Ka-gi-ga-gi-wa-wa-be-ta could hold a Peace Congress.'*? Our
Arnold was just itching to avail himself of the opportunity to make
one of his “frequent appearances” and to produce a manifesto. So
he proclaimed himself a corresponding member of the Frankfurt
Assembly and sent it an extremely confused Peace Manifesto‘
translated out of Cobden’s speeches into his own speculative
Pomeranian. Various Germans drew Arnold’s attention to the
contradiction between his warlike attitude in the Central Commit-


, The hero of K. A. Kortum’s satirical poem Die Jobsiade.—Ed.
> Probably ironical for Baritus, the battle song of the Teutons.— Ed.
“ Manifesto of the Central Committee of European Democracy of November 13,
1850, published in La voix du proscrit, No. 4, November 17, 1850.—Ed.
¢ Sop.— Ed.
© “A letter from Dr. Arnold Ruge, member for Breslau in the German Parliament,
at Frankfort. Presented by the Delegates from Brighton to the Peace Congress
assembled at Frankfort, August, 1850.— Ed.


tee and his peace manifesto Quakerism. He would reply: “Well,
there you have the contradictions. That’s the dialectic for you. In my
youth I studied Hegel.” His “honest consciousness” was eased by the
thought that Mazzini knew no German and it was therefore not hard
to pull the wool over his eyes.

Moreover, Arnold’s relationship with Mazzini promised to
become even more secure thanks to the protection of Harro
Harring who had just landed in Hull. For with Harring a new and
highly symptomatic character steps onto the stage.


IX


The great drama of the democratic emigration of 1849 to 1852
had been preceded by a prelude eighteen years previously: the
emigration of demagogues in 1830 and 1831. Even though with
the passage of time most of the emigrants of this first wave had
been ousted from the stage, there still remained a few worthy
remnants who, stoically indifferent to the course of history and the
effect of their action, continued to work as agitators, devised
global plans, formed provisional governments and hurled proclamations into the world in every direction. It is obvious that the
business experience of these seasoned swindlers greatly surpassed
that of the younger generation. It was this very acumen acquired
through eighteen years practice in conspiring, scheming, intriguing, proclaiming, duping, showing off and pushing oneself to the
fore that gave Mr. Mazzini—supported by three straw men of
much smaller experience in such matters—the audacity and the
assurance to install himself as the Central Committee of European
Democracy.

No one was more favoured by circumstances to become the very
type of the émigré agitator than our friend Harro Harring. And
indeed he did become the prototype whom all our great men of
the exile, all the Arnolds, Gustavs and Gottfrieds, have striven
more or less consciously and with varying success to emulate. They
may even equal him if circumstances are not unfavourable, but
they will hardly surpass him.

Harro, who like Caesar has himself described his great deeds
(London, 1852),* was born on the ‘“Cimbrian Peninsula”? and


* H. Harring, Historisches Fragment über die Entstehung der Arbeiter-Vereine und ihren
Verfall in Communistische Speculationen (the passages quoted in this chapter are mostly
taken from this book).— Ed.

> Old name for Jutland.— Ed.


belongs to that visionary North-Frisian race which has already
been shown by Dr. Clement to have produced all the great nations
of the world.

‘Already in early youth” he attempted to “set the seal of action
upon his enthusiasm for the cause of the peoples” by going to
Greece in 1821."°' We see how friend Harro had an early
premonition of his mission to be everywhere where confusion
reigned. Later on


‘‘a strange fate led him to the source of absolutism, to the vicinity of the Tsar and he
had seen through the Jesuitism of constitutional monarchy in Poland ~~”.


Thus in Poland as well Harro fought for freedom. But “the
crisis in the history of Europe following the fall of Warsaw led him
to deep reflection”, and his reflection led him to the idea of
“national democracy”, which he at once “documented in the
work: Die Volker, Strasbourg, March 1832”. It is worth remarking
that this work was almost quoted at the Hambach Festival.'* At
the same time he published his “republican poems: “Blutstropfen’;
‘Die Monarchie, oder die Geschichte vom Konig Saul’; ‘Manner-
Stimmen, zu Deutschlands Einheit’” and edited the journal
Deutschland in Strasbourg. All these and even his future writings
had the unexpected good fortune to be banned by the Federal
Diet on November 4, 1831. This was the only thing the worthy
fighter still lacked; only now did he achieve the reputation he
deserved and also the martyr’s crown. So that he could exclaim:


“My writings were widely known and evoked a warm response in the hearts of
the people. They were mostly distributed gratis. In the case of some of them I did
not even recover the costs of printing.”


But new honours still awaited him. Already in November 1831
Herr Welcker had vainly attempted in a long letter “to convert
him to the vertical horizon of constitutionalism’”. And now, in
January 1832, there came a visit from Herr Malten, a well-known
Prussian agent abroad, who proposed that he should enter
Prussian service. What double recognition this was—and from the
enemy too! Enough, Malten’s offer triggered off
“the idea that in the face of this dynastic treachery he should advance the


concept of Scandinavian nationality”, and “from that time on at least the word
Scandinavia was reborn after having been forgotten for centuries’’.


