Comité de sûreté générale in Berlin

* Cologne, June 5. Berlin now has its own Comité de sûreté générale, just as Paris did in 1793. Only with the difference that the Paris Committee was revolutionary and the Berlin one is reactionary. According to a proclamation published in Berlin, namely, the authorities “charged with maintaining order” have deemed it necessary “to combine for concerted co-operation.” They have therefore appointed a Safety Committee, which has established its seat in Oberwallstrasse. This new authority is composed as follows: 1. President: the director in the Ministry of the Interior, Puttkammer; 2. the commandant and ex-commander of the civic guard, Aschoff; 3. police president Minutoli; 4. public prosecutor Temme; 5. mayor Naunyn and two town councillors; 6. the chairman of the town deputies and three town deputies; 7. five officers and two men of the civic guard. This committee “will take cognisance of everything that violates or threatens to violate public order, and will subject the facts to comprehensive and thorough consideration. Bypassing the old and inadequate means and forms, and avoiding unnecessary correspondence, it will agree on the appropriate steps and, through the various branches of the administration, will bring about the swift and energetic execution of the requisite measures. Only through such concerted co-operation can speed and reliability, combined with the necessary prudence, be introduced into the course of business, which in today’s circumstances is often very difficult. Above all, however, the civic guard, which has assumed the protection of the city, will be enabled to lend due emphasis, on demand, to the decisions taken by the authorities with its advice. With full confidence in the sympathy and co-operation of all the inhabitants, and especially of the honourable (!) estate of artisans and (!) workers, the deputies, free from all party views and endeavours, are commencing their arduous calling and hope to discharge it primarily by the peaceable path of mediation, for the welfare of all.”

The oily, ingratiating, humbly pleading language already allows one to suspect that a centre for reactionary activity is being formed here, as against the revolutionary people of Berlin. The composition of this committee raises this to a certainty. First there is Herr Puttkammer, the same who notoriously distinguished himself by his expulsions when he was police president. As under the bureaucratic monarchy: no high authority without at least one Puttkammer. Then Herr Aschoff, who, because of his corporal’s coarseness and his reactionary intrigues, became so hated by the civic guard that it resolved upon his removal. He has now, it is true, resigned his post. Then Herr Minutoli, who saved the fatherland in Posen in 1846 by discovering the conspiracy of the Poles, and who recently threatened to expel the compositors when they struck because of wage differences. Then representatives of two bodies that have become extremely reactionary, the municipality and the town deputies, and finally, among the officers of the civic guard, the arch-reactionary Major Blesson. We hope that the people of Berlin will in no way allow themselves to be dictated to by this arbitrarily constituted reaction committee.

Incidentally, the committee has already begun its reactionary activity by calling for the people’s procession announced for yesterday (Sunday) to the graves of the March fallen to be dropped, because this would be a demonstration, and demonstrations in general are an evil.