circumstances have re-established. Vogt says that Marx, not “circumstances”, re-established the “secret connections”. Thus Vogt has furnished the proof that as often as Badinguet’s police discovered the Marianne, Marx wove it together again in agreement with Pietri.

“Marx himself says!” I will now quote in context what Marx himself says:

“Since the defeat of the revolution of 1848–49 the proletarian party on the Continent lost what it exceptionally possessed during that short epoch: press, freedom of speech and right of association, i.e., the legal means of party organisation. The bourgeois-liberal, as well as the petty-bourgeois democratic party, found despite the reaction, in the social position of the classes they represent, the conditions for holding together in one form or another and for asserting their common interests more or less effectively. To the proletarian party, after 1849 as before 1848, only one path stood open—the path of secret connection. Since 1849, therefore, a whole series of secret proletarian connections arose on the Continent, discovered by the police, condemned by the courts, broken through by the prisons, constantly re-established by circumstances. A part of these secret societies aimed directly at the overthrow of the existing state power. This was justified in France.… Another part of the secret societies aimed at the party-formation of the proletariat, without troubling about the existing governments. This was necessary in countries like Germany.… There is no doubt that here, too, the members of the proletarian party would again take part in a revolution against the status quo, but it was not their task to prepare this revolution, to agitate for it, to conspire, to complot for it.… The Communist League was therefore no conspiratorial society…” (pp. 62, 63 “Revelations etc.”, Boston edition.)

But even mere “propaganda” is stamped by the cruel country-Vogt as a crime, with the exception, of course, of the propaganda directed by Pietri and Laity. “Agitating, conspiring, complotting” even permits the country-Vogt, but only if their centre is in the Palais Royal, at Herzens-Heinz, Heliogabalus Plon-Plon. But “propaganda” among the proletarians! Fie, for shame!

In the “Revelations”, after the passage cited above and so meaningfully mutilated by Examining Magistrate Vogt, I continue as follows:

“It stands to reason that such a secret society (as the Communist League) could have little attraction for individuals who, on the one hand, puff up their personal insignificance under the theatrical cloak of conspiracies, and, on the other, satisfy their narrow ambition on the day of the next revolution, but above all wish to appear momentarily important, take part in the booty of demagogy, and be welcomed by the democratic mountebanks. From the Communist League, therefore, a fraction separated itself, or was separated, as you will, which demanded, if not actual conspiracies, yet the semblance of conspiracy and hence direct alliance with the democratic heroes of the day—the Willich-Schapper fraction. Characteristic of them is that Willich figures with and alongside Kinkel as entrepreneur of the German-American revolutionary loan business.” (pp. 63, 64.) And how does Vogt translate this passage into his “euphemistic” police-gibberish? Just listen:

“So long as both (parties) still worked together, they laboured, as Marx indeed himself says, in the founding of secret societies and the compromising of societies and of individuals on the Continent.” (p. 171.) Only the fat rascal forgets to cite the page of the “Revelations” where Marx “indeed himself says” this. “Egli è bugiardo, e padre di menzogna.”

2) Revolution Day of Murten.

“Charles the Bold”, the “bold Charles”, vulgo Karl Vogt, now supplies the defeat at Murten.

“Workers and refugees in great numbers were so long wheedled and worked upon”—namely by Liebknecht—“that at last a revolution day was proclaimed for Murten. Thither the delegates of the branch associations were secretly to betake themselves; there they were to deliberate upon the final organisation of the League and upon the definitive date for the rising. All preparations had been kept highly secret, the convocations had been attended to only by confidants of Herr Liebknecht and by correspondents of the same. The delegates came together in Murten from all sides, on foot, by ship and by waggon, and were instantly received by gendarmes, who knew in advance what, whence, and in what manner. The whole society thus rounded up was confined for a time in the Augustinian monastery in Freiburg and then transported to England and America. Herr Liebknecht was treated with quite special consideration.” (p. 168 “Main Book”.)

[...]buch".)

"Herr Liebknecht" had taken part in Struve's September putsch of 1848, then sat in Baden gaols until after the middle of May 1849, was freed as a result of the Baden military insurrection, joined the Baden people's artillery as a common soldier, was flung back into the casemates of Rastatt as a rebel by Vogt's friend Brentano, after being freed a second time, during the Reich Constitution campaign, attached himself to the troop division commanded by Johann Philipp Becker and finally crossed the French frontier together with Struve, Cohnheim, Korn and Rosenblum, from where they betook themselves to Switzerland.

At that time, "Herr Liebknecht" and his Swiss "revolution days" were even less known to me than the drinking bouts at Wirth Benz's establishment in Kesslergasse in Berne, where the round table of parliamentarians once again recited with much pleasure the speeches they themselves had delivered in St Paul's Church, divided up the future Reich offices among themselves by number and had the harsh night of their exile shortened by the lies, pranks, obscenities, and boasting of Charles the Bold, who, not without a touch of humour and with allusion to an old German tale, at that time personally issued himself the patent as "Reich Wine-Guzzler."

The "tale" begins with the words:

"Swaz ich trinken's han gesehen,
daz ist gar von kinden geschehen:
ich han einen swélch gesehen,
dem wil ich meisterschefte jéhen
Den dühten bécher gar entwiht
ër wolde näpf noch kophe niht.
ër tranc uz grözen kannen.
ër ist vor allen mannen
ein Vorlauf allen swëlhen
von ûren und von einen
wart solcher slünd nie niht getan."

But back to the "revolution day" of Murten. "Revolution day!" "Final organisation of the League!" "Moment for raising the shield!" "Preparations kept most highly secret!" "Quite secret gathering from all sides on foot, by ship, by wagon." "Bold Charles" has evidently not studied Stieber's method, which I exposed in my "Revelations," for nothing.

The facts of the case are simply these: Early in 1850, Liebknecht was president of the Geneva Workers' Association. He proposed an alliance among the German workers' associations in Switzerland, which at that time were completely disconnected. The motion carried. It was then decided to send a circular letter to 24 different workers' associations, inviting them to Murten in order to discuss the intended organisation and the founding of a common press organ. The debates in the Geneva Workers' Association, the circular letter, and the discussions it provoked in the 24 other workers' associations—all were conducted publicly, and the Murten Congress was publicly convened. Had the Swiss authorities wished to prohibit it, they could have done so four weeks before it took place. But a police theatrical coup lay in the plan of the liberal Herr Druey, who was looking for someone to devour, in order to mollify the Holy Alliance which was then threatening. Liebknecht, who as president of the Workers' Association had signed the summons to the congress, enjoyed the honours of a chief ringleader. Separated from the other delegates, he was given free lodgings in the topmost oriel of the tower of Fribourg, enjoyed a broad view into the open country and even had the privilege of promenading on the battlements for an hour each day. The only original feature of his treatment was solitary confinement. His repeated request to be locked up together with the others was repeatedly refused. But Vogt knows that the police do not isolate their "moutons," but rather mix them among the mass as "agreeable company."

Two months later, Liebknecht was dispatched by the Fribourg police director to Besançon together with a certain Gebert, where, like his confederate, he received a French compulsory passport to London, with the warning that if they deviated from the prescribed route they would be transported to Algiers. As a result of this unforeseen journey, Liebknecht lost the greater part of his effects which were in Geneva. Incidentally, Messrs Castella, Schaller, and the other members of the Fribourg government at that time deserve the remark that Liebknecht, no less than all the Murten prisoners, was treated entirely humanely. Those gentlemen remembered that they themselves had been prisoners or fugitives only a few years before, and they openly expressed their abhorrence of the hangman's service imposed on them by the grand sorcerer Druey. The imprisoned refugees were not treated as the fugitive "parliamentarians" had expected. | A fellow still living in Switzerland, a certain H.......... , a comrade of the parliamentarians, therefore felt obliged to publish a pamphlet in which he denounced the prisoners in general, and the imprisoned Liebknecht in particular, for "revolutionary" ideas beyond the bounds of parliamentary reason. And "Charles the Bold" still seems inconsolable over the "quite special consideration" with which Liebknecht was treated.

Plagiarism characterises our "bold" one in the whole of his bookmaking. So here. The Swiss liberals were in the habit of invariably "liberalising" their footsteps of expulsion by slanderously accusing their victims of moucharderie. After Fazyden had expelled Struve, he publicly denounced him as a "Russian spy." So Druey denounced Boichot as a French mouchard. Similarly Tourte contra Schily, after he had the latter suddenly seized on the street in Geneva in order to dispatch him via the Tour des Prisons to Berne. "Le commissaire Maire fédéral Monsieur Kern exige votre expulsion," the grandiose Tourte replied to Schily's question about the reason for the brutality perpetrated against him. Schily: "Alors mettez-moi en présence de Monsieur Kern." Tourte: "Non, nous ne voulons pas que M. le commissaire fédéral fasse la police à Genève." The logic of this answer was fully worthy of the acumen with which the same Tourte, as Swiss envoy in Turin, at a time when the cession of Savoy and Nice was already a fait accompli, wrote to his Federal President that Cavour was working hand and foot against this cession. Yet perhaps at that time certain diplomatic railway relations had cut short Tourte's normal measure of acumen. Scarcely was Schily sitting in the harshest secret confinement in Berne when Tourte began to "liberalise" his police brutality by whispering into the ears of German refugees, e.g., Dr. Fink: "Schily was in secret contact with Kern, denounced refugees to him in Geneva, etc." The "Indépendant" of Geneva at that time itself counted among the notorious sins of the Geneva government "the systematic calumny of the refugees raised to a state maxim." (See Appendix 1.)

Immediately upon the first reclamations of the German police, Swiss liberalism violated the right of asylum—and it had pledged the right of asylum on condition that the rest of the revolutionary army would not fight a last battle on Baden soil—by expelling the so-called "leaders." Later the "led" came in turn. Thousands of Baden soldiers, under false pretences, were given passports to their homeland, where they were at once received by gendarmes who knew in advance "what, whence, and by what means." Then came the threats of the Holy Alliance, and with them the Murten police farce. Yet the "liberal" Federal Council did not dare go as far as "bold Charles." Nothing about "revolution day," "final organisation of the League," "definitive moment for raising the shield." The investigation, which had been initiated pro forma, fizzled out into thin air.

"Threats of war" from abroad and "politico-propagandistic tendencies"—that was all that the "embarrassed" Federal Council stammered by way of excuse in an official document. (See Appendix 2.) The police grand deeds of "Swiss liberalism" by no means reached their end with the "revolution day of Murten." On 25 January 1851, my friend Wilhelm Wolff (the "parliament wolf," as the "parliament sheep" christened him) wrote to me from Zurich: "Through its measures so far, the Federal Council has reduced the number of refugees from 11,000 down to 500, and it will not rest until all those who do not possess considerable wealth or special connections have been finally harried out." The refugees who had acted for the revolution stood in the most natural opposition to the St Paul's Church men, who had talked them to death. The latter did not scruple to play their opponents into the hands of the Swiss police.

Vogt's faithful follower, the monster Ranickel, wrote himself to Schily after the latter's arrival in London: "Do try to keep a few columns open in a Belgian journal for declarations, and do not fail to embitter the sojourn in America of those vile German dogs (parliamentarians) who have sold themselves as tools to the goitred diplomatist (Druey)."

One now understands what "Charles the Bold" means by the phrase: "I worked with all my might to curtail the revolutionary dawdling and to procure a shelter for the refugees, be it on the Continent or across the sea." One already reads in No. 257 of the *Neue Rheinische Zeitung* under the dateline:

"Heidelberg, 23 March 1849: Our friend Vogt, 'champion' of the Left, Reich humorist of the present, Reich barrot of the future, the 'faithful warner' against the revolution, he joins forces with—a few kindred spirits? not at all! with a few reactionaries of the purest water—and for what purpose? In order to ship the 'figures' who are staying in Strasbourg, Besançon, and elsewhere on the German border, to America, i.e., to deport them ... What Cavaignac's sabre rule decrees as a punishment, these gentlemen want ... in the name of Christian love ... The amnesty is dead, long live deportation." Of course the pia fraus was not lacking that the refugees themselves had expressed the wish for emigration, and so on. But now it is written to the 'Seeblätter' from Strasbourg that these deportation lusts provoked a veritable storm of indignation among all the refugees, etc. They all hope soon to return to Germany, even if it be at the risk (as Herr Vogt so touchingly remarks) of having to join in a 'foolhardy enterprise'."

But enough about "Charles the Bold's" revolution day of Murten.

Karl Marx

3) Cherval.

"The virtue of this jest will be the in-
comprehensible lies that this same fat rogue
will tell us."

"The best thing about this farce will be the
extravagant lies that the said fat rascal
will tell us."

In my "Revelations concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne," a special chapter deals with the Cherval complot. In it I show how Stieber, using Cherval (pseudonym for Kremer) as instrument, with Carrier, Greif, and Fleury as accoucheurs, brought into the world the so-called Germano-French September complot in Paris,* in order to remedy the lack of "objective corpus delicti" for the indictment against those arrested in Cologne, which the "Cologne Panel of Arraignment" had censured.

So striking were the proofs I supplied to the defence during the Cologne trial
of the complete lack of connection between Cherval on the one hand, and
myself and the Cologne accused on the other, that the very Stieber who
had, on 18 October (1852), sworn his Cherval upon us, already again
forswore him on 23 October 1852 (p. 29 of the “Enthüllungen”). Driven
into a corner, he abandoned the attempt to identify Cherval and his plot
with us. Stieber was Stieber, but Stieber was still not Vogt. |

I consider it entirely useless to repeat here the information I furnished in the
“Enthüllungen” regarding the so-called September plot. At the beginning of
May 1852 Cherval returned to London, wherefrom he had moved to Paris in
the early summer of 1850 for business reasons. The Paris police allowed
him to escape a few months after his sentencing in February 1852. In London
he was at first hailed as a political martyr by the German Workers’
Educational Society, from which I and my friends had already withdrawn
as of the middle of September 1850. However, this deception did not last
long. His Paris heroic deeds were soon cleared up, and in the course of the
same month of May 1852 he was expelled from the Society as infamous at a
public meeting. The Cologne accused, imprisoned since the beginning of May
1851, still sat in investigative detention. From a notice which the spy
Beckmann had sent to his organ, the Kölnische Zeitung, from Paris, I saw
that the

* Only after the printing of the “Enthüllungen” did I learn that De la Hodde (under the name
Duprez) as well as the Prussian police agents Beckmann (at that time correspondent of the
Kölnische Zeitung) and Sommer had collaborated.

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Prussian police was seeking subsequently to forge a connection between
Cherval, his plot and the Cologne accused. I therefore looked around for
information about Cherval. It happened that in July 1852 the latter offered

his services to Herr von R , former minister under Louis Philippe and
well-known eclectic philosopher, as an agent for the Orleanists. The connections
which Herr v. R maintained with the police prefecture in Paris
enabled him to obtain extracts from the Cherval dossier from there. In
the French police report Cherval was designated as Cherval
nommé Frank, dont le véritable nom est Kremer. He had functioned for a
long time as an agent of Prince Hatzfeldt, the Prussian envoy to Paris;
he was the betrayer in the complot franco-allemand and now
simultaneously a French spy, etc. During the Cologne trial proceedings
I communicated these particulars to one of the defence counsel, Herr advocate
Schneider II, and authorised him, in case of necessity, to name my source.
When Stieber swore at the session of 18 October that the Irishman Cherval,
of whom he himself stated that he had sat in Aachen in 1845 for forgery of
bills of exchange, was still held in detention in Paris, I instructed Herr
Schneider II by return of post that the Rhineland-Prussian Kremer under the
pseudonym Cherval “still” sojourned in London, daily consorted with the Prussian
police lieutenant Greif, and, as a convicted Prussian
criminal, would immediately be extradited by England upon demand by the Prussian
government. His transportation to Cologne as a witness would have
overturned Stieber’s whole system.

Hard pressed by Schneider II, Stieber at last believed on 23 October
he had heard that Cherval had escaped from Paris, but swore by
all that was sacred ignorance of the Irishman’s whereabouts and of his
alliance with the Prussian police. Cherval was at that time in fact
attached to Greif in London at a fixed weekly salary. The debates about the
“Cherval mystery” which my information in the assize court at Cologne
provoked drove the latter from London. I heard that he had undertaken a
police mission trip to Jersey. I had long lost sight of him when I saw by chance
from a Geneva correspondence of the “Republik der Arbeiter” appearing in
New York that Cherval had turned up in Geneva in
March 1853 under the name Nugent and had again absconded from there in the summer
of 1854. Thus, a few weeks after my “Enthüllungen” compromising him
had appeared in Basel with Schabelitz, Cherval turned up in Geneva with Vogt.

Let us now return to the Falstaffian garbling of history.

Vogt makes his Cherval arrive in Geneva immediately after his sham escape
from Paris, after having had him “sent over” from London to Paris “a few
months” before the discovery of the September plot by the communist secret
league (p. 172 loc. cit.).

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When the interval between May | 1852 and March 1853 thus disappears entirely,
the interval between June 1850 and September 1851 shrivels into
“a few months”. What would not Stieber have given for a Vogt who
would have sworn before the Cologne assizes that the “communist
secret league from London” had sent Cherval to Paris in June 1850,
and what would I not have given to see Vogt sweating on the witness bench
beside his Stieber! Pleasant company: the swearing Stieber, with his
Vogel Greif, his Wermuth, his Goldheimchen and his — Bettelvogt. To Geneva

the Vogtian Cherval brought “recommendations to all the acquaintances of Marx and
Co., from whom Herr Nugent was soon inseparable” (p. 173.). He
“takes up his quarters with the family of a correspondent of the Allgemeine
Zeitung” and, probably as a result of the recommendations received from me
(the “Enthüllungen”), gains access to Vogt, who employs him as a

lithographer (p. 173 loc. cit.) and enters, so to speak, into “scientific
rapport” with him, as earlier with Archduke Johann and later with
Plon-Plon. One day, busy in the imperial regency “cabinet”,
“Nugent” is recognised by an “acquaintance” as Cherval and
denounced as an “agent provocateur”. In fact, Nugent busied himself
in Geneva not only with Vogt, but also with the “foundation of a secret
society”. “Cherval-Nugent presided, kept the minutes and the
correspondence with London.” (p. 175 loc. cit.) He had “taken a few less discerning,
but otherwise honest workers, into his confidence” (ibid.), but “among the
members there was also an affiliate of the Marx clique, whom

everyone described as a suspicious emissary of German polices”.
(loc. cit.)

“All the acquaintances” of Marx from whom Cherval-Nugent “was inseparable”
are suddenly transformed into “one affiliate”, which one affiliate
for his part again disintegrates into “the residual Marx’ clique in Geneva”
(p. 176), with whom Nugent later not only “carries on correspondence from
Paris”, but whom he also, as a magnet, again “attracted” to Paris.
(loc. cit.)

Thus, once again, the beloved “form-change” of the starched “stuff”
of Kendal-Green!

What Cherval-Nugent aimed at with his society was “the mass
fabrication of false banknotes and treasury bonds through
whose issue the credit of the despots was to be undermined and their
finances ruined” (p. 175 loc. cit.)

Cherval, as it appears, emulated the famous Pitt, who, as is well known,
during the Anti-Jacobin war had set up a factory for manufacturing false

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French assignats not far from London. “Already
various stone and copper plates had been engraved by Nugent himself for this
purpose, already the credulous members of the secret

league had been designated to proceed with parcels of these” — stone and copper plates? —
no, “of these false banknotes — (the banknotes were naturally packed
before they were fabricated) — to France, Switzerland and

Germany” (p. 175), but already too, Cicero-Vogt stood
with drawn sword behind Cherval-Catiline. It is a peculiar trait of
Falstaff natures that they are not only fat, but that they also put on a fat show. See
how our gullet-guzzler, who had already curtailed the “revolutionary loafing”
in Switzerland and procured a livelihood across the sea for whole shiploads of
refugees, see how he stage-manages himself, how he melodramatises himself,
how he makes the adventure of Stieber’s Paris
fisticuffs (See “Enthüllungen”) with Cherval into something endless! Thus he lunges,
thus he flourishes his blade!

“The plan of this whole conspiracy (p. 176 loc. cit.) was laid out in
the most abominable manner.” “Cherval’s project was to be foisted
upon all workers’ societies.” Already, too, “confidential
enquiries had been received from foreign legations”, already there was a wish
to “compromise Switzerland, and particularly the canton of Geneva”. But the
Landvogt was awake. He performed his first Swiss rescue, an experiment
which he has repeated several times later with ever-growing success.
“I do not deny”, exclaims the weighty man, “I do not deny that
I contributed my substantial share to the frustration of these deviltries;

I do not deny that for this purpose I had recourse to the police of the Republic
of Geneva; I still regret today (inconsolable Cicero),
that the zeal of some of the deceived served as a warning to the cunning
instigator, so that he was able to make off before his arrest.”
Under all circumstances, however, Cicero-Vogt had “frustrated” the Catilinarian
conspiracy, saved Switzerland and “contributed” his substantial share,
wherever he may carry it. A few weeks later, as he
recounts, Cherval surfaced again in Paris, “where he in no way
concealed himself, but lived in public like every citizen” (p. 176 loc. cit.) One knows
how publicly the Parisian citizens (citoyens) of the counterfeit empire live.

While Cherval thus roams about “in public” in Paris, poor
Vogt on his visits to Paris must hide every time, in the Palais Royal,
under the table of Plon-Plon!

I now truly regret having to set against Vogt’s ponderous Zachariad the
following letter from Johann Philipp Becker. Johann Philipp
Becker’s, the veteran of the German emigration, revolutionary
activity, from the Hambach Festival to the Reich Constitution campaign, in which

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he fought as chief of the V Army Division (a certainly non-partisan voice,
the Berliner Militair-Wochenschrift, contains testimony to his
military performance) is too generally known to require a word from me
concerning the letter’s author. I remark therefore only that
his communication was addressed to the German merchant R.......
in London, who is a friend of mine; that J. P. Becker is personally unknown to me and
never stood in political relation to me; finally, that I omit the opening
of the letter, which contains business matters, likewise most of the
material on the “Schwefelbande” and the “Bürstenheimer”, which are already
known from the earlier communications. (The original of the letter lies among my
trial documents in Berlin.)

“Paris, 20 March 1860.

These days the brochure Vogt contra Marx came into my hands. This writing has distressed me all the more because I see the story of the so-called Sulphur Band and the notorious Cherval—which I know quite precisely from my stay in Geneva at that time—completely distorted and, in a totally unjust manner, brought into relation with the political activity of the economist Marx. I am not personally acquainted with this Herr Marx, nor have I been in any contact with him; by contrast, I have known Herr Vogt and his family for more than twenty years and am therefore, in terms of feeling, far closer to the latter. The frivolity and unscrupulousness with which Vogt enters into this struggle I must bitterly lament and most decidedly condemn. To present distorted or even fabricated facts as weapons of dispute is unworthy of a man. It really pains one to observe how Vogt, in his easy frivolity, quasi suicidally ruins a fairer sphere of activity, disgraces and compromises position and reputation, and this even if he were to be acquitted entirely of the accusations of being in Napoleon’s service. How gladly I would have granted him every honest means to extricate himself brilliantly from such grave charges. In view of what he has done so far in this unedifying history, I feel positively impelled to communicate to you at length what the matter is with the so-called Sulphur Band and the cleanly Herr Cherval, so that you may judge for yourself to what extent Marx can bear any responsibility for their existence and activity.

A word, then, on the rise and fall of the Sulphur Band, of which scarcely anyone can give better information than I. During my stay in Geneva at that time, I had not only, by virtue of my position, from the outset every opportunity to observe the doings and dealings of the emigration;

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but, keeping the general cause in view, I also, as an older man, had a special interest in following all its movements attentively, so as, where possible, to prevent and hinder in occurring cases silly undertakings—which, given the state of minds so irritated by misfortune and often despairing, are so excusable. I knew, after all, from thirty years’ experience, how richly the dowry of every emigration is endowed with illusions.”

(What follows is essentially anticipated in the letters of Borkheim and Schily.)

In jest and mockery one now called this essential loafing society the Sulphur Band. It was an association of fellows thrown together by chance, improvised, without president and programme, without statutes and dogma. There was no thought of secret conspiracy, or of any political or other goal to be systematically pursued; only publicly, and with exuberant frankness and open-heartedness, did they chase after effect to the point of excess. Still less did they stand in any connection with Marx, who for his part could quite certainly know nothing of their existence, and with whom, besides, they were, at that time, far apart in their social-political views. Moreover, in that period these fellows displayed a drive for independence so pronounced as to amount to self-overestimation, so that they would hardly have subordinated themselves to any authority, in theory or in practice; they would have laughed at fatherly admonitions from Vogt just as they would have mocked tendentious instructions from Marx. I was all the more accurately informed of everything that went on in their circle, as my eldest son carried on day-to-day intercourse with their chief cocks-of-the-walk—in any case, the whole jest of the unbanded band hardly lasted beyond the days of the winter of 1849 to 1850; the force of circumstances scattered our heroes to all the winds.

