At the end of January 1860 two numbers of the Berlin 
National-Zeitung arrived in London containing two leading articles, 
the first bearing the title “Karl Vogt und die ‘Allgemeine Zeitung’”’ 
(National-Zeitung, No. 37), and the second, “Wie man radikale 
Flugblatter macht” (National-Zeitung, No. 41). Under these headings 
F. Zabel presented a version of Vogts “Magnum Opus’* 
prepared in usum delphini.”’ The “Magnum Opus” itself did not 
reach London until much later. I decided at once to start 
proceedings for libel against this F. Zabel in Berlin. 

In the previous ten years a vast number of vilifications of myself 
had appeared in the German and German-American press, but 
they only rarely drew any literary response from me, and then 
only if a real party interest seemed to be at stake, as with the 
Cologne communist trial. In my view the press has the right to 
insult writers, politicians, actors and other public figures. If I 
regarded an attack to be worth answering my motto in such cases 
was: @ corsaire, corsaire et demi.” 

Here the position was different. Zabel accused me of a series of 
criminal and infamous actions and he did so for the benefit of a 
public whose political prejudices inclined it to credit the greatest 
atrocities and who, moreover, in view of my eleven-year absence 
from Germany, had nothing to enable it to form a judgment of 
me. Quite apart from any political considerations, I therefore 
owed it to my family, my wife and children, to have Zabel’s 
defamatory accusations tested in a court of law. 

4 Carl Vogt, Mein Prozess gegen die Allgemeine Zeitung.— Ed. 
5 Pay rogues in their own coin.— Ed. 

The method of procedure I selected excluded from the outset 
any legal comedy of errors along the lines of Vogt’s action against 
the Allgemeine Zeitung. Even if I had indulged in the fantastic idea 
of appealing against Vogt before the same Fazyesque court which 
had already quashed one criminal action in Vogt’s interests,’ there 
were a number of important and even decisive points that could 
only be settled in Prussia and not in Geneva. Conversely, the only 
one of Zabel’s statements for which he might have sought proof 
from Vogt was based on alleged documents which Zabel could 
produce just as easily in Berlin as his friend Vogt in Geneva. My 
“complaint” against Zabel contained the following points: 

1. In No. 37 of the National-Zeitung dated January 22, 1860, in 
an article entitled “Karl Vogt und die ‘Allgemeine Zeitung’ ” Zabel 
writes: 

“Vogt reports on p. 136 et seq.: Among the refugees of 1849 the term Brimstone 
Gang, or the name of the Bristlers, referred to a number of people who, originally 
scattered throughout Switzerland, France and England, gradually congregated in 
London, where they revered Herr Marx as their visible leader. The political principle of 
these fellows was the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ and with the aid of this illusion 
they succeeded in deceiving for a while not only some of the best among the 
refugees but also the workers from Willich’s volunteer corps. They continued the work 
of the ‘Rheinische Zeitung’> among the refugees. In 1849 this paper had counselled 
against any participation in the movement and had also constantly attacked all the 
members of Parliament because the Imperial Constitution was the only aim of the 
movement. The Brimstone Gang maintained a frightfully strict discipline among its 
supporters. Any of them who sought in any way to make a decent living in the 
bourgeois world was branded a traitor to the revolution merely for attempting to 
become independent. It was expected that the revolution would break out again at 
any moment and it was vital to keep its soldiers mobile and ready to be sent into 
battle. With the aid of rumours, letters, etc., dissension, brawling and duels were 
artificially fomented in this carefully nurtured class of loafers. Each one suspected 
the other of being a spy and a reactionary; distrust was universal. One of the chief 
occupations of the Brimstone Gang was to compromise people at home in Germany in such a 
way that they were forced to pay money so that the gang should preserve their secret without 
compromising them. Not just one, but hundreds of letters were written to people in Germany, 
threatening to denounce them for complicity in this or that act of revolution unless a certain sum 
of money had been received at a specified address by a given date. Following the principle that 
‘whoever is not unconditionally for us, is against us’, the reputation of anyone who 
opposed these intrigues was ‘ruined’, not just among the refugees, but also by means 
of the press. The ‘proletarians’ filled the columns of the reactionary press in Germany with 
their denunciations of those democrats who did not subscribe to their views; they became the 
confederates of the secret police in France and Germany. To fill in the picture Vogt 
publishes among other documents a long letter by Techow, a former lieutenant, dated 

a The action against the joint-stock company La Cimentaire. See Appendix 16 
and also Marx’s letter to Engels of November 16, 1860 (present edition, Vol. 
41).— Ed. 

b The Neue Rheinische Zeitung.— Ed. 

