Karl Marx

The “Frankfurter Oberpostamts-Zeitung” and the Vienna Revolution

* Cologne, 18 October. “A peculiar destiny rules over Germany. When one believes one has arrived at the point where it is permitted to lay one’s hand to the reconstruction of the common fatherland – when one raises one’s gaze gratefully to heaven for that –, the thunderclouds that still lay Europe about charge and discharge in new, mighty blows and cause the hands that have devoted themselves to Germany’s constitutional work to tremble. Just such a thunderclap have we just once more experienced in Vienna.”

Thus laments the Moniteur of the Imperial Regency, the *Frankfurter Oberpostamtszeitung*. This worthy sheet, whose last editor flaunted himself on the list of creatures paid by Guizot, took its position seriously for one moment. The Central Authority with its parliamentary frame, the Frankfurt Concile, appeared to it as a serious power. Instead of directly distributing their counter-revolutionary orders to their subjects, the 38 German governments had the command issued to them by the Central Authority in Frankfurt to carry out their own resolutions. All was going splendidly, as at the time of the Mainz Immediat-Commission. The Central Authority could imagine itself a power, and its Moniteur could imagine itself a Moniteur. “Now thank we all our God,” it sang, “hands raised to heaven.”

And now we “experience” a thunderclap from Vienna. The “hands” of our Lycurguses “tremble”, despite the army of spiked helmets, which are just so many lightning conductors of the revolution; despite the decrees in which the criticism of the black-red-and-gold persons and Gesta is decreed a highly inquisitional case; despite the force-words of those gigantic figures, Schmerling, Mohl and Gagern. Once more the revolutionary monster roars – and they “tremble” in Frankfurt. The *Frankfurter Ober-Post-Amts-Zeitung* is startled out of its prayer of thanksgiving. – Tragically, it grumbles against the iron fate.

The “Frankfurter Oberpostamts-Zeitung” and the Vienna Revolution

In Paris the Thiers party on top, in Berlin the Pfuel ministry with Wrangels in all provinces, in Frankfurt a central gendarmerie, in the whole of Germany a more or less concealed state of siege, Italy pacified by the mild Ferdinand and Radetzky, Jellachich commander of Hungary, after the annihilation of the Magyars jointly with Windisch-Grätz in Vienna proclaiming “Croatian freedom and order”, in Bucharest the revolution stifled in blood, the Danubian Principalities blessed with the benefits of the Russian regime, in England all the leaders of the Chartists arrested and deported, Ireland starved out so that it can move – say, what more do you want?

The Vienna Revolution has not yet triumphed. But its first flash of lightning sufficed to lay bare before Europe all the positions of the counter-revolution and thus to make a universal life-and-death struggle inevitable.

The counter-revolution is not yet annihilated, but it has made itself ridiculous. In the hero Jellachich all its heroes have been transformed into comic figures, and in Fuad Effendi’s proclamation after the bloodbath of Bucharest all proclamations of the friends of “constitutional freedom and order” have been parodied to death, from the Reichstag proclamations down to the smallest whimperer’s address.

Tomorrow we shall speak in detail of the immediate situation of Vienna and of the Austrian conditions in general.