Who would have foreseen that the Sulphur Band, long consigned to oblivion, would, after a ten-year slumber, be rekindled by Herr Professor Vogt in order to spread an evil smell against supposed attackers, which then complaisant newspaper scribblers, as quasi electrico-magnetico-sympathetic conductors, voluptuously conveyed further. Has not even the per excellenz liberal Herr von Vincke, on the occasion of the Italian question, taken the Sulphur Band into his mouth and illumined the modest Prussian Chamber with it? And has not the citizenry of Breslau, otherwise in such good odour, in sancta simplicitas made a carnival mummery in honour of the Sulphur Band and, as a symbol of their virtuous convictions, fumigated the city with sulphur brands?

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Poor, innocent Sulphur Band! Did you have, after your blessed end, nolens volens, to grow to a veritable volcano, as a bogeyman chase timid subjects into the pinfold of the police, vulcanise the weak heads of all the world, char every burnt-out brain down to the stump—

5 as Vogt himself, so it seems to me, has burnt his mouth on it for ever.

Now, then, to Kremer, vulgo Cherval. This political-social and common rascal came to Geneva in the year 1853, namely under the name Nugent, as an Englishman. This was the surname of his alleged wife, who accompanied him and is a genuine Englishwoman. He speaks English fluently, as well as French, and for a long time avoided speaking German, since it seemed all-important to him to be taken for a full-blooded Englishman.

As a skilful lithographer and chromographist, he introduced—so he boasted—the latter art into Geneva. In society he is dexterous, knows how to push himself forward and present himself advantageously. For drawings of natural-historical and antique objects he soon found sufficient employment among professors of the Academy. At first he lived very retired; later he sought his company almost exclusively in the circle of the French and Italian refugee community. At that time I founded an office de renseignements and a daily paper: “Le Messager du Léman”; I had as collaborator a Baden refugee by the name of Stecher, formerly headmaster of a Realschule. The same had a special talent for drawing and strove, for better advancement, to train himself in chromography; he found in the Englishman Nugent his master. Stecher told me very often the finest things of the skilful, friendly and generous Englishman and of the pleasant, gracious Englishwoman. Stecher was now also teacher of singing in the Workers’ Educational Association, and occasionally brought his master Nugent there, where I had the pleasure of first making his acquaintance, and where he condescended to speak German, and so fluently in a Lower Rhine dialect that I said to him: “You are no Englishman your life long.” He nevertheless insisted, explaining that his parents had placed him, in early youth, in a boarding-school in Bonn, where he stayed until his eighteenth year and adopted the dialect of the place. Stecher, who was enchanted to the last with the “nice” man, still helped to make the Englishman believed. For me, on the contrary, this occurrence made me very distrustful of the supposed son of Albion, and I warned the circle of the association to be careful. Later I met the Englishman in the company of French refugees and happened to be present just as he boasted of his heroic deeds in Paris insurrections. This was the first time that I saw that he occupied himself with politics. This made him still more suspect to me; I ridiculed his “lion’s courage”

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with which he claimed to have fought, in order to give him the chance of asserting the same before me, in view of the Frenchmen; but since he took my biting mockery with nothing but cur-like submissiveness, he became also contemptible to me.

From now on he completely avoided me wherever he could. Meanwhile, with Stecher’s help, he organised dancing-evenings in the bosom of the German workers’ association, drawing in, without payment, a few musical forces, an Italian, a Swiss and a Frenchman. At these balls I then met the Englishman again as a true maître de plaisir, quite fully in his element; for making himself madly merry and pleasing the ladies became him better than his lion’s courage. In the workers’ association, however, he pursued no politics; here he only hopped and jumped, laughed, drank and sang. In the meantime, however, I learned from the goldsmith Fritz from Württemberg that “the thoroughly revolutionary Englishman” had founded a league consisting of himself (Fritz), one other German, several Italians and Frenchmen, about seven members in all. | I implored Fritz not to get involved in any serious things with this political rope-dancer, and to leave at once and to induce the comrades to do the same. Some time afterwards my bookseller sent me a brochure by Marx on the Communist Trial in Cologne, in which Cherval, as Kremer, was sharply delineated and roughly handled as a rogue and traitor. I at once suspected that Nugent might be Cherval, especially because, according to this writing, he was from the Rhine, which corresponded to his dialect, and lived with an Englishwoman, which also tallied. I communicated my conjecture at once to Stecher, Fritz and others, and had the brochure circulated for this purpose. Mistrust of Nugent spread rapidly; Marx’s writing did its work. Fritz soon came to me, declaring that he had left the “little league” and that the rest would follow his example. He also revealed to me its secret purpose. The “Englishman” had intended, through reproduction of state paper, to destroy the credit of the states and, with the money to be won thereby, to set a European revolution in motion, etc. Around the same time, a certain Herr Laya, a French refugee, formerly an advocate in Paris, gave lectures on socialism. Nugent attended them; Laya, who had been his defender in his trial in Paris, recognised him as Cherval, which he also declared to him personally. Nugent beseechingly begged not to be betrayed. I learned this fact from a French refugee, a friend of Laya, and at once communicated it on all sides. Nugent had the impudence once more to come to the workers’ association, where he, as the German Kremer and the French Cherval, was unmasked and chased out. Ranickel from Bingen is said

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to have lunged at him most violently in this affair. To crown all, the Geneva police wanted now to pounce upon him on account of the little league; but the state-paper manufacturer had vanished without a trace.

In Paris the same man occupies himself with porcelain decoration, and since I also engaged in this branch here, we encountered one another on the way of business. I found, however, in him the same frivolous, incorrigible gasbag.

How Vogt could have dared, then, to bring this vagabond, in his activity in Geneva, into connection with the strivings of a Marx, to designate him as a comrade or tool, is to me really incomprehensible, all the more so since it is aimed at a point in time when Marx, in the said writing, so decisively went for this fellow. It is thereby precisely Marx who unmasked him, chased him out of Geneva, where he, according to Vogt, is supposed to have worked for Marx.

When I reflect how it was possible for the natural scientist Vogt to have gone so far astray, my reason stands still. Is it not deplorable to see the fine influence which Vogt, through a chance combination of circumstances, had united upon himself, so frivolously, so fruitlessly and self-squanderingly destroyed! Would it be any wonder if, after such observations, all the world were to receive Vogt’s scientific researches only with mistrust and suspect that his scientific conclusions, with the same rashness, the same want of conscientiousness, might be based on false notions instead of positive, thoroughly investigated facts?

To be a statesman and a scholar requires more than ambition; otherwise, even Kremer could be both. Unfortunately, Vogt, through his sulphur gang and his Cherval, has himself sunk into a sort of Cherval. And indeed, they have an inner similarity through a powerfully pronounced need for the comforts of life, for bodily safety, sociable merriment, and flippant jesting in serious matters....... Awaiting your soon and friendly news, I greet you with heartfelt devotion, your

J. Ph. Becker

P.S. Just now I again looked into Vogt’s pamphlet and found to my further astonishment that the ‘Bürstenheimers’ too are given all honour. Shortly you shall also know what is the nature of this gang..........

Herr Vogt – III. Police Affairs

Cherval-Kremer is said to have come to Geneva on Marx’s instructions. I must therefore add that the same, who up to the last moment of his stay in Geneva maintained the role of an Englishman, never in the slightest betrayed that he had ever been in contact anywhere with any German refugee, as indeed it would not have suited his incognito at all. Even now here, after less importance may attach to it than there then, he does not want to be taken for one and denies all acquaintance with Germans from earlier times.
Hitherto I always believed that Vogt had merely allowed himself to be mystified by others lightly, but now his conduct appears to me more and more as malicious, perfidious trickery. I now feel less sorry for him, and it only grieves me for his good, worthy old father, who will certainly have many a bitter hour from this affair.

I do not merely permit you, but I hereby request you in the interest of truth and the good cause to make use of my communications in the circle of your acquaintance.

Thus cordially your
J. Philipp B. (See Appendix 3.)

4) The Cologne Communist Trial.

From the Imperial Regency’s “Cabinet” in Geneva to the Royal Prussian Assize Court in Cologne.

“In the Cologne trial, Marx played a prominent role.” Indisputably.

“In Cologne his confederates were judged.” Admittedly.

The investigative detention of the Cologne accused had lasted 1¾ years.

Prussian police and legation, Hinkeldey with his whole clan, postal and municipal authorities, ministries of the interior and of justice – all had made the most immense exertions during these 1¾ years to bring forth a corpus delicti.

Here, then, in his investigation of my “doings”, Vogt in a way commands the resources of the Prussian state and even possessed authentic material in my “Revelations concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne. Basel 1853”, a copy of which he found, borrowed and “studied” in the Geneva Workers’ Association. This time, then, the lad Karl will not fail to become terrible to me. But no! This time Vogt becomes “embarrassed”, discharges a couple of his naturally grown smoke and stench balls,* and then stammers, eager for retreat: “The Cologne trial has no particular importance for us.” (p. 172 of the “Main Book”.)

In the “Revelations” I could not avoid attacking, among others, Mr. A. Willich. Willich, in the New-York Criminal-Zeitung of 28 October 1853,** begins his self-defence by characterising my pamphlet as “a masterly critique of the horrible procedure of the German Federal Central Police”. J. Schabelitz Jr., the publisher of the pamphlet, wrote after receipt of my manuscript, dated Basel, 11 December 1852: “Your exposure of police infamies is unsurpassed. You have set a lasting monument to the present régime in Prussia.” He adds that his judgement is shared by experts, and at the head of these “experts” stood a present Geneva friend of Mr. Karl Vogt.

Seven years after its publication, the same pamphlet caused Mr. Eichhoff of Berlin, entirely unknown to me – Eichhoff notoriously stood before the court accused of libelling Stieber – to declare during the court proceedings: “He had made thorough studies of the Cologne Communist trial, and must not only fully maintain his original assertion that Stieber had committed perjury, but extend it to the effect that the entire testimony of Stieber in that trial was false.... The condemnation of the Cologne accused occurred solely on the basis of Stieber’s testimonies.... Stieber’s entire testimony was a perjury carried through consistently.” (1st supplement to the Berlin Vossische Zeitung of 9 May 1860.)

Vogt himself admits: “He (Marx) took every conceivable trouble to furnish the defenders of the accused with material and instructions for the conduct of the trial...........

As is well known, there (in Cologne) self-forged false documents were submitted as evidence by the agents Stieber, Fleury etc., and altogether an abyss of depravity among this police rabble was uncovered that makes one shudder.” (pp. 169, 170 of the “Main Book”.)

If Vogt proves his hatred of the coup d’état by propaganda for Bonapartism, why should I not prove “my understanding” with the secret police by uncovering its bottomless depravity?

* “The smoke or stench balls serve chiefly in mine warfare. One takes the ordinary star composition, which, however, must contain somewhat more sulphur, works into it as many feathers, horn, hair and other filth as the composition will take, fills it into bags, and fires the ball with a fuze.” (J. C. Plümicke, Handbook for the Royal Prussian Artillery Officers. First Part. Berlin 1820.)

** I published a reply in the pamphlet: “The Knight of the Noble-Minded Consciousness. New-York 1853.”

If the police had possessed genuine means of proof, why forge false ones?

But, lectures Professor Vogt, “nonetheless the blow struck only Marx’s League members in Cologne, only Marx’s party”.

Indeed, Polonais! Had the blow not previously struck another party in Paris, and did it not afterwards strike again another party in Berlin (Ladendorf trial), another in Bremen (Death’s Head Union), etc., etc.?

As regards the condemnation of the Cologne accused, I will quote a passage from my “Revelations” concerning this:

“Originally the wonder-working intervention of the police had been necessary to conceal the purely tendency character of the trial. The coming revelations, thus (the prosecutor) Saedt opened the proceedings – will prove to you, gentlemen of the jury, that the trial is no tendency trial. Now (at the close of the proceedings) he emphasises the tendency character in order to make the police revelations forgotten. After the 1¾-year preliminary investigation, the jury needed an objective corpus delicti to justify themselves before public opinion.

After the 5-week police comedy, they needed ‘pure tendency’ to rescue themselves from the factual dirt. Saedt therefore not only confines himself to the material that prompted the indictment chamber to decide: ‘there is no objective corpus delicti.’ He goes further. He seeks to prove that the law against conspiracy does not require any corpus delicti at all, but is a pure tendency law, i.e. the category of conspiracy is only a pretext to burn political heretics in legal form. His attempt promised greater success through the application of the new penal code promulgated after the arrest of the accused. Under the pretext that the code contained mitigating provisions, the servile court could permit its retroactive application. But if the trial was a pure tendency trial, what was the 1¾-year preliminary investigation for? From tendency.” (pp. 71, 72 loc. cit.) “With the revelation of the minute-book forged and foisted by the Prussian police itself, the trial had entered a new stage. The jury were no longer free to find the accused guilty or not guilty; they now had to find the accused guilty – or the government.

To acquit the accused meant to condemn the government.” (p. 70 loc. cit.)

That the Prussian government of the time conceived of the situation quite similarly was proved by a letter from Hinkeldey, which he addressed during the Cologne proceedings to the Prussian legation in London, stating that “the entire existence of the political police depended on the decision of this trial”. He therefore requisitioned a person who was to impersonate the fugitive witness H. in court and receive 1,000 thalers for the performance. The person had in fact already been found when a new letter from Hinkeldey arrived: “the state prosecutor hoped, given the happy composition of the jury, to obtain the verdict of guilty even without further extraordinary measures, and he (Hinkeldey) requested therefore that no further exertions be made.” (See Appendix 4.)

It was in fact this happy composition of the jury in Cologne that inaugurated the Hinkeldey-Stieber regime in Prussia. “There will be a blow in Berlin when the Cologne prisoners are condemned,” the police rabble attached to the Prussian legation in London already knew in October 1852, although the police mine in Berlin (the Ladendorf conspiracy) exploded only at the end of March 1853. (See Appendix 4.)

The subsequent liberal howling about an epoch of reaction is always the louder, the more boundless the liberal cowardice that for years left the field to reaction without a contest. Thus, at the time of the Cologne trial, all my attempts to expose Stieber’s system of imposture in the liberal Prussian press failed. It had inscribed in broad characters on its banner: Safety is the first duty of the citizen, and under this sign thou shalt – live.

5) Central Festival of the German Workers’ Educational Associations in Lausanne.

(26 and 27 June 1859.)

Our hero flees with constantly renewed pleasure back to – Arcadia. We find him again in an “out-of-the-way corner of Switzerland”, at Lausanne, at the “Central Festival” of a number of German workers’ educational associations, which was celebrated at the end of June. Here Karl Vogt accomplished his second Swiss rescue. While Catiline sits in London, the Cicero of the motley jacket thunders at Lausanne:

“Jam jam intellegis me acrius vigilare ad salutem, quam te ad perniciem rei publicae.” By chance, an authentic report exists on the said “Central Festival” and the heroic deed perpetrated during it by the “well-rounded personality”. The title of the report composed by Mr. G. Lommel with Vogt’s collaboration runs: “The Central Festival of the German Workers’ Educational Associations in Western Switzerland. (Lausanne 1859.) Geneva

Herr Vogt – III. Police Affairs

1859, Markus Vaney, rue de la Croix d’or. Let us compare the authentic report with the “Hauptbuch”, brought out 5 months later. The report contains the speech “taken down verbatim” by Cicero-Vogt, in the introduction to which he unveils the secret of his appearance on this occasion. He appears among the workers, he harangues them, because “serious accusations have been levelled against him recently which, were they true, would completely shatter confidence in him and utterly undermine his political activity.” “I have come,” he continues, “I have come here, therefore, to speak an open word against (the aforementioned) underhand creeping.” (pp. 6/7 of the report.) He is accused of Bonapartist machinations, his political activity is to be rescued, and according to his custom he defends his skin with his tongue. After 1½ hours of empty straw-threshing, he remembers Demosthenes’ admonition that “action, action, and again action is the soul of eloquence”. But what is action? In America there is a little beast called the skunk, which, in the moment of supreme danger, possesses only a defense, its offensive smell. When attacked, it squirts from certain parts of its body a substance whose moisture condemns your clothes irretrievably to death by fire, and should it even touch your skin, banishes you for some time from the society of all human beings. So terribly offensive is the smell that hunters, the moment their dogs chance to start a “skunk”, take to their heels in more impetuous haste and with greater terror than if wolf or tiger were at their heels. Against wolf and tiger, powder and lead protect you, but against the *a posteriori* of the “skunk” no herb has grown.

That is action, the speaker naturalised in the “animal state” says to himself, and squirts forth the following skunk-like matter upon his supposed persecutors:

“Of one thing, however, I warn you most emphatically, those are the machinations of a little clique of depraved men, whose whole thought and striving are bent on drawing the worker away from his calling, implicating him in conspiracies and communist intrigues, and finally, after they have lived off his sweat, casting him coldly (that is, after he has sweated himself out) into ruin. Now, once again, this little clique is trying in every possible way (only as general as possible) to draw the workers’ associations again into its deceptive nets. Whatever they may say (concerning Vogt’s Bonapartist machinations), rest assured that their sole aim is to exploit the worker for their selfish ends and finally to abandon him to his fate.” (p. 18 of the report. p. B.) The shamelessness of the “skunk” in having me and my friends, who have at all times represented the interests of the working class gratis and at the sacrifice of our private interests, “live off the sweat of the workers”

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is not even original. Not only the decembrist *mouchards* have howled similar calumnies behind Louis Blanc, Blanqui, Raspail, etc., but in all ages and in all places the sycophants of the ruling class have always maligned the literary and political champions of the oppressed classes in this infamous manner. (See Appendix 5.)

After this action, moreover, our “rounded nature” is no longer able to keep his *sérieux*. The buffoon now compares his “persecutors”, still at large, with the “Russians captured at Zorndorf” and himself — guess! — with Frederick the Great. Falstaff-Vogt recalled that Frederick the Great ran away in the first battle he attended. How much greater, then, he who ran away without attending a battle.*

So much for the adventure at the Central Festival at Lausanne according to the authentic report. And “after that one examined” (to speak with Fischart) “the sticky, parasitically clotted scullion and kitchen rag,” the Eulenspiegel-policeystic pap that he dished up five months later to the German philistines.

“It was desired at any price to bring about a complication in Switzerland, the policy of neutrality was to receive a decided blow. I was informed that the Central Festival of the Workers’ Educational Associations was to be used to steer the workers onto paths whose adoption they had strictly rejected. It was hoped that the fine festival could be utilised to form a secret committee which would enter into communication with like-minded persons in Germany and, God knows (Vogt, though informed, does not know), would take all sorts of measures. There were dull rumours and mysterious communications of the active intervention of the workers in patriotic German politics. I resolved on the spot to oppose these machinations, in order to impress anew upon the workers that they should lend no ear to proposals of this sort. At the close of my speech, I publicly uttered the warning etc.” (p. 180 of the “Hauptbuch”.)

Cicero-Vogt forgets that at the beginning of his speech he publicly blurted out

* Kobes I relates in the pamphlet published by Jacob Venedey: “Pro domo et pro

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patria gegen Karl Vogt. Hanover 1860”: “he was a witness to how the Imperial Regent Karl 35

Vogt was not present when we others, and likewise the four other Imperial Regents, forced the

Württemberg government to help the Parliament to an honourable end with sabre and bayonet.

It is a funny story. When the four other Imperial Regents had mounted the carriage in order,

as agreed, to drive to the assembly hall and there face the rump parliament with their breast

(the rump parliament, as is well known, had no head), Karl Vogt, closing the carriage door, 40

called to the driver: drive on, the carriage is already full, I will come after! Karl Vogt came

after when the possible danger was past.” (loc. cit. pp. 23, 24.)

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what drove him to the Central Festival – not Switzerland’s neutrality, but the saving of his own skin. Not a syllable in his speech about the contemplated outrage upon Switzerland, about the conspiratorial designs upon the Central Festival, about a secret committee, about the active intervention of the workers in German politics, about proposals “of this” or any other “sort”. Nothing of all these Stieberiades. His concluding warning was merely the warning of the honest man Sykes, who in the courtroom of the Old Bailey warned the jurors on no account to lend any ear to the “depraved” detectives who had discovered his theft.

“The immediately following events,” says Falstaff-Vogt (p. 181 of the “Hauptbuch”), “confirmed my forebodings.” What, forebodings! But Falstaff forgets again that a few lines earlier he had not “foreboded” but had been “informed”, informed of the plans of the conspirators and informed in full detail! And which, you foreboding angel! were the immediately following events? “An article in the Allgemeine Zeitung imputed to the festival and to the life of the workers tendencies which these (namely the festival and the life) did not in the least think of.” (Just as Vogt imputes them to the Murten Congress and to the workers’ associations in general.) “On the basis of this article and of its reprint in the Frankfurter Journal, a confidential enquiry followed from the envoy of a South German state, in which the festival was given the significance” – which the article in the Allgemeine Zeitung and the reprint in the Frankfurter Journal “imputed” to it – for God’s sake, no – “which it would have had according to the frustrated intentions of the sulphur gang”. Indeed! Would have had!

Although the most superficial comparison between the Hauptbuch and the authentic report on the Central Festival suffices to unveil the secret of Cicero-Vogt’s second Swiss rescue, I nevertheless wished to ascertain whether not some – no matter how distorted – fact had supplied him with the material for his display of force. I therefore applied in writing to the editor of the authentic report, Herr G. Lommel of Geneva. Herr Lommel must have been on a footing of friendly intercourse with Vogt, since he not only drew up the report on the Lausanne Central Festival with Vogt’s assistance, but also, in a later pamphlet on the Schiller and Robert Blum Festival at Geneva, glossed over Vogt’s fiasco there. In a reply dated 13 April 1860, Herr Lommel, who is unknown to me personally, declares: “Vogt’s story that he thwarted a dangerous conspiracy in Lausanne is the clearest fable or lie; he only sought a venue in Lausanne in order to speak, and afterwards to have this speech printed. In this 1½-hour speech he defended himself against the charge of being a salaried Bonapartist. The

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manuscript lies carefully preserved with me.” A Frenchman living in Geneva, when asked about the same Vogt conspiracy, replied shortly: «Il faut connaître cet individu (namely Vogt), surtout le faiseur, l’homme important, toujours hors de la nature et de la vérité.»

Vogt himself says on p. 99 of his so-called “Studien” that he “has never boasted of prophetic qualities”. But it is known from the Old Testament that the ass saw what the prophet had not seen. And thus it is explained how Vogt saw the conspiracy which he had foreboded in November 1859, had “thwarted” it in June 1859.

6) Motley.

“If my memory does not deceive me,” says the parliamentary clown, “the circular (namely an alleged London circular to the proletarians dated 1850) was indeed drawn up by a partisan of Marx, the so-called Parliaments-Wolf, and was played into the hands of the Hanoverian police. – And again this canal emerges in the story of the circular ‘of the friends of the fatherland to the people of Gotha’” (p. 144 of the “Hauptbuch”).

A canal emerges! *Prolapsus ani* perhaps, you natural-historical joker?

As regards the “Parliaments-Wolf” – and we shall later hear why the Parliaments-Wolf weighs like a nightmare upon the memory of the parliamentary clown – he has published the following declaration in the Berliner Volks-Zeitung, Allgemeine Zeitung and Hamburger Reform:

“Declaration. Manchester, 6 February 1860: From a friend’s letter I gather that the National-Zeitung (No. 41 of this year) in a leading article based on a Vogt pamphlet has brought the following passage before the public:

‘In 1850 another circular despatch from London was, as Vogt thinks he recalls, drawn up by Parliaments-Wolf alias Kassematten-Wolf, sent to the proletarians in Germany and simultaneously played into the hands of the Hanoverian police.’ I have seen neither the number of the ‘National-Zeitung’ nor the Vogt pamphlet, and therefore reply only in respect of the passage cited:
1) In the year 1850 I lived in Zurich and not in London, to which I only moved in the summer of 1851.

2) I have never in my whole life drawn up a circular despatch, neither to ‘proletarians’ nor to anyone else.

3) As for the insinuation regarding the Hanoverian police, I hurl back this shamelessly invented accusation

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Herr Vogt – II. Polizistisches

at its originator with contempt. If the rest of Vogt’s pamphlet is as fabricated and mendacious as the part concerning me, it can rank worthily alongside the concoctions of a Chenu, Delahodde, and consorts. W. Wolff.”

5 One sees: just as Cuvier could reconstruct the entire structure of an animal from a single bone, Wolff has correctly deduced from a torn-out citation the whole concoction of Vogt. In fact, Karl Vogt appears, alongside Chenu and De la Hodde, as primus inter pares.

