“We had voted against the inheritability of the office of Supreme Head of the 
Empire; on the next day we abstained from voting. When the whole result lay before 
us, however, as it had emerged from the will of the majority of an assembly elected on 
the basis of universal franchise, we declared that we should submit. Had we not done 
so we should have proved that we did not fit into civil society in general.”* (p. 43.) 

According to Herr L. Simon “of Trier”, therefore, the most 
extreme members of the Frankfurt Assembly no longer “fitted into 
civil society in general”. Herr L.Simon “of Trier” thus appears to 
conceive the bounds of civil society in general as being even narrower 
than the bounds of St. Paul’s Church. 

Incidentally, in his confession of April 11, 1849, Herr Simon had 
the tact to reveal the secret of both his former opposition and his 
later conversion. 

“Cold mists have arisen from the gloomy waters of pre-March diplomacy. These 
mists will gather into clouds and we shall have a thunderstorm. pregnant with ruin, 
threatening to strike first of all the tower of the church in which we are sitting. Take 
heed and arrange for a lightning-conductor to conduct the lightning away from 

yourselves!””? 

That is, gentlemen, it is now our skins that are at stake! 

The beggarly proposals, the wretched compromises offered to the 
majority by the Frankfurt Left on the question of the Emperor and 
after the humiliated return of the deputation to the Emperor,'* 
merely in order to retain them in the Assembly, the dirty attempts at 

agreement which they were at that time making in all directions, all 
receive their higher consecration in the following words of Herr 
Simon: 

“The events of the past year have made the word agreement the butt of a very 
disquieting scorn. It is hardly possible to speak of it any longer without being derided. 
Yet of two possibilities only one can be realised: either people agree with one another, 
or they fall upon one another like wild animals.” (p. 43.) 

That is, either the parties concerned fight their battle to the finish, 
or they postpone it by means of any compromise they choose. The 
latter is at all events “more educated” and “more humane”. With 
his theory set forth above, incidentally, Herr Simon opens up an 
endless series of agreements by means of which he will remain 
acceptable in any and every “civil society”. 

The late Imperial Constitution is justified in the following 
philosophical deduction: 

“The Imperial Constitution was thus in fact properly the expression of what was 
possible without new exertions of violence.... It was the living (!) expression of 
democratic monarchy, and hence of a contradiction in principle. But much has 
already existed in actual fact which was self-contradictory in principle, and it is 
precisely from the actual existence of contradictions in principle that further life 
develops.” (p. 44.) 

It can be seen that to apply Hegelian dialectics is still rather more 
difficult than to quote snippets of verse by Schiller. The Imperial 
Constitution, if it was “actually” to endure in spite of its “contradic- 
tion in principle”, ought at least to have expressed in a “principled” 
fashion that contradiction which “actually” existed. “Actually”, 
there stood on the one hand Prussia and Austria, military absolutism, 
and on the other the German people, cheated of the fruits of their 
March rising, cheated to a great extent by their foolish belief in the 
wretched Frankfurt Assembly, and on the point of daring at last to 
embark on a new fight against military absolutism. This actual 
contradiction could only be resolved by an actual conflict. Did the 
Imperial Constitution express this contradiction? Not in the least. It 
expressed the contradiction as it existed in March 1848, before 
Prussia and Austria had recovered their strength, before the 
opposition had been split, weakened and disarmed by partial defeats. 
It expressed nothing more than the childish self-deception of the 
gentlemen of St. Paul’s Church, who, in March 1849, still imagined 
themselves able to prescribe laws to the Prussian and Austrian 
governments, and to ensure for themselves for all posterity the 
position of imperial German Barrots, a position as profitable as it 
would be secure. 

Then Herr Simon congratulates himself and his colleagues for 
being totally unshakable in their self-interested infatuation with the 
Imperial Constitution: 

‘Admit in shame, ye renegades of Gotha,!” that in the midst of pressing passions 

we have resisted every temptation, have faithfully kept our word and have not altered 
our common achievement by even one iota!” (p. 67.) 

He then refers to their heroic deeds in connection with 
Wiurttemberg and the Palatinate, and to their Stuttgart decision of 
June 8, in which they placed Baden under the protection of the 
Empire, although by that time the Empire was already essentially 
under the protection of Baden, and their decisions only proved 
that they were determined not to shift “by even one iota” from their 
cowardice, and to maintain by force an illusion in, which they 
themselves no longer believed. 

The accusation that “the Imperial Constitution was only a mask 
for the republic” is ingeniously rejected by Herr Simon as follows: 

“Only if the struggle against all governments without exception had to be pursued to 
the end, ... and who tells you then that the struggle against all governments without 
exception ought to have been pursued to the end? Who can calculate them all, the 
possible permutations of battle and of the fortunes of war, and if the hostile brothers” 
(governments and people) “had stood face to face after a bloody struggle, exhausted 
and undecided as to the outcome, and if the spirit of peace and reconciliation had come 
upon them, would we then have harmed even in the slightest the banner of the 
Imperial Constitution, under which the brothers could have stretched out their hands 
to each other in conciliation? Look about you! Place your hands on your hearts! Delve 
sincerely into your innermost conscience, and you will, you must answer: no, no, and 
again no!” (p. 70.) 

This is the true quiver of oratory from which Herr Simon drew 
those arrows which he fired to such astonishing effect in St. Paul’s 
Church!—In spite of its flatness, however, this touching pathos has 
its interest. It shows how the gentlemen of Frankfurt sat calmly in 
Stuttgart and waited for the hostile parties to fight to a standstill so 
that they could step between the exhausted combatants at the right 
moment and offer them the panacea of conciliation, the Imperial 
Constitution. And the extent to which Herr Simon is expressing the 
innermost thoughts of his colleagues can be seen from the way in 
which these gentlemen are even now in session in Berne at 
innkeeper Benz’s in Kesslergasse,* waiting only for a new conflict to 
break out so that they may step in when the sides “are standing face 
to face, exhausted and undecided as to the outcome”, and offer 
them as a basis for agreement the Imperial Constitution, this perfect 
expression of exhaustion and indecision. 

“But I say to you in spite of all that and however painful it may be to roam far from 
one’s fatherland, far from one’s home and far from aged parents, on the lonely path 
of exile, I will not exchange my pure conscience for the remorse of the renegades and 
the sleepless nights of the rulers, not even if I should be offered a surfeit of all worldly 
goods!” (p. 71.) 

If it were only possible to send these gentlemen into exile! But do 
they not drag the fatherland along behind them in their suitcases in 
the form of the stenographic reports from Frankfurt?? And do these 
not waft towards them currents of the purest air of the homeland 
and the fullness of the fairest self-complacency? 

Incidentally, when Herr Simon maintains that he is putting in a 
good word for those who fought for the Imperial Constitution he is 
indulging in a pious deceit. Those who fought for the Imperial 
Constitution had no need of his “Word of Justice”. They defended 
themselves better and more energetically. But Herr Simon has to 
push them forward in order to conceal the fact that, in the interest of 
the Frankfurters who have compromised themselves in every 
respect, in the interest of those who framed the Imperial Constitu- 
tion, in his own interest, he considers it indispensable to deliver an 
oratio pro domo.”