The Hansemann Ministry

** Cologne, June 23. The ministerial crisis in Berlin has taken a new turn!

Nr. 24, 24. Juni 1848
Neue Rheinische Zeitung.

Hansemann has been entrusted with the formation of a Cabinet, and, together with the remnants of the old Ministry—Patow, Bornemann, Schleinitz and Schreckenstein—he will fall, deeply moved, into the arms of the Left Centre. Herr Rodbertus is to participate in the new combination; he is the mediator who obtains for the penitent remnants of the Camphausen Ministry the grace and forgiveness of the Left Centre.

Thanks to the grace of Herr Rodbertus, our Prussian Duchâtel sees his dearest wishes crowned—he is to be Premier. Camphausen’s laurels kept him awake; now at last he will have the opportunity to show what he is capable of, once he can unfold his wings without hindrance. Now we shall be able to admire his gigantic financial plans, his immense projects for relieving all distress and all misery in their full glory—those plans of which he held out such great expectations to his deputies. Only now is he in a position to devote to the state the whole abundance of those talents which he earlier developed so brilliantly and successfully as a railway man and in other posts. And only now will it rain Cabinet questions.

Herr Hansemann has surpassed his model—through Rodbertus’s self-sacrifice he is to be Premier, which Duchâtel never was. But we warn him. Duchâtel had his reasons for always appearing to remain in the second line. Duchâtel knew that the more or less educated classes of the country, both inside and outside the Chamber, need an eloquent knight of the “great debate”, a Guizot or a Camphausen, who in any given case can soothe consciences and carry away the hearts of all hearers with the requisite arguments, philosophical developments, statesmanlike theories and other empty phrases. Duchâtel readily granted his garrulous ideologist the nimbus of the presidency of the Council; the vain glitter was worthless to him, what mattered to him was real practical power, and he knew: where he was, there was real power. Herr Hansemann wants to try it differently; he must know what he is doing.

But a painful feeling seizes us when we remember how soon Herr Hansemann will plunge from his giddy height. Before the Hansemann Cabinet has even been constituted, before it comes for a single moment to enjoy its existence, it is doomed to destruction.

“The hangman stands at the door”; reaction and the Russians are knocking, and before the cock has crowed thrice, the Hansemann Cabinet will have fallen, despite Rodbertus and despite the Left Centre. Then farewell presidency of the Council, farewell financial plans and giant projects for the relief of distress; the abyss will swallow them all, and it will be well for Herr Hansemann if he can return peacefully to his modest bourgeois hearth and reflect that life is a dream.