Herr Vogt.—XI. A. Lawsuit 261 

August 26, 1850, in which the principles, the intrigues, the feuds and the various 
hostile secret unions of the ‘proletarians’ are described, and in which we see how 
Marx, puffed up with Napoleonic pride in his intellectual superiority, rules the members 
of the Brimstone Gang with a rod of tron.” 

We should note at once, so as better to understand what 
follows, that Zabel, who was ostensibly allowing Vogt to “speak for 
himself” in the passage quoted above, now goes on in his own 
name to throw further light on the Brimstone Gang, by 
mentioning ane after the other the Cherval trial in Paris, the 
communist trial in Cologne, the pamphlet I wrote about the last,” 
Liebknecht’s revolutionary congress in Murten and his relations 
with the Allgemeine Zeitung in which I acted as mediator, Ohlv, 
who is “likewise a channei of the Brimstone Gang”, and lastly, 
Biscamp’s letter of October 20, 1859 to the Allgemeine Zeitung.” He 
concludes with the statement: 

“A week after Biscamp Marx, too, wrote to the Allgemeine Zeitung, offering it 
a ‘legal document as evidence against Vogt about which we shall perhaps speak at a 
later date. These then are the correspondents of the ‘Allgemeine Zeitung’.” 

Of the whole of this leading article No. 1, I made use only of 
the section printed under 1. in my submission, and in that passage 
I was concerned only with the following sentences: 

“One of the chief occupations of the Brimstone Gang” ‘commanded by Marx) 
“was to compromise people at home tn Germany in such a wav that they were forced 
to pay monev so that the gang should preserve their secret without compromising 
them. Not just one, but hundreds of letters were written fo peovie in Germany, 
threatening to aenounce them for complicity in this or that act of revolution uniess 
a certain sum of money had been received at a specified address by a given date.” 

Here, of course, what I reauired from Zabel was procf that his 
claims were true. in my first advice to my iawyer, Legal Counsellor 
Weber in Berlin, I wrote that I did not require Zabel to produce 
“hundreds of threatening letters”,° or even one, but just a single 
line showing that any one of my notorious party associates had 
been guilty of the infamous deeds imputed to them. Zabel, after 
all, only needed to turn to Vogt, who could have sent him dozens 
of “threatening letters” by return. And if by any chance Vogt 
were unable to produce even a single line from the hundreds of 
threatening letters, he would in any case still be able to give the 
names of the several hundred “people in Germany” who had been 

a Karl Marx, Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne (present 
edition, Vol. 11).— Ed. 

“ See this volume, p. 127.— Ed. 

©“ See Marx's ietter to Weber of February 13, 1860 (present edition, Vol. 
41).— Fd. 

plundered in the manner described. Since these people are to be 
found in “Germany” they would undoubtedly be more accessible 
to a court in Berlin than to one in Geneva. 

Thus my ground of complaint against Zabel’s leading article 
No. | confined itself to a single point: political compromising of people 
in Germany for the purpose of extorting money from them. In order at 
the same time to refute the other statements made in his leading 
article No. 1, I produced a series of facts. Here I did not require 
Zabel to prove that his claims were true, I showed that they were false. 

