Written from the end of October 
to the beginning of December 1852 

pamphlet: Enthüllungen über den Kom- 
munisten-Prozess zu Koln, Basel, 1853 

1875 edition checked with the 1853 
and 1885 editions 

Enthillungen 

uber den 

Kommuniflen-Prosek 

zu Koln. 

Dafel, 
Buddbruderet von Chr. Krifi. 
1853. 

Title-page o raarshpreaes iines of Marx’s work 
Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne 

399 

I 
PRELIMINARIES 

On May 10, 1851 Nothjung was arrested in Leipzig and Burgers, 
Roser, Daniels, Becker and the others were arrested shortly after. 
The arrested men appeared before the Court of Assizes in Cologne 
on October 4, 1852 ona charge of “treasonable conspiracy” against 
the Prussian state. Thus the preliminary detention (in solitary 
confinement) had lasted a year and a half. 

When Nothjung and Burgers were arrested the police discovered 
copies of the Manifesto of the Communist Party,* the “Rules of the 
Communist League” (a communist propaganda society), two Ad- 
dresses of the Central Authority of this League” as well as a number 
of addresses and other publications. A week after Nothjung’s arrest 
had become public knowledge there were house-searches and 
arrests in Cologne. So if there had still been something to discover it 
would certainly have disappeared by then. And in fact the haul 
yielded only a few irrelevant letters. A year and a half later when the 
accused finally appeared before the jury, the bona fide material in the 
possession of the prosecution had not been augmented by a single 
document. Nevertheless as we are assured by the Public Prosecutor’s 
office (represented by von Seckendorf and Saedt) all government 
departments of the Prussian state had undertaken the most 
strenuous and many-sided activity. What then had they been doing? 
Nous verrons! 

The unusually long period of pre-trial detention was explained in 
the most ingenious way. At first it was claimed that the Saxon 
government refused to extradite Burgers and Nothjung to Prussia. 

* See present edition, Vol. 6, pp. 477-519.— Ed. 
See present edition, Vol. 10, pp. 277-87, 371-77.— Ed. 

The court in Cologne appealed in vain to the ministry in Berlin, 
which appealed in vain to the authorities in Saxony. The Saxon 
authorities however relented. Burgers and Nothjung were handed 
over. By October 1851 enough progress had been made at last for 
the files to be presented to the indictment board of the Cologne 
Court of Appeal. The board ruled that “there was no factual 
evidence of an indictable offence and ... the investigation must 
therefore start again from the beginning”. Meanwhile the zeal of the 
courts had been kindled by a recently approved disciplinary law 
which enabled the Prussian government to dismiss any official of the 
judiciary who incurred its displeasure. Accordingly the case was 
dismissed on this occasion because there was no evidence of an 
indictable offence. At the following quarterly session of the assizes it 
had to be postponed because there was too much evidence. The mass 
of documents was said to be so huge that the prosecutor was unable 
to digest it. Gradually he did digest it, the bill of indictment was 
presented to the prisoners and the action was due to be heard on July 
28. But in the meantime the great driving wheel of the government’s 
case, Chief of Police Schulz, fell ill. The accused had to sit in gaol for 
another three months awaiting an improvement in Schulz’s health. 
Fortunately Schulz died, the public became impatient and the 
government had to ring up the curtain. 

Throughout this whole period the police authorities in Cologne, 
the police headquarters in Berlin and the Ministries of Justice and of 
the Interior had continually intervened in the investigations, just as 
Stieber, their worthy representative, was to intervene later on as 
witness in the public court proceedings in Cologne. The government 
succeeded in assembling a jury that is quite unprecedented in the 
annals of the Rhine Province. In addition to members of the upper 
bourgeoisie (Herstadt, Leiden, Joest), there were city patricians (von 
Bianca, vom Rath), country squires (Habling von Lanzenauer, 
Freiherr von Furstenberg, etc.), two Prussian government officials, 
one of them a royal chamberlain (von Minch-Bellinghausen) and 
finally a Prussian professor (Krausler). Thus in this jury every one of 
the ruling classes in Germany was represented and only these classes 
were represented. 

With this jury the Prussian government, it seems, could stop 
beating about the bush and make the case into a political trial pure 
and simple. The documents seized from Nothjung, Burgers and the 
others and admitted by them to be genuine did not indeed prove the 
existence of a plot; in fact they did not prove the existence of any 
action provided for in the Code pénal.™ But they showed conclusively 
the hostility of the accused to the existing government and the 

Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne 401 

existing social order. However what the intelligence of the legislators 
had failed to achieve might well be made good by the conscience of 
the jury. Was it not a stratagem of the accused that they should have 
conducted their hostile activities directed against the existing social 
order in such a way that they did not violate any article of the Code? 
Does a disease cease to be infectious because it is not listed in the 
Police Medical Register? If the Prussian government had restricted 
itself to using the material actually available to prove the harmfulness 
of the accused and if the jury had confined itself to rendering them 
harmless by its verdict of guilty, who could censure either 
government or jury? Who indeed but the foolish dreamer who 
imagines that a Prussian government and the ruling classes in Prussia 
are strong enough to give even their opponents a free rein as long as 
they confine themselves to discussion and propaganda. 

However the Prussian government had deprived itself of the 
opportunity of using this broad highway of political trials. Owing to 
the unusual delay in bringing the case before the court, the 
Ministry’s direct intervention in the proceedings, the mysterious 
hints about unheard-of horrors, the rodomontade about a conspira- 
cy ensnaring the whole of Europe and, finally, the signally brutal 
treatment of the prisoners, the trial was swollen into a proces monstre, 
the eyes of the European press were upon it and the curiosity and 
suspicions of the public were fully aroused. The Prussian govern- 
ment had put itself in a position in which for decency’s sake the 
prosecution was simply obliged to produce evidence and the jury to 
demand it. The jury itself had to face another jury, the jury of public 
opinion. 

To rectify its first blunder, the government was forced into a 
second one. The police, who had acted as examining magistrates 
during the preliminary investigation, had to appear as witnesses 
during the trial. By the side of the ordinary Public Prosecutor the 
government had to put an extraordinary one, beside the Public 
Prosecutor’s office the police, beside a Saedt and Seckendorf a 
Stieber together with his Wermuth, his griffin Greif and his little 
Goldheim.* It was inevitable that yet another government depart- 
ment should intervene in court and, by virtue of the miraculous 
powers of the police, should continuously supply the facts whose 
shadows the legal prosecution had pursued in vain. The court was so 
thoroughly aware of the position that with the most laudable 

* A play on the names of the three police agents: the word Wermuth means 
vermouth, wormwood and also bitterness; Greif— griffin, and Goldheimchen (diminu- 
tive of Goldheim)— golden cricket.— Ed. 

resignation the President, the judge and the prosecutor abandoned 
their functions to Stieber the Police Superintendent and the witness 
and continually disappeared behind him. Before we proceed to 
elucidate these revelations made by the police, revelations which 
form the basis of the “indictable offence” that the indictment board 
was unable to discover, one more preliminary observation remains to 
be made. 

It became evident from the papers seized from the accused, as well 
as from their own statements, that a German communist society had 
existed with a central authority originally based in London. On 
September 15, 1850, the Central Authority split. The majority—re- 
ferred to in the indictment* as the “Marx party’ — moved the seat of 
the Central Authority to Cologne. The minority, which was later 
expelled from the League by the group in Cologne, established itself 
as an independent central authority in London and founded a 
separate league *” in London and on the continent. The indictment 
refers to this minority and its supporters as the “Willich-Schapper 
party’. 

Saedt-Seckendorf claim that the split in the London Central 
Authority had its origin solely in personal disagreements. Long 
before Saedt-Seckendorf the “chivalrous Willich” had spread the 
most vicious rumours among the London émigrés about the causes 
of the split and had found in Herr Arnold Ruge, that fifth wheel on 
the state coach of European Central Democracy,” and in others of 
the same sort, people who were willing to act as channels leading to 
the German and American press. The democrats realised that they 
could gain an easy victory over the Communists by making the 
“chivalrous Willich” the impromptu representative of the Commun- 
ists. The “chivalrous Willich” for his part realised that the “Marx 
party” could not reveal the causes of the split without betraying the 
existence of a secret society in Germany and in particular exposing 
the Central Authority in Cologne to the paternal attention of the 
Prussian police. This situation no longer obtains and so we may cite a 
few passages from the minutes of the last session of the London 
Central Authority, dated September 15, 1850.” 

In support of his motion calling for separation, Marx said inter alia 
the following which is given here verbatim: 

“The point of view of the minority is dogmatic instead of critical, 
idealistic instead of materialistic. They regard not the real conditions 

* “K6niglicher Rheinischer Appellationsgerichtshof zu Kéln. Anklageschrift 
gegen 1) Peter Gerhard Roeser, 2) Johann Heinrich Georg Burgers, 3) Peter Noth- 
jung u.a.”— Ed. 

See present edition, Vol. 10, pp. 625-29.— Ed. 

Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne 403 

but a mere effort of willas the driving force of the revolution. Whereas 
we say to the workers: ‘You will have to go through 15, 20, 50 years 
of civil wars and national struggles not only to bring about a change 
in society but also to change yourselves, and prepare yourselves for 
the exercise of political power’, you say on the contrary: ‘Either we 
seize power at once, or else we might as well just take to our beds.’ 
Whereas we are at pains to show the German workers in particular 
how rudimentary the development of the German proletariat is, you 
appeal to the patriotic feelings and the class prejudice of the German 
artisans, flattering them in the grossest way possible, and this is a 
more popular method, of course. Just as the word ‘people has been 
given an aura of sanctity by the democrats, so you have done the 
same for the word ‘proletariat. Like the democrats you substitute the 
catchword of revolution for revolutionary development,” etc., etc. 
Herr Schapper’s verbatim reply was as follows: 

“TY have voiced the opinion attacked here because I am in general an enthusiast in 
this matter. The question at issue is whether we.ourselves chop off a few heads right at 
the start or whether it is our own heads that will fall.”” (Schapper even promised to lose 
his own head in a year, i.e. on September 15, 1851.) “In France the workers will come 
to power and thereby we in Germany too. Were this not the case I would indeed take 
to my bed; in that event I would be able to enjoy a different material position. If we 
come to power we can take such measures as are necessary to ensure the rule of the 
proletariat. I am a fanatical supporter of this view but the Central Authority favours 
the very opposite,” etc., etc. 

It is obvious that it was not for personal reasons that the Central 
Authority was divided. But it would be just as wrong to speak of a 
difference of principle. The Schapper-Willich party have never laid 
claim to the dignity of having their own ideas. Their own 
contribution is the peculiar misunderstanding of other people’s ideas 
which they set up as dogmas and, reducing these to a phrase, they 
imagine to have made them their own. It would be no less incorrect 
to agree with the prosecution in describing the Willich-Schapper 
party as the “party of action”, unless by action one understands 
indolence concealed behind beerhouse bluster, simulated con- 
spiracies and meaningless pseudo-alliances. 

II 
THE DIETZ ARCHIVE 

The document found in the possession of the accused, the 
Manifesto of the Communist Party, which had been printed before the 
February revolution and had been available from booksellers for 

some years, could neither in its form nor in its aims be the 
programme of a “plot”. The confiscated Addresses of the Central 
Authority were concerned exclusively with the relations of the 
Communists to the future democratic government and therefore not 
to the government of Frederick William IV. Lastly, the “Rules” were 
indeed the rules of a secret propaganda society, but the Code pénal 
prescribes no penalties for secret societies. The ultimate aim of this 
propaganda is said to be the destruction of existing society; but 
the Prussian state has already perished once and could perish ten 
times more and indeed for good and all without the existing social 
order being even the slightest bit harmed. The Communists can help 
accelerate the dissolution of bourgeois society and yet leave the 
dissolution of the Prussian state in the hands of bourgeois society. If 
a man whose immediate aim was the overthrow of the Prussian state 
were to preach the destruction of the social order as a means to this 
end he would be like that deranged engineer who wished to blow up 
the whole planet in order to remove a rubbish-heap. 

But if the final goal of the League is the overthrowing of the social 
order, the method by which this is to be achieved is necessarily that of 
political revolution and this entails the overthrow of the Prussian state, 
just as an earthquake entails the overthrow of a chicken-house. The 
accused, however, proceed in fact from the outrageous assumption 
that the present Prussian government would collapse without their 
having to lift a finger. They accordingly did not found a league to 
overturn the present government of Prussia, and were not guilty of 
any “treasonable conspiracy”. 

Has anyone ever accused the early Christians of aiming at the 
overthrow of some obscure Roman prefect? The Prussian political 
philosophers from Leibniz to Hegel have laboured to dethrone God, 
and if I dethrone God I also dethrone the king who reigns by the 
grace of God. But has anyone ever prosecuted them for lése-majesté 
against the house of Hohenzollern? 