The final “evidence” of the “not at a loss” Vogt for my entente cordiale with the secret police in general, and “my connections with the Kreuzzeitung party in particular”, consists in the fact that my wife is the sister of the retired Prussian minister, Herr von Westphalen. (P. 194 of the “Main Book”). Now, how is one to parry the fat Falstaff’s cowardly feint? Perhaps the clown will forgive my wife her agnate Prussian minister when he learns that one of her Scottish agnates was beheaded as a rebel in the struggle for freedom against James II in the marketplace of Edinburgh. Vogt himself, notoriously, still carries his own head around with him only by mistake. At the Robert Blum commemoration of the German Workers’ Educational Association in Geneva (13 November 1859), he reported “how the Left of the Frankfurt Parliament had long been undecided whom to send to Vienna, whether Blum or himself. At last the lot, a drawn straw, decided for, or rather against, Blum.” (Pp. 28, 29 of the Schiller Festival in Geneva etc. Geneva 1859.) On 13 October, Robert Blum travelled from Frankfurt to Vienna. On 23 or 24 October, a deputation of the extreme Frankfurt Left, en route to the Democratic Congress in Berlin, arrived in Cologne. I saw the gentlemen, among them some members of parliament with closer ties to the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. The latter, of whom one was shot under martial law during the Reich constitution campaign, another died in exile, and a third still lives, whispered strangely uncanny stories in my ear about Vogt’s machinations with regard to Robert Blum’s Vienna mission. However—

Bid me not speak, bid me be silent,
For secrecy is my duty! —

The aforementioned Robert Blum commemoration (November 1859) in Geneva was ungracious to the “well-rounded nature”. When he entered the banquet hall, waddling around his patron James Fazy with a silenus-like obsequiousness, a worker cried: there goes the lout, and behind him Falstaff. When he made himself known, through his artful anecdote, as Robert Blum’s alter ego, it was only with difficulty that some heated workers were restrained from storming the rostrum. When at last, oblivious of how he himself had frustrated the revolution in June, he now “once more summoned to the barricades” (p. 29 of the Schiller Festival), a mocking echo repeated: “Barricades! – cowpats!” Yet so well do people abroad know how to appraise Vogt’s revolutionary bluster that this time the otherwise inevitable “confidential inquiry from a south German envoy” was omitted, and no article appeared in the Allgemeine Zeitung.

—

Vogt’s whole Stieberiad, from the “Sulphur Band” to the “retired minister”, betrays the sort of master singer of whom Dante says:
Ed egli avea fatto del cul trompetta.*

* And he made a trumpet of his arse. (Kannegießer.)

Mr Vogt « IV. Techow’s Letter

IV. Techow’s Letter.

What does the “well-rounded nature” now extract further from the
«tristo sacco
Che merde fa di quel, che si trangugia. »
(Dante.)*
A letter from Techow, dated London, 26 August 1850.

“I can do nothing better to characterise this activity (namely that of the ‘Sulphur Band’) than to communicate here a letter by a man whom everyone, whoever (!) has known him at all, will recognise as a man of honour, and whom I may therefore take the liberty of publishing, because it (the man of honour or the letter?) was expressly intended for communication (to whom?) and those considerations (on whose side?) no longer obtain which previously stood in the way of publication.” (P. 141 “Main Book”.)

Techow came from Switzerland to London at the end of August 1850. His letter is addressed to the former Prussian lieutenant Schimmelpfennig (then in Berne) “for communication to the friends”, namely the members of the “Centralisation”, a secret society which expired almost a decade ago, founded by German refugees in Switzerland, was of a motley composition and heavily intermingled with parliamentary elements. Techow belonged to this society; Vogt and his friends did not. How, then, does Vogt come into possession of Techow’s letter, and who granted him the authority to publish it?

Techow himself writes to me from Australia, dated 17 April 1860: “In any case, I have never had an opportunity to give Herr Karl Vogt any authorisation in this matter.”

Of Techow’s “friends” to whom the letter was to be communicated, only two still remain in Switzerland. Let them speak for themselves:

* “From the foul sack
Which turns to shit all that it swallows.”

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“E. to Schily, 29 April 1860. Upper Engadin. Canton Graubünden.

When Vogt’s pamphlet: ‘My Case against the Allgemeine Zeitung’ appeared, in which a letter from Techow to his friends in Switzerland, dated 26 August 1850, is printed, we, Techow’s friends still present in Switzerland, resolved to express our disapproval of the unauthorised publication of this letter in a communication to Vogt. Techow’s letter was addressed to Schimmelpfennig in Berne and was to be communicated to friends in copy___ I am glad that we were not deceived in so far as none of Techow’s friends, none who has a right to his letter of 26 August, has made such use of it as the chance possessor of it. On 22 January, it was written to Vogt that the unauthorised publication of Techow’s letter was disapproved of, a protest was entered against any further misuse of it, and the letter was demanded back. On 27 January of the current year, Vogt replied: ‘Techow’s | letter was intended for communication to the friends; the friend who had it in his hands explicitly handed it over to him for publication … and he will return the letter only to the one from whom he received it.’”

“B. to Schily. Zurich, 1 May 1860.

The letter to Vogt was written by me after prior agreement with E. ___ R. did not belong to the ‘friends’ for whom Techow’s letter was intended for communication; but Vogt knew from the content of the letter that it was addressed to me as well, but took good care not to seek my consent to its publication.”

In order to solve the riddle, I have kept back a passage from Schily’s above-communicated letter. It runs as follows:

“Of this Ranickel I must speak here, because it must have been through him that Techow’s letter passed into Vogt’s hands, a point of thy inquiry which I almost overlooked. The letter was addressed by Techow to his friends, with whom he had lived together in Zurich, Schimmelpfennig, B., E. As a friend of these friends and of Techow, I too later received it. At the time of my brutal, summary expulsion from Switzerland (I was arrested in the streets of Geneva without any prior expulsion order and immediately dragged away) I was not permitted to enter my dwelling once more to put my things in order. From the prison in Berne I therefore wrote to a reliable man in Geneva, the master shoemaker Thum, requesting that he might ask one or another of my friends still there (for I did not know which of them might

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have been simultaneously disciplined away) to pack my things and send the best of them after me to Berne, but to take the rest into temporary safekeeping, recommending a careful sifting of my paper inheritance, so that nothing might be added to the shipment to me which could not withstand transit through France. So it happened and Techow's letter was not added. Among that inheritance were several documents relating to the parliamentary mutiny of the time against the Geneva Local Committee for the Distribution of Refugee Funds (the committee consisted of three Geneva citizens, among them Thum, and two refugees, Becker and myself) and which Ranickel knew precisely as a result of his taking sides for the committee against the parliamentarians. I had therefore requested Thum, as cashier and archivist of the committee, to have Ranickel search out those pieces from my papers. Now, whether he, thus legitimised to assist in the sifting of my papers, got hold of Techow's letter in one way or another, perhaps through communication by one of the sifters: in no case do I impugn the transfer of possession, as distinct from transfer of property, from me to him, but I do quite definitely assert that this occurred. I then also wrote from London to Ranickel shortly afterwards: he should send me the letter. He did not do so, however; from then onwards, therefore, dates his culpa manifesta, at first probably only levis, then rising, according to the degree of his complicity in the unauthorised publication of the letter, to magna or maxima culpa or even to dolus. That this publication was an unauthorised one, authorised by none of the addressees, I do not doubt for a moment, and will moreover write to E. about it for the sake of certainty. That Ranickel lent a hand in the publication cannot be doubted either, given his notorious intimacy with Vogt, and although I have not the slightest intention of | criticising this intimacy as such, I cannot refrain from drawing attention here to its contrast with earlier times. For Ranickel was not only one of the greatest devourers of parliamentarians in general, but expressed, with regard to the Imperial Regent in particular, the most bloodthirsty desires: ‘I must strangle the fellow,’ he cried, ‘even if I have to move to Berne for it,’ and it was necessary, so to speak, to put him in a straitjacket to restrain him from this regicidal intent. Now that the scales seem to have fallen from his eyes, however, and Saul has turned into Paul, I am nevertheless curious to see how he will bite his way out in another respect, namely as the avenger of Europe. I have fought a hard fight, he said in those days, when he was wavering between America and Europe, but now it is happily over, I shall remain — and take my revenge!! Tremble, Byzantium.’” Thus far Schily’s letter.

So Ranickel ferrets out Techow’s letter from Schily’s refugee inheritance.

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Despite Schily’s reclamation from London, he withholds the letter. The letter thus embezzled is handed over by “Friend” Ranickel to “Friend” Vogt, and “Friend” Vogt, with his own delicacy of conscience, declares himself entitled to print the letter, for Vogt and Ranickel are “friends”. Whoever writes a letter for “communication” to “friends” therefore writes it necessarily for the “friends” Vogt and Ranickel — arcades ambo.

I regret that this peculiar jurisprudence forces me to return to half-forgotten stories long since sunk into oblivion; but Ranickel has begun and I must follow.

The "Communist League" was founded in Paris in 1836, originally under a different name. The organisation, as it gradually developed, was this: a certain number of members formed a "commune", various communes in the same town a "circle", a larger or smaller number of circles grouped themselves around a "leading circle"; at the head of the whole stood the "Central Authority", elected by a congress of deputies from all the circles, but was entitled to co-opt its own members, and in urgent cases provisionally to appoint its successor. The Central Authority sat first in Paris, from 1840 until the beginning of 1848 in London. The heads of the communes and circles, like the Central Authority itself, were all appointed by election. This democratic constitution, thoroughly inappropriate for conspiratorial secret societies, was at least not incompatible with the task of a propaganda society. The activity of the "League" consisted first and foremost in the founding of public German workers' educational associations, and most of the associations of this kind still existing in Switzerland, England, Belgium and the United States were either founded directly by the "League", or called into being by former members of the same. The constitution of these workers' associations is therefore the same everywhere. One day in the week was set aside for discussion, another for social entertainment (singing, declamation etc.). Association libraries were set up everywhere, and wherever it was at all feasible, classes were established for the instruction of the workers in elementary knowledge. The "League", standing behind the public workers' associations and directing them, found in them both the nearest scope for public propaganda, and, on the other hand, recruited and extended itself from among their most useful members. Given the wandering life of the German artisans, the Central Authority needed only in rare cases to dispatch special emissaries.

As far as the secret doctrine of the "League" itself is concerned, it passed through all the transformations of French and English socialism and communism, and of their German varieties. (Weitling’s fantasies, for example.) Since 1839, as is already apparent from the Bluntschli Report, the

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Herr Vogt - IV. Techow’s Letter

religious question, alongside the social question, played the most significant role. The various phases which German philosophy passed through from 1839 to 1846 were followed within the bosom of these workers’ societies with the most fervent partisanship. The secret form of the society owed its origin to Paris. The main purpose of the League — propaganda among the workers in Germany — commanded the later retention of this form. During my first stay in Paris, I cultivated personal intercourse with the leaders there of the "League", as with the leaders of the most French secret workers’ societies, without, however, joining any of these societies. In Brussels, whither Guizot had banished me, I founded with Engels, W. Wolff and others the still existing German workers’ educational association. We published simultaneously a series of pamphlets, partly printed, partly lithographed, in which the mixture of French-English socialism or communism and of German philosophy which then formed the secret doctrine of the "League" was subjected to a merciless criticism; in its place, the scientific insight into the economic structure of bourgeois society was set up as the only tenable theoretical basis; and finally, it was expounded in popular form that it was not a matter of implementing some utopian system, but of the self-conscious participation in the historical process of social revolution taking place before our eyes. In consequence of this activity, the London Central Authority entered into correspondence with us and, at the end of 1846, sent one of its members, the watchmaker Joseph Moll, who later fell as a revolutionary soldier on the battlefield in Baden, to Brussels to urge us to enter the "League". The misgivings which opposed this request were knocked down by Moll through the disclosure that the Central Authority intended to summon a League Congress to London, where the critical views we had asserted were to be set up as the League doctrine in a public manifesto, but that, in the face of the antiquated and resisting elements, our personal co-operation was indispensable, and that this, however, was tied to entry into the "League". We therefore entered. The congress, at which the League members of Switzerland, France, Belgium, Germany and England were represented, took place, and after heated debates lasting several weeks the "Manifesto of the Communist Party", composed by Engels and myself, was adopted, which appeared in print at the beginning of 1848 and later in English, French, Danish and Italian translations. On the outbreak of the February Revolution, the London Central Authority transferred to me the supreme direction of the "League". During the revolutionary period in Germany, its activity died away of its own accord, for now more effective paths stood open for the assertion

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of its aims. When I arrived in London in the late summer of 1849, after my renewed expulsion from France, I found the remnants of the Central Authority there reconstituted and the connection with the re-established circles of the League in Germany renewed. Willich arrived in London a few months later and was, on my proposal, admitted to the Central Authority. He was recommended to me by Engels, who had taken part as his adjutant in the Reich constitution campaign. To complete the history of the League, I further note: On 15 September 1850, a split took place in the bosom of the Central Authority. Its majority, with Engels and myself, transferred the seat of the Central Authority to Cologne, where the "leading circle" for Central and South Germany had existed for a long time and where, besides London, the most significant centre of intellectual forces was to be found.

We simultaneously withdrew from the London workers’ educational association.

10

The minority of the Central Authority, with Willich and Schapper, founded, on the other hand, a separate league, which both maintained the connection with the workers’ educational association, and took up again the connections, broken off since 1848, with Switzerland and France. On 12 Nov. 1852, the condemnation of the Cologne accused took place. A few days later the League was, on my motion, declared dissolved. A document relating to this dissolution, dated November 1852, I have appended to my court documents in the case against the "National-Zeitung". It is mentioned therein as the motive for the dissolution that, since the arrests in Germany, hence already since the spring of 1851, all connection with the Continent ceased in any case, and that, moreover, such a propaganda society was no longer timely. A few months later, at the beginning of 1853, the Willich-Schapper separate league also expired.

The principled grounds of the above-touched-upon split may be found in my "Revelations concerning the Communist Trial", in which an extract from the minutes of the sitting of the Central Authority of 15 September 1850 is printed. The nearest practical occasion was provided by Willich’s striving to embroil the "League" in the revolutionary play-acting of the German democratic emigration. A completely opposed conception of the political situation sharpened the discord still further. I will adduce but one example. Willich imagined, for example, that the quarrel between Prussia and Austria, on the occasion of the Kurhessian and the Federal question, would lead to serious conflicts and offered a handle for the practical intervention of the revolutionary party. On 10 November 1850, shortly after the split of the "League", he also published a proclamation in this sense: "Aux démocrates de toutes les nations", signed by the Central Authority of the "separate league", as well as by French, Hungarian and Polish

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refugees. Engels and I, on the other hand, as may be read on pp. 174, 175 of the "Revue der Neuen Rheinischen Zeitung" (double number for May to October 1850, Hamburg), maintained the reverse: "All this noise will come to naught. Without a drop of blood being spilt, the parties, Austria and Prussia, will come together in Frankfurt on the seats of the Bundestag, without, for all that, the slightest detriment being done either to their jealousies among themselves, or to their quarrels with their subjects, or to their vexation over Russian supremacy."

10 Whether Willich’s individuality, whose sterlingness, by the way, is not to be contested, and his Besançon recollections, then (1850) still fresh, exactly fitted him to conceive the conflicts made unavoidable by the opposition of views and daily renewed in an "impersonal" manner, let him be judged by the following document.

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"The German Column at Nancy
to
Citizen Joh. Philipp Becker in Biel,
President of the German military association ‘Help Yourself!’

Citizen!

To you, as the elected representative of all German fugitive Republicans, we hereby indicate that a column of German fugitives has formed in Nancy, which bears the name ‘German Column at Nancy’.

The fugitives who make up the local column are partly those who formerly formed the Vesoul Column, and partly they, the fugitives here, have been a component part of the Besançon Column; purely democratic causes lie at the bottom of their removal from the same.

Willich, namely, in all that he did, very rarely asked the column for advice; thus the fundamental laws of the Besançon Column were not generally deliberated and decided upon, but given a priori by Willich and put into execution without the consent of the column.

Furthermore, Willich also gave us a posteriori proofs of his despotic character, through a series of commands which were worthy of a Jellachich, a Windischgrätz, but no Republican.

Willich gave the command that from a member leaving the column, by the name of Schön, the new shoes procured for him out of the savings of the column be pulled from his feet, not reflecting that Schön also had a share in these savings, since these savings derived principally from the

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10 sous per man which were paid daily by France as subsidy moneys ....... | he wanted his shoes, Willich, however, had them taken from him.

Willich sent several capable members of the colony away from Besançon for trifles, such as absence at roll-call, at drill, coming late (in the evening), minor disputes—without consulting the colony—with the remark that they could go to Africa, for they would never be allowed to remain in France and, if they did not go to Africa, he would have them extradited, and extradited to Germany at that, for he had authority from the French government to do so; this was subsequently declared false by the prefecture in Besançon on enquiry. Willich declared almost every day at roll-call: whoever didn’t like it could leave whenever he wished, the sooner the better, he could go to Africa, etc.; furthermore, on one occasion he issued the general threat: anyone who disobeyed his orders could either go to Africa or he would have him extradited to Germany, which gave rise to the aforementioned enquiry at the prefecture. Through these daily threats many people grew sick and tired of life in Besançon, where, as they said, one daily had the dole thrown at one’s feet; if we wanted to be slaves, they said, we could go to Russia, or there would have been no need to make a start in Germany at all. Enough; in Besançon they declared that at no price could they hold out any longer without getting into a serious conflict with Willich; they therefore left; but since at that time there was nowhere else a colony that could have taken them in, and they could not live on 10 sous a day alone, nothing remained for them but to have themselves enlisted for Africa, which they did. Thus Willich drove 30 brave citizens to despair and is to blame that these forces are lost to the fatherland for ever.

Furthermore, Willich was so imprudent as always to praise his old comrades at roll-call and to disparage the new ones, which constantly provoked disputes, indeed Willich even declared once at roll-call that the Prussians were far superior to the South Germans in head, heart and body, or in physical, moral and intellectual powers, as he expressed it. The South Germans possessed, by contrast, good-naturedness—he meant to say stupidity, but did not quite have the heart for it. By this Willich embittered all the South Germans, by far the majority, terribly. Lastly, the grossest thing.

When, a fortnight ago, the 7th Company promised a member named Baroggio, whom Willich had arbitrarily expelled from the barracks, shelter for one more night in the room, kept him in their room despite Willich’s prohibition, and defended it against Willich’s partisans, fanatical tailors, Willich ordered: ropes should be fetched and the rebels bound. The ropes were actually fetched. But Willich’s will was not matched by his power to have the order fully carried out. … These are the reasons for their departure.

We have not written this to accuse Willich. For | Willich’s character and will are good, and many of us respect him, but the manner in which he seeks to attain his object, and the means he employs, did not please us all. Willich means well. He believes himself, however, to be wisdom and ultima ratio and regards anyone who contradicts him, even in trifles, as either a blockhead or a traitor. In short, Willich recognises no other opinion than his own. He is an intellectual aristocrat and despot; when he holds something to be good, he does not readily shrink from any means either. But enough of this; we know Willich now. We know his strong and weak sides, and that is why we are no longer in Besançon. Incidentally, on their departure from Besançon all declared that they parted from Willich, but did not resign from the German Arms Association “Hilf Dir”.

The same from Vesoul……

With the assurance of our high esteem we close, fraternal greeting and handshake from the colony at Nancy.
Adopted in the general assembly of 13 Nov. 1848.
Nancy, 14 Nov. 1848.
In the name of and by order of the colony.

Now back to Techow’s letter. The venom of his letter, like that of any other reptile, sits in the tail, namely in the postscript of 3 September (1850). It deals with a duel between my friend Conrad Schramm, who died too young, and Herr Willich. In this duel, which took place in Antwerp at the beginning of September 1850, Techow and the Frenchman Barthélemy figured as Willich’s seconds. Techow writes to Schimmelpfennig “for communication to the friends”: “Those (namely Marx and his following) let their champion Schramm loose upon Willich, who [Techow means: whom he] attacked with the most vulgar invectives and finally challenged to a duel.” (pp. 156, 157 of the main book.)

My refutation of this foolish tittle-tattle has been in print for 7 years in the previously cited pamphlet: “Der Ritter vom edelmüthigen Bewußtsein. New-York 1853.”

At that time Schramm was still alive. He, like Willich, was in the United States.

Willich’s second Barthélémy had not yet been hanged; Schramm’s second, the brave Polish officer Miskowski, was not yet burned, and Herr Techow could not yet have forgotten his circular letter for “communication to the friends”.

The said pamphlet contains a letter from my friend Friedrich Engels, dated Manchester, 23 Nov. 1853, in which it says at the close:

“At the session of the Central Authority at which the challenge between Schramm and Willich took place, I (Engels) am supposed (according to Willich) to have committed the crime of having ‘left the room’ with Schramm shortly before the scene, and thus to have prearranged the whole affair. Previously it was Marx (according to Willich) who was supposed to have ‘egged on’ Schramm; now, for a change, it is I. A duel between an old Prussian lieutenant, a crack pistol shot, and a man of commerce who had perhaps never held a pistol in his hand, was truly a capital measure for ‘putting the lieutenant out of the way’. In spite of this, friend Willich related everywhere, orally and in writing, that we had wanted to have him shot. …… Schramm was simply furious at Willich’s shameless conduct, and, to the greatest astonishment of us all, he forced him to a duel. Schramm himself had had no inkling a few minutes before that it would come to this. Never was an act more spontaneous. … Schramm left (the meeting room) only at the personal urging of Marx, who wished to avoid further scandal.

Fr. Engels.” (p. 7 of the “Ritter etc.”)

How far I myself was from suspecting that Techow would turn himself into the vehicle of this foolish tittle-tattle can be seen from the following passage of the same pamphlet:

“Originally, as Techow himself narrated to me and Engels on his return to London, Willich was firmly convinced that I, through Schramm’s intermediation, intended to dispatch the noble man from this world, and he wrote this idea to all quarters. On closer reflection, however, he found that a diabolical tactician such as I could not possibly have hit upon the notion of disposing of him through a duel with Schramm.” (p. 9 l.c.)

What Techow carries as tittle-tattle to Herr Schimmelpfennig for “communication to the friends” he repeats from hearsay. Karl Schapper, who in the split of the League that occurred later took the party of Willich and was a witness of the challenge scene, writes to me about it as follows:

“5, Percy Street, Bedford Square,
27 Sept. 1860.
Dear Marx!

Concerning the scandal between Schramm and Willich, the following:

It took place at a session of the Central Authority and in consequence of a violent dispute that happened to break out between the two during the discussion. I still remember very well that you did everything to restore order and to settle the matter, and that you appeared just as astonished at this sudden explosion as I myself and the other members present. Salut

Your Karl Schapper.”

Finally I should also mention that Schramm himself, some weeks after the duel, in a letter of 31 December 1850, accused me of partiality for Willich. The disapproval that Engels and I openly expressed to him before and after the duel about it had momentarily put him out of humour. This letter of his and other papers which he and Miskowski sent me concerning the duel are open to inspection by his relatives. They are not for the public eye.

When Conrad Schramm, after his return from the United States in mid-July 1857, sought me out again in London, his bold, lanky youthful figure had collapsed under an incurable consumption, which had only however transfigured his handsome, characterful head. With his peculiar humour, which never deserted him for a moment, the first thing he laughingly told me was his own death notice, which an indiscreet friend, on the strength of a rumour, had already published in a New York German paper. On medical advice Schramm went to St. Helier in Jersey, where Engels and I saw him for the last time. Schramm died on 16 Jan. 1858. At his funeral procession, which was followed by the whole liberal citizenry of St. Helier and the entire emigration settled there, G. Julian Harney, one of the finest English popular orators, formerly known as a Chartist leader and a friend of Schramm’s during his stay in London, delivered the graveside oration. Schramm’s impetuous, daring, fiery nature, which never allowed itself to be fettered by everyday interests, was saturated with critical understanding, original power of thought, ironic humour and naïve good-naturedness. He was the Percy Hotspur of our party.

Back to Herr Techow’s letter. A few days after his arrival in London, late in the evening, in a wine-house where Engels, Schramm and I entertained him, he had a longer rendez-vous with us. He describes this rendez-vous in his letter to Schimmelpfennig of 26 August 1850, “for communication to the friends”. I had never seen him before and saw him afterwards perhaps twice more, but only very fleetingly. Nevertheless he immediately saw through me and my friends, head, heart and kidneys, and hastens, behind our backs, to send a psychological warrant to Switzerland, whose secret multiplication and circulation he most solicitously recommends to the “friends”.

Techow busies himself a great deal with my “heart”. I magnanimously do not follow him onto this terrain. “Ne parlons pas morale,” as the Parisian grisette says when her friend speaks of politics.

Let us dwell a moment on the addressee of the letter of 26 Aug., the former Prussian lieutenant Schimmelpfennig. I do not know this gentleman personally, have never seen him. I characterise him from two letters. The first letter, which I give only in extracts, was addressed to me by my friend W. Steffen, former Prussian lieutenant and teacher at the divisional school, and dated Chester, 23 Nov. 1853. It says:

“Willich had once sent over an adjutant (to Cologne) by the name of Schimmelpfennig. The latter did me the honour of having me summoned, and was very firmly convinced that he could judge all the circumstances from the start better than anybody who looked the facts in the face day after day. He therefore acquired a very low opinion of me when I told him that the officers of the Prussian army would not count themselves fortunate to fight under his and Willich’s banner, and were not at all inclined to proclaim the Willich republic citissime. He was even more infuriated when nobody was crazy enough to want to duplicate his ready-made appeal to the officers to declare themselves immediately for ‘That’ which he called democracy.”

Wüthend verließ er ‚das von Marx geknechtete Köln‘, wie er mir schrieb,
und bewirkte die Vervielfältigung dieses Blödsinns in einem andern Orte,
sandte ihn an eine Menge Officiere, und so kam es daß das komische Ge-
heimniß dieser schlauen Methode, die preußischen Officiere zu Republica-
nern zu machen, von dem ‚Zuschauer‘ der _Kreuz-Zeitung_ prostituirt
wurde.