As to the Brimstone Gang or Bristlers, Johann Philipp Becker's 
letter* has thrown sufficient light on them. As far as the character 
of the Communist League was concerned, and my involvement with 
it, H. Bürgers of Cologne, one of the condemned in the Cologne 
communist trial, belonged to those people who could have been 
subpoenaed as witnesses to Berlin and made to testify under oath 
during the proceedings. Furthermore, Frederick Engels had dis- 
covered amongst his papers a letter dated November 1852° and 
authenticated by its postmarks in London and Manchester, in which 
I informed him of the dissolution of the League at my suggestion 
together with the reasons for that dissolution as they were set 
forth in the resolution: viz. that since the arrest of the accused in 
Cologne all contacts with the Continent had been broken off and 
that a propaganda societv of this kind was no longer opportune. 
As for Zabel’s shanieless allegations about my contacts “with the 
secret police in Germany and France”, these were supposed to 
have been verified partly by the Coiogne communist trial and 
partly by the Cherval trial in Paris. I shall have more to say about 
the latter in due course. With reference to the former I sent my 
defence counsel a copy of my Revelations Concerning the Communist 
Trial in Cologne, which had appeared in 1853, and pointed out 
that the lawver Schneider IT could be subpoenaed from Cologne 
to Berlin where he could testify under oath to my part in 
uncovering the nefarious activities of the police.“ Zabel’s claim that 
my party associates and myself had “filled the columns of the 
reactionary press in Germany with denunciations of those demo- 
crats who did not subscribe to our views”’—this claim was to be 
confronted with the fact that I never either directly or indirectly 
wrote for German newspapers from abroad, with the single 

4 See this volume, pp. 60-64.— Ed. 

b Marx to Engels, November 19, 1852 (see present edition, Vol. 39). An extract 
from this letter 1s contained in Marx’s notebook.— Fd. 

© See Marx’s letters to Weber of February 24 and March 3, 1860 (present 
edition, Vol. 41).— Ed. 

Herr Vogt——XI. A Lawsuit 263 

exception of the Neue Oder-Zeitung. My printed contributions to 
that paper and, if need be, the testimony of one of its editors, Dr. 
Elsner, would prove that I never thought it worth the trouble to 
mention even one “democrat” by name. As for Liebknecht’s reports 
to the Allgemeine Zeitung, they began in the spring of 1855, three 
years after the “League” was dissolved, and moreover they appea- 
red without my knowledge, and as a scrutiny of the back numbers 
will reveal they contain accounts of English politics written from 
his political standpoint, but not a word about “democrats”. When, 
during my absence from London, Liebknecht sent a pamphlet 
printed in London and attacking the “democrat” Vogt* to the 
Allgemeine Zeitung, he was perfectly entitled to do so for he knew 
that the pamphlet had been published by a “democrat” whom the 
“democrat” Vogt had himself invited to collaborate on_ his 
“democratic” propaganda, 1.e. whom Vogt had recognised as a 
“democrat” of equal standing with himself. Zabel’s comic tale 
making me a “correspondent of the Allgemeine Zeitung” was 
utterly refuted by a letter written to me by Herr Orges a few days 
before the opening of the Augsburg trial (see Appendix 10), in 
which he, inter alia, sought to correct my presumed “liberal” 
prejudices against the Allgemeine Zeitung. Lastly, Zabel’s lie that “a 
week after Biscamp Marx, too, wrote to the Allgemeine Zeitung” 
collapsed of its own accord since Biscamp’s letter was dated 
October 20, 1859 and the brief note I sent to Herr Orges along 
with the “document” he had asked for, was already in the hands 
of the Augsburg Court on October 24, 1859 and so could not 
possibly have been written in London on October 29, 1859. 

For the benefit of the court it seemed appropriate to supple- 
ment the evidence already mentioned with a few documents which 
would serve to reflect back on “democrat” Zabel the grotesquely 
defaming light in which he had sought to place my situation 
within the emigration and my “intrigues” abroad. 