From whatever angle one looked at it, when the corpus delicti was 
subjected to public scrutiny it vanished like a ghost. The complaint of 
the indictment board * that there was “no indictable offence” remained 
valid and the “Marx party” was spiteful enough to refrain from 
providing one single iota for the indictment during the whole year and a 
half of the preliminary investigation. 

Such an embarrassing situation had to be remedied. The 
Willich-Schapper party, in conjunction with the police, remedied it. 

* A pun in the original: Klage des Anklagesenats (Klage means complaint, accusation, 
indictment; Anklagesenat, indictment board).— Ed. 

Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne 405 

Let us see how Herr Stieber, the midwife of this party, introduces it 
into the trial in Cologne. (See Stieber’s testimony in the sitting of 
October 18, 1852.*) 

While Stieber was in London in the spring of 1851, allegedly to 
protect the visitors to the Great Exhibition””’ from pilferers and 
thieves,” the Berlin police headquarters sent him a copy of the papers 
found in Nothjung’s home. 

“In particular,” Stieber swore, “my attention was directed to the conspirators’ 
archive which according to papers found in Nothjung’s home were in the possession of a 
certain Oswald Dietz in London and which would undoubtedly contain the whole 
correspondence of the League’s members.” 

The conspirators’ archive? The whole correspondence of the 
League’s members? But Dietz was the secretary of the Willich- 
Schapper Central Authority. If the archive of a conspiracy was in his 
possession it was the archive of the Willich-Schapper conspiracy. If 
Dietz had correspondence belonging to the League it could only be 
the correspondence of the separate league that was hostile to the 
accused in Cologne. But even more became clear from the scrutiny 
of the documents found in Nothjung’s home, namely that nothing in 
them points to the fact of Oswald Dietz being the keeper of an 
archive. Moreover, how should Nothjung,who was in Leipzig, know 
what was not even known to the “Marx party” in London? 

Stieber could not say outright: Now note this, Gentlemen of the 
Jury! I have made amazing discoveries in London. Unfortunately 
they refer to a conspiracy with which the accused in Cologne have 
nothing to do and which it is not the task of the Cologne jury to 
judge, but which provided a pretext for keeping the accused in 
solitary confinement for one and a half years. Stieber could not say 
this. The intervention of Nothjung was indispensable to create even 
the semblance of a connection between the revelations and 
documents from London and the trial in Cologne. 

Stieber then swore on oath that a man offered to buy the archive 
for cash from Oswald Dietz. The plain fact is that a certain Reuter, a 
Prussian police spy who has never belonged to a communist society, 
lived in the same house as Dietz and, during the latter’s absence, 

* The testimony of witnesses such as Stieber and other evidence produced during 
the Cologne trial is quoted by Marx from the minutes of the trial published in the 
Kolnische Zeitung between October 5 and November 13, 1852, under the heading 
“Assisen-Procedur gegen D. Herm. Becker und Genossen. Anklage wegen hochver- 
ratherischen Complottes” .— Ed. 

Poking fun at Stieber, Marx forms the words “Stiebern” and “Diebern” 
evidently derived from Stieber—which literally means retriever—and Dieb— 
thief.— Ed. 

406 Karl! Marx 

broke into his desk and stole his papers. That Herr Stieber paid him 
for the theft is quite credible, but this would hardly have protected 
Stieber from a journey to Van Diemen’s Land  if the manoeuvre 
had become public knowledge while he was in London. 

On August 5, 1851, Stieber, who was in Berlin, received from 
London the Dietz archive, “in a bulky parcel wrapped in stout 
oil-cloth”, which turned out to be a heap of documents consisting of 
“60 separate items’. To this Stieber could swear, and at the same 
time he swore that the parcel he received on August 5, 1851 
contained also letters from the leading district in Berlin dated 
August 20, 1851. If someone were to assert that Stieber was 
perjuring himself when he claimed that he received on August 5, 
1851 letters dated August 20, 1851, Stieber would justly retort that a 
royal Prussian counsellor, like the Evangelist Matthew, has the right 
to perform chronological miracles. 

En passant. From the list of documents stolen from the Willich- 
Schapper party and from the dates of these documents it follows that 
although the party had been warned by Reuter’s burglary, it still 
constantly found ways and means of having its documents stolen and 
allowing them to fall into the hands of the Prussian police. 

When Stieber found himself in possession of the treasure 
wrapped in stout oil-cloth he was beside himself with joy. “The 
whole network,” he swore, “lay revealed before my eyes.” And 
what did the treasure-trove contain about the “Marx party” and 
the accused in Cologne? According to Stieber’s own testimony, 
nothing at all except for 
“the original of a declaration by several members of the Central Authority, who 
obviously formed the nucleus of the ‘Marx party’; it was dated London, September 17, 

1850, and concerned their resignation from the communist society consequent on the 
well-known breach of September 15, 1850”. 

Stieber says so himself but even in this simple statement he is 
unable simply to confine himself to the facts. He is compelled to 
raise them to a higher plane in order to make them truly worthy 
of the police. For the original declaration* contained nothing more 
than a statement of three lines to the effect that the majority- 
members of the former Central Authority and their friends were 
resigning from the public Workers’ Society of Great Windmill 
Street”; but they did not resign from a “communist society’. 

Stieber could have spared his correspondents the oil-cloth and 
his authorities the postal dues. He had only to.rummage” through 

* See present edition, Vol. 10, p. 483.— Ed. 
Here Marx plays on the name Stieber and the verb durchstiebern, which means 
rummage, scan, search.— Ed. 

Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne 407 

the various German papers of September 1850 and he would have 
found in black and white the declaration of the “nucleus of the 
Marx party” announcing their resignation from the Refugee 
Committee?” and also from the Workers’ Society of Great 
Windmill Street. 

The immediate product of Stieber’s researches was then the 
amazing discovery that the “nucleus of the Marx party” had 
resigned from the public Society of Great Windmill Street on 
September 17, 1850. ““The whole network of the Cologne plot lay 
revealed before his eyes.” But the public couldn’t believe their 
eyes.” 

III 
THE CHERVAL PLOT 

Stieber, however, was able to make the most of his stolen 
treasure-trove. The papers that had come into his possession on 
August 5, 1851, led to the discovery of the so-called ‘Franco- 
German plot in Paris”.?”' They contained six reports sent from 
Paris by Adolph Mayer, an emissary of Willich-Schapper, as well as 
five reports from the leading district in Paris to the Willich- 
Schapper Central Authority. (Stieber’s testimony in the sitting of 
October 18.) Stieber then went on a diplomatic pleasure trip to 
Paris and there he made the personal acquaintance of the great 
Carlier who in the recent notorious affair of the Gold Bullion 
Lottery’ had just delivered proof that though a great enemy of 
the Communists, he was an even greater friend of other people’s 
private property. 

“Accordingly I went to Paris in September 1851. Carlier, the Prefect of Police 
there at the time, was most eager and ready to lend me his support.... With the aid 
of French police agents the threads laid bare in the London letters were speedily 
and surely traced; we were able to track down the addresses of the various leaders 
of the conspiracy and to keep all their movements, and especially all their meetings 
and correspondence, under observation. Some very sinister things came to light.... I 

was compelled to yield to Prefect Carlier’s demands and measures were taken during 
the night of September 4, 1851.” (Stieber’s testimony of October 18.) 

Stieber left Berlin in September. Let us assume it was Septem- 
ber 1. At best he could have arrived in Paris on the evening of the 

* In the German the last sentence has a dual meaning, either “The public, 
however, couldn’t believe his [i.e. Stieber’s] eyes” or “The public, however, couldn’t 
believe their eyes” .— Ed. 

b ; 

See this volume, pp. 156-57.— Ed. 

2nd. On the night of the 4th measures were taken. Thirty-six 
hours remain then for the conference with Carlier and for the 
necessary steps to be taken. In these thirty-six hours not only were 
the addresses of the various leaders “tracked down”; but all their 
movements, all their meetings and all their correspondence were 
“kept under observation”, that is of course after their “addresses 
had been tracked down”. Stieber’s arrival not only inspires the 
“French police agents” with a miraculous “speed and sureness”’, it 
also makes the conspiratorial leaders “eager and ready” to 
perpetrate so many movements, meetings and so much correspon- 
dence within twenty-four hours that already the following evening 
measures can be taken against them. 

But it is not enough that on September 3 the addresses of the 
individual leaders should have been traced and all their move- 
ments, meetings and correspondence put under observation: 

“French police agents,” Stieber swears, “found an opportunity to be present at 
the meetings of the conspirators and to hear their decisions about the plan of 
campaign for the next revolution.” 

No sooner have the police agents observed the meetings than 
the observation gives them an opportunity to be present, and no 
sooner have they been present at one meeting than it becomes 
several meetings, and no sooner has it become several meetings 
than decisions are adopted about the plan of campaign during the 
next revolution—and all this on the same day. On that very same 
day when Stieber first meets Carlier, Carlier’s police discover the 
addresses of the various leaders, the various leaders meet Carlier’s 
police, invite them to their meetings that very day, hold a whole 
series of meetings on the same day for their benefit and cannot 
part from them without hastily adopting decisions on the plan of 
campaign for the next revolution. 

However eager and ready Carlier might be—and no one will 
doubt his readiness to uncover a communist plot three months 
before the coup d’état—Stieber ascribes more to him than he 
could achieve. Stieber asks miracles of the police; he does not 
merely ask for them, he believes them; he does not merely believe 
them, he swears to them on oath.* 

“At the beginning of this venture, i.e. the taking of measures, first of all a 
French police inspector and I personally arrested the dangerous Cherval, the 

ringleader of the French Communists. He resisted vigorously and a stubborn 
struggle ensued.” 

7A pun: Marx has er beschwort sie, which can mean “he swears to them on oath” or 
“he invokes, or entreats, them” .—— Ed. 

Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne 409 

Thus Stieber’s testimony of October 18. 

“Cherval made an attempt on my life in Paris, in my own home where he had 
broken in during the night. In the course of the ensuing struggle my wife, who 
came to my aid, was wounded.” 

Thus Stieber’s further testimony of October 27. 

On the night of the 4th, Stieber intervenes at Cherval’s dwelling 
and it comes to fisticuffs in which Cherval resists. On the night of 
the 3rd, Cherval intervenes at Stieber’s dwelling and it comes to 
fisticuffs in which Stieber resists. But it was precisely on the 3rd 
that a veritable entente cordiale obtained between conspirators and 
police agents as a result of which so many great deeds were 
performed in one day. It is now alleged that not only the 
conspirators were found out by Stieber on the 3rd, but Stieber too 
was found out on the 3rd by the conspirators. While Carlier’s 
agents discovered the addresses of the conspirators, the con- 
spirators discovered Stieber’s address. While he played the role of 
an “observer” towards them, they pursued an active role towards 
him. While he was dreaming about their plot against the 
government, they were engaged in an assault on his person. 

Stieber’s testimony of October 18 continues: 

“In the course of the struggle” (this is Stieber on the attack) “I observed that 
Cherval was endeavouring to put a piece of paper into his mouth and swallow it. 
Only with great difficulty was it possible to retrieve one half of the paper, the other 
half being already devoured.” 

So the paper was situated in Cherval’s mouth, between his teeth 
in fact, for only one half was retrieved, the other half having 
already been devoured. Stieber and his henchman, a _ police 
inspector or whoever, could only retrieve the other half by placing 
their hands in the jaws of the “dangerous Cherval”. Against such 
an onslaught biting was the most obvious method of defence that 
Cherval could adopt, and the Paris papers actually reported that 
Cherval had bitten Frau Stieber; in that scene however Stieber was 
assisted not by his wife but by the police inspector. On the other 
hand, Stieber declares that when Cherval assaulted him in his own 
home, it was Frau Stieber who had been wounded while coming to 
his aid. If one compares Stieber’s statements with the reports of 
the Paris papers it would appear that on the night of the 3rd 
Cherval bit Frau Stieber in an attempt to save the papers that 
Herr Stieber tore from between his teeth on the night of the 4th. 
Stieber will retort that Paris is a city of miracles and that long 
before him La Rochefoucauld had said that in France everything 
is possible.?” 

Putting the belief in miracles to one side for a moment it seems 
that the first miracles arose because Stieber compressed into one 
day, September 3, a whole series of events that were in reality 
spread over a long period of time, while the latter miracles arose 
when he claimed of different events that happened in one place 
and on one evening that they occurred in two places on two 
eyenings. Let us confront his tale from A Thousand and One Nights 
with the actual facts. But first one very strange fact, though by no 
means a miracle.* Stieber tore from Cherval one half of the paper 
that had been swallowed. What was in the retrieved half? The 
whole that Stieber wanted. 

“This paper,” he swears, “contained a vital instruction for Gipperich, the 
emissary in Strasbourg, together with his complete address.” 

