The Dissolution of the Democratic Associations in Baden

Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Nr. 58, 28. Juli 1848

Cologne, July 27.

The reactionary police measures against the right of association follow one another blow upon blow. First the democratic association in Stuttgart, then that of Heidelberg, is suppressed. Success makes the gentlemen of the reaction bold; the Baden government now suppresses all the democratic associations in Baden. This happens at the very moment when the soi-disant National Assembly in Frankfurt is engaged in securing the right of association as one of the “fundamental rights of the German people” for all time.

The basic condition of the free right of association is that no association, no society can be dissolved or prohibited by the police, that this can only occur as a result of a judicial decision establishing the illegality of the association or of its actions and aims and punishing the authors of these actions.

This course is naturally far too protracted for the repressive impatience of Herr Mathy. Just as it was too tedious for him first to obtain a warrant of arrest or at least have himself appointed special constable when, by the gendarme within his breast, he arrested the “traitor to the country” Fickler, just as contemptible and impracticable does the judicial, the legal course appear to him now.

The motives for this new act of police violence are most edifying. The associations, it is said, joined the organisation of the *democratic* associations throughout Germany that originated from the Democratic Congress in Frankfurt. This Congress, it is claimed, “set as its aim the achievement of a democratic republic” (as if that were forbidden!), “and what is meant by the means through which this aim is to be achieved is apparent, among other things, from the sympathy for the insurgents expressed in those resolutions” (since when are “sympathies” illegal “means”?), “as well as from the fact that the Central Committee of these associations even denied the German National Assembly further recognition and called for the formal breaking away of the minority for the purpose of forming a new assembly by illegal means.” Then follow the Congress resolutions on the organisation of the democratic party.

According to Herr Mathy, then, the Baden associations are responsible for the resolutions of the Central Committee, even if they do not carry them out. For if these associations, in response to the appeal of the Frankfurt Committee, had really addressed a message to the Left of the National Assembly and urged it to withdraw, Herr Mathy would not fail to report this. Whether, moreover, the particular appeal was illegal is for the courts, not Herr Mathy, to decide. And in order to declare the organisation of the party in circles, congresses and central committees illegal, one really has to be Herr Mathy. And do the constitutional and reactionary associations not organise themselves on this pattern?

But of course! “it appears inadmissible and pernicious when the foundation of the constitution is undermined and thus the whole edifice of the state is shaken by the power of associations.”

That is precisely why the right of association exists, Herr Mathy, so that one may “undermine” the constitution with impunity, in legal form, of course! And if the power of associations is greater than that of the state, so much the worse for the state!

We once again call upon the National Assembly, if it does not wish to lose all prestige, to impeach Herr Mathy immediately.