Zur Zeit dieses Abentheuers war Steffen, der erst 1853 nach England kam,
mir noch gänzlich unbekannt. Schlagender noch characterisirt Schim-
melpfennig sich selbst in dem folgenden Briefe an denselben Hörfel, der
später als französischer Polizeiagent enthüllt wurde, die Seele des Ende 1850
von Schimmelpfennig, Schurz, Häfner und andern damaligen Freunden
Kinkel’s zu Paris gestifteten Revolutionscomites, und der intimste Vertraute
der beiden Matadore Schurz und Schimmelpfennig war.

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Herr Vogt.—IV. Techow’s Brief

„Schimmelpfennig an Hörfel (zu Paris 1851).

Hier (zu London) ist jetzt folgendes geschehn...... Wir haben dorthin
(nach America) an alle unsre Bekannte von Einfluß geschrieben, die Anleihe
(Kinkel-Anleihe) dadurch vorzubereiten, daß sie persönlich und in der Presse
vorerst einige Zeit von der Macht der Conspiration sprechen, daß sie darauf
hinweisen, wie tüchtige Kräfte, weder von der deutschen, französischen,
noch italienischen Seite den Kampfplatz nie verlassen werden. (Die
Geschichte hat keinen Datum nicht?) Unsre Arbeit geht jetzt gut los.
Sobald man Personen fallen läßt, die zu hartköpfig sind, so finden sie sich
nachher ein und nehmen die gestellten Bedingungen gern an. Morgen werde
ich mich nun, nachdem die Arbeit fest und gesichert ist, mit Ruge und Haug
einlassen. ... Meine sociale Lage ist wie die Deine eine sehr drückende.
Es thut Noth, daß unser Geschäft bald besser auf den Strumpf
kommt. (Nämlich das Kinkel’sche Revolutions-Anleihe-Geschäft.)

Dein Schimmelpfennig.“

Dieser Brief Schimmelpfennig’s befindet sich in den von A. Ruge im „Herold
_des Westens“, Louisville 11. Sptbr. 1853 veröffentlichten_ _„Enthüllungen“._
Schimmelpfennig, der sich schon zur Zeit dieser Veröffentlichung in den
Vereinigten Staaten aufhielt, hat niemals gegen die Echtheit des Briefes
reclamirt. Ruge’s _„Enthüllungen“ sind Abdruck eines Documentes_ _„Aus den_
_Acten des Berliner Polizeipräsidiums“._ Das Document besteht aus Hin-
keldey’schen Randglossen und Papieren, die entweder bei Schimmelpfennig
und Hörfel zu Paris von der französischen Polizei abgefaßt, oder bei dem
Pastor Dulon zu Bremen aufgestiebert, oder endlich während des Frosch-
mäuslerkriegs zwischen Ruge’s Agitationsverein und Kinkel’s Emigrations-
verein von den feindlichen Brüdern selbst der deutsch-americanischen
Presse anvertraut wurden. Characteristisch ist die Ironie, womit Hinkeldey
von Schimmelpfennig sagt, er habe seine Kinkel’sche Revolutions-Anleihe-
Missions-Reise durch Preußen kurz abgebrochen, weil „er sich von der
Polizei verfolgt wähnte“! In denselben _„Enthüllungen“_ findet sich ein Brief
von Karl Schurz „dem Repräsentanten des Pariser Comités (nämlich
Hörfel’s, Häfner’s, Schimmelpfennig’s u. s. w.) in London“, worin es
heißt:

„Es ist gestern beschlossen worden, von der hier anwesenden Emigration,
Bucher, Dr. Frank, Redz aus Wien und Techow, der bald hier sein wird, zu
den Berathungen zuzunehmen. N.B. Es ist Techow vorläufig von diesem
Beschluß nichts weder mündlich noch schriftlich zu eröffnen, bis er hier ist.“
(K. Schurz an die „lieben Leute“ zu Paris, London, 16. April 1851.)

An einen dieser „lieben Leute“, Herrn Schimmelpfennig, richtet Techow
seinen Brief vom 26. August 1850 zur „Mittheilung an die Freunde“. Zu-

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nächst theilt er dem „lieben Mann“ von mir ganz geheim gehaltene Theorien
mit, die er jedoch in unsrer einmaligen Zusammenkunft vermittelst des
Sprichworts „in vino Veritas“ mir sofort ablauscht.

„Ich“, erzählt Herr Techow Herrn Schimmelpfennig „zur Mittheilung an
die Freunde“, „ich erklärte schließlich, daß ich sie (Marx, Engels etc.)
mir immer über den Unsinn eines communistischen Glückseligkeitsstalles
à la Cabet erhaben vorgestellt etc.“. (p. 150 des „Hauptbuchs“.)

Vorgestellt! Techow wußte also nicht einmal das A.B.C. unsrer An-
sichten, war jedoch großmüthig und herablassend genug, sie sich nicht grade
als „Unsinn“ vorzustellen.

Wissenschaftlicher Arbeiten nicht zu erwähnen, hätte er auch nur das
_„Manifest der communistischen Partei“_ gelesen, das er später als meinen
„Proletarier-Catechismus“ kennzeichnet, so fand er darin einen ausführ-
lichen Abschnitt unter dem Titel: „Socialistische und communistische Li-
teratur“, und am Schluß dieses Abschnitts einen Paragraph: „der kritisch-
utopistische Socialismus und Communismus“, worin es heißt:

„Die eigentlich socialistischen und communistischen Systeme, die Sy-
steme St. Simon’s, Fourier’s, Owen’s u. s. w. tauchen auf in der ersten un-
entwickelten Periode des Kampfes zwischen Proletariat und Bourgeoisie, die
wir oben dargestellt haben. Die Erfinder dieser Systeme sahen zwar den
Gegensatz der Klassen wie die Wirksamkeit der auflösenden Elemente
in der herrschenden Gesellschaft selbst. Aber sie erblickten auf der Seite des
Proletariats keine geschichtliche Selbstthätigkeit, keine ihm eigenthümliche
politische Bewegung. Da die Entwicklung des Klassengegensatzes gleichen
Schritt hält mit der Entwicklung der Industrie, finden sie ebenso wenig die
materiellen Bedingungen zur Befreiung des Proletariats vor und suchen nach
einer socialen Wissenschaft, nach socialen Gesetzen, um diese Bedingungen
zu schaffen. An die Stelle der gesellschaftlichen Thätigkeit muß ihre per-
sönlich erfinderische Thätigkeit treten, an die Stelle der geschichtlichen
Bedingungen der Befreiung, phantastische, an die Stelle der allmählig vor
sich gehenden Organisation des Proletariats zur Klasse, eine eigens aus-
geheckte Organisation der Gesellschaft. Die kommende Weltgeschichte löst
sich für sie auf in Propaganda und practische Ausführung ihrer Gesell-

schaftspläne. Die Bedeutung des kritisch-utopistischen Socialismus und
Communismus steht in umgekehrtem Verhältnisse zur geschichtlichen
Entwicklung. Waren daher die Urheber dieser Systeme noch in vieler

Beziehung revolutionair, so bilden ihre Schüler jedesmal reactionaire Secten
und träumen noch immer die versuchsweise Verwirklichung ihrer gesell-
schaftlichen Utopien, Stiftung einzelner Phalansterien, Gründung von
Home-Colonien, Errichtung eines kleinen Icarien’s — Duodezausgabe des
neuen Jerusalem’s.“ (_Manifest der communistischen Partei_ 1848, p. 21, 22.)

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Herr Vogt.—IV. Techow’s Brief

In den letzten Worten ist Cabet’s Icarien oder wie Techow es nennt
„Glückseligkeitsstall“ ausdrücklich als „Duodezausgabe des neuen Jerusa-
lem’s“ bezeichnet.

Die eingestandene gänzliche Unbekanntschaft Techow’s mit den An-
sichten, die Engels und ich Jahre lang vor unsrer Zusammenkunft mit ihm
durch den Druck bekannt gemacht hatten, ist ein Umstand, der seinen Miß-
verstand völlig aufklärt. Zu seiner eignen Characteristik einige Beispiele:

„Er (Marx) lacht über die Narren, welche ihm seinen Proletarier-Catechis-
mus nachbeten, so gut wie über die Communisten à la Willich, so gut wie
über die Bourgeois. Die einzigen, die er achtet, sind ihm die Aristocraten,
die reinen und die es mit Bewußtsein sind. Um sie von der Herrschaft zu
verdrängen, braucht er eine Kraft, die er allein in dem Proletariat findet,
deshalb hat er sein System auf sie zugeschnitten.“ (p. 152 des „Haupt-
buch“.)

Techow „stellt“ sich also „vor“, ich habe einen „Proletarier-Catechismus“
verfaßt. Er meint das _„Manifest“_, worin der socialistische und kritische
Utopismus aller Sorten kritisirt und wenn Techow will „verlacht“ wird. Nur
war dies „Verlachen“ nicht so einfach, wie er sich „vorstellt“, sondern
erheischte ein gut Stück Arbeit, wie er aus meiner Schrift gegen Proudhon
_„Misère de la philosophie“_ (1847) ersehn konnte. Techow „stellt“ sich ferner
„vor“, ich habe ein _„System“_ „zugeschnitten“, während ich umgekehrt, auch
in dem direct für die Arbeiter bestimmten _„Manifest“_, alle Systeme verwarf
und an ihre Stelle „die kritische Einsicht in die Bedingungen, den Gang und
die allgemeinen Resultate der wirklichen gesellschaftlichen Bewegung“
setzte. Eine solche „Einsicht“ läßt sich aber weder nachbeten, noch gleich
einer Patrontasche „zuschneiden“. Von seltner Naivetät ist die Auffassungs-
weise über das Verhältniß von Aristocratie, Bourgeoisie und Proletariat, wie
Techow sie sich „vorstellt“, und mir unterstellt.

Die Aristocratie „achte“ ich, über die Bourgeoisie „lache“ ich, und für die
Proletarier „schneide ich ein System zu“, um durch sie die Aristocratie „von
der Herrschaft zu verdrängen“. In dem ersten Abschnitt des _„Manifestes“_
betitelt: „Bourgeois und Proletarier.“ (S. _Manifest_ p. 11.) wird ausführlich
entwickelt, daß die öconomische und daher auch, in einer oder der andern
Form die politische Herrschaft der Bourgeoisie die Grundbedingung ist,
sowohl für die Existenz des modernen Proletariats, wie für die Schöpfung
der „materiellen Bedingungen seiner Befreiung“. „Die Entwicklung des
modernen Proletariats (Siehe _Revue der Neuen Rheinischen Zeitung_, Januar
1850, p. 15) ist überhaupt bedingt durch die Entwicklung der industriellen
Bourgeoisie. Unter ihrer Herrschaft gewinnt es erst die ausgedehnte natio-
nale Existenz, die seine Revolution zu einer nationalen erheben kann, schafft
es selbst erst die modernen Productionsmittel, welche eben so viele Mittel

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seiner revolutionären Befreiung werden. Ihre Herrschaft reißt erst die
materiellen Wurzeln der feudalen Gesellschaft aus, und ebnet das Terrain,
worauf allein eine proletarische Revolution möglich ist.“ Ich erkläre daher
in derselben _„Revue“_ jede proletarische Bewegung, an welcher sich England
nicht betheiligt, für einen „Sturm in einem Glase Wasser“. Engels hatte
schon 1845 in seiner _„Lage der arbeitenden Klassen in England“_ dieselbe
Ansicht entwickelt. In Ländern also, wo die Aristocratie im continentalen
Sinn— und so verstand Techow ‚die Aristocratie‘— erst von der „Herrschaft
verdrängt“ werden muß, fehlt meiner Ansicht nach die erste Voraussetzung
einer proletarischen Revolution, nämlich ein industrielles Proletariat auf
nationaler Stufenleiter.

Meine Ansicht über das Verhältniß, das speciell die deutschen Arbeiter
zur bürgerlichen Bewegung einnahmen, fand Techow in dem _„Manifest“_
sehr bestimmt ausgesprochen. „In Deutschland kämpft die communistische
Partei, sobald die Bourgeoisie revolutionair auftritt, gemeinsam mit der
Bourgeoisie gegen die absolute Monarchie, das feudale Grundeigenthum und
die Kleinbürgerei. Sie unterläßt aber keinen Augenblick bei den Arbeitern
ein möglichst klares Bewußtsein über den feindlichen Gegensatz von
Bourgeoisie und Proletariat herauszubilden“ u. s. w. (p. 23 _„Manifest“_.) Als
ich wegen „Rebellion“ vor einer bürgerlichen Jury zu Köln stand, erklärte
ich in demselben Sinn: „In der modernen bürgerlichen Gesellschaft giebt es
noch Klassen, aber keine Stände mehr. Ihre Entwicklung besteht in dem
Kampfe dieser Klassen, aber diese sind vereinigt gegenüber den Ständen und
ihrem gottbegnadeten Königthum.“ (p. 59 _„Zwei politische Prozesse. Ver-
handelt vor den Februar-Assisen zu Köln 1849.“_)

Was andres that die liberale Bourgeoisie in ihren Aufrufen an das Pro-
letariat von 1688 bis 1848 als „Systeme und Phrasen zuschneiden“, um
durch seine Kraft die Aristocratie von der Herrschaft zu verdrängen? Des
Pudels Kern, den Herr Techow aus meiner Geheim-Theorie herausschält,
wäre also der ordinärste bürgerliche Liberalismus! Tant de bruit pour une
omelette! Da Techow nun aber doch andrerseits wußte, daß „Marx“ kein
bürgerlicher Liberaler war, blieb ihm nichts übrig als „den Eindruck mit-
zunehmen, daß seine persönliche Herrschaft der Zweck all’ seines Treibens
ist“. „All’ mein Treiben“, welch’ gemäßigter Ausdruck für meine einmalige
Unterredung mit Herrn Techow!

Techow furthermore entrusts to his Schimmelpfennig, “for communication to his friends,” that I expressed the following monstrous view: “In the end it was also a matter of complete indifference whether wretched Europe went to ruin, which would have to happen soon without the social revolution, and whether America then exploited the old system at Europe’s expense.” (p. 148 of the “Hauptbuch.”) My conversation with Techow took place at the end of August 1850. In the February 1850 issue of the *Revue der Neuen Rheinischen Zeitung*, thus 8 months before Techow wormed this secret out of me, I revealed the following to the German public:

“We now come to America. The most important fact that has occurred here, more important than the February Revolution, is the discovery of the Californian gold mines. Already now, after barely eighteen months, it can be foreseen that this discovery will have far grander results than even the discovery of America itself. ... For the second time world trade acquires a new direction. Then the Pacific Ocean will play the same role as the Atlantic now plays, and as the Mediterranean Sea played in antiquity and the Middle Ages—the role of the great waterway of world traffic; and the Atlantic Ocean will sink down to the role of an inland sea, such as the Mediterranean now plays. The only chance that the European civilised countries will not then fall into the same industrial, commercial and political dependence in which Italy, Spain and Portugal now find themselves lies in a social revolution, etc.” (p. 77 of the *Revue*, Second Issue, February 1850.)

Only Herr Techow has made out of the “soon to go to ruin” of old Europe the imminent “ruin” and the “accession to the throne” of America taking place the very next morning. How clear I was at that time about the immediate future of America can be seen from the following passage in the same *Revue*: “Over-speculation will develop very rapidly, and even if English capital flows in massively, New York will this time remain the centre of the whole swindle and will, as in 1836, be the first to experience its collapse.” (p. 149 double issue of the *Revue*, May to October 1850.) This prognosticon, which I had made for America in the year 1850, was to be fulfilled literally in the great commercial crisis of 1857. Of “old Europe”, after describing its economic upswing, I say on the contrary: “In this general prosperity, in which the productive forces of bourgeois society develop so luxuriantly—there can be no talk of a real revolution. ... The various bickerings in which the representatives of the individual fractions of the continental party of order now indulge and in which they mutually compromise one another, far from giving rise to a revolution, are on the contrary only possible because the foundation of the conditions is momentarily so secure and, something the reaction does not realise, so bourgeois. Against it, all reactionary attempts to halt bourgeois development will rebound just as much as all moral indignation and all the enthusiastic proclamations of the democrats. A new revolution is possible only in the wake of a crisis.” (p. 153 loc. cit.)

In fact, European history only again assumed an acute, and if one likes, revolutionary character since the crisis of 1857–58. In fact, it was precisely during the reactionary epoch from 1849 to 1859 that industry and trade on the Continent developed on a previously unimagined scale, and with them the material basis for the political rule of the bourgeoisie. In fact, during that epoch, “all moral indignation and all the enthusiastic proclamations of the democracy” rebounded against the economic conditions.

If Techow took the serious part of our conversation so jokingly, he took its joke all the more seriously. With the most solemn undertaker’s mien he informs his Schimmelpfennig “for communication to his friends”:

“Furthermore Marx: In revolutions the officers are always the most dangerous, from Lafayette to Napoleon a chain of traitors and betrayals. One must always keep dagger and poison ready for them.” (p. 153 of the “Hauptbuch.”)

Even Techow will not want to palm off on me the commonplace about the betrayals of the “gentlemen of the military” as an original thought. The original part would consist in the “dagger and poison” always to be kept ready. Did Techow not know even at that time that really revolutionary governments, such as the *comité du salut public*, kept ready, if also very drastic, yet less melodramatic means for the “gentlemen of the military”? Dagger and poison suited at most the trade of a Venetian oligarchy. If Techow studies his own letter again, he will retrospectively read the irony out of “dagger and poison”. Vogt’s fellow rogue, the notorious Bonapartist *mouchard* Edouard Simon, translates in the *Revue Contemporaine* (XIII, Paris 1860, p. 528, in his “le procès de M. Vogt etc.”) the last passage from Techow’s letter with a marginal gloss: «Marx n’aime pas beaucoup voir des officiers dans sa bande. Les officiers sont trop dangereux dans les révolutions. Il faut toujours tenir prêts pour eux le poignard et le poison! Techow, qui est officier, se le tient pour dit; il se rembarque et retourne en Suisse.» Edouard Simon makes poor Techow so frightfully afraid of the “dagger and poison” I kept ready that he promptly takes to his heels, embarks and returns to Switzerland. The *Reichs-Vogt* prints the passage with “dagger and poison” in bold type in order to frighten the German philistine. Yet the same comical person writes in her so-called “*Studien*”: “the knife and the poison of the Spaniard shine today in transfigured splendour—it was after all a question of the independence of the nation.” (p. 79 loc. cit.)

Quite in passing: the Spanish and English historical sources on the period from 1807 to 1814 have long since refuted the poison fables invented by the French. But for coffee-house politics they naturally continue to exist undisturbed.

I finally come to the “gossip” in Techow’s letter and will demonstrate his historical impartiality with a few examples:

“First there was talk of the competition between them and us, Switzerland and London. They had had to uphold the rights of the old League, which naturally, on account of its specific party position, could not have tolerated another on the same terrain (proletariat) alongside itself in friendship.” (p. 143 of the “Hauptbuch.”)

The competition society in Switzerland of which Techow speaks here, and as whose representative he, to a certain extent, confronted us, was the already mentioned “Revolutionary Centralisation”. Its central authority sat in Zurich, at its head as president a lawyer, former vice-president of one of the 1848 miniature parliaments and member of one of the German provisional governments of 1849. In July 1850 Dronke arrived in Zurich, where, as a member of the London “League”, a kind of notarial contract was presented to him by the lawyer “for communication” to me. It reads literally:

“Between the Communist Association and the Revolutionary Centralisation, considering the necessity of a union of all truly revolutionary elements, and after all members of the revolutionary central authority have recognised the character of the next revolution as a proletarian one, even if not all were in a position to profess unconditionally the programme drawn up from London (Manifesto of 1848), agreement was reached on the following points:

1) Both parties agree to work alongside one another—the Revolutionary Centralisation, by seeking to prepare the next revolution through the union of all revolutionary elements, the London society, by seeking to prepare the rule of the proletariat through the organisation of the predominantly proletarian elements;

2) the Revolutionary Centralisation instructs its agents and emissaries that, when forming sections in Germany, they draw the attention of the members who appear suitable for entry into the Communist Association to the existence of an organisation established predominantly in the proletarian interest;

3) and 4) that the leadership for Switzerland be left only to real adherents of the London Manifesto in the revolutionary central authority, and that reciprocal reports be made.”

From this document, still in my possession, it can be seen: It was not a matter of two secret societies “on the same terrain” (proletariat), but of the alliance of two societies on different terrains and with different tendencies. It can further be seen: The “Revolutionary Centralisation” declared itself ready, alongside the pursuit of its own goals, to form a kind of branch for the “Communist League”.

The proposal was rejected because its acceptance was incompatible with the “principled” character of the “League”.

“Now Kinkel came under discussion. To this they replied: They had never striven for cheap popularity, on the contrary! As for Kinkel, they would have heartily granted him his cheap popularity if he had kept quiet. But after he published that Rastatt speech in the *Berliner Abend-Post*, peace had been impossible. They had known that the whole world would cry out; they had clearly told themselves beforehand that they were thereby gambling with the existence of their current paper (the *Revue der Rheinischen Zeitung*). Their fears had indeed come true. They had gone under on that story, had lost all their subscribers in the Rhine Province and now had to let the paper cease. But that did not matter to them.” (p. 146–148 loc. cit.)

First, by way of factual correction: At that time the *Revue* had by no means gone under, for a new double issue of it appeared still 3 months later, nor had we lost a single subscriber in the Rhine Province, as my old friend J. Weydemeyer, former Prussian artillery lieutenant, at that time editor of the *Neue Deutsche Zeitung* in Frankfurt, can attest, since he was kind enough to collect the subscription money for us. For the rest, Techow, who knew Engels’ and my writing only from hearsay, must at least have read our critique of the Kinkel speech, which he himself criticises. Why, then, his confidential communication to the “dear people” in Switzerland? Why “reveal” to them what we ourselves had already revealed to the public 5 months earlier? It says literally in the mentioned critique:

“We know in advance that we will arouse the general indignation of the sentimental swindlers and democratic declaimers by denouncing this speech of the captive Kinkel to our party. This is a matter of complete indifference to us. Our task is ruthless criticism, and by maintaining this our position we gladly renounce cheap democratic popularity. By our attack we in no way worsen Herr Kinkel’s situation: we denounce him to the amnesty by confirming his confession that he is not the man he is alleged to be, by declaring that he is worthy not only of being amnestied but even of entering Prussian state service. Besides, his speech is published.” (p. 70, 71 *Revue der Neuen Rheinischen Zeitung* April 1850.)

Techow speaks of our “compromising” of the *petits grands hommes* of the revolution. He does not, however, understand this “compromising” in the

In the polemical sense of Herr Vogt. He means, rather, the operation whereby we stripped the offensive hide from sheep that had disguised themselves in revolutionary wolf-skins, thus preserving them from the fate of the famous Provençal troubadour who was torn to pieces by the dogs because they believed in the wolf-skin in which he went hunting.

As an example of the offensive manner of our attacks, Techow cites in particular the incidental gloss on General Sigel in Engels’ “Darstellung der Reichsverfassungs-Campagne”. (See Revue, March 1850, pp. 70-78.)

Now compare Engels’ documented criticism with the following maliciously shallow twaddle which the London “Emigration Society”, run by Techow, Kinkel, Willich, Schimmelpfennig, Schurz, H. B. Oppenheim, Eduard Meyen, etc., had printed against the same General Sigel some one year after our meeting, for no other reason than that Sigel sided with Ruge’s “Agitation Society” instead of Kinkel’s “Emigration Society”.

On 3 December 1851, under the title “The Agitation Society in London”, the Baltimore Correspondent, at that time a kind of Kinkel-Moniteur, printed the following characterisation of Sigel:

“Let us look further at who these sterling men are to whom everyone else appears as ‘impure politicians’. The commander-in-chief Sigel. When the Muse of history is asked how this pale insignificance attained the command-in-chief, she finds herself in greater embarrassment than with the moon-calf Napoleon. The latter is at least the ‘nephew of his uncle’; Sigel, however, is only the ‘brother of his brother’. His brother had become a popular officer through unguarded utterances against the government, brought on by frequent arrest which he had to endure for banal dissoluteness. Young Sigel considered this a sufficient ground to proclaim himself commander-in-chief and minister of war in the first confusion of the revolutionary uprising. The Baden artillery, which had often proved its excellence, had older and more solid officers enough, before whom the young, schoolboyish Lieutenant Sigel ought to have stepped back, and who were not a little outraged at having to obey a young, insignificant person, as inexperienced as he was talentless. But, after all, there was a Brentano, who was so weak-headed and treacherous as to let happen everything that was bound to ruin the revolution. Yes, it is a ridiculous fact, but it is a fact, that Sigel made himself commander-in-chief and Brentano subsequently recognised him. … In any case, that trait is noteworthy, that Sigel left the bravest soldiers of the republican army in the lurch in desperate, hopeless fighting in Rastatt and the Black Forest without the promised relief troops, while he himself drove around Zurich with the epaulettes and in the cabriolet of the Prince of Fürstenberg, and paraded as an interesting, unfortunate commander-in-chief. Such is the well-known greatness of the mature politician, who in the permitted self-esteem of his former heroic deeds imposed himself for the second time as commander-in-chief in the Agitation Society. Such is the great celebrity, the ‘brother of his brother’.”