Now for the facts of the matter. 

We know from Stieber that he received the Dietz archive in a 
stout oil-cloth wrapping on August 5, 1851. On August 8 or 9, 
1851, a certain Schmidt arrived in Paris. Schmidt, it seems, is the 
name inevitably assumed by Prussian police agents travelling 
incognito. In 1845-46 Stieber travelled through the Silesian 
Mountains under the name of Schmidt. Fleury, his London agent, 
went as Schmidt to Paris in 1851. Here he searched for the 
various leaders of the Willich-Schapper conspiracy and lit upon 
Cherval. He pretended that he had fled from Cologne rescuing 
the League’s cash-box with 500 talers. He produced credentials 
from Dresden and various other places and spoke about reorganis- 
ing the League, uniting the different parties, as the schisms were 
caused solely by personal disagreements (the police preached unity 
and union even then), and promised to use the 500 talers to inject 
fresh life into the League. Schmidt gradually made the acquain- 
tance of various leaders of the Willich-Schapper communities in 
Paris. He not only learned their addresses, but visited them, 
watched their post, observed their movements, found his way into 
their meetings and, as an agent provocateur, egged them on. 
Cherval in particular became more boastful than ever as Schmidt 
lavished more and more admiration on him, hailing him as the 
League’s great unknown, as the “Great Chief” who was only 
unaware of his own importance,a fate that had befallen many a 
great man. One evening when Schmidt went with Cherval to a 
meeting of the League, the latter read out his famous letter to 

* Here Marx plays on the words verwunderlich—strange, surprising, amazing, and 
Wunder— wonder, miracle.— Ed. 

Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne 411 

Gipperich before sending it off. In this way Schmidt learned of 
Gipperich’s existence. “As soon as Gipperich returns to Stras- 
bourg,” Schmidt observed, “we can give him an order for the 500 
talers lying in Strasbourg. Here is the address of the man who is 
holding the money. Give me in exchange Gipperich’s address to 
send it as a credential to the man to whom Gipperich will present 
himself.” In this way Schmidt obtained Gipperich’s address. On 
the same evening a quarter of an hour after Cherval posted the 
letter to Gipperich, a message was sent by electric telegraph and 
Gipperich was arrested, his house was searched and the famous 
letter was intercepted. Gipperich was arrested before Cherval. 
Some little while after this Schmidt informed Cherval that a 
man called Stieber who was a member of the Prussian police had 
arrived in Paris. He had not only learned his address but had also 
heard from a waiter in a café opposite that Stieber had conferred 
about having him (Schmidt) arrested. Cherval was the man who 
could give this wretched Prussian policeman a lesson he would not 
easily forget. “We'll throw him in the Seine” was Cherval’s answer. 
They agreed to gain entry into Stieber’s house the next day under 
some pretext or other in order to confirm that he was there and 
to make a mental note of his personal appearance. The next 
evening our heroes really set out on their expedition. As they 
approached their goal Schmidt expressed the opinion that it would 
be better if Cherval were to enter the house while he patrolled in 
front of it. “Just ask the porter for Stieber,” he went on, “and 
when Stieber lets you in tell him that you want to speak to Herr 
Sperling and ask him whether he has brought the expected bill of 
exchange from Cologne. Oh, and one thing more. Your white hat 
is too conspicuous, it is too democratic. There, take my black one.” 
They exchanged hats, Schmidt prepared to stand guard, Cherval 
pulled the bell-rope and found himself in Stieber’s house. The 
porter doubted whether Stieber was at home and Cherval was 
about to withdraw when a woman’s voice called from upstairs: 
“Yes, Stieber is at home.”’ Cherval followed the voice and the trail 
led to an individual wearing green spectacles who identified 
himself as Stieber. Cherval then produced the formula agreed on 
about Sperling and the bill of exchange. “That won’t do,” Stieber 
interrupted him quickly. “You come into my house, ask for me, 
are shown up, then you try to withdraw, etc. I find that ts 
extremely suspicious.” Cherval answered brusquely. Stieber pulled 
the bell, several men appeared immediately, they surrounded 
Cherval, Stieber reached for his coat pocket from where a letter 
was visible. It did not in fact contain Cherval’s instructions to 

Gipperich, but it was a letter from Gipperich to Cherval. Cherval 
tried to eat the letter, Stieber attempted to take it from his mouth, 
Cherval hit out and bit and lashed out. Husband Stieber tried to 
save one half, wife Stieber the other half and an injury was all the 
reward she had for her zeal. The noise of the scene brought all 
the other tenants from their apartments. Meanwhile one of 
Stieber’s types had thrown a gold watch downstairs and while 
Cherval was shouting: “Spy!’’ Stieber and Co. screamed: “Stop 
thief!” The porter recovered the gold watch and the cry of “Stop 
thief!” became general. Cherval was arrested and on his way out 
he was met at the door not by his friend Schmidt but by four or 
five soldiers. 

When confronted with the facts, all the miracles invoked* by 
Stieber disappear. His agent Fleury had been at work for over 
three weeks, he not only laid bare the threads of the plot, he also 
helped to weave them. Stieber had only to arrive from Berlin and 
he could exclaim: Veni, vidi, vici!” He could present Carlier with a 
ready-made plot and Carlier needed only to be “willing” to 
intervene. There was no need for Frau Stieber to be bitten by 
Cherval on the 3rd because Herr Stieber put his hand into 
Cherval’s mouth on the 4th. There was no need for Gipperich’s 
address and the appropriate instructions to be salvaged whole 
from the jaws of the “dangerous Cherval”, like Jonah from the 
whale’s belly, after they have been half eaten. The only miracle 
that remains is the miraculous faith of the jurymen to whom 
Stieber dares to serve up seriously such fairy tales. Genuine 
representatives of the obtuse thinking of loyal subjects! °” 

“In prison, after I had shown Cherval to his great astonishment,” Stieber swears 
(in the sitting of October 18), “all his original reports which he had sent to 
London, he realised that I knew all and made a frank confession to me.” 

The papers that Stieber showed Cherval at first were by no 
means his original reports to London. Only afterwards were these 
together with other documents from the Dietz archive sent to 
Stieber from Berlin. He first showed Cherval a circular signed by 
Oswald Dietz that Cherval had just received and a few of the most 
recent letters from Willich. How did Stieber get possession of 
these? While Cherval was occupied biting and fighting Herr and 
Frau Stieber the valiant Schmidt-Fleury hurried to Mme Cherval, 

* A pun: beschworenen can mean both “invoked” and “sworn to”.— Ed. 

> “I came, I saw, I conquered” thus, according to Plutarch, Caesar announced his 
victory at Zela, on August 2, 47 B.C. over Pharnaces II, King of Bosporus.— Ed. 

© Jonah 2:10.— Ed. 

Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne 413 

an Englishwoman (Fleury being a German businessman in London 
naturally speaks English) and told her that her husband had been 
arrested, that the danger was great, that she should hand over his 
papers so that he might be compromised no further, and that 
Cherval had instructed him to give them to a third person. As 
proof that he came as a genuine emissary he showed her the white 
hat he had taken from Cherval because it looked too democratic. 
Thus Fleury obtained the letters from Mme Cherval and Stieber 
obtained them from Fleury. 

At any rate he now had a more favourable base from which to 
operate than previously in London. He could simply steal the 
Dietz archive, but he could concoct Cherval’s evidence. According- 
ly (in the sitting on October 18) he makes his Cherval expatiate 
about ‘‘contacts in Germany” as follows: 

“He had lived in the Rhineland for a considerable time and more particularly 
he had been in Cologne in 1848. There he made the acquaintance of Marx and the 
latter admitted him to the League, which he then zealously propagated in Paris on 
the basis of elements already existing there.” 

In 1846 Cherval was nominated and admitted to the League in 
London by Schapper at a time when Marx was in Brussels and was 
himself not yet a member of the League.” So Cherval could not 
be admitted to the same League by Marx in Cologne in 1848. 

On the outbreak of the March revolution Cherval went to 
Rhenish Prussia for a few weeks but from there returned to 
London where he remained without interruption from the end of 
spring 1848 until the summer of 1850. He cannot therefore at the 
same time “have zealously propagated the League in Paris” unless 
Stieber, who performs chronological miracles, also finds spatial 
miracles within his powers and can even confer the quality of 
ubiquity on third persons. 

Only after his expulsion from Paris did Marx come to know 
Cherval superficially along with a hundred other workers when he 
joined the Workers’ Society in Great Windmill Street in London in 
September 1849. So he cannot have met him in Cologne 
in 1848. 

At first Cherval told Stieber the truth on all these points. Sueber 
tried to compel him to make false statements. Did he succeed? We 
have only Stieber’s testimony that he did, and that is a 
shortcoming. Stieber’s prime concern was, of course, to establish a 
fictitious connection between Cherval and Marx so as to establish 
an artificial connection between the accused in Cologne and the 
Paris plot. 

Whenever Stieber is required to go into details about the 
connections and correspondence of Cherval and his colleagues 
with Germany, he takes good care not even to mention Cologne 
and instead speaks complacently and at length of Heck in 
Brunswick, Laube in Berlin, Reininger in Mainz, Tietz in 
Hamburg, etc., etc., in short of the Willich-Schapper party. This 
party, says Stieber, had “the League’s archive in_ its 
hands”.—Through a misunderstanding it changed from their 
hands to his. In the archive he found not one single line written by 
Cherval to anyone in London, let alone to Marx in person, before 
September 15, 1850, before the split of the London Central 
Authority. 

With the help of Schmidt-Fleury he swindled Frau Cherval out 
of her husband’s papers. But again, he could not find a single line 
written by Marx to Cherval. To remedy this awkward state of 
affairs he makes Cherval write in his statement that 

“he had _ fallen out with Marx because the latter had demanded that 
correspondence should still be sent to him even though the Central Authority was 
now situated in Cologne.” 

If Stieber found no Marx-Cherval correspondence before Sep- 
tember 15, 1850, this must be due to the fact that Cherval ceased 
all correspondence with Marx after September 15, 1850. Pends-toz, 
Figaro, tu n’aurais pas inventé cela!? 

The documents against the accused that had been laboriously 
brought together by the Prussian government and, in part, by 
Stieber himself during the year and a half that the investigation 
lasted refuted every suggestion of a connection between the 
accused and the Paris community or the Franco-German plot. 

The Address from the London Central Authority of June 1850 
proved that the Paris community was dissolved even before the 
split in the Central Authority. Six letters from the Dietz archive 
showed that after the Central Authority was transferred to 
Cologne the Paris communities were set up afresh by A. Majer, an 
emissary of the Willich-Schapper party. The letters of the leading 
district in Paris that were found in the archive proved that it was 
decidedly hostile towards the Cologne Central Authority. Finally, 
the French bill of indictment” proved that all the acts Cherval and 
his associates were accused of did not occur until the year 1851. In 

* Hang yourself, Figaro, that’s a thing you wouldn’t have invented (Beaumarchais, 
La folle journée, ou le mariage de Figaro, Act V, Scene 8—paraphrased).— Ed. 

> A resumé of it was published in Le Moniteur universel, No. 58, February 27, 
1852.— Ed. 

Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne 415 

the sitting of November 8 Saedt, despite the Stieberian revelations, 
found himself therefore reduced to the bare supposition that it 
was surely not impossible that the Marx party had at some time 
somehow been involved in some plot or other in Paris but that 
nothing was known of this plot or the time when it took place 
other than the fact that Saedt, acting on official instructions, 
deemed it possible. How dull-witted the German press must be to 
go on inventing stories of Saedt’s incisive intelligence! 

De longue main the Prussian police had sought to persuade the 
public that Marx and, through Marx, the accused in Cologne were 
involved in the Franco-German plot. During the Cherval trial 
Beckmann, the police spy, sent the following notice from Paris to 
the Kolnische Zeitung on February 25, 1852: 

“Several of the accused have fled, among them a certain A. Majer, who is 
described as an agent of Marx and Co.” 

Whereupon the Kolnische Zeitung printed a statement by Marx that 
“A. Majer is one of the most intimate friends of Herr Schapper 
and the former Prussian lieutenant Willich, and that he is a complete 
stranger to Marx”’.” Then, in his testimony of October 18, 1852, 
Stieber himself admitted: 

“The members of the Central Authority expelled by the Marx party in London 
on September 15, 1850, sent A. Majer to France, etc.” 

and he even divulged the contents of the correspondence between 
A. Majer and Willich-Schapper. 

