On May 30 the former responsible manager of the Neue Rheinische 
Zeitung, Hermann Korff, stood again before the police court, accused 
of having interfered in official functions and having committed an 
act encroaching on these functions. In an item in the supplement to 
No. 297 of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung of May 13 of this year, Korff 
had invited people to come to a meeting of the 14th Company of the 
civic militia and to enter their name on a list. Judicial proceedings 
were started against Korff for making this call, and he was arrested. 

In the public trial the State Public Prosecutor, Bolling, sought to 
justify the indictment and asked for the defendant to be sentenced to 
a two-year term of imprisonment. 

The counsel for the defence, barrister Rath, drew attention to the 
fact that for some time past similar items concerning the civic militia 
had been appearing in the local newspapers without there having 
been any prosecution hitherto. The accusation against Korff, he said, 
is utterly and completely unfounded. The convoking of the 14th 
Company in a tavern is not an official function, at most it is an 
attempt to form a company, that is to say, an attempt at exercising an 
official function. But assuming that the convocation in question were 
an official function in the legal sense, only two possibilities were then 
conceivable: 1) the civic militia is still in existence—and this I 
maintain is the position in principle; in that case Korff was entitled to 
convene it. The civic militia had merely been suspended in Cologne 
during the state of siege; with the lifting of the state of siege, all 
former laws and institutions came back into force; even if not in 
practice, but legally the civic militia was once more in existence. Or 2) 
the civic militia was no longer in existence, and this is the view of the 


522 Appendices 


authorities and the Public Prosecutor’s office; in that case there was 
no official function either, and in that case the accusation is complete 
and utter nonsense. 

After the prosecution had replied briefly to the counsel for the 
defence, barrister Hagen opened his address for the defendant, 
seeking to demonstrate that the most that could be imputed to him 
was a remote intention to interfere in official functions, but not in 
any sense an actual act, actual interference, as is required by Art. 258 
of the Penal Code. The court thereupon adjourned for about a 
quarter of an hour to its committee room and then acquitted the 
defendant with neither sentence nor costs. 

Despite this acquittal, Korff was taken back into custody by order 
of the State Public Prosecutor, since he intends to appeal against the 
verdict of acquittal.