VI 
THE BERLIN INSURRECTION 

[New-York Daily Tribune, No. 3311, November 28, 1851] 

The second center of revolutionary action was Berlin. And from 
what has been stated in the foregoing papers, it may be guessed 
that there this action was far from having that unanimous support 
of almost all classes by which it was accompanied in Vienna. In 
Prussia the bourgeoisie had been already involved in actual 

* See this volume, pp. 54-55.— Ed. 

Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany 35 

struggles with the Government; a rupture had been the result of 
the “United Diet”; a bourgeois revolution was impending, and 
that revolution’ might have been, in its first outbreak, quite as 
unanimous as that of Vienna, had it not been for the Paris 
revolution of February. That event precipitated everything, while, 
at the same time, it was carried out under a banner totally 
different from that under which the Prussian bourgeoisie was 
preparing to defy its Government. The revolution of February 
upset, in France, the very same sort of government which the 
Prussian bourgeoisie were going to set up in their own country. 
The revolution of February announced itself as a revolution of the 
working classes against the middle classes; it proclaimed the 
downfall of middle-class government and the emancipation of the 
working man. Now the Prussian bourgeoisie had of late had quite 
enough of working-class agitation in their own country. After the 
first terror of the Silesian riots had passed away, they had even 
tried to give this agitation a turn in their own favor; but they 
always had retained a salutary horror of revolutionary Socialism 
and Communism; and, therefore, when they saw men at the head 
of the Government in Paris whom they considered as the most 
dangerous enemies of property, order, religion, family, and of the 
other penates*' of the modern bourgeois, they at once experienced 
a considerable cooling down of their own revolutionary ardor. 
They knew that the moment must be seized, and that without the 
aid of the working masses they would be defeated; and yet their 
courage failed them. Thus they sided with the Government in the 
first partial and provincial outbreaks, tried to keep the people 
quiet in Berlin, who during five days met in crowds before the 
royal palace to discuss the news and ask for changes in the 
Government; and when at last, after the news of the downfall of 
Metternich, the King made some _ slight concessions, the 
bourgeoisie considered the revolution as completed, and went to 
thank his Majesty for having fulfilled all the wishes of his people. 
But then followed the attack of the military on the crowd, the 
barricades, the struggle, and the defeat of Royalty. Then 
everything was changed; the very working classes, which it had 
been the tendency of the bourgeoisie to keep in the background, 
had been pushed forward, had fought and conquered, and al) at 
once were conscious of their strength. Restrictions of suffrage, of 
the liberty of the press, of the right to sit on juries, of the right of 
meeting—restrictions that would have been very agreeable to the 
bourgeoisie, because they would have touched upon such classes 
only as were beneath it—now were no longer possible. The 

danger of a repetition of the Parisian scenes of “anarchy” was 
imminent. Before this danger all former differences disappeared. 
Against the victorious working man, although he had not yet 
uttered any specific demands for himself, the friends and the foes 
of many years united, and the alliance between the bourgeoisie 
and the supporters of the overturned system was concluded upon 
the very barricades of Berlin. The necessary concessions, but no 
more than was unavoidable, were to be made; a ministry of the 
opposition leaders of the United Diet was to be formed, and in 
return for its services in saving the Crown, it was to have the 
support of all the props of the old Government, the feudal 
aristocracy, the bureaucracy, the army. These were the conditions 
upon which Messrs. Camphausen and Hansemann undertook the 
formation of a Cabinet. 

Such was the dread evinced, by the new ministers, of the 
aroused masses, that in their eyes every means was good if it only 
tended to strengthen the shaken foundations of authority. They, 
poor deluded wretches, thought every danger of a restoration of 
the old system had passed away; and thus they made use of the 
whole of the old state machinery for the purpose of restoring 
“order.” Not a single bureaucrat or military officer was dismissed; 
not the slightest change was made in the old bureaucratic system 
of administration. These precious constitutional and responsible 
ministers even restored to their posts those functionaries whom 
the people, in the first heat of revolutionary ardor, had driven 
away on account of their former acts of bureaucratic overbearing. 
There was nothing altered, in Prussia, but the persons of the 
ministers; even the ministerial staffs in the different departments 
were not touched upon, and all the constitutional place-hunters, 
who had formed the chorus of the newly-elevated rulers, and 
who had expected their share of power and office, were told 
to wait until restored stability allowed changes to be operated 
in the bureaucratic personnel which now were not without 
danger. 