In September 1851 during the police campaign against aliens in 
Paris a member of the “Marx party”, Konrad Schramm, was 
arrested, together with 50 or 60 other people sitting in a café, and 
was detained for almost two months on the charge of being 
implicated in the plot instigated by the Irishman Cherval. On 
October 16 while still in the depot of the Prefecture of Police he 
received a visit from a German who addressed him as follows: 

“I am a Prussian official. You are aware that all over Germany and especially in 
Cologne there have been many arrests following the discovery of a communist 
society. The mere mention of a person’s name in a letter is enough to bring about 
his arrest. The government is somewhat embarrassed by the large number of 
prisoners of whom it is uncertain whether or not they are really implicated. We 
know that you had no part in the complot franco-allemand but on the other hand you are 
very closely acquainted with Marx and Engels and are doubtless very well informed about all 
the details of the German communist connections. We would be greatly indebted to you 
if you could help us in this respect and give us more detailed information as to 

* For a long time.— Ed. 
See this volume, p. 223.— Ed. 

who is guilty and who innocent. In this way you could bring about the release of a 
large number of people. If you wish we can draw up an official document about 
your statement. You will have nothing to fear from such a statement,” etc., etc. 

Schramm naturally showed this gentle Prussian official the door, 
protested to the French Ministry about such visits and was 
expelled from France at the end of October. . 

That Schramm was a member of the “Marx party” was known 
to the Prussian police from the official resignation found in the 
Dietz archive. That the “Marx party” had no connection with the 
Cherval plot, they themselves admitted to Schramm. If it was 
possible to establish a connection between the “Marx party” and 
the Cherval plot this could not be done in Cologne but only in 
Paris where a member of that party sat in gaol at the same time as 
Cherval. But the Prussian government feared nothing more than a 
confrontation of Cherval and Schramm, which was bound to 
nullify in advance the successful outcome they expected from the 
Paris trial with regard to the accused in Cologne. By his acquittal 
of Schramm the French examining magistrate ruled that the trial 
in Cologne was in no way connected with the Paris plot. 

Stieber then made a last attempt: 

“With reference to the above-mentioned leader of the French Communists, 
Cherval, we endeavoured, for a long time in vain, to discover Cherval’s true 
identity. It finally became clear from a remark made in confidence to a police 
agent by Marx that he had escaped from gaol in Aachen in 1845, where he was 
serving a sentence for forgery of bills, that he was then granted admittance to the 
League by Marx during the troubles of 1848 and that he went as an emissary from 
there to Paris.” 

Just as Marx was unable to inform Stieber’s spiritus familiaris,’ 
the police agent, that he had admitted Cherval into the League in 
Cologne in 1848, for Schapper had admitted him into the League 
in London as early as 1846, or that he had induced him to live in 
London and at the same time to hawk propaganda around in 
Paris, so too, he was unable to inform Stieber’s alter ego, the police 
agent as such, that Cherval served a sentence in Aachen in 1845 
and that he had forged bills, facts that he learnt only from 
Stieber’s testimony. Only a Stieber can allow himself such a hysteron 
proteron.” Antiquity has bequeathed to us its dying warrior?”; the 
Prussian state will leave us its swearing Stieber. 

Thus for a long, long time they had vainly endeavoured to 

* Familiar spirit—a supernatural being which serves an individual.— Ed. 
> Inversion of the natural order, figure of speech in which what should come last 
(hysteron) is put first (proteron).— Ed. 

Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne 417 

discover Cherval’s true identity. On the evening of September 2 
Stieber arrived in Paris. On the evening of the 4th Cherval was 
arrested, on the evening of the 5th he was taken from his cell toa 
dimly lit room. Stieber was there but in addition there was also a 
French police official present, an Alsatian who spoke broken 
German but understood it perfectly, had a policeman’s memory 
and was not favourably impressed by the arrogantly servile Police 
Superintendent from Berlin. In the presence of this French 
official the following conversation took place: 

Stieber in German: “Now look here, Herr Cherval, we know what’s at the 
bottom of this business with the French name and the Irish passport. We know 
who you are, you are a Rhenish Prussian. Your name is K. and it is entirely in your 
own hands to escape the consequences by making a full confession,” etc., etc. 

Cherval denied this. 

Stieber: “Certain people who forged bills and escaped from Prussian gaols were 
extradited to Prussia by the French authorities. So I would again urge you to think 
carefully; the penalty is twelve years solitary confinement.” 

The French police official: ““We must give the man time to think it over in his 
cell.” 

Cherval was led back to his cell. 

Naturally enough Stieber could not afford to blurt out the truth, 
he could not admit publicly that he was trying to force false 
admissions from Cherval by conjuring up the spectre of extradi- 
tion and twelve years solitary imprisonment. 

And even now Stieber had still not been able to discover 
Cherval’s true identity. He still referred to him in front of the 
jury as Cherval and not as K. And that was not all. He did not 
know where Cherval really was. In the sitting of October 23 he 
had him still locked up in Paris. When in the sitting on October 27 
Schneider II, counsel for the defence, pressed him to say 
“whether the afore-mentioned Cherval was at present in Lon- 
don?” Stieber answered that “he could not give any precise 
information on this point; and could only inform them of the 
rumour that Cherval had escaped in Paris”. 

The Prussian government suffered its customary fate of being 
duped. The French government had allowed it to pull the 
chestnuts of the Franco-German plot out of the fire but not to eat 
them. Cherval had managed to gain the sympathy of the French 
government and a few days after the Paris Assizes it let him and 
Gipperich flee to London. The Prussian government had hoped 
that in Cherval it would have a tool for the trial in Cologne, 
whereas in fact it only provided the French government with yet 
another agent.” 

One day before Cherval’s pretended flight he received a visit 

418 Kar] Marx 

from a Prussian faquin* dressed in a black tail-coat and cuffs, with 
a bristling black moustache, and sparse grey hair cut short, in a 
word, a very pretty fellow who, he was told later, was Police 
Lieutenant Greif and who indeed afterwards introduced himself as 
Greif. Greif had obtained access to him by means of an entrance 
ticket he had obtained (having by-passed the prefect of police) 
directly from the Minister of Police. The Minister of Police 
thought it great fun to deceive the dear Prussians. 

Greif: “I am a Prussian official. I have been sent here to negotiate with you. 
You will never get out of here without our aid. I have a proposal to make to you. 
We need you as a witness in Cologne. If you submit a request to the French 
government to hand you over to Prussia they have agreed to grant permission. 
After you have fulfilled your obligations and the case is over we shall release you 
on your word of honour.” 

Cherval: “I'll get out without your help.” 

Greif (emphatically): ““That is impossible!” 

Greif also had Gipperich brought to him and proposed that he 
should spend five days in Hanover as a communist emissary. 
Likewise without success. The next day Cherval and Gipperich 
escaped. The French authorities smirked, the telegraph brought 
the bad news to Berlin and as late as October 23 Stieber swore in 
court that Cherval was locked up in Paris, and as late as October 
27 he could not give any information and had merely heard the 
rumour that Cherval had escaped “in Paris’. Meanwhile, Police 
Lieutenant Greif had visited Cherval in London three times 
during the Cologne proceedings in order to discover, among other 
things, Nette’s address in Paris in the belief that he could be bribed 
to testify against the defendants in Cologne. This plan misfired. 

Stieber had his reasons for casting a veil of obscurity over his 
relations with Cherval. K. therefore remained Cherval, the 
Prussian remained Irish and Stieber does not know to this day 
where Cherval is and what is “his true identity” * 

* Even in the Black Book’’ Stieber still does not know who Cherval really is. It is 

written there, Part II, p. 38, under No. 111, Cherval: see Cramer; and under No. 116 
Cramer: “as stated in No. 111, he has been very active in the Communist League under 
the name of Cherval. In the League he is also known as Frank. Under the name of 
Cherval he was sentenced to 8 years imprisonment by the Paris Assizes in February 
1853” (this should read 1852) “but he soon escaped and fled to London.” So ignorant 
is Stieber in Part II where he provides an alphabetical, numbered list of suspects with 
their particulars. He has already forgotten that in Part I, p. 81 he has let slip the 
admission: “Cherval is the son of a Rhenish official called Joseph Kramer who” (who? 
the father or the son?) ‘abused his craft of lithography to forge bills, and was arrested 
for this but escaped from prison in Cologne” (false, it was Aachen!) “in 1844 and fled 

* Scoundrel.— Ed. 

Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne 419 

In Cherval’s correspondence with Gipperich the trifolium Se- 

ckendorf-Saedt-Stieber had at last found what it was looking for: 
Schinderhannes*, Karlo Moor 
Whom I took as model sure. 

In order that Cherval’s letter to Gipperich might be deeply 
engraved upon the lethargic cerebral matter of the 300 top 
tax-payers whom the jury represented, it received the honour of 
being read aloud three times. Behind this harmless gipsy pathos 
no experienced person could fail to see the figure of the buffoon 
who tries to appear terrifying both to himself and others. 

Cherval & Co., moreover, shared the general expectation of the 
democrats that the second [Sunday] of May 1852?’ would work 
miracles and so they decided to join the revolution on that day. 
Schmidt-Fleury had helped to bestow upon this fixed idea the 
form of a plan and so the activities of Cherval and Co. now came 
within the legal definition of a plot. Thus through them proof was 
provided that the plot that had not been perpetrated by the 
accused in Cologne against the Prussian government had at any 
rate been perpetrated by the Cherval party against France. 

With the help of Schmidt-Fleury the Prussian government had 
sought to fabricate the semblance of a connection between the plot 
in Paris and the accused in Cologne, a connection to the reality of 
which Stieber then swore on oath. This trinity of Stieber, Greif, 
Fleury played the chief role in the Cherval plot. We shall see them 
at work again. 

Let us then sum up: 

A is a republican, B also calls himself a republican. A and B are 
enemies. B is commissioned by the police to construct an infernal 
machine. Whereupon A is dragged before the courts. If B rather 
than A has built the machine this is due to the enmity between A 
and B. In order to find proof of A’s guilt B is called as a witness 
against him. This was the comedy of the Cherval plot. 

It will be readily understood that as far as the general public 
was concerned the logic of this was a flop. Stieber’s “factual” 
revelations dissolved amidst malodorous vapours; the complaint of 
the indictment board that “there was no factual evidence of an 
indictable offence” was as valid as ever. New police miracles had 
become necessary. 
to England and later to Paris.” —Compare this with Stieber’s evidence before the jury 

quoted above. The plain fact is that the police are absolutely incapable of telling the 
truth. [Note by Engels to the edition of 1885.] 

* Jack the Skinner, a name given to Johann Biickler, a German robber.— Ed. 
> Heinrich Heine, “Ich kam von meiner Herrin Haus” (Buch der Lieder).— Ed. 

IV 
THE ORIGINAL MINUTE-BOOK 

During the sitting on October 23, the Presiding Judge* 
announced: “Police Superintendent Stieber has indicated to me 
that he has to make important new depositions” and for that 
purpose he called this witness back into the box. Up jumped 
Stieber and the performance began. 

Hitherto Stieber had described the activities of the Willich- 
Schapper party, or more briefly, the Cherval party, activities that 
took place both before and after the arrest of the accused in 
Cologne. He said nothing about the accused themselves either 
before or after their arrest. The Cherval plot took place after their 
arrest and Stieber now declared: 

“In my earlier testimony I described the development of the Communist 
League and the activities of its members only up to the tume when the men now 
accused were arrested.” 

Thus he admitted that the Cherval plot had nothing to do with 
“the development of the Communist League and the activities of 
its members”. He confessed to the nullity of his previous 
testimony. Indeed, he was so complacent about his statements on 
October 18 that he regarded it as quite superfluous to continue to 
identify Cherval with the “Marx party”. 

“Firstly,” he said, “the Willich group still exists and of its members hitherto 
only Cherval in Paris has been seized, etc.” 

Aha! So the ringleader Cherval is a leader of the Willich group. 

But now Stieber wished to make some most important announce- 
ments, not merely the very latest announcements that is, but the 
most important ones. The very latest and most important ones! 
These most important announcements would lose some of their 
significance if the insignificance of his earlier announcements were 
not emphasised. Up to now, Stieber declared, I have not really 
said anything, but now the time has come. Pay attention! Hitherto 
I have talked about the Cherval party, which is hostile to the 
accused, and strictly speaking, none of that has been in place here. 
But now I shall discuss the ‘Marx party’, and this trial is 
concerned exclusively with the Marx party. But Stieber could not put 
the matter as plainly as this. So he says: 

“Up to now I have described the Communist League before the arrest of the 
accused; I shall now describe the League after their arrest.” 

* G6bel.— Ed. 

Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne 42} 

With characteristic virtuosity he manages to convert even mere 
rhetorical phrases into perjury. 

After the arrest of the accused in Cologne Marx formed a new 
central authority. 

“This emerges from the statement of a police agent whom the late Chief of 
Police Schulz had managed to smuggle unrecognised into the London League and 
into the immediate proximity of Marx.” 

