Threat of the Gervinus-Zeitung

** Cologne, 24 June. “If the authority of the Frankfurt Assembly and its constitutional provisions keep France in check, then there is no danger; Prussia will restore its authority from its eastern provinces, and will perhaps hardly shrink from a momentary loss of its Rhine Province.” (Gervinus-Zeitung, 22 June).

No. 25, 25 June 1848  
Neue Rheinische Zeitung.

How diplomatically the Berlin correspondent of the professors’ newspaper writes! Prussia will restore its authority “from its eastern provinces.” Where will it restore its authority? In the eastern provinces? Oh no, *from* the eastern provinces. In the Rhine Province? Even less so. For in this restoration of its authority it reckons “on a momentary loss of the Rhine Province,” i.e., on a momentary loss of its “authority” in the Rhine Province.

So in Berlin and in Breslau.

And why will it restore the authority apparently lost in Berlin and Breslau not *with* its eastern province, why will it do so *from* its eastern province?

Russia is not the eastern province of Prussia; on the contrary, Prussia is the western province of Russia. But *from* the Prussian eastern province. Arm in arm with the good Pomeranians, the Russians will march against Sodom and Gomorrah and restore the “authority” of Prussia, i.e. of the Prussian dynasty, of absolute kingship. This “authority” was lost from the day when absolutism was forced to thrust a “written” “scrap of paper” stained with plebeian blood between itself and its people, when the court was compelled to place itself under the protection and supervision of bourgeois corn and wool merchants.

So the friend, the saviour, comes from the east; why then occupy the border militarily on that side? From the west comes the enemy, therefore the mass of troops must be concentrated towards the west. A naïve Berlin correspondent of the *Kölnischen Zeitung* cannot grasp the heroism of Pfuel, the good friend of the Poles, who accepts a mission to Petersburg without having a protective guard of 100,000 men behind him. Pfuel travels to Petersburg fearlessly! Pfuel in Petersburg! Pfuel does not shrink from crossing the Russian border, and the German public tells fables about Russian soldiery on the German border! The correspondent of the *Kölnischen Zeitung* pities the German public. But back to our professors’ newspaper!

If the Russians come to the aid of the Prussian dynasty from the east, the French will come to the aid of the German people from the west. And the “Frankfurt Assembly” may calmly continue debating the best agenda and the best “constitutional provisions.” The correspondent of the Gervinus-Zeitung conceals this view beneath the rhetorical flourish “that the Frankfurt Assembly and its constitutional provisions” will keep France “in check.” Prussia will lose the Rhine Province. But why should it shrink from this loss? It will only be “momentary.” German patriotism will march once more under Russian command against the Latin Babylon and will “restore Prussia’s authority” permanently in the Rhine Province and throughout southern Germany. Oh, you prophetic angel, you!

If Prussia does not “shrink from a momentary loss of the Rhine Province,” the Rhine Province shrinks even less from a “permanent” loss of Prussian rule. When the Prussians ally themselves with the Russians, the Germans will ally themselves with the French and, united with them, wage the war of the West against the East, of civilisation against barbarism, of the republic against autocracy.

We want Germany’s unity, but only out of the splintering of the great German monarchies can the elements for this unity be separated out. Only in the storm of war and revolution will they be forged together. Constitutionalism, however, disappears of its own accord as soon as the watchword of events runs: Autocracy or Republic. But, the constitutional bourgeois cry indignantly to us: Who brought the Russians down upon the Germans? Who else but the democrats? Down with the democrats! – And they are right!

Had we ourselves introduced the Russian system among us, we would spare the Russians the trouble of introducing it and ourselves – the costs of war.