The King, chap-fallen in the highest degree after the insurrec- 
tion of the 18th of March, very soon found out that he was quite 
as necessary to these “liberal” ministers as they were to him. The 
throne had been spared by the insurrection; the throne was the 
Jast existing obstacle to “anarchy,” the liberal middle class and its 
leaders, now in the ministry, had therefore every interest to keep 
on excellent terms with the Crown. The King, and the reactionary 
camarilla that surrounded him, were not slow in discovering this, 
and profited by the circumstance in order to fetter the march of 

Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany 37 

the ministry even in those petty reforms that were from time to 
time intended. 

The first care of the ministry was to give a sort of legal 
appearance to the recent violent changes. The United Diet was 
convoked, in spite of all popular opposition, in order to vote, as 
the legal and constitutional organ of the people, a new electoral 
law for the election of an assembly, which was to agree with the 
Crown upon a new Constitution.*? The elections were to be 
indirect, the mass of voters electing a number of electors, who 
then were to choose the representative. In spite of all opposition, 
this system of double elections passed. The United Diet was then 
asked for a loan of twenty-five millions of dollars, opposed by the 
popular party, but equally agreed to. 

These acts of the ministry gave a most rapid development to the 
popular, or as it now called itself, the democratic party. This — 
party, headed by the petty trading and shopkeeping class, and 
uniting under its banner, in the beginning of the revolution, the 
large majority of the working people, demanded direct and 
universal suffrage, the same as established in France, a single 
Legislative Assembly, and full and open recognition of the 
revolution of the 18th of March, as the base of the new 
governmental system. The more moderate faction would be 
satisfied with a thus “democratized” monarchy, the more ad- 
vanced demanded the ultimate establishment of the Republic. 
Both factions agreed in recognizing the German National Assem- 
bly at Frankfort as the supreme authority of the country, while the 
Constitutionalists and Reactionists affected a great horror of the 
sovereignty of this body, which they professed to consider as 
utterly revolutionary. 

The independent movement of the working classes had, by the 
revolution, been broken up for a time. The immediate wants and 
circumstances of the movement were such as not to allow of any of 
the specific demands of the Proletarian party to be put in the 
foreground. In fact, as long as the ground was not cleared for the 
independent action of the working men, as long as direct and 
universal suffrage was not yet established, as long as the 36 larger 
and smaller States continued to cut up Germany into numberless 
morsels, what else could the Proletarian party do but watch 
the—for them all-important— movement of Paris, and struggle in 
common with the petty shopkeepers for the attainment of those 
rights which would allow them to fight, afterward, their own 
battle? 

There were only three points, then, by which the Proletarian 

party in its political action essentially distinguished itself from the 
petty trading class, or properly so-called democratic party: firstly, 
in judging differently the French movement, with regard to which 
the democrats attacked, and the Proletarian Revolutionists de- 
fended the extreme party in Paris; secondly, in proclaiming the 
necessity of establishing a German Republic, one and indivisible, 
while the very extremest ultras among the democrats only dared 
to sigh for a Federative Republic; and thirdly, in showing upon 
every occasion, that revolutionary boldness and readiness for 
action, in which any party, headed by and composed principally, 
of petty tradesmen, will always be deficient. 

The Proletarian, or really revolutionary party, succeeded only 
very gradually in withdrawing the mass of the working people 
from the influence of the democrats, whose tail they formed in the 
beginning of the revolution. But in due time the indecision, 
weakness and cowardice of the democratic leaders did the rest, 
and it may now be said to be one of the principal results of the 
last years’ convulsions, that wherever the working class is 
concentrated in anything like considerable masses, they are 
entirely freed from that democratic influence which led them into 
an endless series of blunders and misfortunes during 1848 and 
1849. But we had better not anticipate; the events of these two 
years will give us plenty of opportunities to show the democratic 
gentlemen at work. 

The peasantry in Prussia, the same as in Austria, but with less 
energy, feudalism pressing, upon the whole, not quite so hard 
upon them here, had profited by the revolution to free themselves 
at once from all feudal shackles. But here, from the reasons stated 
before, the middle classes at once turned against them, their 
oldest, their most indispensable allies; the democrats, equally 
frightened with the bourgeois by what was called attacks upon 
private property, failed equally to support them; and thus, after 
three months’ emancipation, after bloody struggles and military 
executions, particularly in Silesia, feudalism was restored by the 
hands of the, until yesterday, anti-feudal bourgeoisie. There is not 
a more damning fact to be brought against them than this. Similar 
treason against its best allies, against itself, never was committed by 
any party in history, and, whatever humiliation and chastisement 
may be in store for this middle-class party, it has deserved by this 
one act every morsel of it. 

London, October, 1851 

Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany 39