The new central authority kept a minute-book and this, the 
“original minute-book”’, was now in Stieber’s possession. Horrifying 
machinations in the Rhine provinces, in Cologne and even in the 
courtroom itself, all this is proved by the original minute-book. It 
contains proof that the accused had maintained an uninterrupted 
correspondence with Marx through the very walls of the prison. 
In a word, if the Dietz archive was the Old Testament, the original 
minute-book is the New Testament. The Old Testament was 
wrapped in stout oil-cloth, but the New Testament is bound in a 
sinister red morocco leather. Now the red morocco is indeed a 
demonstratio ad oculos,* but people today are even more sceptical 
than in Thomas’ time; they do not even believe what they see with 
their own eyes. Who still believes in Testaments, let them be Old 
or New, now that the religion of the Mormons?” has been 
invented? But Stieber, who is not wholly unsympathetic to 
Mormonism, has foreseen even this.” 

“It might be objected,” Stieber the Mormon observed, “that these are nothing 
but the tales of contemptible police agents but,” Stieber swore, “I have complete 
proofs of the veracity and reliability of their reports.” 

Just listen to that! Proofs of their veracity and proofs of their 
reliability! and complete proofs at that. Complete proofs! And what 
are these proofs? 

Stieber had long known 
“that a secret correspondence existed between Marx and the accused men in the 
gaol, but had been unable to track it down. Then on the previous Sunday a special 
courier from London arrived bringing me the news that we had finally managed to 
discover the secret address from which the correspondence had been conducted. It 
was the address of D. Kothes, a businessman in the Old Market here. The same 

courier brought me the original minute-book used by the London Central 
Authority which had been procured from a member of the League for money.” 

Stieber then communicated with Chief of Police Geiger and the 
postal authorities. 

* Visual proof.— Ed. 
This sentence is omitted in the 1853 Basle edition; it occurs in the 1853 Boston 
edition and in the 1875 and 1885 editions.— Ed. 

422 Kar] Marx 

“The necessary precautionary measures were taken and after no more than two 
days the evening post from London brought with it a letter addressed to Kothes. 
On the instructions of the Chief Public Prosecutor the letter was detained and opened 
and in itwas found a seven-page-long briefing for Schneider II, the Counsel for the 
Defence, in Marx’s own handwriting. It indicated the method of defence that 
Counsel should adopt.... On the reverse side of the letter there was a large Latin B. 
The letter was copied and an easily detachable piece of the original was retained 
together with the original envelope. The letter was then put into a new envelope, 
sealed and given to a police officer from another town with the order that he 
should go to Kothes, and introduce himself as an emissary from Marx,” etc. 

Stieber then narrated the rest of the disgusting farce enacted by 
the police, about how the police officer from another town had 
pretended to be an emissary from Marx, etc. Kothes was arrested 
on October 18 and after 24 hours he declared that the B on the 
inside of the letter stood for Bermbach. On October 19 Bermbach 
was arrested and his house searched. On October 21 Kothes and 
Bermbach were released. 

Stieber gave this evidence on Saturday, October 23. “The 
previous Sunday”, that is Sunday, October 17, was allegedly the day 
the special courier arrived with Kothes’ address and the original 
minute-book and two days after the courier, the letter arrived for 
Kothes, that is on October 19. But Kothes had already been 
arrested on October 18 because of the letter the police officer 
from another town had brought him on October 17. The letter to 
Kothes, therefore, arrived two days before the courier with 
Kothes’ address, that is Kothes was arrested on October 18 for a 
letter that he did not receive until October 19. A chronological 
miracle? 

Later, having been worried by Counsel, Stieber declared that the 
courier with Kothes’ address and the original minute-book arrived 
on October 10. Why on October 10? Because October 10 
happened to be likewise a Sunday and on October 23 it too would 
be a “previous” Sunday and in this way the original statement 
about the previous Sunday could be sustained and to this extent 
the perjury could be concealed. In that event, however, the letter 
did not arrive two days but a whole week after the courier. The 
perjury now fell on the letter rather than on the courier. Stieber’s 
oath is like Luther’s peasant. If you help him to mount the horse 
from one side he falls down on the other.’ 

And finally during the sitting of November 3 Police Lieutenant 
Goldheim of Berlin declared that Police Lieutenant Greif of 
London had delivered the minute-book to Stieber on October 11, 

* M. Luther, Der Welt Bild (Tischreden).— Ed. 

Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne 423 

that is to say on a Monday, in his presence and that of Chief of 
Police Wermuth. Goldheim’s statement therefore makes Stieber 
guilty of perjury twice over. 

As the original envelope with the London postmark shows, 
Marx posted the letter to Kothes on Thursday, October 14. So the 
letter should have arrived on Friday evening, October 15. For a 
courier to deliver Kothes’ address and the original minute-book 
two days before the letter arrived, he must have come on 
Wednesday, October 13. He could not arrive on October 17th, nor 
on the 10th nor on the 11th. 

Greif, in his role of courier, did indeed bring Stieber his original 
minute-book from London. Stieber was as well aware as his crony 
Greif of the real significance of this book. He hesitated therefore 
to produce it in court for this time it was not a matter of statements 
taken behind prison bars in Mazas.?*° Then came the letter from 
Marx. It was a godsend for Stieber. Kothes is a mere address, for 
the contents of the letter were not intended for Kothes but for the 
Latin B on the back of the enclosed sealed letter. Kothes is 
therefore nothing but an address. Let us suppose he is a secret 
address. Let us suppose further he is the secret address through 
which Marx communicates with the accused in Cologne. Let us 
suppose lastly that our London agents had sent by the same 
courier at the same time both the original minute-book and this 
secret address but that the letter arrived two days after the 
courier, the address and the minute-book. In this way we kill two 
birds with one stone. Firstly we have proof of the secret 
correspondence with Marx and secondly we prove that the original 
minute-book is authentic. The authenticity of the minute-book is 
shown by the correctness of the address, the correctness of the 
address is shown by the letter. The veracity and reliability of our 
agents is shown by the address and the letter, the authenticity of 
the minute-book is shown by the veracity and reliability of our 
agents. Quod erat demonstrandum. Then comes the merry comedy 
with the police official from another town and then come the 
mysterious arrests. Public, jurymen and even the accused, all stand 
thunderstruck. 

But why did not Stieber let his special courier arrive on October 
13, which would have been quite easy for him? Because in that 
case he would not have been special, because, as we have seen, 
chronology was not his strong point and the common calendar is 
beneath the dignity of a Prussian police superintendent. Moreover, 
he kept the original envelope; so who would be able to unravel the 
affair? 

15* 

But giving his evidence, Stieber compromised himself from the 
outset by the omission of one fact. If his agents knew of Kothes’ 
address they would also know to whom the mysterious B referred 
on the reverse of the inside letter. Stieber was so. little initiated 
into the mysteries of the Latin B that on October 17 he had 
Becker searched in gaol in the hope of finding the letter from 
Marx on him. He only learnt from Kothes’ statement that the B 
stood for Bermbach. 

But how did Marx’s letter fall into the hands of the Prussian 
government? Very simply. The Prussian government regularly 
opens the letters entrusted to its postal service and during the trial 
in Cologne it did this with particular assiduity. In Aachen and 
Frankfurt am Main they could tell some pretty stories about it. It 
was a pure chance whether a letter would slip through or not. 

When the story about the original courier collapsed, the one 
about the original minute-book had to share its fate. Naturally, 
Stieber did not yet suspect this in the sitting on October 23 when 
he triumphantly revealed the contents of the New Testament, that 
is the red book. The immediate effect of his statement was the 
re-arrest of Bermbach, who was present at the trial as a witness. 

Why was Bermbach re-arrested? 

Because of the papers found on him? No, for after his house 
had been searched he was released again. He was arrested 24 
hours after Kothes. Therefore if he had had _ incriminating 
documents they would certainly have disappeared by then. Why 
then was witness Bermbach arrested, when the witnesses Hentze, 
Hatzel, Steingens, who had been shown to be accomplices or 
members of the league, still sat unmolested on the witness bench? 

Bermbach had received a letter from Marx which contained a 
mere criticism of the indictment and nothing else besides. This 
Stieber admitted since the letter was there for the jury to see. But 
he couched the admission in his hyperbolic policeman’s manner 
thus: “Marx himself exercises an uninterrupted influence on the 
present case from London.” And the jury might well ask 
themselves, as Guizot asked his voters: Est-ce que vous vous sentez 
corrompus?* What then was the reason for Bermbach’s arrest? 
From the beginning of the inquiry the Prussian Government as a 
matter of principle strove consistently to deprive the accused of all 
means of defence. In direct contradiction to the law, defence 
counsel, as they announced in open court, were refused access to 
the accused even after presentation of the bill of indictment. On 

* Do you feel you are corrupted?— Ed. 

Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne 425 

his own testimony Stieber had been in possession of the Dietz 
archive ever since August 5, 1851. But the Dietz archive was not 
appended to the indictment. Not until October 18, 1852, was it 
produced in the middle of a public hearing—and only so much of 
it was produced as Stieber thought politic. The jury, the accused 
and the public were all to be caught off their guard and taken by 
surprise; defence counsel were to stand by helplessly in the face of 
the surprise prepared by the police. 

And even more so after the presentation of the original 
minute-book! The Prussian Government trembled at the thought 
of revelations. Bermbach however had received material for the 
defence from Marx and it could be foreseen that he would receive 
information about the minute-book. His arrest denoted the 
proclamation of a new crime, that of corresponding with Marx, 
and the punishment for this crime was imprisonment. That was 
intended to deter every Prussian citizen from permitting his 
address to be used. A bon entendeur demi mot.? Bermbach was locked 
up so that evidence for the defence might be locked out. And 
Bermbach remained in gaol for five weeks. For if they had 
released him immediately after the case was concluded the 
Prussian courts would have publicly proclaimed their docile 
subservience to the Prussian police. So Bermbach remained in 
gaol, ad majorem gloriam of the Prussian judiciary. 

Stieber swore on oath that 

“after the arrest of the accused in Cologne, Marx joined together the ruins of 
his party in London and formed a new central authority with about eighteen 
people,” etc 

The ruins had never come apart for they were so joined 
together that they had formed a private society‘ ever since 
September 1850. But at a word from Stieber they promptly 
vanished only to be revived by another command from Stieber 
after the arrest of the accused in Cologne and this time they 
appear in the form of a new central authority. 

On Monday, October 25, the Kolnische Zeitung arrived in 
London with an account of Stieber’s testimony of October 23. 

The. “Marx party” had neither formed a new central authority 
nor kept minutes of its meetings. They guessed at once who had 

* A word is enough to the wise.— Ed. 

Paraphrase of a saying by Gregory I: Ad majorem Dei gloriam: for the greater 
glory of God, which later became the motto of the Society of Jesus.— Fd. 

© Marx uses the English word.— Ed. 

been the chief manufacturer of the New Testament—Wilhelm Hirsch 
from Hamburg. 

Early in December 1851 Hirsch appeared at the “Marx society” 
saying he was a communist refugee. Simultaneously, letters arrived 
from Hamburg denouncing him as a spy. But it was decided to 
allow him to remain in the society for the time being and watch 
him with a view to procuring proof of his innocence or guilt. At 
the meeting on January 15, 1852, a letter from Cologne was read 
aloud in which a friend of Marx* referred to another postpone- 
ment of the trial and to the difficulty experienced even by 
relatives in gaining access to the accused. On this occasion mention 
was made of Frau Dr. Daniels. People were struck by the fact that 
Hirsch was not seen again after this meeting either in anyone’s 
“immediate proximity” or at a distance. On February 2, 1852, Marx 
was notified from Cologne that Frau Dr. Daniels’ house had been 
searched as the result of a police denunciation which claimed that 
a letter from Frau Daniels to Marx had been read out in the 
communist society in London and that Marx had been instructed 
to write back to her telling her that he was busy reorganising the 
League in Germany, etc. This denunciation literally fills the first 
page of the original minute-book. 

Marx replied by return of post that as Frau Daniels had never 
written to him he could not possibly have read out a letter from 
her; the whole denunciation had been invented by a certain 
Hirsch, a dissolute young man who had no objection to supplying 
the Prussian police with as many lies as they had a mind to pay for 
in cash. 

Since January 15 Hirsch had disappeared from the meetings; he 
was now formally expelled from the society. At the same time it 
was resolved to change the time and place of the meetings. 
Hitherto, meetings had taken place on Thursdays on premises 
belonging to J.W. Masters, Markethouse, in Farringdon Street, 
City. From now on it was agreed that the society would meet on 
Wednesdays in the Rose and Crown Tavern, Crown Street, Soho. 
Hirsch, whom “Chief of Police Schulz had managed to smuggle 
unrecognised into the immediate proximity of Marx”, despite his 
“proximity” was unaware even eight months later of the place and 
day of the meetings. Both before and after February he persisted 
in manufacturing his “original minute-book” on a Thursday and 
dating the meetings on Thursdays. If the Kolnische Zeitung is 
consulted the following can be found: Minutes of January 15 

* Bermbach — Fad. 

Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne 427 

(Thursday), likewise January 29 (Thursday), and March 4 
(Thursday), and May 13 (Thursday), and May 20 (Thursday), and 
July 22 (Thursday), and July 29 (Thursday), and September 23 
(Thursday), and September 30 (Thursday). 

The landlord of the Rose and Crown ‘Tavern made a 
declaration before the magistrate in Marlborough Street to the 
effect that “Dr. Marx’s circle” had met in his tavern every 
Wednesday since February 1852. Liebknecht and Rings, whom 
Hirsch had named as the secretaries for his original minute-book, 
had their signatures witnessed by the same magistrate. And finally, 
the minutes Hirsch had kept in Stechan’s Workers’ Society **' were 
obtained so that his handwriting might be compared with that in 
the original minute-book. 

In this way the spurious nature of the original minute-book was 
demonstrated without it being necessary to embark upon a 
criticism of the contents which their own contradictions caused to 
disintegrate. 

The real difficulty was how to send these documents to Counsel. 
The Prussian Post was merely an outpost, situated between the 
Prussian frontier and Cologne, and designed to frustrate the 
passage of munitions to the defence. 

It was necessary to use roundabout ways and so the first 
documents, despatched on October 25, arrived in Cologne only on 
October 30. 

Counsel were at first forced to make do with the very meagre 
resources that lay at hand in Cologne. The first blow against Stieber 
came from a direction he had not foreseen. Frau Dr. Daniels’ father 
Miller, a King’s Counsel and a man in high repute as a legal expert 
and well known for his conservative views, declared in the Kolnische 
Zeitung on October 26 that his daughter had never corresponded 
with Marx and that Stieber’s origirial book was a piece of 
‘“mystification”. The letter Marx had sent to Cologne on February 3, 
1852, in which Hirsch was alluded to as a spy and a manufacturer of 
false police notices, was found by chance and put at the disposal of 
the defence. In the “Marx party’s” notice of resignation from the 
Great Windmill Street Society* which was included in the Dietz 
archive, a genuine specimen of W.Liebknecht’s handwriting was 
discovered. Lastly, Schneider II, Counsel for the Defence, obtained 
some genuine letters by Liebknecht from Birnbaum, the secretary of 
the Council for Poor-Relief in Cologne, and genuine letters by Rings 
from a private secretary called Schmitz. At the offices of the court 

* See present edition, Vol. 10, p. 483.— Ed. 

Counsel compared the minute-book with Liebknecht’s handwriting 
in the notice of resignation and also with letters by Rings and 
Liebknecht. 

Stieber, who was already alarmed by the declaration of Muller, 
King’s Counsel, now heard of these ominous handwriting investiga- 
tions. To forestall the imminent blow he again leaped up in court 
during the sitting on October 27, and declared that 

“the fact that Liebknecht’s signature in the minute-book differed greatly from a 
signature that already was in the dossier had seemed very suspicious to him.* He had 
therefore made further inquiries and had learnt that the signatory in the minute-book 
in question was H. Liebknecht whereas the name in the dossier was preceded by the 
initial W.” 

When Counsel, Schneider II, asked him: “Who informed you that 
an H. Liebknecht also exists?”’, Stieber refused to answer. Schneider 
II then asked for further information about Rings and Ulmer who 
appear together with Liebknecht as secretaries in the minute-book. 
Stieber smelt a new trap. He ignored the question three times, and 
tried to conceal his embarrassment and to regain his composure by 
recounting three times and for no reason how the minute-book had 
come into his possession. At last he stammered: The names Rings 
and Ulmer are probably not real names at all but only “League 
names’’. Stieber explained the frequent mention in the minute-book 
of Frau Dr. Daniels as a correspondent of Marx by surmising that 
perhaps the young notary Bermbach was really meant, when the book 
said Frau Dr. Daniels. Counsel, von Hontheim, questioned him about 
Hirsch. 

“He did not know this man Hirsch either,” Stieber swore. “Contrary to rumour 
however it is obvious that he is not a Prussian agent if only because the Prussian police 
are on the lookout for him.” 

At a signal from Stieber Goldheim buzzed into view and said that 

“in October 1851 he was sent to Hamburg in order to apprehend Hirsch”. 

We shall see how the very same Goldheim was sent to London on 
the following day to apprehend the very same Hirsch. So the very 
same Stieber who claimed that he had bought the Dietz archive and 
the original minute-book from refugees for cash, that same Stieber 
now asserts that Hirsch cannot be a Prussian agent because he is a 
refugee! You have only to be a refugee and Stieber will guarantee 
your absolute venality or absolute incorruptibility, just as it suits his 
book. And is not Fleury likewise a political refugee, the same Fleury 

* The Basle edition of 1853 had (sic) after these words.— Ed. 

Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne 429 

whom Stieber denounced as a police agent in the sitting on 
November 3? 

When the defences of his original minute-book had been breached 
on every side, Stieber summed up the situation on October 27 with a 
classical display of impudence, stating that 

‘his belief in the authenticity of the minute-book is firmer than ever’’. 

At the sitting of October 29 an expert compared the letters of 
Liebknecht and Rings, which had been submitted by Birnbaum 
and Schmitz, with the minute-book and declared the signatures in 
the latter to be false. 

The Chief Public Prosecutor, Seckendorf, said in his speech: 

“The information contained in the minute-book coincides with facts derived from 
other sources. But the prosecution is quite unable to prove the book’s authenticity.” 

The book is authentic, but its authenticity cannot be proved. The 
New Testament! Seckendorf continued: 

“But the defence has itself shown that at least the book contains much that is true, 
for example it gives us information about the activities of Rings, who is mentioned 
there, activities about which no one knew anything before.” 

If no one knew anything about Rings’ activities before, the 
minute-book does not provide any information about it either. 
Therefore the statements about Rings’ activities could not confirm 
the truth of the minute-book’s contents and as regards its form they 
demonstrated that the signature of a member of the “Marx party” 
was in truth false, and had been forged. They proved then, according 
to Seckendorf, that ‘at least the book contains much that is 
true”—i.e. a true forgery. The Chief Public Prosecutors (Saedt- 
Seckendorf) and the postal authorities had together with Stieber 
opened the letter to Kothes. Therefore they knew the date of its 
arrival. Therefore they knew that Stieber committed perjury when 
he caused the courier to arrive at first on October 17 and, later, on 
the 10th, and the letter first on October 19 and then on the 12th. 
They were his accomplices. 

At the sitting on October 27 Stieber tried in vain to preserve a calm 
appearance. He feared that any day the incriminating documents 
might arrive from London. Stieber felt ill at ease and the Prussian 
state, incarnate in him, felt ill at ease too. The public exposure had 
reached a dangerous stage. So Police Lieutenant Goldheim was sent 
to London on October 28 to save the fatherland. What did Goldheim 
do in London? Aided by Greif and Fleury, he attempted to persuade 
Hirsch to go to Cologne and, under the name of H. Liebknechi, to 
swear to the authenticity of the minute-book. Hirsch was offered a 

real state pension, but Hirsch’s policeman’s instincts were as good as 
Goldheim’s. Hirsch knew that he was neither Public Prosecutor nor 
Police Lieutenant, nor Police Superintendent, and therefore had not 
the privilege of committing perjury with impunity. His instincts told 
him that he would be dropped as soon as things began to go wrong. 
Hirsch did not want to become a goat,’ and least of all'a scapegoat. 
Hirsch flatly refused. But the Christian-Germanic government of 
Prussia won lasting fame for having attempted to bribe a man to bear 
false witness in the course of criminal proceedings in which the heads 
of its own citizens were at stake. 

Goldheim thus returned to Cologne without having achieved his 
object. 

In the sitting on November 3, when the prosecutor had concluded 
his address and before Counsel for the defence could commence his, 
Stieber, caught between the two, leaped once again into the breach 
swearing that 

“he had now ordered further research into the minute-book. He had sent Police 
Lieutenant Goldheim from Cologne to London to pursue the inquiry there. Goldheim 
left on October 28 and returned on November 2. Here is Goldheim.” 

At a signal from his master Goldheim buzzed into view and swore 
that | 

“on arriving in London he went first to Police Lieutenant Greif who took him to 
police agent Fleury in the borough of Kensington for it was Fleury from whom Greif 
had obtained the book. Fleury admitted as much to him, the witness Goldheim, and 
asserted that he had really received the book from a member of the Marx party called 
H. Liebknecht. Fleury definitely recognised the receipt H. Liebknecht had given him 
for the money he had received for the book. Goldheim was not able to catch hold of 
Liebknecht himself in London because he was, according to Fleury, afraid to appear in 
public. During his stay in London witness became convinced that, a few errors apart, 
the content of the book was entirely genuine. Reliable agents who had been present at 
Marx’s meetings had confirmed this to him. The book itself however was not the 
original minute-book but only a notebook on the proceedings at Marx’s meetings. There 
are only two possible explanations for the admittedly still rather obscure origin of the 
book. Either, as the agent insists, it really emanates from Liebknecht, who has refused 
to give a specimen of his handwriting in order that there should be no proof of his 
treachery; or the agent Fleury obtained the notes for the book from Dronke and 
Imandt, two other émigré friends of Marx, and put them in the form of an original 
minute-book in order to increase the value of his commodity. Police Lieutenant Greif 
has officially stated that Dronke and Imandt frequently consorted with Fleury.... The 
witness Goldheim asserts his stay in London has convinced him that everything that 
had been said previously about secret meetings in Marx’s home, about the contacts 
between London and Cologne and about the secret correspondence, etc., was true in 
every particular. As evidence of how well informed the Prussian agents in London 
were even today, he would inform the Court that a completely secret meeting took 

* Marx plays on the name Hirsch, which means “stag”.— Ed. 

Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne 43] 

place in Marx’s house on October 27 to discuss what steps should be taken to 
counteract the minute-book and above all the activities of Police Superintendent 
Stieber, who was a thorn in the side of the London Party. The relevant decisions and 
documents were sent in complete secrecy to the lawyer, Schneider II. In particular, 
among the papers sent to Schneider II was a private letter that Stieber himself wrote to 
Marx in Cologne in 1848 and that Marx had hitherto kept very secret in the hope that 
it might be used to compromise the witness Stieber.” 

Witness Stieber leaped up and declared that he had written to Marx 
about an infamous slander, and had threatened to sue him, etc. 

“No one but Marx and he could know this and this was indeed the strongest proof 
of the accuracy of the information from London.” 

So according to Goldheim the original minute-book is “entirely 
genuine”, apart from the false parts. What convinced him of its 
authenticity is in particular the circumstance that the original 
minute-book is no original minute-book but only a “notebook”. And 
Stieber? Stieber was by no means thunderstruck; on the contrary a 
great weight had been lifted from his mind.* At the very last 
moment, when the sound of the prosecutor’s last words had hardly 
faded away and before the first word of the defence had been 
uttered, Stieber managed with the aid of his Goldheim quickly to 
transform the original minute-book into a notebook. When two 
policemen accuse each other of lying, does that not prove that they 
are both addicted to telling the truth? Through Goldheim Stieber 
was able to cover his retreat. 

Goldheim testified that “on arriving in London he went first to 
Police Lieutenant Greif, who took him to police agent Fleury in the 
borough of Kensington”. Now who would not swear on oath that 
poor Goldheim and Police Lieutenant Greif must have worn 
themselves out walking or driving to Fleury’s house in the remote 
borough of Kensington? But Police Lieutenant Greif lives in the 
same house as police agent Fleury, in fact he lives on the top floor of 
Fleury’s house, so that in reality it was not Greif who took Goldheim 
to Fleury, but Fleury who took Goldheim to Greif. 

“Police agent Fleury in the borough of Kensington!” What 
precision! Can you still doubt the truthfulness of a Prussian 
government that denounces its own spies, gives their name and 
address and every detail, body and soul? If the minute-book is 
false you can still rely on “police agent Fleury in Kensington”. 
Yes, indeed. On private secretary Pierre in the 13th arrondissement. 
If you wish to specify a person you must give his Christian name 

* A pun in the original: “fallt nicht aus den Wolken” —is not thunderstruck. and 
“ein Stein falltihm vom Herzen”—a weight is taken off his mind.— Ed. 

as well as his surname. Not Fleury but Charles Fleury. And you 
must also name the profession that he practises in public, and not 
his clandestine activities. So it is Charles Fleury, a businessman, not 
Fleury, the police agent. And when you state his address you do 
not merely name a London borough, a town in itself, but you give 
the borough, the street and the number of the house. So it is not . 
police agent Fleury in Kensington but Charles Fleury, a businessman, 
17 Victoria Road, Kensington. 

But “Police Lieutenant Greif’, that at any rate is frankly spoken! 
But when Police Lieutenant Greif attaches himself to the embassy 
in London and the Lieutenant turns into an attaché that of course 
is an attachment of no concern to the courts. The heart’s desire is the 
voice of fate.’ 