Impartiality requires us to hear for a moment also Ruge’s “Agitation Society” in the person of its spokesman Tausenau. Tausenau, in an open letter dated London, 4 Nov. 1851, “To Citizen Seidensticker”, remarks with reference to the “Emigration Society” directed by Kinkel, Techow, etc., among other things:

“You express the conviction that a unification of all in the interest of the revolution is a patriotic duty and a matter of urgency. The German Agitation Society shares this conviction, and its members have demonstrated it in long-winded attempts at unification with Kinkel and his supporters. But every basis for political co-operation vanished as soon as it seemed to be won, and new disappointments followed the old ones. Arbitrary acts against previous agreements, separate interests under the mask of conciliation, systematic surreptitious capture of majorities, the appearance of unknown great men as organising party chiefs, attempts to impose a secret financial committee, and whatever else the corner- and chessboard moves may be called by which immature politicians of every age have imagined they could steer the destinies of their country in exile, while already the first white heat of revolutions disperses such vanities into empty vapour. … We were publicly and officially denounced by Kinkel’s supporters; the reactionary German press, which is inaccessible to us, teems with correspondences unfavourable to us and favourable to Kinkel; and finally Kinkel travelled to the United States in order to dictate to us, by means of his so-called German loan set in motion there, a union, or better said, a subordination and dependence such as every originator of financial party amalgamations intends. Kinkel’s departure was kept so carefully secret that we learned of it only from American papers with the news of his arrival in New York.——That and still more were, for serious revolutionaries who did not overestimate themselves but may say, in the consciousness of past achievements and with self-esteem, that at least clearly circumscribed sections of the people stand behind them, compelling motives for entering a society which, in its own way, seeks to further the interests of the revolution.” Kinkel is further accused that the funds collected by him were to serve “a clique”, as “his whole conduct here (London) and in America shows”, and no less “the majority of the guarantors appointed by Kinkel himself”.

The conclusion reads:

“We promise our friends no interest and no repayment of their patriotic donations, but we know that we shall justify their trust by positive (real service?) achievements and conscientious accounting, and that the gratitude of the fatherland awaits them one day, with the publication of their names on our part.” (Baltimore Wecker, 29 Nov. 1851.)

That was the kind of “literary activity” which the democratic heroes of the “Agitation Society” and of the “Emigration Society”, to which later the “Revolutionary League of the Two Worlds” founded by Gögg was added, developed in the German-American press over 3 years. (See Supplement 6.)

The refugee scandal in the American press had, incidentally, been opened by a paper tournament between the parliamentarians Zitz and Rosier von Oels.

Here is yet one fact characteristic of Techow’s “dear people”.

Schimmelpfennig, the addressee of Techow’s letter “for communication to the friends”, had (as already mentioned above) at the end of 1850 set up a so-called revolutionary committee in Paris together with Hörfel, Häfner, Gögg and others (K. Schurz joined later).

Several years ago, a letter from a former member of this committee to a local political refugee was transmitted to me for my discretionary use. The paper is still in my possession.

It says, among other things:

“Schurz and Schimmelpfennig made up the whole committee. Those they adjoined as a kind of assessors were there only for show. Those two gentlemen believed at that time that they would soon be able to bring their Kinkel, whom they had formally expropriated for themselves, to the head of affairs in Germany. They particularly hated Ruge’s sarcasms, as well as the criticism and the demonic activity of Marx. At a meeting of those gentlemen with their assessors, they gave us a truly interesting portrayal of Marx and gave us an exaggerated opinion of his pandemoniac dangerousness. … Schurz-Schimmelpfennig submitted a motion to destroy Marx. Suspicion and intrigue, the most impudent slanders were recommended as means. An affirmative vote and a resolution, if you want to call that childish game a resolution, took place. The next step towards execution was the characterisation of Marx published by L. Häfner in the feuilleton of the Hamburger Nachrichten at the beginning of 1851, on the basis of the above-mentioned portrayal by Schurz and Schimmelpfennig.”

In any case, the most striking elective affinity exists between Häfner’s feuilleton and Techow’s letter, although neither the one nor the other comes close to Vogt’s “Lausiade”. One must not confuse the Lausiade with the Lusiade of Camões. The original “Lousiad” is rather a heroic-comic epic by Peter Pindar.

V. Imperial Regent and Count Palatine.

Vidi un col capo si di merda lordo,
Che non parea, s’era laico, o cherco.
Quei mi sgridò: Perchè se’ tu si ’ngordo
Di riguardar più me, che gli altri brutti.
(Dante.)*

Vogt, having brushed himself up at home, feels a powerful need to demonstrate why precisely he, as bête noire, attracted the glances of the “Sulphur Gang”. Cherval and the “foiled conspiracy” at the Lausanne Central Festival are therefore supplemented by a no less real adventure with the “fugitive Imperial Regent”. Vogt, not to be forgotten, was at that time the governor of the parliamentary island of Barataria. He relates:

“At the beginning of 1850, Kolatschek’s ‘Deutsche Monatsschrift’ appeared. Immediately after the appearance of the first issue, the Sulphur Gang, through one of its comrades who departed at once for America, issued a pamphlet entitled: ‘The Fugitive Imperial Regent Vogt with His Following and the Deutsche Monatsschrift of Adolph Kolatscheck’, which was also mentioned by the Allgemeine Zeitung. … The entire system of the Sulphur Gang is once again revealed in this pamphlet.” (p. 163 l.c.) He then expounds at great length how in the said pamphlet an anonymous article about Gagern, written by Professor Hagen, was “attributed” to the fugitive Imperial Regent Vogt, namely because “the Sulphur Gang knew” that Hagen “was living in Germany at that time, was being disciplined by the Baden police, and could not then be named without being exposed to the most severe vexations”. (p. 163.)

Schily, in his letter dated Paris, 8 February, writes to me:

“That Greiner, who to my knowledge has never been in Geneva, was mixed up in the Sulphur Gang, he owes to his obituary for the ‘fugitive Imperial Regent’, whose author was parliamentarily held to be D Ester and was defamed as such, until I informed a friend and colleague of Vogt’s, by correspondence, to the contrary.”

Greiner was a member of the provisional government of the Palatinate. Greiner’s rule was “a horror” (see Vogt’s Studien, p. 28), namely for my friend Engels, whom he had arrested at Kirchheim under false pretences. The whole tragi-comic event has been recounted in detail by Engels himself in the “Revue der Neuen Rheinischen Zeitung” (pp. 53-55, February issue 1850). And that is all I know of Herr Greiner. The fact that the fugitive Imperial Regent drags me by lies into his conflict with the “Count Palatine” shows “once again” the “entire system” by which the inventive one has composed the life and deeds “of the Sulphur Gang”.

* I saw one whose head was so befouled with filth,
It was not to be seen whether he was layman or cleric.
He cried to me: “Why art thou so greedy
To gaze on me more than the other filthy ones?” (Kannegießer.)

What reconciles me, however, is the genuine Falstaffian humour with which he has the Pfalzgraf depart “immediately” for America. After the Pfalzgraf had shot off the pamphlet against the “fugitive Imperial Regent” like a Parthian arrow, a horror crept over the Greiner. Away it drove him from Switzerland to France, from France to England. Even the Channel did not hold him sufficiently covered, and on it drove him to Liverpool onto a Cunard steamer, where, breathless, he shouted to the ship’s captain: “Away, across the Atlantic!” And the “stern mariner” answered:

“Well, from Vogt’s power I deliver you!
From storm’s distress another must help.”

VI. Vogt and the *Neue Rheinische Zeitung*.

*Sin kumber was manecvalt.*

Vogt himself declares that in his “main book” it is a matter for him (loc. cit. p. 162) of “the development of his personal position towards this clique” (Marx and consorts). Strangely enough, he narrates only conflicts he has never experienced, and experiences only conflicts he has never narrated. To his hunting stories I must therefore counterpose a piece of real history. If one leafs through the annual volume of the *Neue Rheinische Zeitung* (1 June 1848 to 19 May 1849), one will find that during the year 1848 Vogt’s name, with a single exception, figures neither in the leading articles nor in the correspondences of the *Neue Rheinische Zeitung*. It appears only in the daily reports on the parliamentary debates, and the Frankfurt reporter never failed, to Herr Vogt’s great satisfaction, each time to register conscientiously the “applause” caught for the “speeches delivered by himself”. We saw that while the Right at Frankfurt could dispose of the united forces of a Harlequin like Lichnowsky and a clown like von Vincke, the Left was reduced to the isolated buffoonery of the sole Vogt. We understood that he needed encouragement, “that important fellow, / the children’s wonder — Signor Punchinello”, and accordingly let the Frankfurt reporter have his way. A change in the colouring of the reports occurs after mid-September 1848.

Vogt, who in the debates on the Malmö armistice had provoked an uprising through revolutionary rodomontades, did his utmost, at the moment of decision, to thwart the adoption of the resolutions passed by the popular assembly on the Pfingstweide and approved by a part of the extreme Left. After the barricade fighting had been suppressed, Frankfurt turned into an open military camp, and the state of siege proclaimed on 19 September, the same Vogt declared himself in favour of the urgency of Zachariä’s motion for the approval of the measures taken so far by the Imperial Ministry and for a vote of thanks to the Imperial troops. Before Vogt mounted the tribune, even Venedey had opposed the “urgency” of those motions and declared such a discussion, at such a moment, contrary to the dignity of the assembly. But Vogt stood below Venedey. As a punishment, I inserted in the parliamentary report after the word “Vogt” the word “chatterer”, a laconic hint for the Frankfurt reporter.

In the following October Vogt not only failed to do what it was his office to do, to swing the fools’ whip over the heads of the majority, which was then arrogant and thirsting for reaction. He did not even dare to sign the protest which Zimmermann of Spandau lodged on 10 October in the name of about 40 deputies against the law for the protection of the National Assembly. This law, as Zimmermann rightly stressed, was the most shameless encroachment upon the people’s rights won by the March revolution — right of assembly, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press. Even Eisenmann lodged a similar protest. But Vogt stood below Eisenmann. When, later on, he again made himself cocky at the founding of the “Central March Association”, his name finally appears in an article of the *Neue Rheinische Zeitung* (issue of 29 December 1848), in which the “March Association” is depicted as “the unconscious tool of counter-revolution”, its programme critically torn to shreds, and Vogt is presented as one half of a double figure, the other half being Vincke. More than a decade later, both “ministers of the future” recognised that they belonged together, and made the partition of Germany the watchword of their unification.

That we had understood the “March Association” correctly was shown not only by its later “development”. The Heidelberg “People’s League”, the Breslau “Democratic Association”, the Jena “Democratic Association”, etc., scornfully rejected its importunate love advances, and those members of the extreme Left who had joined it confirmed, through their declaration of withdrawal of 20 April 1849, our critique of 29 December 1848. Vogt, however, in quiet magnanimity, heaped fiery coals upon our head, as will be seen from the following quotation:

“No. 243 of the *Neue Rheinische Zeitung*, Cologne, 10 March 1849. ‘The Frankfurt so-called March Association’ of the so-called ‘Reich Assembly’ has the impudence to send us the following lithographed letter:

‘The March Association’ has resolved that a list of all papers which have opened their columns to us shall be drawn up and communicated to all associations with which we are in contact, so that through the said association efforts may be made to ensure that the designated papers are given preferential consideration in respect of any relevant advertisements. In sending you the drawn-up list herewith, we believe we have no need to draw your attention to the importance of paid announcements for a paper as the main source of nourishment of the whole enterprise. Frankfurt, end of February 1849.
The Board of the “Central March Association”.’

On the enclosed list of these papers, which have opened their columns to the March Association and are to be given preferential consideration with ‘relevant advertisements’ by the adherents of the March Association, there figures also, in addition provided with an honouring star, the *Neue Rheinische Zeitung*. We hereby declare that the so-called March Association has never had the columns of our paper opened to it ... If the March Association therefore, in its lithographed report and really column-opening papers, designates our paper as one of its organs, this is a simple slander of the *Neue Rheinische Zeitung* and a tasteless boast of the March Association———

To the dirty remark of the profit-crazed, competition-goaded patriots about the importance of paid announcements for a newspaper as source of nourishment of the whole enterprise, we naturally have no reply. The *Neue Rheinische Zeitung*, as in everything else, also in this respect always differed from the patriots in that it never regarded the political movement as a branch of industrial chivalry or source of livelihood.”

Shortly after this harsh rejection of the source of livelihood offered by Vogt and consorts, the *Neue Rheinische Zeitung* was tearfully mentioned in a meeting of the Central March Association as a model of “truly German disunity”. At the end of our reply to the jeremiad (No. 248 of the *Neue Rheinische Zeitung*), Vogt is characterised as a “petty-university beer-brawler and failed Imperial Barrot”. He had admittedly not yet eaten garlic at that time (15 March) in the imperial question. We, however, were clear about Herr Vogt once and for all, and could therefore treat his future treason, which was not yet clear to himself, as a settled fact.

From then on, incidentally, we left Vogt and consorts to the treatment of the young Schlöffel, as witty as he was bold, who had arrived in Frankfurt from Hungary at the beginning of March and had since been reporting to us on the storms in the imperial frog-pond.

In the meantime Vogt had fallen so low — he himself had naturally contributed more to this fall than the *Neue Rheinische Zeitung* — that even Bassermann dared to brand him in the sitting of 25 April 1849 as an “apostate and renegade”.

As a result of his participation in the Elberfeld uprising, an editor of the *Neue Rheinische Zeitung*, F. Engels, had to flee, and I myself was shortly thereafter expelled from Prussia, after repeated attempts to silence me by means of trials had failed before the jury, and the organ of the coup d’état ministry, the *Neue Preußische Zeitung*, had repeatedly denounced the “Chimborasso-insolence of the *Neue Rheinische Zeitung*, compared with which the *Moniteur* of 1793 seems pale” (see No. 299 of the *Neue Rheinische Zeitung*). Such “Chimborasso-insolence” was in place in a Prussian fortress town and at a time when the victorious counter-revolution sought to impress through shameless brutality.

On 19 May 1849 the last number of the *Neue Rheinische Zeitung* (the red number) appeared. As long as the *Neue Rheinische Zeitung* existed, Vogt had suffered and kept silent. Whenever a parliamentarian protested, it was always done in a modest manner, roughly like this:

“Sir! I esteem the sharp criticism in your paper not the less because it watches over all parties and all persons with equal strictness.” (See No. 219 of 11 February 1849, Wesendonk’s Reclamation.)

A week after the demise of the *Neue Rheinische Zeitung*, Vogt at last believed that, under the shield of parliamentary inviolability, he could seize the long-missed opportunity by the forelock and develop into “energy” the “matter” that had long accumulated in the depths of his heart. For an editor of the *Neue Rheinische Zeitung*, Wilhelm Wolff, had entered the “progressive dissolution”-bound Frankfurt Assembly as a substitute for an elderly Silesian parliamentarian.

To understand the following scene in the sitting of Parliament of 26 May 1849, one must remember that at that time the uprising in Dresden and the partial movements in the Rhine Province had already been suppressed, the Imperial intervention in Baden and the Palatinate was imminent, the main Russian army was advancing on Hungary, and finally the Imperial Ministry had simply quashed resolutions passed by the Assembly. On the agenda were two “Proclamations to the German People”, the first edited by Uhland and emanating from the majority, the other from members belonging to the Centre of a committee of thirty. Presiding was Reh of Darmstadt, who afterwards turned into a hare (Hase) and likewise “detached” himself from the Assembly, which was in “full dissolution”. I quote from the official stenographic report No. 229, 228th sitting in the Paulskirche:

Wolff of Breslau: “Gentlemen! I have declared myself against the proclamation

...to register a statement with the people, against the proclamation that the majority has drafted and that has been read out here, because I consider it entirely inappropriate to present conditions, because I find it far too weak, suitable only for appearing as a newspaper article in those dailies that represent the party from which this proclamation has issued, but not as a proclamation to the German people. Now that a second one has just been read out, I wish only to remark in passing that I would declare myself still much more strongly against that one, for reasons that I need not adduce here. (A voice from the Centre: Why not, then?) I am speaking only of the majority proclamation; it is, to be sure, couched in such moderate terms that even Herr Büß was not able to say much against it, and that is certainly the worst recommendation for a proclamation. No, gentlemen, if you still wish to have any influence at all upon the people, you must not speak to the people in the manner that the proclamation does; you must not speak there of legality, of legal ground and the like, but of illegality in the same way as the governments, as the Russians – and by Russians I mean the Prussians, the Austrians, the Bavarians, the Hanoverians. (Uneasiness and laughter.) They are all subsumed under the common name of Russians. (Great hilarity.) Yes, gentlemen, the Russians are represented in this assembly too. You must say to them: “Just as you take your stand on the legal standpoint, so we too take our stand upon it.” It is the standpoint of force, and parenthetically explain legality to mean that you oppose the cannon of the Russians with force, well-organised storm columns. If a proclamation is to be issued at all, then issue one in which from the outset you declare the first traitor to the people, the Imperial Vicar, an outlaw. (Cry: Order! – Lively applause from the galleries.) Likewise all the ministers. (Renewed uneasiness.) Oh, I shall not let myself be disturbed; he is the first traitor to the people.'

President: 'I believe Herr Wolff has exceeded and violated every consideration. He cannot call the Archduke-Imperial Vicar a traitor to the people before this House, and I must therefore call him to order. At the same time I call upon the galleries for the last time not to take part in the debate in the manner that has occurred.'

Wolff: 'I, for my part, accept the call to order, and declare that I deliberately intended to transgress the order, that he and his ministers are traitors.' (From all sides of the House the cry: Order, that is vulgar.)

President: 'I must withdraw the floor from you.'

Wolff: 'Good, I protest; I wished to speak here in the name of the people and wished to say how one thinks among the people. I protest against any proclamation couched in this sense.' (Great excitement.)

President: 'Gentlemen, allow me the floor for a moment. Gentlemen, the incident that has just taken place is, I may say, the first since the parliament has been sitting here. (It was in fact the first and the only incident in this debating club.) No speaker has yet declared here that he deliberately wished to violate order, the foundation of this House. (Schlöffel, on a similar call to order in the sitting of 25 April, had said: “I accept the call to order and do so the more gladly as I hope the time will soon come in which this assembly will be called to order elsewhere.”)

Gentlemen, I must deeply deplore that Herr Wolff, who has only just become a member of the House, makes his début in this fashion (Reh considers the matter from the standpoint of comedy). Gentlemen! I have pronounced the call to order against him on account of the grave offence against the respect and consideration that we owe to the person of the Imperial Vicar which he has permitted himself.'

The sitting now goes on its course. Hagen and Zachariä hold long speeches, the one for, the other against the majority proclamation. At last Vogt of Giessen rises: 'Gentlemen! Allow me a few words; I do not wish to weary you. That the parliament is no longer what it was when it assembled the previous year, gentlemen, is perfectly correct, and we thank heaven (the “charcoal-burner believer” Vogt thanks heaven!) for the fact that it has become so (yes indeed, become so!) and that those who despaired of their people, and who betrayed the cause of the people at the decisive moment, have separated from the assembly! Gentlemen, I have asked for the floor (so the preceding prayer of thanks was only verbiage) in order to defend the crystal-clear stream that has flowed from a poet’s soul (Vogt gets soulful) into this proclamation (stream-defence) against the unworthy filth that has been thrown into it or hurled against it (the stream was, of course, already absorbed by the proclamation), in order to defend these words (the stream, like everything else with Vogt, turns into words) against the mire that has been heaped up in this latest movement, threatening to flood everything there and to besmirch everything. Yes, gentlemen! That (i.e., the mire) is a mire and is a filth (the mire is a filth!) that is cast in this way (which way?) upon everything whatsoever that can be thought pure, and I express my deepest indignation (Vogt in deepest indignation, quel tableau!) at the fact that such a thing (what?) could happen.' And what he speaks is – mire.

Wolff had not said a syllable about Uhland’s redaction of the proclamation.

He had, as the President repeatedly declares, been called to order, he had conjured up the whole storm because he had declared the Imperial Vicar and all his ministers to be traitors to the people, and had called upon the parliament to declare them traitors to the people. But the “Archduke-Imperial Vicar”, the “worn-out Habsburger” (Vogt’s Studien, p. l S) and “all his ministers” are for Vogt “everything whatsoever that can be thought pure”. He sang with Walther von der Vogelweide:

“The prince’s mind from Austria
delighteth, like sweet rain,
both folk and eke the land.”

Did Vogt already stand at that time in what he later admitted as “scientific relations” with Archduke Johann? (See p. 25, Documents, Hauptbuch.)

Ten years later the same Vogt declared in the Studien, p. 27: “At least this much is certain, that the National Assembly in France and its leaders just as much underestimated Louis Napoleon’s abilities at the time as the leaders of the Frankfurt National Assembly underestimated those of Archduke Johann, and that each of the two cunning heads, in his own sphere, made them pay amply for the mistake committed. We are far from placing the two on the same level. The appalling unscrupulousness etc. etc. (of Louis Bonaparte) – all this makes him appear far superior to the already old and worn-out Habsburger.”

In the same sitting Wolff had Vogt challenged to pistols through the deputy Wurth of Sigmaringen, and when the said Vogt resolved to preserve his skin for the Reich,* threatened him with corporal chastisement. But when, on leaving St Paul’s Church, Wolff found Charles the Bold flanked by two ladies, he burst into loud laughter and left him to his fate. Although a wolf, whose teeth and heart are wolfish, Wolff is nonetheless a lamb towards the fair sex. The only, very harmless revenge he took was an article in the Revue der Neuen Rheinischen Zeitung (April issue 1850, p. 73) entitled: “Supplementary Matter from the Reich”, where it runs thus with reference to the ex-Imperial Regent:

“In these critical days the Central March Association was very busy indeed. Before leaving Frankfurt it had already called out to the March associations and the German people in an address: ‘Fellow citizens! The eleventh hour has struck.’ To procure a people’s army it then issued from Stuttgart a new proclamation ‘to the German people’, and lo, the hand of the Central March clock still stood at the same old spot, or the number XII had been broken out of it, as with the clock of Freiburg Minster. Enough, the proclamation once more says: ‘Fellow citizens! The eleventh hour has struck!’ Oh, if only it had struck earlier and at least then, when the Central March hero Karl Vogt in Nuremberg waved down the Franconian revolution to his own satisfaction and that of the whiners who sponsor him,* struck – through your heads as well. … In the Freiburg government building the regency set up its bureaux. The Regent Karl Vogt, at the same time Minister of Foreign Affairs and holder of many other ministries, here too took the welfare of the German people most solicitously to heart. After long day and night studies he had brought to completion a quite timely invention: ‘Imperial Regency Passports’. The passports were simple, beautifully lithographed and to be had free of charge, as many as the heart could desire. They had only the little defect of being valid and respected only in the Vogt chancellery. Perhaps one or another copy may later find its place in the curiosity cabinet of some Englishman.”

Wolff did not follow Greiner’s example. Instead of “setting off for America immediately after the appearance” of the Revue, he still waited a year for the Land-Vogt’s revenge in Switzerland.

* Kobes I. relates in the pamphlet of Jacobus Venedey already mentioned: “When Karl Vogt, in the sitting in which Gagern embraced Gabriel Rießer after his Emperor speech, embraced the deputy Zimmermann with mock pathos and loud yells in St Paul’s Church, I called out to him: ‘Leave off those street-boy tricks.’ Whereupon Vogt thought he had to insult me with a provocative term of abuse, and when I called him personally to account for it, he, after a long toing and froing by a friend, had the courage not to answer for the insult.” (p. 21, 22 Le.)

* Vogt later justified his Nuremberg heroic deed with the words: “He lacked the guarantees for his personal safety.”

VII. The Augsburg Campaign.

Shortly after the canton citizen of Thurgau had finished his Italian war, the canton citizen of Berne opened his Augsburg campaign.

“There (in London) it was from time immemorial the Marx clique that provided the greater part of the correspondence (of the Allgemeine Zeitung), and stood uninterruptedly in relation with the Allgemeine Zeitung since the year 1849.” (p. 194 of the Hauptbuch)

Although Marx himself has made his lair in London only since the end of 1849, namely since his second expulsion from France, the “Marx clique” appears to have made its lair there from time immemorial, and although the Marx clique “provided the greater part of the correspondence of the Allgemeine Zeitung from time immemorial”, it nonetheless stood “in relation” with the Allgemeine Zeitung only “since the year 1849 uninterruptedly”. In any case, Vogt’s chronology – and this is not to be wondered at, since before 1848 the man “was not yet thinking of political occupation” (p. 225 loc. cit.) – falls into two great periods, namely the period “from time immemorial” to 1849 and the period from 1849 to “this” year.

From 1842–43 I edited the old “Rheinische Zeitung”, which waged a life-and-death war upon the Allgemeine Zeitung. From 1848–49 the “Neue Rheinische Zeitung” renewed the polemic. What then remains for the period “from time immemorial to 1549” except the fact that Marx “from time immemorial” fought the Allgemeine Zeitung, while Vogt, from 1844 to ’47, was its “permanent contributor”? (See p. 225 of the “Hauptbuch”)

Now for the second period of Vogt’s world history.