I first lived in Paris from the end of 1843 until early in 1845, 
when I was expelled by Guizot. To indicate my position within the 
French revolutionary party during my stay in Paris I sent my 
counsel a letter from Flocon which in the name of the Provisional 
Government of 1848 revoked Guizot’s decree of expulsion and 
invited me to return to France from Belgium (Appendix 14). I 
lived in Brussels from the beginning of 1845 until the end of 
February 1848, when Rogier had me expelled from Belgium. 
Subsequently the Brussels Municipal Council dismissed the police 

a Zur Warnung by Karl Blind.— Ed. 

commissar who had arrested my wife and myself on the occasion 
of my expulsion. In Brussels there was an international democratic 
association *** in which the aged General Mellinet who had saved 
Antwerp from the Dutch held the office of Honorary President. 
_ The lawyer Jottrand, a former member of the Belgian Provisional 
Government, was President; the Vice-President for the Poles was 
Lelewel, a former member of the Polish Provisional Government; 
the Vice-President for the French was Imbert, who had been 
Governor of the Tuileries after the February revolution of 1848, 
and I held the post of Vice-President for the Germans, having 
been elected at a public meeting consisting of the members of the 
German Workers’ Association and the entire German emigration 
in Brussels. A letter from Jottrand to me at the time of the 
establishment of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (Jottrand belongs to 
what is known as the American school of republicanism, ie. a 
trend alien to me), and a few otherwise insignificant lines from my 
friend Lelewel provide a sufficient indication of my position in the 
democratic party in Brussels. I added them therefore to the material 
in my defence (Appendix 14). 

After I had been driven out of Prussia in the spring of 1849 
and out of France in the late summer of the same year, I went to 
London, where following the dissolution of the League (1852) and 
the departure of most of my friends from London, I have been 
living without joining any associations whether public or secret, 
and indeed without society of any sort. I do, however, from time 
to time, with the permission of “democrat” Zabel, give free 
lectures on political economy to a select group of workers. The 
German Workers’ Educational Society in London, from which I 
resigned on September 15, 1850, celebrated its twentieth anniver- 
sary on February 6, 1860. It invited me to attend the celebrations, 
at which it passed a unanimous resolution “to brand as slander” 
Vogt’s allegation that I had “exploited” the German workers in 
general and the London workers in particular. Herr Muller, who 
was at that time the President of the Workers’ Society, had this 
resolution authenticated on March 1, 1860 at the Police Court in 
Bow Street. Together with this document I sent my lawyer a letter 
from the English lawyer and leader of the Chartist Party, Ernest 
Jones (Appendix 14), in which he expresses his indignation about 
the “infamous articles’* of the National-Zeitung and draws 

a Marx uses the English phrase and gives the German translation in 
brackets.— Ed. 

Herr Vogt.—XI. A Lawsuit 265 

attention inter alia to my unpaid collaboration over a period of 
years on the London organs of the Chartist Party. (It should be 
noted, incidentally, that Ernest Jones, who was born and brought 
up in Berlin, knows more German than Zabel.) I may also mention 
here that when the English Labour Parliament assembled in 
Manchester at the end of 1853,?*° Louis Blanc and I were the only 
members of the London emigration to be invited to attend as 
honorary members. 

Finally, since our honorary Vogt has represented me as “living 
from the sweat of the workers”, from whom I have never either 
asked or received a penny, and since “democrat” Zabel has 
suggested that I have “compromised people in Germany” 
politically “in such a way that they were forced to pay money so 
that ae gang should preserve their secret without compromising 
them”, I requested Mr. Charles A. Dana, the managing editor* of 
the New-York Tribune, the first Anglo-American paper which has 
200,000 subscribers and is thus almost as widely known as the Biel 
Commis voyageur and Zabel’s “organ of democracy”,” to give me a 
statement in writing about my ten-year-long paid collaboration on 
the Tribune, the Cyclopaedia Americana, etc. His letter, extremely 
flattering for me (see Appendix 14), was the last document | 
thought it necessary to forward to my lawyer to defend myself 
against the stink-ball No. 1 of Vogt and Zabel. 

2. In Zabel’s leading article No. 2, “Wie man_ radikale 
Flugblatter macht” (National-Zeitung, No. 41, January 25, 1860), it 
is stated: 

““Where the money for this generously distributed paper” (i.e. Das Volk) “came 
from, is known to the gods; men, however, are well aware that Marx and Biscamp 
have no money to spare.” 

