Karl Marx

Freedom of Press and Speech in Germany

From the English.

["The Daily News", 19 January 1871]

To the Editor of the "Daily News"

Sir,

When Bismarck accused the French government of having "rendered the free expression of opinion by the press and the people's representatives in France impossible," he was evidently merely intending to crack a Berlin joke. If you want to learn the "true" public opinion in France, please apply to Herr Stieber, the editor of the Versailles "Moniteur" and notorious Prussian police spy!

On Bismarck's express orders, Messrs. Bebel and Liebknecht have simply been arrested on the pretext of a charge of high treason, because they had dared to fulfil their duties as German representatives of the people, i.e., to protest in the Reichstag against the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine, to vote against new war credits, to express their sympathy for the French Republic, and to condemn the attempt to turn Germany into a single Prussian barracks. For expressing the same views, the members of the Brunswick Committee of the Social-Democratic Workers' Party have been treated like galley convicts since the beginning of September last year, and even now they have to submit to a judicial farce on the charge of high treason. The same fate has befallen numerous workers who propagated the Brunswick Manifesto. Under similar pretexts, Herr Hepner, the second editor of the Leipzig "Volksstaat", is being prosecuted for high treason. The few independent German newspapers appearing outside Prussia are not allowed to be brought into the territories of the Hohenzollerns. In Germany, workers' meetings in favour of an honourable peace with France are daily dispersed by the police. According to the official Prussian doctrine, as naively expounded by General Vogel von Falckenstein, every German "who attempts to act counter to the presumable aims of Prussian warfare in France" is guilty of high treason. If Messrs. Gambetta and Co., like the Hohenzollerns, were compelled to suppress public opinion by force, they would only need to adopt the Prussian method and impose a state of siege over the whole of France under the pretext of the war. The only French soldiers on German soil are languishing in Prussian prisons. Nevertheless, the Prussian government feels obliged to rigorously maintain the state of siege, that is, the crudest and most revolting form of military despotism and the suspension of all laws. The soil of France is infested by almost a million German invaders. Nevertheless, the French government can safely dispense with that Prussian method of "making free expression of opinion possible." Compare the two pictures! Germany, however, has proved too narrow a field for Bismarck's all-embracing love of independent expression of opinion. When the Luxembourgers expressed their sympathies for France, Bismarck made this expression of feeling one of his pretexts for denouncing the London Treaty of Neutrality. When the Belgian press committed a similar sin, the Prussian ambassador in Brussels, Herr von Balan, called upon the Belgian government to forbid not only all anti-Prussian newspaper articles, but even the printing of mere news items calculated to encourage the French in their war of independence. Indeed, a very modest request—to suspend the Belgian constitution "pour le roi de Prusse"! Hardly had a few Stockholm newspapers permitted themselves to crack a few harmless jokes about Wilhelm Annexander's notorious "pietism", when Bismarck pounced upon the Swedish cabinet with fierce missives. Even at the longitude of St. Petersburg, he managed to spy out an all too unbridled press. At his most humble request, the editors of the most important Petersburg newspapers were summoned before the chief censor, who ordered them to refrain from all critical remarks about the loyal Borussian vassal of the Tsar. One of these editors, Herr Sagulyayev, was imprudent enough to disclose the secret of this warning in the columns of the "Golos". Immediately the Russian police pounced upon him and packed him off to some remote province. It would be a mistake to believe that these gendarme methods are merely attributable to the paroxysm of war fever. On the contrary, they are the exact, methodical application of the spirit of Prussian laws. There exists, indeed, in the Prussian Penal Code a strange provision, by virtue of which any foreigner can be prosecuted on account of his actions or writings in his own or another foreign country for "insulting the Prussian King" and for "high treason against Prussia"! France – and its cause is fortunately far from being desperate – is fighting at this moment not only for its own national independence, but for the freedom of Germany and Europe.

I remain, Sir, your obedient servant
Karl Marx

London, 16 January 1871