I was, from London, “uninterruptedly in contact with the Allgemeine Zeitung”, “uninterruptedly since the year 1849”, because “from the year 1852” a certain Ohly was the London chief correspondent of the Allgemeine Zeitung. Ohly, it is true, had no relations with me, neither before

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nor after 1852. I have never in my life set eyes on him. Insofar as he figured at all among the London exiles, it was as a member of the Kinkel Emigration Society. This, however, does not alter the matter, for

“Former oracle of the English-learning old Bavarian Altenhöfer was my (Vogt’s) closer compatriot, the fair-haired Only, who, from a communist basis, sought to attain higher poetic standpoints in politics and literature, at first in Zurich, but from the year 1852 in London so long chief correspondent of the Allgemeine Zeitung, until he finally ended in the madhouse.” (p. 195 of the “Hauptbuch”)

Mouchard Edouard Simon Gallicizes this Vogtiade as follows: “En voici d’abord un qui de son point de départ communiste, avait cherché a s’élever aux plus hautes conceptions de la politique. (‘Höhere poetische Standpunkte in Politik’ was beyond even Edouard Simon’s powers.) A en croire M. Vogt, cet adepte fut l’oracle de la Gazette d’Augsbourg jusqu’en 1852, époque où il mourut dans une maison de fous.” (p. 529, Revue contemporaine, tome XIII. Paris 1860.)

“Operam et oleum perdidi”, Vogt may exclaim, of his Hauptbuch and his Only. While he himself has his “closer compatriot” correspond with the Allgemeine Zeitung from London from 1852, until he “finally ends in the madhouse”, Edouard Simon says, “if one believes Vogt, Ohly was the oracle of the Allgemeine Zeitung until 1852, at which epoch he (who, be it noted in passing, is still alive) died in a madhouse.” But Edouard Simon knows his Karl Vogt. Edouard knows that once one has resolved to “believe” his Karl, it is a matter of complete indifference what one believes of him—what he says, or the exact opposite of what he says.

“Herr Liebknecht,” says Karl Vogt, “replaced him,” namely Ohly, “as correspondent for the Allgemeine Zeitung.” “It was only after Liebknecht was publicly proclaimed as a member of the Marxian party that he was accepted by the Allgemeine Zeitung as a correspondent.” (p. 169 l. c.)

That proclamation took place during the Cologne Communist trial, i.e. at the end of 1852.

In fact, Liebknecht became in the spring of 1851 a contributor to the “Morgenblatt”, in which he reported on the London Industrial Exhibition. Through the mediation of the “Morgenblatt” he obtained, in September 1855, the correspondence for the Allgemeine Zeitung.

“His (Marx’s) comrades do not write a single line of which he has not been informed beforehand.” (p. 194 l. c.) The proof is simple: “he (Marx) rules his people unconditionally” (p. 195), while Vogt unconditionally obeys his Fazy and consorts. Here we come upon a peculiarity

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of Vogt’s myth-making. Everywhere the Gießen or Geneva dwarf-standard, small-town frame and Swiss tavern fug. Naïvely transferring petty backstairs clique machinations from Geneva to the world-city London, he makes Liebknecht write “not a single line” in the West End, of which I in Hampstead, four miles away, “should not have been informed beforehand”. And the same La Guéronnière service I perform daily for a host of other “comrades” scattered all over London and corresponding with every part of the world. What a refreshing profession in life and—how lucrative!

Vogt’s mentor Edouard Simon, familiar, if not with London, at least with Parisian conditions, gives the sketch of his clumsy “friend from the country” a metropolitan sweep with unmistakable artistic tact:

“Marx, comme chef de la société, ne tient pas lui-même la plume, mais ses fidèles n’écrivent pas une ligne sans l’avoir consulté: La Gazette d’Augsbourg sera d’autant mieux servie.” (p. 529 l. c.) That is, “Marx, as chief of the society, does not write himself, but his faithful do not write a line without consulting him beforehand. The Augsburg Gazette will be all the better served.” Does Vogt appreciate the whole delicacy of this correction?

I had just as much to do with Liebknecht’s London correspondence for the Allgemeine Zeitung as with Vogt’s Paris correspondence for the Allgemeine Zeitung. Moreover, Liebknecht’s correspondence was entirely praiseworthy—a critical presentation of English politics, which he depicted in the Allgemeine Zeitung exactly as he did in simultaneous correspondence for radical German-American newspapers. Vogt himself, who has anxiously rummaged whole volumes of the Allgemeine Zeitung for something compromising in Liebknecht’s letters, restricts his criticism of their content to the fact that Liebknecht’s correspondence sign was “two thin, slanting strokes” (p. 196 of the “Hauptbuch”).

The slanting position of the strokes certainly proved that the correspondence was in a slanting condition, and then the “thinness”! If Liebknecht had painted at least two round blobs of fat into his correspondence’s coat of arms, instead of two “thin strokes”! However, if no other flaw clings to the correspondence than “two thin, slanting strokes”, then the only reservation remains that it appeared in the Allgemeine Zeitung at all. And why not in the Allgemeine Zeitung? The Allgemeine Zeitung, as is well known, allows the most diverse standpoints to have their say, at least on neutral terrain like English politics, and is moreover regarded abroad as the only German organ of more than local significance. Liebknecht could confidently write London letters for the same paper in which Heine wrote his “Paris”, and Fallmerayer his “Oriental Letters”

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wrote. Vogt reports that even filthy persons contribute to the Allgemeine Zeitung. He himself, as is well known, was its contributor from 1844–47.

Now as regards myself and Friedrich Engels—I mention Engels because we both work according to a common plan and by prior agreement—we did, in 1859, in a certain sense enter “into relations” with the Allgemeine Zeitung. For during the months of January, February and March 1859, I published a series of leading articles in the New-York Tribune in which, inter alia, “the Central European great-power theory” of the Allgemeine Zeitung and its assertion that the maintenance of Austrian rule in Italy was a German interest, were subjected to a detailed critique. Engels, shortly before the outbreak of the war, and with my agreement, published “Po und Rhein. Berlin 1859”, a pamphlet specifically directed against the Allgemeine Zeitung and which, to speak in Engels’ words (p. 4 of his brochure: “Savoyen, Nizza und der Rhein. Berlin 1860”), demonstrated in military-scientific fashion “that Germany needs no piece of Italy for its defence, and that France, if purely military grounds were to prevail, has in fact far stronger claims on the Rhine than Germany upon the Mincio”. This polemic against the Allgemeine Zeitung and its theory of the necessity of Austrian despotic rule in Italy was, however, accompanied in our case by the polemic against Bonapartist propaganda. I demonstrated, for instance, at length in the Tribune (see e.g. February 1859) that the financial and internal political conditions of the “bas empire” had reached a critical point, where only a foreign war could prolong the rule of the coup d’état in France and thereby of the counter-revolution in Europe. I showed that the Bonapartist liberation of Italy was merely a pretext for keeping France subjugated, subjecting Italy to the coup d’état, shifting the “natural frontiers” of France towards Germany, transforming Austria into a Russian instrument, and driving the peoples into a war of the legitimate against the illegitimate counter-revolution. All this took place before the ex-Imperial Regent blew his trumpet from Geneva.

Since Wolff’s article in the Revue der Neuen Rheinischen Zeitung (1850), I had completely forgotten the “rounded nature”. I was reminded of the jolly fellow again in the spring of 1859, one April evening, when Freiligrath gave me a letter from Vogt, together with an enclosed political “programme”, to read. This was no indiscretion, for Vogt’s missive was intended “for communication” to the friends—not Vogt’s, but the addressee’s.

To the question, what I found in the “programme”, I replied:

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Herr Vogt - VII. The Augsburg Campaign

“Pub-politics.” I immediately recognised the old jester in his request to Freiligrath to enlist Herr Bücher as a political correspondent for the proposed Genevan propaganda sheet. Vogt’s letter was dated 1 April 1859. It is well known that since January 1859, in his London correspondence for the Berliner National-Zeitung, Bucher had expressed views absolutely contradictory to the Vogt programme; but to the man of “critical immediacy”, all cows are grey.

After this event, which I considered too unimportant to mention to anyone, I received Vogt’s “Studien zur gegenwärtigen Lage Europa’s”, a pitiful piece of writing that left me in no doubt of his connection with the Bonapartist propaganda.

On the evening of 9 May 1859 I was on the platform of a public meeting which David Urquhart held on account of the Italian war. Even before the meeting opened, a grave-looking figure strode weightily up to me. From the Hamlet expression of his physiognomy I perceived at once that “something was rotten in the state of Denmark.” It was the homme d'état Karl Blind. After a few preliminary words, he came to speak of Vogt’s “machinations”, and assured me, with head-shaking emphasis, that Vogt received Bonapartist subsidies for his propaganda, that a south-German writer, whom he “unfortunately” could not name to me, had been offered 30,000 gulden to bribe Vogt—I could not quite see what south-German writer was worth 30,000 gulden—, that attempts at bribery had taken place in London, that already in 1858, at a meeting in Geneva between Plon-Plon, Fazy and consorts, the Italian war had been resolved upon and the Russian Grand Duke Constantine designated as future king of Hungary, that Vogt had also invited him (Blind) to collaborate in his propaganda, that he possessed proofs of Vogt’s treasonable machinations. Blind returned to his seat at the other corner of the platform, by his friend J. Fröbel; the meeting began, and D. Urquhart sought, in a lengthy speech, to present the Italian war as the fruit of Russo-French intrigue.*

* The attacks of the Marx clique on Lord Palmerston are, of course, traced by Vogt to my antagonism towards his own self-important person and its “friends” (Main Book, p. 212). It therefore seems appropriate here briefly to touch on my relationship with D. Urquhart and his party. Urquhart’s writings on Russia and against Palmerston had stimulated me, but not convinced me. In order to arrive at a firm view, I subjected Hansard’s “Parliamentary Debates” and the diplomatic Blue Books from 1807 to 1850 to a painstaking analysis. The first fruit of these studies was a series of leading articles in the New York Tribune (end of 1853), in which I demonstrated Palmerston’s connections with the Petersburg cabinet from his transactions with Poland, Turkey, Circassia, etc. Shortly afterwards I had these works reprinted in the Chartist organ “The People’s Paper”, edited by Ernest Jones, and added new sections on Palmerston’s activities. Meanwhile, the “Glasgow Sentinel” had also reprinted one of these articles (Palmerston and Poland), which attracted the attention of Mr D. Urquhart. Following a meeting I had with him, he arranged for Mr Tucker in London to publish part of those articles in pamphlet form. These Palmerston pamphlets were later distributed in various editions of 15–20,000 copies. As a result of my analysis of the Blue Book on the fall of Kars—it appeared in the London Chartist paper (April 1856)—the Foreign Affairs Committee in Sheffield sent me a letter of appreciation. (See Appendix 7.) While examining diplomatic manuscripts held in the British Museum, I discovered a series of English documents, extending from the end of the 18th century back to the epoch of Peter the Great, which reveal the constant secret cooperation between the cabinets of London and St Petersburg, and show the period of Peter the Great as the birthplace of this connection. Of a detailed work on this subject I have so far only had the introduction printed, under the title: “Revelations of the Diplomatic History of the 18th Century.” It appeared first in Sheffield, later in the London “Free Press”, both Urquhartite organs. The latter has, since its founding, received occasional contributions from me. My occupation with Palmerston and Anglo-Russian diplomacy in general, as can be seen, therefore took place without the faintest suspicion that Herr Karl Vogt stands behind Lord Palmerston.

Towards the end of the meeting, Dr Faucher, foreign editor of the Morning Star (organ of the Manchester School), came up to me and told me that a new German-London weekly paper, “Das Volk”, had just appeared. The workers’ paper “Die Neue Zeit”, published by Herr A. Scherzer and edited by Edgar Bauer, had foundered as a result of an intrigue by Kinkel, the publisher of the “Hermann”. Having been informed of this, Biskamp, previously correspondent for the “Neue Zeit”, had given up his teaching post in the south of England in order to counterpose “Das Volk” to the “Hermann” in London. The German Workers’ Educational Association and several other London associations supported the paper, which naturally, like all similar workers’ papers, was edited and written gratis. He himself, Faucher, although as a free trader alien to the tendency of “Das Volk”, would not tolerate a monopoly in the German press in London and had therefore, together with other acquaintances in London, founded a finance committee for the support of the paper. Biskamp had already written to Liebknecht, whom he had not previously known, to request literary contributions, etc. Finally Faucher invited me to take part in “Das Volk”.

Although Biskamp had been living in England since 1852, we had so far remained strangers. One day after the Urquhart meeting, Liebknecht introduced him at my house. I was initially unable to comply with the request to write for “Das Volk” for lack of time, but promised to urge my German friends in England towards subscriptions, money grants and literary contributions. In the course of the conversation we touched upon the Urquhart meeting, which led to Vogt, whose “Studies” Biskamp already knew and correctly appreciated. I communicated to him and Liebknecht the content of Vogt’s “Programme” and Blind’s revelations, but remarked with regard to the latter that it was a South German manner to lay the colours on thick. To my surprise, No. 2 of “Das Volk” (14 May) carried an article entitled: “The Imperial Regent as Imperial Traitor” (see Main Book, Documents pp. 17, 18), in which Biskamp mentions two of the facts adduced by Blind—the 30,000 gulden, though he reduces them to 4,000, and the Bonapartist origin of Vogt’s operational funds. For the rest, his article consisted of jokes in the manner of the “Hornisse”, which he had edited together with Heise in Kassel in 1848-49. The London Workers’ Educational Association, as I learned long after the appearance of the Main Book (see Appendix 8), had meanwhile instructed one of its leaders, Herr Scherzer, to call upon the workers’ educational associations in Switzerland, Belgium and the United States to support “Das Volk” and to combat Bonapartist propaganda. The above-mentioned article in “Das Volk” of 14 May 1859 was sent by Biskamp himself through the post to Vogt, who at the same time received Herr A. Scherzer’s circular through his own Ranickel.

Vogt, with his well-known “critical immediacy”, straightway concocted me as the demiurge in the web that was so disagreeable to him. Without further ado, he therefore published the ground-plan of his later historico-fantastic fabrication in the more than once cited “Extraordinary Supplement to No. 150 of the Schweizer Handels-Courier”. This primeval gospel, in which the mysteries of the Sulphur Band, the Bristleheimers, Cherval, etc., were first revealed, bore the date Berne, 23 May 1859, (thus of more recent date than the Mormon gospel) and the title “Zur Warnung” [A Warning], and was fittingly attached to a piece of translation from a brochure by the notorious E. About.*

Vogt’s anonymous primeval gospel “Zur Warnung” was, as noted earlier, reprinted in “Das Volk” at my request.

At the beginning of June I left London to visit Engels in Manchester, where a subscription of approximately £25 sterling for “Das Volk” was raised. Fr. Engels, W. Wolff, I, and finally 3 German doctors domiciled in Manchester, whose names appear in a legal document sent by me to Berlin, provided this subvention, the “nature” of which prompts the “inquisitive” Vogt to take a “glance across the Channel” towards Augsburg and Vienna (p. 212 of the Main Book). As for the collections in London made by the original finance committee, Vogt may make enquiries of Dr Faucher.

Vogt teaches on p. 225 of the “Main Book”: “It has, however, always been a trick of reaction to demand of the democrats that they should do everything for nothing, while they themselves (namely not the democrats, but the reaction) claim for themselves the privilege of getting themselves paid and of being paid.” What a reactionary trick of “Das Volk”, then, not only to be edited and written for nothing, but to make its contributors pay into the bargain! If that is no proof of the connection between “Das Volk” and the reaction, then Karl Vogt’s powers of comprehension stand still.

During my stay in Manchester an event of decisive importance occurred in London. Liebknecht discovered in Hollinger’s (printer of Das Volk) composing room the corrected proof-sheet of the anonymous leaflet “Zur Warnung” directed against Vogt, skimmed through it, immediately recognised Blind’s revelations, and then learned, for good measure, from the compositor A. Vögele, that Blind had given the manuscript, written in his own hand, to Hollinger for printing. The corrections on the proof were likewise in Blind’s handwriting. Two days later Liebknecht received from Hollinger the proof-sheet, which he sent to the Allgemeine Zeitung. The type of the leaflet was left standing and later served for the reprint of the same in No. 7 of “Das Volk” (of 18 June 1859).

With the publication of the “Warnung” by the Allgemeine Zeitung the ex-Imperial Vogt’s Augsburg Campaign begins. He sued the Allgemeine Zeitung for printing the leaflet.

In the “Main Book” (pp. 227-228) Vogt travesties Müllner’s: “bin’s, bin’s, bin der Räuber Jaromir.” Only he translates from being to having. “I have sued, because I knew in advance that the entire hollowness, nullity and pitifulness of that editorial board, which arrogates to itself the role of representative of ‘High German culture’, was bound to come to light; I have sued, because I knew in advance that the connection of this worthy editorial board, and of the Austrian policy it extols to the skies, with the Sulphur Band and the dregs of the revolution was bound to come before the public”—and a further fourfold “I have sued”. The suing Vogt becomes sublime, or Longinus is proved right in the view that there is nothing drier in the world than a dropsical man. “Personal consideration,” cries the “well-rounded nature”, “was the least motive for my lawsuit.”

In reality, however, things took a different course. No calf could have struggled more anxiously to avoid the slaughter-bench than Karl Vogt to avoid the bench of the accused. While his “intimate” friends, the Ranickel, Reinach (formerly the walking chronique scandaleuse about Vogt) and the garrulous—

* A word about the Biel commercial traveller, the hole-and-corner Moniteur of the “fugitive Imperial Regent”. The publisher and editor of the “Bieler Handels-Courier” is a certain Ernst Schüler, political refugee of 1838, postmaster, wine merchant, bankrupt, and at present once again in funds, his paper, which was subsidised by the British-French-Swiss recruiting business during the Crimean War, now counting 1,200 subscribers.

\[When\] the wavering rump parliamentarian Mayer of Esslingen confirmed him in his dread of the dock, he received urgent admonitions from Zurich to proceed with the “lawsuit”. At the Lausanne workers’ festival the fur trader Roos declared to him before witnesses that he could no longer respect him if he did not sue. Vogt, however, dug in his heels: he did not care a damn about the Augsburg and London sulphur gang and would keep silent. Suddenly, however, he spoke. Various newspapers carried the announcement of his lawsuit, and Ranickel remarked: “Those in Stuttgart simply gave him (Vogt) no peace. His (Ranickel’s) consent was not involved.”

Besides, since the “Rounded One” was already in a fix, a suit against the *Allgemeine Zeitung* seemed indisputably the most promising manoeuvre. Vogt’s self-apologia against an attack by J. Venedey, who had accused him of Bonapartist machinations, saw the light of day in the *Bieler Handels-Courier* of 16 June 1859, and thus reached London after the appearance of the anonymous leaflet which ended with the threat: “Should Vogt, however – what he can scarcely dare to do – wish to deny it, a No. 2 will follow upon this revelation.” Vogt had now denied it, and what did not follow was Revelation No. 2. Thus secured on this side, mischief could now threaten him only from the dear acquaintances, whom he knew well enough to count on their cowardly consideration. The more he exposed himself publicly through a lawsuit, the more surely he could draw on their discretion, for in the “fugitive Imperial Regent” the entire rump parliament was, in a manner of speaking, stood in the pillory.

Parliamentarian Jacob Venedey tattles out of school on pp. 27–28 of his “Pro domo et pro patria gegen Karl Vogt. Hanover 1860” as follows:

“In addition to the letters communicated in Vogt’s account of his lawsuit, I have read another letter of Vogt’s which, much more clearly than that one to Dr. Löning, laid bare Vogt’s position as an assistant of those who were willing to pay something to localise the war in Italy. For my own conviction I copied out a few passages from this letter, which I unfortunately may not publish here, because the person to whom the letter was addressed communicated them to me on the promise not to publish them. Personal and party considerations have sought to cover Vogt’s doings in this matter in a manner which appears to me justified neither towards the party nor towards the manly duty to the fatherland. This holding back on the part of many is the reason why Vogt continues to dare to step forward with brazen brow as a German party leader. To me, however, it seems as though it is precisely through this that the party to which Vogt belonged is rendered halfway co-responsible for his doings.”*

* See also p. 4 of the cited pamphlet, where it reads: “This ‘settling of accounts’ out of party considerations, the moral baseness of admitting in the inner circle that Vogt has driven a disgraceful game with the fatherland, and then allowing this Vogt openly to accuse of slander those who have said nothing but what all know and think and for which they know the proofs and hold them in their hands, disgusts me, etc.”

If, then, the risk of a lawsuit against the *Allgemeine Zeitung* was not inordinate, on the other hand an offensive in this direction offered General Vogt the most favourable basis of operations. It was Austria that decried the Imperial Vogt through the *Allgemeine Zeitung*, and Austria in league with the Communists! Thus the Imperial Vogt appeared as an interesting victim of a monstrous coalition between the enemies of bourgeois liberalism. And the Little German press, already well-disposed towards the Imperial Vogt because he is a diminisher of the Empire, would jubilantly raise him upon its shield!

At the beginning of July 1859, shortly after my return from Manchester, Blind sought me out in consequence of an incident that is of no importance here. Fidelio Hollinger and Liebknecht were his companions. At this meeting I expressed my conviction that he was the author of the leaflet “Zur Warnung”. He protested the contrary. I repeated point for point his communications of 9 May, which in fact formed the entire content of the leaflet. All this he admitted, but despite all that he was not the author of the leaflet.

About a month later, in August 1859, Liebknecht showed me a letter from the editors of the *Allgemeine Zeitung*, in which he was urgently requested to provide evidence for the charges contained in the leaflet “Zur Warnung”. At his request I resolved to accompany him to Blind’s dwelling in St. John’s Wood, who, even if he was not the author of the leaflet, at any rate already knew at the beginning of May what the leaflet only disclosed to the world at the beginning of June, and could moreover “prove” his knowledge. Blind was absent. He was at a seaside resort. Liebknecht therefore informed him in writing of the purpose of our visit. No answer. Liebknecht wrote a second letter. At last the following statesmanlike document arrived:

“Dear Herr Liebknecht,

Your two letters, wrongly addressed, reached me almost simultaneously. As you will understand, I have no wish whatsoever to meddle in the affairs of a newspaper entirely unknown to me. In the present case so much the less, as I had, as already remarked earlier, no part whatever in the matter mentioned. As regards the remarks made in private conversation which you cite, they have evidently been quite wrongly understood, and an error prevails thereupon which I shall take the opportunity to speak of orally one day. While regretting that you made the journey to me with Marx in vain,

I remain with all respect yours, K. Blind.
St. Leonard’s, 8 September”

This diplomatically cool note, according to which Blind had “no part whatever” in the denunciation of Vogt, reminded me of an article which had appeared anonymously | on 27 May 1859 in the *Free Press* in London and reads in German translation as follows:

“The Grand Duke Constantine as Future King of Hungary.

A correspondent, who encloses his card, writes to us:

‘Sir! Being present at the last meeting* in the Music Hall, I heard the remark made concerning Grand Duke Constantine. I am in a position to communicate to you another fact. As far back as last summer, Prince Jérôme Napoléon detailed to some of his confidants in Geneva a plan of attack against Austria, and a prospective remodelling of the map of Europe. I know the name of a Swiss senator to whom he expounded the subject. Prince Jérôme declared at that time that, according to the projected plan, Grand Duke Constantine was to become King of Hungary.

I further know of attempts made at the beginning of the current year to win over to the Russo-Napoleonic plan both a number of exiled German Democrats and influential liberals in Germany. Large pecuniary advantages were held out to them as a bribe. (Large pecuniary advantages were held out to them as a bribe.) I am happy to say that these offers were indignantly rejected.’” (See App. 9.)

* This was the above-mentioned meeting held by D. Urquhart on 9 May.

This article, in which Vogt was not named but was unmistakably designated for the German emigration in London, in fact gives the gist of the subsequently published leaflet “Zur Warnung”. The author of “the future King of Hungary”, whom patriotic zeal drove to the anonymous denunciation of Vogt, naturally had to seize greedily the golden opportunity which the Augsburg lawsuit threw into his lap, the opportunity of revealing the treason before the courts in the sight of all Europe. And who was the author of “the future King of Hungary”? Citizen Karl Blind. The form and content of the article had already revealed this to me in the month of May, and it was now officially confirmed by the editor of the *Free Press*, Mr Collet, as soon as I had explained to him the significance of the pending dispute and communicated Blind’s diplomatic note to him.

On 17 September 1859, the compositor Mr A. Vögele gave me a written declaration (printed in “Hauptbuch”, “Documente”, Nos. 30, 31), in which he testifies, not at all that Blind was the author of the leaflet “Zur Warnung”, but that he himself (A. Vögele) and his employer Fidelio Hollinger set the leaflet in Hollinger’s printing office, that the manuscript was written in Blind’s handwriting, and that Blind had occasionally been referred to him by Hollinger as the author of the leaflet.