Looked at in isolation this passage might appear to be no more 
than a frank expression of astonishment, as if I were to say: “How 
a certain stout party whom I knew in my student days in Berlin as 
a dunce bereft of all intellectual and material charms—he was the 
owner of a day nursery and his literary accomplishments prior to 
the revolution of 1848 were confined to a few furtive contribu- 
tions to a literary local rag—how the above-mentioned stout dunce 
managed to become editor-in-chief of the National-Zeitung, a 
shareholder in it and ‘a democrat in possession of spare 
money —that is known to the gods. Men, however, who have read 

a Marx uses English: “managing editor”.— Ed. 
b The Schweizer Handels-Courier and the National-Zeitung.— Ed. 

10* 

a certain novel by Balzac* and who have made a study of the 
Manteuffel era, may be able to hazard a guess.” 

Zabel’s remark acquires quite a different, and far more 
malicious inflection from the circumstance that it follows his 
allegations about my connections with the secret police of France 
and Germany and my conspiratorial and police efforts to extort 
money with the aid of threatening letters, and leads on directly to 
the “manufacture of counterfeit paper money on a massive scale” 
to be treated under 3. Obviously he intends to imply that I 
obtained financial contributions for Das Volk in a disreputable 
manner. 

In order to refute Zabel in court I obtained an affidavit from 
Manchester dated March 3, 1860 according to which all the money 
I gave to Das Volk (with the exception of a specified amount out 
of my own pocket) came, not, as Vogt opined, from “the other 
side of the Channel’, but from the pockets of my friends in 
Manchester (see “The Augsburg Campaign’”).” 

3. “To throw light on” the “tactics” of the “‘proletarian’ party 
under Marx”, F. Zabel narrates the following story (leading article 
No. 2 inter alia): 

66s 

“In this way a conspiracy of the most infamous sort was devised in 1852, which 
aimed at damaging the Swiss workers’ associations by manufacturing counterfeit 
paper money on a massive scale. See Vogt for further details, etc.” 

This is how Zabel interprets Vogt’s assertions about the Cherval 
affair and makes me the moral source and criminal accomplice in 
the “manufacture of counterfeit paper money on a massive scale”. 
The evidence I assembled in refutation of these allegations by 
“democrat” Zabel extended over the whole period from Cherval’s 
admission to the “Communist League” to his flight from Geneva 
in 1854. An affidavit taken out by Karl Schapper at the Police 
Court at Bow Street on March 1, 1860° proved that Cherval had 
been admitted to the League in London before I myself joined it. 
It showed further that when he was in Paris, where he lived from 
the summer of 1850 until the spring of 1852, he entered into 
relations not with myself, but with the rival League of Willich and 
Schapper which was hostile to me. Finally, it proved that after his 
feigned escape from the prison of St. Pélagie and his return to 

4 Presumably Illusions perdues.— Ed. 

b See this volume, pp. 118, 119.— Ed. 

© On this see Marx’s letter to Karl Schapper of February 27, 1860 (present 
edition, Vol. 41). Extracts from the letter and from the affidavit are contained in 
Marx’s notebook.— Ed. 

Herr Vogt.—XI. A Lawsuit 267 

London (spring 1852), he joined the public German Workers’ 
Educational Society there to which I had ceased to belong in 
September 1850. Here he was finally exposed, condemned and 
expelled. Moreover, the lawyer Schneider II in Cologne could be 
made to testify under oath that the revelations about Cherval 
made while the Cologne communist trial was in progress, the 
account of his relations with the Prussian police in London, etc., 
all came from me. My Revelations, which were published in 1853, 
proved that I had publicly denounced him after the conclusion of 
the trial. Finally, Johann Philipp Becker’s letter* provided 
information about Cherval’s Geneva period. 

4. Having with genuinely dunce-like logic babbled about the 
pamphlet Zur Warnung, which had been aimed at Vogt, and 
having done his best to discredit Vogele’s testimony” about the 
origins of the pamphlet, which testimony I had forwarded to the 
Allgemeine Zeitung, “democrat” F. Zabel concludes his peroration in 
leading article No. 2 as follows: 

“He” (Blind) “is obviously not a member of the Marx party in the narrower sense. 
It appears to us that the latter did not find it too difficult to turn him into a 
scapegoat, and if the charges levelled at Vogt were to carry any weight, they had to 
be attributed to a definite person who would have to be responsible for them. The 
Marx party could very easily saddle Blind with the authorship of the pamphlet 
because and after he had expressed similar views to those contained in it in 
conversation with Marx and in an article in The Free Press. By making use of Blind’s 
assertions and turns of phrase the pamphlet could be fabricated and made to look as if he 
had concocted it.... Anybody is at liberty to regard either Marx or Blind as its 
author”, etc. 