So Police Lieutenant Goldheim asserts that police agent Fleury 
asserted that he had the book from a man who really asserted that 
he was H. Liebknecht and who had even given a receipt to Fleury. 
The only drawback is that Goldheim was unable “to catch hold of” 
the said H. Liebknecht in London. So Goldheim could have stayed 
quietly in Cologne for Police Superintendent Stieber’s assertion 
does not look any healthier for the fact that it appears as an 
assertion of Police Lieutenant Goldheim’s, which had _ been 
asserted by Police Lieutenant Greif, for whom in his turn police 
agent Fleury had done the favour of agreeing to assert his 
assertion. 

Goldheim’s London experiences were hardly encouraging but, 
undeterred and with the aid of his considerable faculty for 
convincing himself (which in his case must do duty for the faculty 
of reasoning), he convinced himself “completely” that “everything” 
that Stieber had affirmed on oath concerning the “Marx party”, 
about its contacts in Cologne, etc., was “all true in every particular’. 
And now that Goldheim, his junior official, has issued him with a 
testimonium paupertatis,” surely Police Superintendent Stieber is 
fully covered now? Stieber’s method of swearing has at least one 
achievement to its credit: he has turned the whole Prussian 
hierarchy upside down. You don’t believe the Police Superinten- 
dent? Very well. He has compromised himself. But surely you will 
believe the Police Lieutenant? You don’t believe him either? Better 
still. Then you have no other choice than to believe at least the 
police agent alias mouchardus vulgaris‘ Such is the heretical 
conceptual confusion that our swearing Stieber has created. 

* Schiller, Die Piccolomini, Act III, Scene 8.— Ed. 
Certificate of poverty.— Ed. 
© An ordinary spy.— Ed. 

Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne 433 

Goldheim proved that in London he had established the 
non-existence of the original minute-book, and as for the existence 
of H.Liebknecht that he was unable “to catch hold” of it in 
London, and it was precisely this that convinced him that “all” 
Stieber’s statements about the “Marx party” “were true in every 
particular”. In addition to these negative proofs, which in 
Seckendorf’s view contained “much that was true”, he had in the 
end to produce the positive proof of “how weil informed the 
Prussian agents in London were even today”. As evidence of this 
he mentions that on October 27 there had been a “completely 
secret meeting in Marx’s house”. In this completely secret meeting 
steps were discussed to counteract the minute-book and Police 
Superintendent Stieber, that “thorn in their side”. The relevant 
orders and decisions were “sent in complete secrecy to the lawyer, 
Schneider IT”. 

Although the Prussian agents were present at these meetings the 
route taken by these letters remained so “completely secret’ that 
all the efforts of the postal authorities to intercept them were in 
vain. Listen to the cricket chirping sadly from among the ageing 
and venerable ruins*: “The relevant letters and documents were 
sent in complete secrecy to the lawyer, Schneider II.” Completely 
secret for Goldheim’s secret agents. 

The imaginary decisions about the minute-book cannot have 
been made at the completely secret meeting in Marx’s house on 
October 27 for already on October 25 Marx had sent the chief 
reports about the spurious nature of the minute-book not indeed 
to Schneider II, but to Herr von Hontheim. 

It was not merely the bad conscience of the police that gave 
them the idea that documents had been sent to Cologne. On 
October 29 Goldheim arrived in London. On October 30 
Goldheim found a statement signed by Engels, Freiligrath, Marx 
and Wolff? in The Morning Advertiser, The Spectator, The Examiner, 
The Leader and The People’s Paper in which the attention of the 
English public was drawn to the revelations that the defence would 
make of forgery, perjury, the falsification of documents, in short 
of all the infamies perpetrated by the Prussian police. The sending 
of the documents was veiled in such “complete secrecy” that the 
“Marx party” openly informed the English public about this, 

war pun on the name Goldheim and the word Heimchen (cricket).— Ed. 

> See this volume, pp. 378-79.— Ed. 

©“ Marx and Engels use the English words “forgery, perjury, falsification of 
documents” .— Ed. 

though not until October 30 by which time Goldheim had arrived 
in London and the documents in Cologne. 

However, on October 27 documents were also sent to Cologne. 
How did the omniscient Prussian police learn of this? 

The Prussian police did not pursue their activities with quite 
such “complete secrecy” as the “Marx party”. On the contrary, for 
weeks they had openly posted two of their spies in front of Marx’s 
house and from the street they watched him du soir jusqu’au matin 
and du matin jusqu’au soir? and dogged his every step. Now the 
absolutely secret documents, containing the genuine specimens of 
Liebknecht’s and Rings’ handwriting together with the statement 
of the landlord of the Crown Tavern concerning the days of the 
society's meetings, these absolutely secret documents Marx had 
officially witnessed in the absolutely public police court in 
Marlborough Street in the presence of reporters from the English 
daily press on October 27. His Prussian guardian angels followed 
him from his house to Marlborough Street and from Marlborough 
Street back to his house and from his house to the post office. 
They did not in fact disappear until Marx had gone in absolute 
secrecy to the local magistrate in order to obtain a warrant for the 
arrest of his two “followers”. 

Moreover, yet another way lay open to the Prussian govern- 
ment. For Marx sent the documents that were dated October 27 
and had been witnessed on October 27 directly to Cologne 
through the post in order to ensure that the talons of the Prussian 
eagle would not seize the duplicates that had been sent in absolute 
secrecy. Both postal authorities and the police in Cologne knew 
then that documents dated October 27 had been forwarded by 
Marx and there was no need for Goldheim to make the journey to 
London in order to unravel the mystery. 

Goldheim felt that after all he ought “in particular” to reveal 
something “particular” that the “absolutely secret meeting on 
October 27” had resolved to send to Schneider II, he therefore 
mentioned the letter written by Stieber to Marx. Unfortunately 
Marx had sent this letter not on October 27 but on October 25 
and it was sent not to Schneider II but to Herr von Hontheim. 
But how did the police know that Marx still had Stieber’s letter in 
his possession and that he intended to send it to the defence? Let 
us however permit Stieber to leap up once more. 

* From evening till morning and from morning till evening (Beaumarchais, La 
folle journée, ou le mariage de Figaro, Act I, Scene 1).— Ed. 

Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne 435 

Stieber hoped to forestall Schneider IJ and thus prevent him 
from reading aloud in court what was for him a very “unpleasant 
letter”. Stieber calculated: If Goldheim says that Schneider II has 
my letter and that he has it thanks to his “criminal contact with 
Marx”, then Schneider II will suppress the letter so as to prove 
that Goldheim’s agents were misinformed and that he himself does 
not maintain any criminal contact with Marx. So Stieber leaped 
up, gave a false account of the content of the letter and concluded 
with the astonishing declaration that “no one but himself and 
Marx could know this and this was indeed the strongest proof of the 
reliability of the information from London”. 

Stieber has a strange method of keeping secret facts that he 
finds unpalatable. If he remains silent, the whole world must keep 
silence. Hence “no one can know” apart from him and a certain 
elderly lady that he once lived near Weimar as an homme entretenu.’ 
But if Stieber had every reason to make sure that no one but 
Marx should know of the letter, Marx had every reason to let 
everyone apart from Stieber know about it. We now know the 
strongest proof of the information from London. What does 
Stieber’s weakest proof look like? 

But once again Stieber knowingly commits perjury when he says 
“no one but myself and Marx could know this”. He knew that it 
was not Marx but another editor of the Rheinische Zeitung who had 
answered his letter.”*? So there had been at least “one man other 
than Marx and himself”. In order that even more people may 
learn of it we print the letter here’: 

“No. 177 of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung contains a news item from your 
correspondent in Frankfurt am Main dated December 21 in which a base lie is 
reported to the effect that being a police spy I went to Frankfurt to try, while 
pretending to hold democratic views, to discover the murderers of Prince 
Lichnowski and General Auerswald. I was in fact in Frankfurt on the 21st but 
stayed only one day and as you can see from the accompanying certificate I was 
engaged in purely private business on behalf of a lady from here, Frau von 
Schwezler. I have long since returned to Berlin and resumed my work as defence 
counsel. I would refer you moreover to the official correction in this matter that 
has already appeared in No. 338 of the Frankfurter Oberpostamts-Zeitung of 
December 21 and in No. 248 of the Berlin National-Zeitung. I believe that I may 
expect from your respect for the truth that you will print the enclosed correction in 
your paper without delay and that you will also give me the name of your 
slanderous informant in accordance with your legal obligations, for I cannot 

possibly permit such a libel to go unpunished, otherwise IJ shall regretfully be 
compelled to proceed against your editorial board. 

“ Kept man.— Ed. 
> Stieber’s letter was given in a footnote in the Basle and Boston editions of 1853 
but in the 1875 and 1885 editions it was included in the main text.— Ed. 

“T believe that in recent times democracy is indebted to no one more than myself. 
It was I who rescued hundreds of democrats who had been charged from the nets 
of the criminal courts. It was I who even while a state of siege was proclaimed here 
persistently and fearlessly challenged the authorities (and do so to this very day), 
while all the cowardly and contemptible fellows (the so-called democrats) had long 
since fled the field. When democratic organs treat me in this fashion it is scarcely 
an encouragement to me to make further efforts. 

“The real joke, however, in the present case lies in the clumsiness of the organs 
of democracy. The rumour that I went to Frankfurt as a police agent was spread 
first by that notorious organ of reaction, the Neue Preussische Zeitung,in order to 
undermine my activities as defence counsel that gave that paper such offence. The 
other Berlin papers have long since corrected this report. But the democratic 
papers are so inept that they parrot this stupid lie. If I had wished to go to 
Frankfurt as a spy it would certainly not be announced beforehand in every 
newspaper. And how could Prussia send a police official to Frankfurt which has 
enough competent officials of its own? Stupidity has always been the failing of the 
democrats and their opponents’ cunning has always brought them to victory. 

“It is likewise a contemptible lie to say that years ago I was a police spy in 
Silesia. At that time I was openly employed as a police officer and as such I did my 
duty. Contemptible lies have been circulated about me. If anyone can prove that I 
insinuated my way into his favour let him come forth and do so. Anyone can make 
assertions and tell lies. I think of you as an honest, decent man and so I expect 
from you a satisfactory answer by return of post. The democratic papers are 
generally in disrepute here because of the many lies they publish. I hope that you 
are a man of a different stamp. 

“Berlin, December 26, 1848 
Respectfully yours, 

Stieber, Doctor at Law, etc., 
Berlin, Ritterstrasse 65.” 

How then did Stieber know that on October 27 Marx had sent 
this letter to Schneider II? But it was not sent on October 27 but 
on October 25, and it was not sent to Schneider II but to von 
Hontheim. Stieber therefore knew only that the letter still existed 
and he suspected that Marx would put it in the hands of some 
defence counsel or other. Whence this suspicion? When the 
Kolnische Zeitung brought Stieber’s testimony on October 18 about 
Cherval, etc., to London, Marx sent a statement dated October 21 
to the Ké6lnische Zeitung, the Berlin National-Zeitung and the 
Frankfurter Journal and at the end of this statement Stieber was 
threatened with his still existing letter. In order to keep this letter 
“completely secret’”” Marx himself announced it in the newspapers. 
He failed, because of the cowardice of the daily press in Germany, 
but the Prussian post was now informed and with the Prussian 
post, its—Stieber. 

What then was the message Goldheim chirruped back from 
London? 

Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne 437 

That Hirsch has not committed perjury, that H. Liebknecht 
has no “tangible” existence, that the original minute-book is no 
original minute-book and that the all-knowing London agents 
know all that the “Marx party’ has published in the London 
press. To save the honour of the Prussian agents Goldheim placed 
in their mouths the few titbits of information that Stieber 
discovered* in letters he had opened or purloined. 

In the sitting on November 4 after Schneider II had annihilated 
Stieber and his minute-book and shown him to be guilty of 
forgery and perjury, Stieber leaped into the breach for the last 
time and gave vent to his moral indignation. They even dare, he 
cried out, his soul mortally wounded, they even dare to accuse 
Herr Wermuth, Chief of Police Wermuth, of perjury! Stieber 
thereby returned to the orthodox hierarchy, to the rising scale. 
Earlier he had moved on the heterodox, descending scale. If he, a 
police superintendent, could not be trusted, well then surely his 
police lieutenant could be; and if not the police lieutenant, then 
surely his police agent; and if not agent Fleury, then surely 
subagent Hirsch. But now it is in_ reverse. He, the _ police 
superintendent, can perhaps commit perjury, but Wermuth, a Chief 
of Police? Unbelievable! In his rage he praised Wermuth with 
mounting bitterness,” he served Wermuth up to the public neat, 
Wermuth as a human being, Wermuth as a lawyer, Wermuth as 
paterfamilias, Wermuth as a Chief of Police, Wermuth for ever.‘ 

Even now, during the public hearing, Stieber did not stop trying 
to isolate the accused and to erect a barrier between the defence 
and the defence materials. He accused Schneider II of “criminal 
contact” with Marx. In attacking him Schneider was impugning 
the highest authorities of Prussia. Even Gobel, the Presiding Judge 
of the court, even a Gobel felt overwhelmed by Stieber’s 
onslaught. He could not overlook it and even though in a 
timorous and servile way he did lash Stieber with a few rebukes. 
But Stieber was in the right for all that. It was not merely he as a 
person that stood exposed to public view: it was the prosecution, 
the courts, the postal authorities, the government, the police 
headquarters in Berlin, it was the ministries and the Prussian 
embassy in London, in short it was the whole Prussian state that 
stood in the pillory with him, original minute-book in hand. 