Relying on Vögele’s declaration and on “the future King of Hungary”, Liebknecht now wrote once more to Blind for “proofs” of the facts denounced by this statesman in the *Free Press*, and at the same time informed him that a piece of evidence concerning his participation in the publication of the leaflet “Zur Warnung” now existed. Instead of a reply to Liebknecht, Blind sent Mr Collet to me. Mr Collet was to request me in Blind’s name not to make any public use of my knowledge concerning the authorship of the said article in the *Free Press*. I replied that I could not undertake any obligation. My discretion would keep pace with Blind’s bravado.

Meanwhile the date for the opening of the lawsuit in Augsburg approached. Blind was silent. Vogt, in his various public statements, had attempted to foist the leaflet and the proof of its allegations upon me as the secret originator. To ward off this manoeuvre, to justify Liebknecht, and to defend the *Allgemeine Zeitung*, which in my view had done a good deed with the denunciation of Vogt, I informed the editors of the *Allgemeine Zeitung* through Liebknecht that I was ready to transmit to them a document concerning the origin of the leaflet “Zur Warnung”, if they requested it of me in writing. Thus occurred the “lively correspondence which Marx is now precisely carrying on with Mr Kolb”, as Vogt relates it on p. 194 of the “Hauptbuch”.* This my “lively correspondence with Mr Kolb” consisted, namely, of two letters from Mr Orges to me, both of the same date, in which he requests me to send the promised document, which was then sent to him, too, with a few lines on my part.**

* Mr Kolb, it is true, mentions in No. 319 of the *Allgemeine Zeitung* “a very detailed letter from Mr Marx, which he did not print”. This “detailed letter” is, however, printed in the *Hamburger Reform* No. 139, supplement of 19 November 1859. The “detailed letter” was a declaration on my part intended for the public, which I also sent to the *Berliner Volks-Zeitung*.
** My covering note and Vögele’s declaration are to be found in Hauptbuch, Documente, pp. 30, 31; the letters of Mr Orges to me in Appendix 10.

Both letters of Mr Orges, really only the duplicate of the same

Letters arrived in London on 18 October 1859, while the court proceedings in Augsburg were already due to take place on 24 October. I therefore immediately wrote to Herr Vögele, proposing a rendez-vous for the following day at the premises of the Marlborough Police Court, where he was to give his statement on the leaflet “Zur Warnung” the judicial form of an affidavit.* My letter did not reach him in time. On 19 October** I was therefore compelled, contrary to my original intention, to send to the *Allgemeine Zeitung*, instead of an affidavit, the previously mentioned written declaration of 17 Sept.***

* An affidavit is a judicial declaration on oath which, if false, entails all the legal consequences of perjury.
** As my handwriting is illegible, before the Augsburg court my letter dated 19 October was given the date of 29 October. Vogt’s advocate, Dr Hermann, Vogt himself, the worthy *Berliner National-Zeitung et hoc genus omne* of “critical immediacy” did not doubt for a moment that a letter written in London on 29 October could have been in Augsburg by 24 October.
*** That this *quid pro quo* was due purely to chance—namely, the delayed arrival of my letter to Vögele—will be seen from the subsequent affidavit of 11 February 1860.

Karl Marx

In No. 313 of the *Allgemeine Zeitung*, under the date London, 3 Nov. (see *Hauptbuch* Documents 37, 38), citizen and statesman Blind declares he is not the author of the leaflet, and as proof he “publishes” the “following document”:

“a) I hereby declare the assertion of compositor Vögele, contained in No. 300 of the *Allgemeine Zeitung*, that the aforementioned leaflet ‘Zur Warnung’ was printed in my printing office, or that Herr Karl Blind is the originator of the same, to be a malicious fabrication.

3, Litchfield Street, Soho. London, 2 Nov. 1859.
Fidelio Hollinger.”

“b) The undersigned, who has been living and working at No. 3, Litchfield Street for 11 months, for his part testifies to the correctness of the statements of Herr Hollinger.

London, 2 Nov. 1859. J. F. Wiehe, compositor.”

Vögele had nowhere asserted that Blind was the originator of the leaflet. Fidelio Hollinger therefore first fabricates Vögele’s assertion, in order afterwards to declare it a “malicious fabrication”. On the other hand, if the leaflet was not printed in Hollinger’s printing office, where did the said Fidelio Hollinger get the knowledge that Karl Blind was not the author? And how, moreover, is the circumstance that he had “been living and working” at Hollinger’s for “11 months” (reckoning back from 2 November 1859) supposed to enable compositor Wiehe to testify to the “correctness of this statement of Fidelio Hollinger”?

My reply to this declaration by Blind (No. 325 of the *Allgemeine Zeitung*, see *Hauptbuch* Documents pp. 39, 40) concluded with the words: “the transfer of the trial from Augsburg to London would clear up the whole Blind-Vogt mystery.”

Blind, with all the moral indignation of a wounded beautiful soul, returns to the attack in the “Supplement to the *Allgemeine Zeitung* of 1 Dec. 1859”:

“Whilst I repeatedly (let this be kept in mind) invoke the documents signed by the printing-office proprietor Herr Hollinger and the compositor Wiehe, I declare for the last time that the insinuation, which now appears only as an insinuation, that I am the author of the oft-mentioned leaflet is a flat untruth. The other statements about me contain the grossest distortions.”

In a postscript to this declaration the editors of the *Allgemeine Zeitung* remark that “the discussion is of no further interest to the wider public”, and therefore request “the gentlemen concerned to refrain from any further replies”, which the “rounded nature” comments on at the end of the *Hauptbuch* as follows:

“In other words: the editors of the *Allgemeine Zeitung* request the gentlemen Marx, Biscamp,* Liebknecht, who have been branded as flat liars, no longer to compromise themselves and the *Allgemeine Zeitung*.”

Thus ended, for the time being, the Augsburg campaign.

Falling back into the tone of his Lausiad, Vogt alleges that “compositor Vögele” made “a false deposition” before me and Liebknecht (p. 195 of the *Hauptbuch*). He explains the origin of the leaflet, however, by saying that Blind “may have hatched and spread around conceptions of suspicion. From these the Sulphur Gang then forged the pamphlet and further articles, which they imputed to the cornered Blind” (p. 218 loc. cit.).

* Biscamp had sent a letter about the Vogt affair to the editors of the *Allgemeine Zeitung* under the date London, 20 October, in which he finally offered himself as a correspondent. This letter only became known to me from the *Allgemeine Zeitung* itself. Vogt invents a moral theory according to which support for a defunct paper makes me responsible for the subsequent private letters of its editor. How much more responsible would Vogt be for Kolatschek’s “Stimmen der Zeit”, since he was a paid contributor to Kolatschek’s “Monatsschrift”. As long as Biscamp was bringing out the “Volk”, he showed the greatest self-sacrifice, leaving a position of many years’ standing to take over the editorship, editing without pay under very oppressive conditions, and finally sacrificing correspondence with German papers, such as the *Kölnische Zeitung* for example, in order to be able to work in accordance with his convictions. Everything else was and is no concern of mine.

If now the Reichs-Vogt did not re-open his undecided campaign in London, as he had been challenged to do, this was partly because London is “a corner” (p. 229 of the *Hauptbuch*), and partly because the parties concerned “accuse each other of untruth” (loc. cit.).

The “critical immediacy” of the man considers the intervention of the courts only appropriate when the parties are not disputing about the truth.

I now skip three months, in order to take up the thread of my narrative again at the beginning of February 1860. Vogt’s “Hauptbuch” had not yet arrived in London at that time, but the selected excerpts of the *Berliner National-Zeitung* had, in which it says, among other things:

“The Marx party could now very easily shift the authorship of the leaflet onto Blind, precisely because and after the latter had expressed himself in a similar sense in conversation with Marx and in the article in the ‘Free Press’; by using these statements and turns of phrase of Blind’s, the leaflet could be forged so that it looked like his handiwork.”

Blind, who, like Falstaff held discretion to be the better part of valour, holds silence to be the whole art of diplomacy, began anew to be silent. In order to loosen his tongue, I published an English circular with my signature, under the date, London, 4 February 1860. (See Appendix 11.)

This circular, addressed to the editor of the *Free Press*, says, *inter alia*:

“Before I take any further steps, I must expose the fellows who have obviously played into Vogt’s hands. I therefore publicly declare that the declaration of Blind, Wiehe and Hollinger, according to which the anonymous leaflet was not printed in Hollinger’s business premises, 3, Litchfield Street, Soho, is an infamous lie.”* After setting out my evidence, I conclude with the words: “Consequently, I again declare the above-named Karl Blind to be an infamous liar (deliberate liar). If I am in the wrong, he can easily refute me by an appeal to an English court of law.”

* In the English I say: “Deliberate lie.” The *Kölnische Zeitung* translates: “infame Lüge.” I accept the translation, although “durchtriebene Lüge” comes closer to the original.

On 6 February 1860 a London daily paper (*Daily Telegraph*)—I shall return to this later—reproduced, under the title: “The Journalistic Auxiliaries of Austria”, the selected excerpts from the *National-Zeitung*. I, for my part, instituted an action for libel against the *National-Zeitung*, gave the *Telegraph* notice of a similar suit, and began to procure the necessary legal material.

On 11 February 1860 compositor Vögele made an affidavit before the police court in Bow Street. It repeats the essential content of his declaration of 17 Sept. 1859, namely, that the manuscript of the leaflet was written in Blind’s handwriting and was set in Hollinger’s printing office, partly by himself (Vögele), partly by F. Hollinger. (See Appendix 12.)

Far more important was the affidavit of compositor Wiehe, upon whose testimony Blind had repeatedly, and with ever-increasing self-satisfaction, invoked in the *Allgemeine Zeitung*.

In addition to the original (see Appendix 13), a word-for-word translation follows here:

“On one of the first days of last November—I no longer recall the exact date—in the evening between 9 and 10 o’clock, I was fetched out of bed by Herr F. Hollinger, in whose house I was then living and for whom I was working as a compositor. He handed me a document to the effect that I had been continuously employed by him during the preceding 11 months, and that during this whole period a certain German leaflet ‘Zur Warnung’ had not been set and printed in Herr Hollinger’s printing office, 3, Litchfield Street, Soho; and he demanded that I, who do not understand German, should sign this declaration, of the truth or untruth of which I knew nothing. I refused to do so. Herr Hollinger insisted on my signing it, whereupon I did what he demanded.”

Herr Vogt — VII. The Augsburg Campaign

Street, Soho. In my confused state and without knowledge of the importance of the transaction, I complied with his wish and copied and signed the document. Herr Hollinger promised me money; but I have received nothing. During this transaction, Herr Karl Blind, as my wife later informed me, waited in Herr Hollinger’s room. A couple of days later, Frau Hollinger called me from dinner and led me into her husband’s room, where I found Herr Blind alone. He presented me with the same document that Herr Hollinger had previously presented to me and urgently begged me (entreated me) to write and sign a second copy, as he needed two, one for himself and the other for publication in the press. He added that he would show me his gratitude. I again copied and signed the document.

I hereby declare the truth of the above statement and further:

1) that during the 11 months mentioned in the document, I was not employed for six weeks by Herr Hollinger, but by a certain Ermani;

2) I did not work in Herr Hollinger’s business, precisely at the time when the leaflet ‘Zur Warnung’ was published;

3) I heard at that time from Herr Vögele, who was then working for Herr Hollinger, that he, Vögele, together with Herr Hollinger himself, set the leaflet in question and that the manuscript was in Blind’s handwriting;

4) the type of the leaflet was still standing when I re-entered Hollinger’s business. I myself broke it up for the reprinting of the leaflet ‘Zur Warnung’ in the German paper ‘Das Volk’, printed by Herr Hollinger, 3, Litchfield Street, Soho. The leaflet appeared in No. 7 of ‘Das Volk’, dated 18 June 1859.

5) I saw how Herr Hollinger gave Herr Wilhelm Liebknecht, residing at 14, Church Street, Soho, the proof sheet of the pamphlet ‘Zur Warnung’, on which proof sheet Herr Karl Blind had corrected 4 or 5 printing errors with his own hand. Herr Hollinger wavered whether he should give the proof sheet to Herr Liebknecht, and as soon as Herr Liebknecht had departed, Hollinger expressed to me and my colleague Vögele his regret at having let the proof sheet out of his hands.

Johann Friedrich Wiehe.

Declared and signed by the said Friedrich Wiehe at the Police Court of Bow Street on this 8th day of February 1860 before me

/. Henry, Judge of the said Court. (Police Court)

(Bow Street.)

153

Karl Marx

It was proved by the two affidavits of the compositors Vögele and Wiehe that the manuscript of the leaflet was written in Blind’s handwriting, was set up in Hollinger’s printing office, and a correction was attended to by Blind himself.

And the homme d’état wrote to Julius Fröbel under the date London, 4 July 1859: “Against Vogt, I know not by whom, a fierce accusation of bribe-taking has appeared here. It contains several alleged facts of which we had previously heard nothing.” And the same homme d’état wrote to Liebknecht on 8 September 1859, that “he had no part whatsoever in the matter mentioned”.

Not content with these performances, citizen and statesman Blind had, over and above, fabricated a false statement, for which he, by holding out promises of money on the part of Fidelio Hollinger and future gratitude on his own part, surreptitiously obtained the signature of the compositor Wiehe.

This his own manufacture, with the surreptitiously obtained signature and in the company of Fidelio Hollinger’s false testimony, he sent not only to the Allgemeine Zeitung, but “repeatedly” “invokes” these “documents” in a second statement and throws “downright untruth” at my head with reference to these “documents” and in the most moral indignation.

I had the two affidavits of Vögele and Wiehe copied and circulated in various circles, whereupon a meeting took place in Blind’s house between Blind, Fidelio Hollinger, and Blind’s house friend, Herr D. M. Karl Schaible, a good, quiet man, who, in Blind’s statesmanlike operations, plays to some extent the tame elephant.

In the issue of the Daily Telegraph of 15 February 1860 there appeared a paragraph later reprinted in German newspapers, which in translation reads:

“The Vogt Pamphlet.
To the Editor of the Daily Telegraph!
Sir! In consequence of erroneous statements that have been set in circulation, I feel I owe both Herr Blind and Herr Marx the formal declaration that neither of the two is the author of the leaflet directed some time ago against Professor Vogt of Geneva. This leaflet originates from me, and upon me rests the responsibility. I regret both with regard to Herr Marx and Herr Blind that circumstances beyond my control have prevented me from making this declaration earlier.
London, 14 February 1860.
Karl Schaible, M.D.”

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Herr Vogt – VII. The Augsburg Campaign

Herr Schaible sent me this declaration. I returned the courtesy at once by sending him the affidavits of the compositors Vögele and Wiehe, and at the same time wrote to him that his (Schaible’s) declaration changed nothing, either in the false testimonies that Blind had sent to the Allgemeine Zeitung, or in Blind’s conspiracy with Hollinger to surreptitiously obtain Wiehe’s signature for the fabricated false document.

Blind felt that this time he was not on the safe ground of the Allgemeine Zeitung, but within the perilous jurisdiction of England. If he wished to invalidate the affidavits and the “gross injuries” of my circular based on them, he and Hollinger would have to produce counter-affidavits, but it is not advisable to trifle with felony.

Eisele Blind is not the author of the leaflet, for Beisele Schaibele publicly declares himself the author. Blind merely wrote the manuscript of the leaflet, merely had it printed at Hollinger’s, merely corrected the proof-sheet in his own hand, and merely fabricated false testimonies with Hollinger to refute these facts and dispatched them to the Allgemeine Zeitung. But oh! misunderstood innocence, for he is not the author or originator of the leaflet. He functioned only as Beisele Schaibele’s scribe. Precisely for this reason, on 4 July 1859 he also did not know “by whom” the leaflet had been hurled into the world, and on 8 September 1859 he had “no part whatsoever in the matter mentioned”. To his consolation, then: Beisele Schaible is the author of the leaflet in the literary sense, but Eisele Blind is the author in the technical sense of English law and the responsible publisher in the sense of all civilized legislation. Habeat sibi!

One word of farewell to Herr Beisele Schaible.

The libel published by Vogt against me in the Bieler Handels-Courier under the date: Berne, 23 May 1859 bore the heading: “Zur Warnung.” The leaflet written at the beginning of June 1859 by Schaible and written and issued by his secretary Blind, in which Vogt is denounced as a “bribing” and “bribe-taking” agent of Louis Bonaparte, with specific details given, likewise bears the heading: “Zur Warnung.” It is moreover signed: X. Although X in algebra represents the unknown quantity, it happens also to form the last letter of my name. Were the heading and signature of Schaible’s leaflet perhaps designed to make the “Warnung” appear as my reply to Vogt’s “Warnung”? Schaible had promised a revelation No. II as soon as Vogt dared to deny revelation No. I. Vogt not only denied; he filed an action for slander on account of Schaible’s “Warnung”. And Herr Schaible’s No. II is still missing to this very hour.

Schaible had printed at the head of his leaflet the words: “For favour of circulation.” And when Liebknecht was then so “favourable” as to provide “circulation” through the Allgemeine Zeitung, “circumstances beyond his control” tied Herr Schaible’s tongue from June 1859 to February 1860, which was only loosened by the affidavits in the Police Court of Bow Street.

Be that as it may, Schaible, the original accuser of Vogt, has now publicly assumed responsibility for the statements in the leaflet. Instead of ending with the victory of the defendant Vogt, the Augsburg campaign therefore closes with the final appearance of the accuser Schaible on the field of battle. |

156

Herr Vogt – VIII. Dä-Dä Vogt and his Studies

“

“Sine studio.

About a month before the outbreak of the Italian war, Vogt’s so-called “Studies on the Present Situation of Europe, Geneva, 1859” appeared. Cui bono?

Vogt knew that “England will remain neutral in the impending war.” (Studies p.4.) He knew that Russia “in agreement with France will employ all means short of open hostility to injure Austria.” (Studies p.13.) He knew that Prussia—but let him tell us himself what he knows of Prussia. “It must now have become clear to the most short-sighted that an understanding exists between the Prussian government and the imperial government of France; that Prussia will not draw the sword for the defence of the extra-German provinces of Austria; that it will give its consent to all measures concerning the defence of federal territory, but will otherwise prevent any participation of the Confederation or individual members of the Confederation on Austria’s side, in order then, at the later peace negotiations, to receive its reward for these exertions in the North German lowlands.” (loc. cit. p.19.)

Thus the result: In the coming crusade of Bonaparte against Austria, England will remain neutral, Russia will act in a hostile manner towards Austria, Prussia will keep the possibly pugnacious members of the Confederation quiet, and Europe will localise the war. Just as formerly the Russian war, Louis Bonaparte will now conduct the Italian war with high official permission, to a certain extent as secret general of a European coalition. What then is the purpose of Vogt’s pamphlet? Since Vogt knows that England, Russia, and Prussia are acting against Austria, what compels him to write for Bonaparte? But it seems that apart from the old French-guzzling with “the childish become Father Arndt and the phantom of Dirtpeter Jahn at its head” (p.121 loc. cit.), a kind of national movement was shaking up “the German people” and found its echo in all sorts of “chambers and newspapers”, “while the governments only hesitatingly and reluctantly entered the prevailing current”. (p.114 loc. cit.) It seems that the “belief in a threatening danger” caused a “call for common measures” (loc. cit.) to ring out from the German “people”. The French Moniteur (see inter alia the issue of 15 March 1859) viewed this German movement with “sorrow and astonishment”.

157

Herr Vogt — VIII. Da-Da Vogt and His Studies

“A kind of crusade against France,” he exclaims, “is being preached in the chambers and the press of some states of the German Confederation. It is accused of harbouring ambitious plans that it has disavowed, of preparing conquests that it does not need,” etc. In the face of these “calumnies”, the Moniteur shows that “the Emperor’s” intervention in the Italian question must, “on the contrary, inspire the German spirit with the greatest confidence”, that German unity and nationality are, to some extent, the hobby-horses of decembrist France, etc. The Moniteur admits, however (see 10 April 1859), that certain German apprehensions might appear to have been “provoked” by certain Paris pamphlets — pamphlets in which Louis Bonaparte urgently asks himself to give his people the “long-desired opportunity” “pour s’étendre majestueusement des Alpes au Rhin” (to extend majestically from the Alps to the Rhine). “But,” says the Moniteur, “Germany forgets that France lives under the aegis of a legislation that permits no preventive control on the part of the government.” These and similar Moniteur declarations, as was reported to Lord Malmesbury (see the Blue Book: On the affairs of Italy. January to May 1859), produced the exact opposite of the intended effect. What the Moniteur was unable to do, perhaps Karl Vogt was able to do. His Studies are nothing but Germanised compilations from Moniteur articles, Dentu pamphlets, and decembrist maps of the future.

Vogt’s coffee-house politics on England are of interest only for one thing — to illustrate the manner of his “Studies”. In accordance with his French original sources, he turns the English Admiral Sir Charles Napier into a “Lord” Napier (“Studies”, p. A). The literary Zouaves attached to the December regime know from the theatre of the Porte Saint-Martin that every distinguished Englishman is at least a lord.

“With Austria,” Vogt recounts, “England has never been able to harmonise for any length of time. When momentary community of interests brought them together for a while, political necessity always separated them again at once. With Prussia, on the other hand, England has always entered into closer connection,” etc. (p. 2, loc. cit.)

Indeed! The common struggle of England and Austria against Louis XIV lasts, with slight interruptions, from 1689 to 1713, hence almost a quarter of a century. In the War of the Austrian Succession, England fights for roughly 6 years with Austria against Prussia and France. Only in the Seven Years’ War does England ally itself with Prussia against Austria and France, but already in 1762 Lord Bute abandons Frederick the Great in order to make proposals, alternately to the Russian minister Gallitzin and to the Austrian minister Kaunitz, for the “partition of Prussia”. In 1790 England concludes a treaty with Prussia against Russia and Austria, which, however, dissolves again in the same year. During the Anti-Jacobin War, Prussia, despite Pitt’s subsidies, withdraws from the European coalition through the Treaty of Basel. Austria, on the other hand, goaded by England, fights on with slight interruptions from 1793 to 1809. Hardly is Napoleon removed, still during the Congress of Vienna, when England at once concludes a secret treaty (of 3 January 1815) with Austria and France against Russia and Prussia. In 1821 Metternich and Castlereagh agree in Hanover upon a new convention against Russia. While the British themselves, historians and parliamentary speakers, speak of Austria by preference as England’s “ancient ally”, Vogt discovers in his French original pamphlets published by Dentu that Austria and England, “momentary community” aside, always separated, whereas England and Prussia always joined together — which is presumably why Lord Lyndhurst, during the Russian war, called out to the House of Lords with reference to Prussia: “Quem tu, Romane, caveto!” Protestant England has antipathies to Catholic Austria, liberal England antipathies to conservative Austria, free-trading England antipathies to protectionist Austria, solvent England antipathies to bankrupt Austria. But the pathetic element remained ever alien to English history. Lord Palmerston, during his 30-year reign in England, occasionally glosses over his vassalage under Russia with his antipathy to Austria, to be sure. Out of “antipathy” to Austria, for example, he refused the mediation in Italy offered by Austria in 1848 and approved by Piedmont and France, according to which Austria withdrew to the Adige line and Verona, Lombardy, if it saw fit, incorporated itself with Piedmont, Parma and Modena fell to Lombardy, and Venice, under an Austrian Archduke, formed an independent Italian state and gave itself its own constitution. (See Blue Book on the affairs of Italy. Part II. July 1849, No. 377, 478.) These conditions were in any case more favourable than those of the Peace of Villafranca. After Radetzky had beaten the Italians at all points, Palmerston proposed the very conditions he himself had rejected. As soon as Russia’s interests demanded the opposite course, during the Hungarian war of independence, in spite of his “antipathy” to Austria, he rejected the aid which the Hungarians, relying on the Treaty of 1711, invited him to give, and even refused any protest against the Russian intervention, because “the political independence and liberties of Europe were bound up with the preservation and integrity of Austria as a European great power”. (Session of the House of Commons, 21 July 1849.)

Vogt further relates:

“The interests of the United Kingdom … are everywhere in hostile opposition to them [the interests of Austria].” (p. 2, loc. cit.)

This “everywhere” immediately turns into the Mediterranean.

“England wants at all costs to maintain its influence in the Mediterranean and its coastal states. Naples and Sicily, Malta and the Ionian Islands, Syria and Egypt are resting points of its policy directed towards East India; everywhere at these points Austria has thrown up the liveliest obstacles to it.” (loc. cit.)

What things Vogt does not believe from the decembrist original pamphlets published by Dentu in Paris! The English have hitherto imagined that they fought alternately with Russians and French over Malta and the Ionian Islands, but never with Austria. France, not Austria, earlier sent an expedition to Egypt and is at this moment establishing itself at the Isthmus of Suez; France, not Austria, made conquests on the north coast of Africa and, allied with Spain, sought to wrest Gibraltar from the British; England concluded the July Treaty of 1840 relating to Egypt and Syria against France, but together with Austria; in “the policy directed towards East India” England everywhere encounters the “liveliest obstacles” from the side of Russia, not Austria; in the only serious dispute between England and Naples — the sulphur question of 1840 — it was a French, not an Austrian, company whose monopoly of the Sicilian sulphur trade served as the pretext for friction; finally, on the other side of the Channel there is talk now and again of transforming the Mediterranean into a “lac français”, but never of transforming it into a “lac autrichien”. However, an important circumstance is to be considered here.