Zabel here accuses me of having fabricated a document, viz. the 
pamphlet Zur Warnung, in Blind’s name and of having subse- 
quently, in a false testimony sent by me to the Allgemeine Zeitung, 
represented Blind as the author of the pamphlet fabricated by 
myself. The legal refutation of “democrat” Zabel’s allegations was 
as decisive as it was simple. It consisted of Blind’s letter to 
Liebknecht, cited earlier on, of Blind’s article in The Free Press, the 
two affidavits of Wiehe and Vogele (Appendices 12 and 13) and 
the printed declaration of M. D. Schaible.‘ 

Vogt, who is known to have jeered at the Bavarian Government 
in his Studien, launched an action against the Allgemeine Zeitung at 

a See this volume, pp. 60-64.— Ed. 

b ibid., Appendix 12.— Ed. 

¢ ibid., pp. 122, 122-23.— Ed. 

ibid., pp. 130-31.— Ed. 

© Carl Vogt, Studien cur gegenwartigen Lage Europas, S. 91.— Ed. 

[omy 

the end of August 1859. As early as September the Allgemeine 
Zeitung had to request a postponement of the hearing and 
although the postponement had been granted the trial actually 
took place on October 24, 1859. If this was possible in the 
obscurantist state of Bavaria, what might not be expected from the 
enlightened state of Prussia, quite apart from the proverbial truth 
that “in Berlin there are judges”. 
My lawyer, Counsellor Weber, formulated my case thus: 

“The editor of the National-Zeitung, Dr. Zabel, has repeatedly and_ publicly 
libelled me in leading articles in Nos. 37 and 41 of that paper of this year. In 
particular he has accused me (1) of acquiring and having acquired money in a 
dishonourable and criminal manner; (2) of having fabricated the anonymous 
pamphlet Zur Warnung and of having not only represented a certain Blind as its 
author to the Allgemeine Zeitung against my better knowledge, but also of having 
sought to prove this assertion with the aid of a document of whose inaccurate 
contents I must have been convinced.” 

Counsellor Weber elected to proceed first by means of an official 
investigation, i.e. he denounced Zabel’s libels to the Public 
Prosecutor with the idea that proceedings against Zabel should 
then be initiated by the Public Prosecutor’s Office. This resulted in 
the following “ruling” which was handed down on April 18, 1860: 

“The original documents are returned to Dr. Karl Marx c/o Counsellor Weber, 
together with the notification that no issue of public importance is raised by this 
matter which could make it desirable for me to take any action (Article XVI of the 
Prolegomena to the Penal Code of April 14, 1851).* Berlin, April 18. 

“Public Prosecutor at the Royal Municipal Court, 
(signed) Lippe” 

My counsel appealed to the Chief Public Prosecutor and on April 
26, 1860 he received a second “ruling” worded thus: 

“To the Royal Counsellor Weber, acting on behalf of Dr. Karl Marx of London. 
I hereby return to you the documents accompanying the complaint of April 20 of 
this year concerning the denunciation against Dr. Zabel. The only criterion by 
which the Public Prosecutor may act in considering what discretion he is allowed by 
Article XVI of the Prolegomena to the Penal Code is, of course, the question 
whether prosecution is required by any discernible public interest. Concurring with 
the judgment of the Royal Public Prosecutor I must answer this question negatively 
in the present instance, and I accordingly reject your complaint. Berlin, April 26, 
1860. 

“Chief Public Prosecutor at the Royal High Court, 
(signed) Schwarck” 

a “Gesetz tiber die Einführung des Strafgesetzbuchs für die Preussischen 
Staaten. Vom 14. April 1851”, Gesetz-Sammlung ftir die Kéniglichen Preussischen 
Staaten 1851.— Ed. 