In this manner our North Frisian from Sdderjylland* who did
not know himself whether he was a German or a Dane acquired at


* The Frisian name for South Jutland.— Ed.


least an imaginary nationality whose first consequence was that the
men of Hambach would have nothing to do with him.

With all these events behind him Harro’s fortune was made.
Veteran of freedom in Greece and Poland, the inventor of the
“democracy of nationality”, re-discoverer of the word “Scandinavia”,
acknowledged by the ban of the Federal Diet to be a poet, thinker
and journalist, a martyr, a great man esteemed even by his enemies,
a man whose allegiance constitutionalists, absolutists and republicans
vied with each other to possess and, with all that, empty-headed and
confused enough to believe in his own greatness—what then was
needed to make his happiness complete? But Harro was a
conscientious man and as his fame grew so did the demands which
he made upon himself. What was missing was a great work that
would present in an artistic, entertaining and popular form the great
doctrines of freedom, the idea of the democracy of nationality and
all the sublime struggles for freedom on the part of the youthful
Europe arising before his very eyes. None but a poet and thinker of
the first rank could produce such a work and none but Harro could
be this man. Thus arose the first three plays of the “dramatic cycle
Das Volk, comprising twelve plays in all, one of them in Danish”, a
labour to which the author devoted ten years of his life. Unfortunately eleven of these twelve plays have “hitherto remained in
manuscript”.

However, this dallying with the muse was not to last forever.


“In the winter of 1832-1833 a movement was prepared in Germany— which
was brought to a tragic end in the riot in Frankfurt.'“* I was entrusted with the
task of taking the fortress (?) of Kehl on the night of April 6. Men and weapons
were at the ready.”


Unfortunately it all came to nothing and Harro had to retire to
the depths of France, where he wrote his “ Worte eines Menschen’.
From there he was summoned to Switzerland by the Poles arming
themselves for their march on Savoy. Here he became “associated
with their General Staff’, wrote a further two plays of his
dramatic cycle Das Volk, and made the acquaintance of Mazzini in
Geneva. The whole brimstone gang consisting of Polish,
French, German, Italian and Swiss adventurers under the command of the noble Ramorino then made their famous raid into
Savoy.'” In this campaign our Harro felt “the value of his life and
strength”. But as the other freedom fighters felt “the value of
their lives” no less than Harro and no doubt had just as few
illusions about their “strength”, the exploit ended badly and they
returned to Switzerland beaten, dishevelled and in disarray.


This campaign was all that was needed to make the band of
emigrant knights fully conscious of the terror they inspired in the
tyrants. As long as the after-effects of the July revolution still
caused isolated insurrections in France, Germany or Italy, as long
as someone or other was still standing behind them, our émigré
heroes felt themselves to be but atoms in the seething masses
—more or less privileged, prominent atoms, to be sure, but in
the last analysis they were still atoms. But as these insurrections
gradually grew feebler, as the great mass of “cowards”, of the
“half-hearted” and the “men of little faith” retired from the
putschist swindles and as our knights felt increasingly lonely, so
their self-esteem grew in proportion. If the whole of Europe
became craven, stupid and selfish, how could the loyal men fail to
grow in their own estimation, for they were the priests who kept
the sacred fires of hatred for all tyrants burning in their breasts
and who maintained the traditions of the great era of virtue and
love of freedom for a more vigorous generation! If they too
deserted the flag the tyrants would be safe for ever. So like the
democrats of 1848 they saw in every defeat a guarantee of future
victory and they gradually transformed themselves more and more
into itinerant Don Quixotes with dubious sources of income. Once
arrived at this point, they could venture upon their greatest act of
heroism, the foundation of “Young Europe’ '*° whose Charter of
Brotherhood was edited by Mazzini and signed in Berne on April
15, 1834. Harro joined it as an


“initiator of the Central Committee, adoptive member of Young Germany and
Young Italy and also as representative of the Scandinavian branch” which he “still
represents today”.


The date of the Charter of Brotherhood marks for our Harro
the great epoch from which calculations are made forwards and
backwards, as up to now from the birth of Christ. It is the
high point of his life. He was co-dictator of Europe in partibus and
although the world knew nothing of him he was one of the most
dangerous men alive. No one stood behind him but his many
unpublished works, a few German artisans in Switzerland and a
dozen political speculators who had seen better days—but for that
very reason he could claim that all nations were on his side. For it
is the fate of all great men not to be recognised by their own age
whereas the future belongs to them for that very reason. And this
future—our Harro had it in black and white in his bag in the
form of the Charter of Brotherhood.