* In the original a pun on Stieber: aufstiebern (aufstébern)—to ferret out, to trace, to 
discover.— Ed. 
A pun on Wermuth (wormwood, vermouth, bitterness) and Bitterkeit (bitter- 
ness).— Ed. 
“ Marx uses the English phrase “for ever”.— Ed. 

Herr Stieber is herewith granted permission to print the answer 
the Neue Rheinische Zeitung returned to his letter. 

Let us now return once more to London with Goldheim. 

Just as Stieber is still ignorant of Cherval’s whereabouts and true 
identity so too, according to Goldheim’s testimony (in the sitting 
on November 3), the origin of the minute-book is an enigma that 
is still not fully resolved. To resolve it Goldheim put forward two 
hypotheses. 

“There are only two possible explanations,” he said, “for the 
still rather obscure origin of the book. Either, as the agent insists, 
it really emanates from Liebknecht, who has refused to give a 
specimen of his handwriting in order that there should be no proof 
of his treachery.” 

W. Liebknecht is well known as a member of the “Marx party”. 
But it is no less well known that the signature in the minute-book 
does not belong to W. Liebknecht. In the sitting on October 27 
Stieber therefore swore that the signature was not that of 
W. Liebknecht but of another Liebknecht, an H. Liebknecht. He had 
learnt of the existence of this double without being able however 
to disclose the source of his discovery. Goldheim swore: “Fleury 
asserted that he had really received the book from a member of 
the ‘Marx party’ called H. Liebknecht.” Goldheim swore further: 
“I was not able to catch hold of the said H. Liebknecht in 
London.” Up to now, therefore, what signs of life has the 
H. Liebknecht that Stieber has discovered given to the world in 
general and to Police Lieutenant Goldheim in particular? No sign 
of life other than his handwriting in the original minute-book; but 
now Goldheim declares: ‘“Liebknecht has refused to give a 
specimen of his handwriting.” 

Up to the present H. Liebknecht existed only as a signature. 
Now nothing remains of H. Liebknecht at all, not even a 
signature, not even the dot on the 1. How Goldheim could possibly 
know that H. Liebknecht’s handwriting differs from the handwrit- 
ing in the minute-book, when the handwriting in the minute-book 
is his only proof of H. Liebknecht’s existence, that is Goldheim’s 
secret. If Stieber has his miracles, why should not Goldheim have 
his miracles too? 

Goldheim forgot that his superior, Stieber, had sworn to 
H. Liebknecht’s existence before him, and that he too had just sworn 
to it. In the same breath in which he swears to H. Liebknecht he 
recollects that H. Liebknecht is nothing but a makeshift, invented by 
Stieber, a necessary fib and necessity knows no law. He remembers 
that there is but one genuine Liebknecht, W. Liebknecht, but that if 

Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne 439 

W. Liebknecht is genuine then the signature in the minute-book is a 
forgery. He cannot confess that Fleury’s subagent Hirsch had 
manufactured the false signature along with the false minute-book. 
Accordingly he invents the hypothesis: “Liebknecht has refused to 
give a specimen signature.” Let us likewise construct a hypothesis. 
Goldheim once forged banknotes. He is brought before the courts; it 
is proved that the signature on the banknote is not that of the bank 
director. Don’t take offence, gentlemen, Goldheim will say, don’t 
take offence. The banknote is genuine. It comes from the bank 
director himself. If his name appears signed by someone other than 
him what does that matter? “He merely refused to give a specimen of 
his handwriting.” 

Or, Goldheim continues, if the hypothesis with Liebknecht turns 
out to be false: “Or the agent Fleury obtained the notes for the 
book from Dronke and Imandt, two other émigré friends of Marx, 
and then put them in the form of an original minute-book in order 
to increase the value of his commodity. Police Lieutenant Greif has 
officially stated that Dronke and Imandt frequently consorted with 
Fleury.” 

Or? How so, or? If a book like the original minute-book is 
signed by three people, Liebknecht, Rings and Ulmer, no one will 
deduce that “it emanates either from Liebknecht”—or from 
Dronke and Imandt, but: It emanates either from Liebknecht or 
from Rings and from Ulmer. Should our unfortunate Goldheim, 
now that he has climbed to the dizzy heights of a disjunc- 
tion — either—or—should he now repeat: “Rings and Ulmer have 
refused to give specimens of their handwriting”? Even Goldheim 
realises the need for new tactics. 

If the original minute-book does not emanate from Liebknecht, 
as the agent Fleury claimed, then it must have been manufactured 
by Fleury himself, but the notes for it were provided by Dronke 
and Imandt of whom Police Lieutenant Greif has officially stated 
that they frequently consorted with Fleury. 

“To increase the value of his commodity,” says Goldheim, 
Fleury put the notes in the form of an original minute-book. He 
not only commits a fraud, he also forges signatures and all this to 
“increase the value of his commodity”. So scrupulous a man as 
this Prussian agent, who for profit manufactures forged minutes 
and forged signatures, is obviously incapable of manufacturing 
forged notes. Such is Goldheim’s inference. 

Dronke and Imandt did not come to London until April 1852, 
after they had been expelled by the Swiss authorities. However, 
one-third of the original minute-book consists of entries for the 

months of January, February and March 1852. Fleury therefore 
‘manufactured one-third of the original minute-book without 
Dronke and Imandt although Goldheim had sworn that the 
minute-book was written either by Liebknecht—or else by Fleury, 
following, however, the notes of Dronke and Imandt. Goldheim 
swore to it, and Goldheim it is true is no Brutus* but he is 
Goldheim. 

But the possibility still remains that Dronke and Imandt 
furnished Fleury with notes from April onwards for, Goldheim 
swore: “Police Lieutenant Greif has officially stated that Dronke 
and Imandt frequently consorted with Fleury.” 

Let us examine this association. 

As we have noted above Fleury was known in London not as a 
Prussian police agent but as a businessman in the City, and indeed 
as a democratic businessman. Born in Altenburg he had come to 
London as a political refugee, had later married an English 
woman from a wealthy and respected family and apparently 
enjoyed a quiet life with his wife and his father-in-law, an old 
Quaker industrialist. On October 8 or 9 Imandt began to “consort 
frequently” with Fleury, in the capacity, that is, of tutor. But 
according to the improved version of Stieber’s evidence the 
original minute-book arrived in Cologne on October 10—accord- 
ing to Goldheim’s final statement on the 11th. By the time that 
Imandt, whom he had never set eyes on till then, had given him 
his first French lesson, Fleury had not only had the original 
minute-book bound in red morocco leather, he had already 
entrusted it to the special courier who brought it to Cologne. So 
heavily did Fleury rely on Imandt’s notes when writing the 
original minute-book. As for Dronke, Fleury only saw him once 
and by chance with Imandt, and this was on October 30 by which 
time the original minute-book had long since dissolved into its 
original nothingness. 

Thus the Christian-Germanic government is not content with 
breaking into desks, stealing papers, obtaining false testimony by 
underhand means, creating false plots, forging false documents, 
swearing false oaths, and attempting to suborn witnesses—all this 
to bring about the condemnation of the Cologne defendants. The 
government attempts also to cast suspicion on the London friends 
of the accused so as to conceal the activities of their Hirsch now 

* Cf. Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Act III, Scene 2, “Brutus is an honourable 
man’’.— Ed. 

Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne 44] 

that Stieber has sworn that he does not know him and Goldheim 
has sworn that he is no spy. 

On Friday, November 5, the Kolnische Zeitung arrived in London 
with the report of the court sitting on November 3 and 
Goldheim’s evidence. Inquiries about Greif were made at once and 
the very same day it was learnt that he lived in Fleury’s house. At 
the same time Dronke and Imandt paid Fleury a visit taking with 
them a copy of the Kolnische Zeitung. They gave him Goldheim’s 
testimony to read. He went pale, tried to regain his composure, 
pretended to be utterly astonished and declared himself perfectly 
willing to make a statement against Goldheim before an English 
magistrate. But he said he must consult his solicitor first. They 
agreed to meet the following afternoon, Saturday, November 6. 
Fleury promised to have his statement officially witnessed and said 
he would bring it to the meeting. Of course, he did not appear. 
Imandt and Dronke then went to his house on Saturday evening 
and found there the following note addressed to Imandt: 

“With the solicitor’s help everything has been arranged; further steps can be taken 
as soon as the person in question has been found. The solicitor sent the relevant 
documents off today. Business commitments have made it imperative for me to go to 
the City. If you would like to visit me tomorrow I shall be at home the whole afternoon 
until 5 o’clock. Fl.” 

On the other side of the note there was the following post- 
script: 

“I have just arrived home but had to go out again with Herr Werner and my 
wife— I can prove this to you tomorrow. Leave me a note saying when you would like to 
come.” 

Imandt left the following reply: 

“TI am extremely surprised not to find you at home now, especially as you did not 
come to meet us this afternoon as arranged. I must confess that in the circumstances 
my opinion of you is already fixed. If you wish me to revise it you will visit me by 
tomorrow morning at the latest for I cannot guarantee that your activities as a 
Prussian police spy might not find their way into the English newspapers. Imandt.” 

Fleury did not appear on Sunday morning either, so in the 
evening Dronke and Imandt went to his house once again in order to 
obtain his statement by making it appear as if their confidence in him 
had only at first been shaken. Finally, after all sorts of procrastina- 
tions and doubts the statement was formulated. Fleury hesitated 
most when it was pointed out to him that he must sign with his 
Christian name as well as his surname. The statement went literally 
as follows: 

“To the editors of the Kélnische Zeitung 

“The undersigned declares that he has known Herr Imandt for about a month 
during which time the latter gave him tuition in the French language and that he met 
Herr Dronke for the first time on Saturday, October 30 of this year. 

“He declares further that neither of them gave him any information in connection 
with the minute-book mentioned in the Cologne trial. 

‘That he does not know of any person by the name of Liebknecht nor has he ever 
been in contact with anyone of that name. 

“Kensington, London, November 8, 1852. Charles Fleury” 

Dronke and Imandt were, of course, quite sure that Fleury would 
instruct the Kélnische Zeitung not to print any statement signed by 
him. Accordingly they sent his statement not to the Kolnische Zeitung 
but to Schneider II, the lawyer, who however received it when the 
case was too far advanced for him to make use of it. 

Fleury is not indeed the Fleur de Marie of the police prostitutes, 
but he is a flower’ and he will bear blossom, albeit only fleurs-de-lys.* 

But the story of the minute-book is not yet finished. 

On Saturday, November 6, W. Hirsch of Hamburg made an 
affidavit before the magistrate at Bow Street, London, to the effect 
that under the direction of Greif and Fleury he himself had 
fabricated the original minute-book that figured in the Cologne 
communist trial. 

Thus, it had at first been the original minute-book of the “Marx 
party” —after that it was the notebook of the police spy Fleury —and 
lastly it became the manufacture of the Prussian police, a simple 
police manufacture, a police manufacture sans phrase. 

On the same day that Hirsch revealed the secret of the original 
minute-book to the English magistrate at Bow Street another 
representative of the Prussian state was busy packing at Fleury’s 
house in Kensington, and this time the things he was packing in stout 
oil-cloth were neither stolen nor forged nor even documents at all, 
but his own personal belongings. And this bird was none other than 
Greif? whom we remember from Paris, the special courier to 
Cologne, the chief of the Prussian police agents in London, the 
official director of mystifications, the Police Lieutenant attached to 
the Prussian Embassy. Greif had received instructions from the 

* Fleurs-de-lys [lilies] is the French colloquial name of the letters T. F. (travaux 
forcés, forced labour), the brand-mark of criminals. The accuracy of Marx’s judgment 
is demonstrated in the Postscript (VIII, 1). 208 [ Note by Engels to the edition of 1885.] 

*“ A pun: Fleur de Marie—the heroine in Eugéne Sue’s novel Les mystéres de Paris, 
fleur—a flower.— Ed. 
The word “Greif” means griffin.— Ed.