Karl Marx

**Cologne, 12 October. The “Cologne Revolution” of 25 September, No. 115, 13 October 1848.  
Neue Rheinische Zeitung.

was a Shrovetide farce, the Kölnische Zeitung tells us, and the Kölnische Zeitung is right. The “Cologne Commandant’s Office” performed Cavaignac on 26 September. And the Kölnische Zeitung admires the wisdom and moderation of the “Cologne Commandant’s Office”. But who is the more comical, the workers who on 25 September practised building barricades, or the Cavaignac who on 26 September, in the most solemn earnest, declared a state of siege, suspended journals, disarmed the civic guard, and banned associations?

Poor Kölnische Zeitung! The Cavaignac of the “Cologne Revolution” cannot be an inch bigger than the “Cologne Revolution” itself. Poor Kölnische Zeitung! It is obliged to take the “revolution” as a joke, but the “Cavaignac” of this droll revolution in earnest. An annoying, thankless, contradictory theme!

On the justification of the Commandant’s Office we shall not waste a word. D’Ester has exhausted this subject. In other respects we regard the Commandant’s Office as a subordinate tool. The true authors of this strange tragedy were the “right-minded citizens”, Dumont and his consorts. No wonder, then, that Herr Dumont had his newspapers circulate the address against D’Ester, Borchardt and Kyll. What they had to defend, these “right-minded” ones, was not the act of the Commandant’s Office—it was their own act.

The Cologne event wandered through the Sahara desert of the German press in the form given it by the Cologne *Journal des Débats*. Reason enough to come back to it.

Moll, one of the most popular leaders of the workers’ association, was to be arrested. Schapper and Becker were already under arrest. A Monday had been chosen for the implementation of these measures, a day on which, as is known, the greater part of the workers is idle. It must therefore have been known beforehand that the arrests would cause great ferment among the workers and could even give rise to violent resistance. A curious coincidence that these arrests fell precisely on a Monday! The excitement was all the more foreseeable because, on the occasion of Stein’s army order, after Wrangel’s proclamation and Pfuels’s nomination as Prime Minister, a decisive counter-revolutionary blow—hence a revolution from Berlin—was expected at any moment. The workers therefore had to regard the arrests not as judicial but as political measures. In the public prosecutor’s office they saw only a counter-revolutionary authority. They believed that on the eve of important events an attempt was being made to deprive them of their leaders. They resolved to save Moll from arrest at any cost. And they did not leave the arena until they had achieved their purpose. The barricades were not built until the workers assembled on the Old Market learned that the military was advancing from all sides to attack. They were not attacked. Thus they also had nothing to defend. Moreover, they had become aware that no significant news whatever had arrived from Berlin. They therefore withdrew after having waited in vain for an enemy through a large part of the night. Nothing is more ridiculous, therefore, than the accusation of cowardice that has been levelled against the Cologne workers.

But still other accusations have been made against them, in order to justify the state of siege and to rig out the Cologne event as a little July revolution. Their real plan, it is said, was the plundering of the good city of Cologne. This charge rests on the alleged looting of a draper’s shop. As though every city did not have its contingent of thieves, who naturally make use of days of public excitement. Or does “plundering” mean the plundering of gunsmiths’ shops? If so, let the Cologne public prosecutor’s office be sent to Berlin to prepare the indictment against the March revolution. Without the plundered gunsmiths’ shops we might perhaps never have had the satisfaction of seeing Herr Hansemann transformed into a bank director and Herr Müller into a Secretary of State.

Enough of the workers of Cologne. Let us come to the so-called democrats. What does the Kölnische Zeitung reproach them with, the Deutsche Zeitung, the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung, and whatever else the “right-minded” papers may call themselves?

The heroic Brüggemanns, Bassermanns, etc. demanded blood, and the tender-hearted democrats, out of cowardice, shed no blood.

The facts are simply these. The democrats declared in the Kranz (on the Old Market), in Eiser’s Hall, and on the barricades to the workers that they under no circumstances wanted a “putsch”. At a moment, however, when no great question was driving the whole population into the fight, and every émeute must therefore fail, it was all the more senseless because in a few days mighty events might occur, and one would thereby render oneself incapable of fighting before the day of decision. If the Ministry in Berlin dared a counter-revolution, then the day would have come for the people to dare a revolution. The judicial inquiry will confirm our statement.

The gentlemen of the Kölnische Zeitung would have done better, instead of standing before the barricades “in the darkness of night” with “arms folded and sombre looks”, pondering “the future of their people”, to harangue the deluded masses with their words of wisdom from the barricades. What use is wisdom *post festum*?

The civic guard has been worst treated by the good press on the occasion of the Cologne events. Let us distinguish. That the civic guard refused to sink to the level of a will-less servant of the police—that was its duty. That it voluntarily surrendered its arms can only be excused by one fact. The liberal part of it knew that the illiberal part had seized the opportunity with jubilation to get rid of the arms. Any partial resistance, however, would have been useless.

The “Cologne Revolution” has had one result. It has revealed the existence of a phalanx of more than 2,000 saints, whose “well-fed virtue and solvent morality” leads a “free life” only under the state of siege. Perhaps an occasion will one day present itself to write the *acta sanctorum* biographies of these saints. Our readers will then learn how the “treasures” are acquired which “neither moth nor rust doth corrupt”, they will learn the manner in which the economic background of “right-mindedness” is conquered.