In the course of the year 1858, a map of Europe was published in London entitled: “L’Europe en 1860” (Europe in 1860). This map, which was issued by the French legation and contains many a prophetic hint for 1858 — for example, Lombardy-Venetia annexed to Piedmont and Morocco to Spain — redraws the political geography of the whole of Europe, with the sole exception of France, which apparently remains within its old borders. The territories intended for it are bestowed with covert irony upon impossible possessors. Thus Egypt falls to Austria, and the marginal gloss printed on the map says: “François Joseph I., l’Empereur d’Autriche et d’Egypte.” (Franz Joseph I, Emperor of Austria and Egypt.)

Vogt had before him the map “L’Europe en 1860” as a decembrist compass. Hence his conflict between England and Austria over Egypt and Syria. Vogt prophesies that this conflict would “end in the annihilation of one of the warring powers”, if, as he recollects just in time, “if Austria possessed a sea power” (p. 2, loc. cit.). The Studies, however, reach the high point of their characteristic historical erudition in the following passage:

“When Napoleon I once sought to break the English Bank, the latter helped itself, during one day, by counting the sums and not weighing them, as had previously been the custom; the Austrian state treasury finds itself 365 days in the year in the same, indeed in a far worse, position.” (loc. cit., p. 43.)

The specie payments of the Bank of England (“the English Bank” is also a phantom of Vogt’s) were, as is well known, suspended from February 1797 until the year 1821, during which 24 years English banknotes were not at all convertible into metal, weighed or counted. When the suspension occurred, no Napoleon I existed in France (though a General Bonaparte was at that time conducting his first Italian campaign), and when the specie payments in Threadneedle Street resumed, Napoleon I had ceased to exist in Europe. Such “Studies” beat even La Guéronnière’s conquest of Tyrol by the “Emperor” of Austria.

Madame von Krüdener, the mother of the Holy Alliance, distinguished between the good principle, the “white angel of the North” (Alexander I), and the evil principle, the “black angel of the South” (Napoleon I). Vogt, the adoptive father of the new Holy Alliance, turns both, Tsar and Caesar, Alexander II and Napoleon III, into “white angels”. Both are the predestined liberators of Europe.

Piedmont, says Vogt, “has even gained the respect of Russia” (p. 71, loc. cit.). What more can be said of a state than that it has even gained the respect of Russia? Especially after Piedmont ceded the war port of Villafranca to Russia, and as the same Vogt, in reference to the purchase of the Jahde Bay by Prussia, admonishes: “a war port on foreign territory without organic reconnection with the land to which it belongs is such laughable nonsense that its existence can only acquire significance when one regards it, to some extent, as the goal point of future strivings, as the planted banner according to which the lines of direction are sighted.” (Studies, p. 15.) Catherine II had, as is well known, already sought to obtain war harbours for Russia in the Mediterranean.

Tender regard for the “white angel” of the North leads Vogt to violate “the modesty of nature”, even where it is preserved by his Dentu original sources, with coarse exaggeration. In “La vraie Question, France-Italie-Autriche. Paris 1859” (published by Dentu) he read on p. 20:

“Besides, with what right would the Austrian government invoke the inviolability of the treaties of 1815, it which has violated them by the confiscation of Cracow, whose independence the treaties guaranteed?”

He renders this French original of his into German as follows:

"It is strange to hear such language from the mouth of the only government
which has so far insolently broken treaties, by stretching out, in the midst of peace,
without cause, its criminal hand against the Republic of Cracow, guaranteed by treaties,
and incorporating it forthwith into the Imperial State." (p. 58 loc. cit.)

Nicolas, of course, destroyed the constitution and independence of the Kingdom of
Poland, guaranteed by the treaties of 1815, out of "respect" for the treaties of 1815.
Russia showed no less respect for the integrity of Cracow when it occupied the free city
with Muscovite troops in 1831. In 1836 Cracow was again occupied by Russians, Austrians
and Prussians, was treated entirely as a conquered country, and in 1840, invoking the
treaties of 1815, it still appealed in vain to England and France. Finally, on 22 February
1846, Russians, Austrians and Prussians occupied Cracow once more, in order to
incorporate it into Austria. The breach of treaty was committed by the three Northern
powers, and the Austrian confiscation of 1846 was merely the last word of the Russian
invasion of 1831. Out of delicacy towards the "white angel of the North", Vogt forgets
the confiscation of Poland and falsifies the history of the confiscation of Cracow.*

The fact that Russia is "thoroughly hostile towards Austria and sympathetic towards
France" leaves Vogt in no doubt as to Louis Bonaparte's peoples-liberating tendencies,
just as the fact that "his" (Louis Bonaparte's) "policy today goes hand in hand most
closely with that of Russia" (p. 30) allows him no doubt as to the peoples-liberating
tendencies of Alexander II.

Holy Russia must therefore be considered in the East quite as much a "friend of
liberal aspirations" and of "popular and national development" as Decembrist France in
the West. This watchword was distributed to all the agents of 2 December. "Russia",
Vogt read in the work published by Dentu: La Foi des Traités, les Puissances Signataires
et l'Empereur Napoléon III. Paris 1859 — "Russia belongs to the family of the Slavs, an
elect race ... People have been astonished at the chivalrous accord that has suddenly sprung
up between France and Russia. Nothing more natural: concord of principles, unanimity as
to the end ... submission to the law of the holy alliance of governments and peoples, not
to ensnare or to constrain, but to guide and aid the divine march of the nations. From this
most perfect cordiality (between Louis Philippe and England there was only entente cordiale,
but between Louis Bonaparte and Russia there reigns la cordialité la plus parfaite) the
happiest effects have proceeded: railways, emancipation of the serfs, commercial stations
in the Mediterranean, etc."**

Vogt immediately seizes on the "emancipation of the serfs" and hints that "the
impulse now given ... is likely to make Russia rather a co-worker in the liberal
aspirations than a foe of them". (loc. cit. p. 10.)

He, like his Dentu original, traces the impulse of the so-called Russian serf
emancipation back to Louis Bonaparte, and for this purpose converts the English-Turkish-

* Palmerston, who mocked Europe with his ridiculous protest, had worked unremittingly at the
intrigue against Cracow since 1831. (See my pamphlet: Palmerston and Poland. London 1853.)
** "La Russie est de la famille des Slaves, race d'élite ... On s'est étonné de l'accord chevaleresque
survenu soudainement entre la France et la Russie. Rien de plus naturel: accord des principes,
unanimité du but ... soumission à la loi de l'alliance sainte des gouvernements et des peuples, non
pour leurrer et contraindre, mais pour guider et aider la marche divine des nations. De la cordialité
la plus parfaite sont sortis les plus heureux effets: chemins de fer, affranchissement des serfs,
stations commerciales dans la Méditerranée etc." p. 33 "La Foi des Traités etc. Paris 1859."

French-Russian war which gave the impulse into a "French war" (p. 9 loc. cit.)

As is well known, the call for the emancipation of the serfs was first raised loudly and
persistently under Alexander I. Tsar Nicolas occupied himself with the emancipation of
the serfs throughout his whole life; in 1838 he created for this purpose a special Ministry
of Domains; in 1843 he had this Ministry take preparatory steps; and in 1847 he even issued
peasant-friendly laws on the alienation of noble landed estates, which only the fear of
revolution drove him to revoke in 1848. If, therefore, under the "benevolent Tsar", as
Vogt genially calls Alexander II, the question of the emancipation of the serfs has
assumed mightier dimensions, this appears to be due to a development of economic
conditions which not even a tsar can lord over. Moreover, the emancipation of the serfs
in the sense of the Russian government would increase the aggressive power of Russia a
hundred-fold. It simply aims at the completion of the autocracy, by pulling down the
barriers which the great autocrat has hitherto encountered in the numerous small autocrats
of the Russian nobility resting on serfdom, as well as in the self-governing peasant
communities, whose material basis, communal property, is to be destroyed by the
so-called emancipation.

As it happens, the Russian serfs understand emancipation in a different sense from
the government, and the Russian nobility understand it in yet another sense. The
"benevolent Tsar" therefore discovered that a genuine emancipation of the serfs is
incompatible with his autocracy, exactly as the benevolent Pope Pius IX has discovered for
the time being that Italian emancipation is incompatible with the conditions of existence
of the papacy. The "benevolent Tsar" therefore sees in a war of conquest and in the
execution of Russia's traditional foreign policy, which, as the Russian historiographer
Karamzin notes, is "unchangeable", the only means of postponing the revolution at home.
Prince Dolgorukov, in his work La Vérité sur la Russie, 1860, has critically annihilated the
lying fairy-tales about the millennium that has dawned under Alexander II, assiduously
spread throughout Europe since 1856 by paid Russian pens, loudly proclaimed by the
Decembrists in 1859, and parroted by Vogt in his "Studies".

Even before the outbreak of the Italian War, according to Vogt, the alliance
expressly founded for the liberation of nationalities between the "white Tsar" and the
"Man of December" had proved itself in the Danubian Principalities, where the unity
and independence of the Romanian nationality was sealed by the election of Colonel Cuza
as Prince of Moldavia and Wallachia. "Austria protests with hands and feet, France
and Russia applaud" (p. 65 loc. cit.).

In a memorandum (printed in the Preußisches Wochenblatt, 1855), drafted by the Russian
cabinet in 1837 for the present tsar, we read:
"Russia does not like to incorporate states with heterogeneous elements immediately ...
In any case, it seems more fitting to let the countries whose acquisition has been decided
upon exist for some time under separate but entirely dependent heads, as we have done in
Moldavia and Wallachia, etc." Before Russia incorporated the Crimea, she proclaimed its
independence.

In a Russian proclamation of 11 December 1814, it says among other things:
"The Emperor Alexander, your protector, appeals to you Poles. Arm yourselves for the
defence of your fatherland and the preservation of your political independence."

And now the Danubian Principalities! Ever since Peter the Great's entry into the
Danubian Principalities, Russia has worked for their "independence". At the Congress
of Nemirov (1737), the Empress Anna demanded from the Sultan the independence of the
Danubian Principalities under Russian protectorate. Catherine II, at the Congress of
Focşani (1772), insisted on the independence of the Principalities under European
protectorate.

Alexander I continued these endeavours and sealed them by transforming Bessarabia
into a Russian province (Peace of Bucharest, 1812). Nicolas even blessed the Romanians
through Kiselev with the still valid Organic Regulation, which organised the most infamous
serfdom amid the jubilation of all Europe over this code of freedom. Alexander II has merely
carried the one-and-a-half-century-old policy of his forefathers one step further by the
quasi-unification of the Danubian Principalities under Cuza. Vogt discovers that as a
result of this unification under a Russian vassal "the Principalities would be a bulwark
against Russia's advance towards the South" (p. 64 loc. cit.).

Since Russia applauds the election of Cuza (p. 65 loc. cit.), it becomes as clear as
daylight that the benevolent tsar is blocking for himself, with all his might, "the way to
the South", although "Constantinople remains an eternal goal-point of Russian policy".
(loc. cit. p. 9.)

The turn of decrying Russia as the protector of liberalism and national aspirations is
nothing new. Catherine II was celebrated by a whole host of French and German
illuminists as the standard-bearer of progress. The "noble" Alexander I (le Grec du
Bas Empire, as Napoleon less nobly calls him) played in his time the hero of liberalism
in all Europe. Did he not bless Finland with the blessings of Russian civilisation? Did he
not, in his magnanimity, give France not only a constitution but also a Russian prime
minister, the Duc de Richelieu? Was he not the secret chief of the "Hetairia", while
simultaneously at the Congress of Verona, through the purchased Chateaubriand, he drove
Louis XVIII to the campaign against the Spanish rebels? Did he not incite Ferdinand VII,
through his confessor, to the expedition against the revolted Spanish-American colonies,
while simultaneously promising the President of the United States of North America his
support against any intervention of European powers on the American continent? Did he
not send Hypsilantis as "leader of the holy band of Hellenes" to Wallachia, and through
the same Hypsilantis betray the band and have Vladimirescu, the Wallachian rebel leader,
murdered? Nicolas, too, was greeted before 1830 as the liberating hero of nationalities in
all languages, in verse and in prose. When in 1828-29 he undertook the war against
Mahmud II for the liberation of the Greeks — after Mahmud, namely, had refused to allow a
Russian army to march in to suppress the Greek rebellion — Palmerston told the English
Parliament that the enemies of liberating Russia were necessarily the "friends" of the
greatest monsters of the world, Dom Miguel, Austria and the Sultan. Did not Nicolas, in
fatherly care, give the Greeks a Russian general, Count Capo d'Istria, for their President?
Only the Greeks were no Frenchmen and murdered the noble Capo d'Istria. Although,
since the outbreak of the July Revolution of 1830, Nicolas played his role mainly as
patron of legitimacy, he never for a moment abandoned working for the

to effect the “liberation of nationalities.” A few examples suffice. The constitutional revolution of Greece in September 1843 was directed by Katakasi, the Russian minister at Athens, formerly responsible chief superintendent over Admiral Heyden during the catastrophe of Navarino. The centre of the Bulgarian rebellion of 1842 was the Russian consulate at Bucharest. There, in the spring of 1842, the Russian General Duhamel received a Bulgarian deputation to whom he presented the plan for a general insurrection. Serbia was to serve as the reserve of the insurrection and the Hospodariat of Wallachia was to be transferred to the Russian General Kisseleff. During the Serbian insurrection (1843), Russia, through the legation at Constantinople, drove Turkey to violent measures against the Serbs, in order then, on this pretext, to appeal to the sympathy and fanaticism of Europe against the Turks.

Nor was Italy by any means excluded from the liberation plans of Tsar Nicholas: “La jeune Italie,” for a time the Paris organ of the Mazzinian party, relates in an issue of November 1843: “the recent disturbances in the Romagna and the movements in Greece were more or less connected … The Italian movement failed because the really democratic party refused to join it. The republicans did not want to support a movement set on foot by Russia. Everything was prepared for a general insurrection in Italy. The movement was to begin in Naples, where it was expected that a part of the army would put itself at the head or immediately make common cause with the patriots. After the outbreak of this revolution, Lombardy, Piedmont, and the Romagna were to rise; and an Italian empire was to be founded under the Duke of Leuchtenberg, son of Eugène Beauharnais and son-in-law of the Tsar. ‘Young Italy’ thwarted the plan.”

*The Times* of 20 November 1843 remarks on this communication of the “Jeune Italie”: “If this great purpose—the establishment of an Italian empire with a Russian prince at its head—could be achieved, so much the better; but another more immediate, if not so weighty, advantage was to be gained by any outbreak in Italy—to alarm Austria and to divert its attention from the fearful (fearful) plans of Russia on the Danube.”

After Nicholas had turned in vain to “Young Italy” in 1843, he sent Herr von Boutenieff to Rome in March 1844. Boutenieff proposed to the Pope in the name of the Tsar that Russian Poland should be ceded to Austria in exchange for Lombardy, which was to form a north Italian kingdom under Leuchtenberg. *The Tablet* of April 1844, then the English organ of the Roman Curia, remarks on this proposal: “The bait for the Roman court in this fine plan lay in the fact that Poland would fall into Catholic hands, while Lombardy would remain as before under a Catholic dynasty. But the diplomatic veterans of Rome perceived that, while Austria can hardly hold her own possessions and in all human probability must sooner or later give up her Slav provinces again, a transfer of Poland to Austria, even if this part of the proposal was seriously meant, would only be a loan later repayable; whereas Northern Italy with the Duke of Leuchtenberg would in fact fall under Russian protection, and before long infallibly under the Russian sceptre. Consequently, the warmly recommended plan was for the time being laid aside.”

So far *The Tablet* of 1844.

The only circumstance that justified the political existence of Austria since the middle of the 18th century, its resistance to Russia’s advances in the east of Europe—a resistance helpless, inconsistent, cowardly, but tenacious—prompts Vogt to discover that “Austria is the refuge of every discord in the East” (l.c., p. 56). With “a certain childishness” that so well becomes his fat nature, he explains the alliance of Russia with France against Austria, apart from the liberating tendencies of the “benevolent Tsar,” by Austria’s ingratitude for the services received from Nicholas during the Hungarian Revolution. “In the Crimean war itself, Austria went to the furthest limit of armed, hostile neutrality. It goes without saying that this behaviour, which moreover bore the stamp of falsehood and perfidy, had to embitter the Russian government against Austria to a tremendous degree and thereby also drive it towards France” (l.c., pp. 10, 11). Russia, according to Vogt, pursues a sentimental policy. The gratitude that Austria showed the Tsar at Germany’s expense during the Warsaw Congress of 1850 and by the campaign in Schleswig-Holstein does not yet satisfy the grateful Vogt.

The Russian diplomat Pozzo di Borgo, in his famous despatch dated Paris, October 1825, says, after enumerating beforehand Austria’s intrigues against Russia’s intervention plans in the East: “Our policy therefore commands us to show ourselves to this state (Austria) in a terrible shape, and to convince it by our preparations that if it ventures a movement against us, the wildest storm it has ever experienced will burst over its head.” After Pozzo has threatened with war from without and revolution from within, has described Austria’s seizure of the Turkish provinces “suited to it” as a possible peaceful solution, and has depicted Prussia simply as a subordinate ally of Russia, he continues: “If the court of Vienna had yielded to our good aims and intentions, the plan of the imperial cabinet would long since have been fulfilled—a plan that extends not only to the seizure of the Danubian Principalities and Constantinople, but even to the expulsion of the Turks from Europe.” In 1830, as is well known, a secret treaty was concluded between Nicholas and Charles X. It stipulated: France allows Russia the seizure of Constantinople and receives in compensation the Rhine provinces and Belgium; Prussia is indemnified with Hanover and Saxony; Austria receives a portion of the Turkish provinces on the Danube. The same plan was again presented to the Petersburg cabinet under Louis Philippe, at Russia’s instigation, by Molé. Soon afterwards, Brunnow travelled with the document to London, where it was communicated to the English government as proof of France’s treachery and used to form the anti-French coalition of 1840.

Let us now see how Russia, in understanding with France, was to exploit the Italian war in the idea of Vogt, inspired by his original Paris sources. The “national” composition of Russia, and in particular the “Polish nationality,” might seem to present some difficulties for a man whose “lodestar is the principle of nationality,” but: “the principle of nationality stands high with us, the principle of free self-determination still higher” (p. 121 l.c.).

When Russia annexed by the treaties of 1815 by far the largest part of Poland proper, it obtained a position thrust so far to the west, wedging itself so wedge-like not only between Austria and Prussia, but between East Prussia and Silesia, that already at that time Prussian officers (Gneisenau, for example) drew attention to the intolerability of such frontier relations with an overpowerful neighbour. But when the subjugation of Poland in 1831 subjected this territory to the Russians at their mercy, the true meaning of the wedge first revealed itself. The fortifications, laid out on the grandest scale at Warsaw, Modlin, Ivangorod, the keeping down of Poland served only as a pretext. Their real purpose was complete strategic domination of the Vistula region, the establishment of a base for attack towards the north, south, and west. Even Haxthausen, who raves about the orthodox Tsar and everything Russian, sees here a quite decided danger and threat for Germany. The fortified position of the Russians on the Vistula threatens Germany more than all French fortresses put together, especially from the moment when Poland’s national resistance ceases and Russia can dispose of Poland’s warlike strength as its own aggressive force. Vogt therefore reassures Germany that Poland is Russian by free self-determination.

“Doubtless,” he says, “doubtless, as a result of the strenuous efforts of the Russian popular party, the chasm that yawned between Poland and Russia has been considerably reduced, and perhaps only a slight impulse is needed to fill it up entirely” (l.c., p. 12). This slight impulse was to be provided by the Italian war. (Alexander II, however, convinced himself during this war that Poland was not yet at the level of Vogt.) Poland, subsumed into Russia by “free self-determination,” would, as a central body, attract the members of the erstwhile Polish realm that languish under foreign rule and are detached from it, by means of the law of gravity. In order that this process of attraction might proceed all the more easily, Vogt advises Prussia to seize the moment to get rid of the “Slav appendage” (p. 17 l.c.), namely Posen (p. 97 l.c.), and probably also West Prussia, since only East Prussia is recognised as “truly German territory.” The members detached from Prussia would naturally at once fall back to the central body absorbed in Russia, and the “truly German territory” of East Prussia would be transformed into a Russian enclave. On the other hand, as regards Galicia, which is also incorporated into Russia on the map “L’Europe en 1860,” its separation from Austria lay precisely in the aim of the war, to free Germany from Austria’s non-German possessions. Vogt recalls that “before 1848 one found in Galicia more frequently the portrait of the Russian Tsar than that of the Austrian Emperor” (p. 12 l.c.), and “with the uncommon skill that Russia possesses in hatching such intrigues, a considerable cause for apprehension on Austria’s part would exist here” (l.c.). But it goes without saying that in order to get rid of the “internal enemy,” Germany must calmly allow the Russians to “push troops to the border” (p. 13), which support these intrigues. While Prussia itself separates its Polish provinces from itself, Russia, using the Italian war, was to detach Galicia from Austria, just as Alexander I already in 1809 received a piece of Galicia as payment for his merely theatrical support of Napoleon I. It is known that Russia successfully reclaimed, partly from Napoleon I, partly from the Congress of Vienna, a part of the Polish territories that had originally fallen to Austria and Prussia. In 1859, according to Vogt, the moment had come to unite all Poland with Russia. Instead of the emancipation of the Polish nationality from the Russians, Austrians, and Prussians, Vogt demands the dissolution and absorption of the whole former Polish realm into Russia. Finis Poloniae! This “Russian” idea of the “restoration of Poland,” which coursed through all Europe immediately after the death of Tsar Nicholas, is already denounced in March 1855 in the pamphlet: “The New Hope of Poland” by David Urquhart.

But Vogt has not yet done enough for Russia.

“The extraordinary obligingness,” this amiable companion says, “indeed almost the fraternal spirit with which the Russians treated the Hungarian revolutionaries contrasted too sharply with the conduct of the Austrians not to have produced its full effect. By throwing down the party (Nota bene: according to Vogt, Russia threw down not Hungary, but the party) but treating it with forbearance and courtesy, Russia laid the foundation for a view which can be expressed roughly as follows: that of two evils one must choose the lesser, and that in the given case Russia is not the greater one.” (p.12, 13 Le.)

With what “extraordinary obligingness, forbearance, courtesy”, indeed almost “fraternal spirit”, Plon-Plon’s Falstaff escorts the Russians into Hungary and makes himself the “channel” of the illusion on which the Hungarian

Herr Vogt – VIII. Da-Da Vogt and His Studies

Revolution of 1849 foundered. It was Görgei’s party that at that time spread the belief in a Russian prince as the future king of Hungary and with this belief broke the power of resistance of the Hungarian Revolution.*

Lacking any particular hold on any race, the Habsburgs before 1848 naturally based their rule over Hungary on the ruling nationality—the Magyars. Incidentally, it may be said in passing, Metternich was the greatest preserver of nationalities. He misused them against one another, but he needed them in order to misuse them. Hence he preserved them. Compare Posen and Galicia. After the revolution of 1848-49, the Habsburg dynasty, which had defeated the Germans and Magyars by means of the Slavs, sought, imitating Joseph II, to forcibly bring the German element to power in Hungary. For fear of Russia, the Habsburgs did not dare to throw themselves into the arms of their saviours, the Slavs. Their overall state reaction in Hungary was directed even more against their saviours, the Slavs, than against their vanquished, the Magyars. In the struggle with its own saviours, the Austrian reaction therefore, as Szemere has shown in his pamphlet “Hungary, 1848–1860. London 1860”, drove the Slavs back under the banner of Magyarism. Austrian rule over Hungary and the rule of the Magyars in Hungary thus coincided before and after 1848. Quite otherwise with Russia, whether it rule Hungary directly or indirectly. Adding together the kindred-stock and kindred-religion elements, Russia disposes straightway of the non-Magyar majority of the population. The Magyar race succumbs straightway to the kindred-stock Slavs and the kindred-religion Wallachs. Russian rule in Hungary is therefore synonymous with the ruin of Hungarian nationality, i.e., of the Hungary historically tied to the rule of the Magyars.**

* It was, says the Polish Colonel Lapinski, who fought in the Hungarian revolutionary army up to the surrender of Komorn and later against the Russians in Circassia, “it was the misfortune of the Hungarians that they did not know the Russians.” (Theophil Lapinski: Feldzug der ungarischen Hauptarmee im Jahre 1849. Hamburg 1850, p.216.) “The Vienna Cabinet was completely in the hands of the Russians … on their advice the leaders were murdered … while the Russians in every way gained sympathy, Austria was commanded by them to make itself even more hated than it had ever been.” (loc. cit., p. 188, 189.)

** General Moriz Perczel, honourably known from the Hungarian revolutionary war, withdrew, while the Italian campaign was still going on, from the Hungarian officers assembled around Kossuth at Turin and set forth the reasons for his withdrawal in a public declaration – on the one hand, Kossuth serving only as a Bonapartist scarecrow, on the other, the prospect of Hungary’s Russian future. In a reply (dated St. Helier, 19 April 1860) to a letter in which I asked him for more detailed information about his declaration, he says, among other things: “I shall never serve as an instrument to rescue Hungary from the talons of the double eagle merely to deliver it to the deadly tenderness of the Northern bear.”