But now began Harro’s decline. His first sorrow was that
“Young Germany'” split off from Young Europe in 1836”. But
Germany was duly punished for that. For owing to this split
“nothing had been prepared for a national movement in Germany in
the spring of 1848” and this is why everything ended so miserably.

But a much greater sorrow for our Harro was the emergence of
communism. We learn from him that the founder of communism
was none other than


“the cynic Johannes Miller from Berlin, the author of a very interesting
pamphlet on Prussian policy, Altenburg 1831”, who went to England where “he
had no option but to tend swine in Smithfield Market at the crack of dawn”.


Communism soon began to spread among the German artisans
in France and Switzerland and it became a very dangerous enemy
for our Harro as it cut off the only market for his writings. This
was due to the “indirect communist censorship” from which
poor Harro has suffered to this very day and indeed is now
suffering more than ever, as he sadly confesses and “as the fate of
his drama Die Dynastie proves”.

This indirect communist censorship even succeeded in driving
our Harro from Europe and so he went to Rio de Janeiro (in
1840) where he lived for a time as a painter. “Using his time
conscientiously here as everywhere’, he published a new work:
“Poeste eines Scandinaven (2,000 copies) which has been distributed so widely


among sea-faring people that it has, as it were, become the favourite oceanic
reading matter”.


However, his “scrupulous sense of obligation towards Young
Europe” unfortunately caused him soon to return to Europe. He


“hastened to Mazzini in London and soon perceived the danger that threatened
the cause of the European peoples from communism”.


New deeds awaited him. The Bandiera brothers were preparing
for their expedition to Italy." To support them and to embroil the
forces of despotism in a diversion, Harro


“returned to South America to do everything possible with Garibaldi to further
the idea of the future of the nations by establishing a United States of South
America”.


But the despots had got wind of his mission and Harro took to
his heels. He sailed to New York.


“Out on the ocean I was very active intellectually and wrote among other
things a drama, Die Macht der Idee, which belonged to the dramatic cycle Das
Volk—this too has remained in manuscript up to now!”


From South America he brought with him to New York a
mandate alleging a connection with Humanidad.

The news of the February revolution inspired him to produce a
pamphlet in French, La France réveillée, and while embarking for
Europe,


“I documented my love for my country once again in some poems,
Scandinavia’ .


He arrived in Schleswig-Holstein. Here,


“after an absence of twenty-seven years”, he discovered ‘an unheard-of
confusion in the concepts of international law, democracy, republic, socialism and
communism, which lay like rotting hay and straw in the Augean stables of party
strife and national hatred”.


No wonder, for his


“political writings and” his “whole striving and activities since 1831 had
remained alien and unknown in those frontier provinces of my home country”.


The Augustenburg party” had suppressed him for eighteen
years by means of a conspiracy of silence. To deal with this he girt
on a sabre, a rifle, four pistols and six daggers and called for the
formation of a volunteer corps, but in vain. After various
adventures he finally landed in Hull. Here he hastened to issue
two circulars—to the people of Schleswig-Holstein, and to the
Scandinavians and Germans* and even sent a note, as has been
reported, to two Communists in London with this message:


“Fifteen thousand workers in Norway asked me to tell you that they extend the
hand of brotherhood to you.”


Despite this curious appeal he soon became a sleeping partner
of the European Central Committee again, thanks to the Charter
of Brotherhood, and he also became


“night watchman and employee of a young firm of brokers in Gravesend on the
Thames where my task was to drum up trade among ships’ captains in nine
different languages until I was required to practise deceit, a thing which the
philosopher Johannes Muller was at least spared in his capacity as swineherd”.


Harro summarised his action-packed life as follows:


“It can easily be calculated that apart from my poems I have given away more than
18,000 copies of my writings in German (their price in Hamburg varies from 10
shillings to 3. marks, and accordingly their value amounts to around 25,000 marks in
toto) to the democratic movement. I have never been reimbursed for the printing
costs, let alone received any profit for myself.”


* “Sendschreiben an die ‘Schleswig-Holsteiner’”, November 29, 1850, and
“Sendschreiben an die Skandinaven und an die Deutschen”, February 3, 1851.— Ed.


With this we bring the adventures of our demagogic Hidalgo from
the South Jutland Mancha to a close. In Greece and in Brazil, on the
Weichsel* and on La Plata, in Schleswig-Holstein and in New York,
in London and in Switzerland: at different times the representative
of Young Europe and of the South-American Humanidad, painter,
night watchman and employee, peddler of his own writings; among
Wasserpolacken one day and gauchos the next, and ships’ captains
the day after that; unacknowledged, abandoned, ignored but
everywhere an itinerant knight of freedom thoroughly despising
ordinary bourgeois work—our hero at all times in all countries and
in all circumstances remains himself: with the same confusion, the
same pretentious obtrusiveness, the same faith in himself,and in
spite of all the world he will never cease to say, write and print
that since 183] he has been the mainspring of world history.