Herr Vogt.—XI. A Lawsuit 269 

I found these two refusals on the part of Public Prosecutor 
Lippe and Chief Public Prosecutor Schwarck entirely justified. In 
every state throughout the world, and hence presumably in the 
state of Prussia also, the public interest is interpreted as the interest 
of the government. As far as the Prussian Government was 
concerned there neither was nor could there be “any discernible 
public interest’? in the prosecution of “democrat” Zabel for libels 
against my person. If anything, the interest lay in the opposite 
direction. Moreover, the Public Prosecutor does not have the 
judicial authority to pass judgment; he has to follow blindly the 
regulations laid down by his superior, the Minister of Justice in the 
final instance, and he must do this regardless of his own views or 
convictions. 

In actual fact, then, I am quite in agreement with the decisions 
of Messrs. Lippe and Schwarck, although I have legal reser- 
vations about Lippe’s reference to Article XVI of the Pro- 
legomena to the Penal Code of April 14, 1851. There is no 
paragraph in the Prussian Code which obliges the Public 
Prosecutor’s Office to give a reason for its refusal to intervene. 
Nor is there any single syllable about this in the Article XVI 
referred to by Lippe. So why quote it? 

My lawyer now proceeded to launch a civil action, and I 
breathed a sigh of relief. Though the Prussian Government had 
no public interest in prosecuting F. Zabel, I had the strongest 
private interest to defend myself. And I could now act in my own 
name. The verdict was a matter of indifference to me, if only I 
could compel F. Zabel to appear at the bar of a public court. But 
just imagine my astonishment! I was told that it was not yet a 
matter of instituting legal proceedings, but of a court hearing to 
settle the question whether I had a right to bring an action against 
F. Zabel. 

I was disconcerted to discover that, according to the Prussian 
judicial regulations, before the judge can hear the action and 
proceed to judgment, every plaintiff must plead his case to the 
same judge to enable the latter to see whether the plaintiff has the 
right to sue. In the course of this preliminary investigation the 
judge may call for additional evidence, or he may suppress part cf 
the old evidence, or he may find that the plaintiff has no right to 
sue. If he sees fit to allow the right to sue, the judge arranges the 
hearing, the case is heard and 1s settled by a verdict. If the judge 
refuses the right to sue, he simply stops the action by a decree, by 
a ruling. This procedure applies not only to actions for libel, but to 
all civil cases. Thus an action for libel, like any other civil action, 

can be dismissed in all instances by such an official ruling and 
therefore will never be settled. 

It will be granted that a code of law which does not recognise 
the right of the private individual to sue in his own private 
interests, ignores the simplest and most basic laws of civil society. 
The right to sue, a self-evident right of the independent private 
individual, is turned into a privilege granted by the state through 
the agency of its judiciary. In every legal conflict the state 
intervenes placing itself between the private individual and the 
gateway to the court, which is its private property and which it 
opens or closes as it thinks fit. First the judge gives a ruling in his 
capacity as an official; later on he gives his verdict, in his capacity as 
a judge. The same judge who, without hearing the accused, 
without hearing the pros and cons of the case, prejudges the issue 
of whether there are grounds for an action, and who, let us say, 
places himself on the side of the plaintiff, who thus decides to a 
certain degree in favour of the legitimacy of the complaint, who 
decides therefore to a certain degree against the defendant, this 
very same judge is supposed subsequently, in the actual trial, to 
decide impartially between the plaintiff and defendant, i.e. to pass a 
verdict on his own prejudgment. B. boxes A.’s ears. A. cannot sue 
the attacker until he has civilly acquired a licence to do so from 
the court official. A. withholds from B. a piece of land that 
belongs to him. B. requires a preliminary licence enabling him to 
assert his property rights before the court. He may receive it or he 
may not. B. libels A. publicly in the press, and an official of the 
judiciary, sitting in camera, may “rule” that A. may not sue B. It 
is easy to see what monstrous injustices may be perpetrated 
because of this procedure even in civil cases in the strict sense of 
the word. Still more so in case of libels made in the press against 
political parties. In all countries, and even in Prussia, judges are 
known to be human beings like everyone else. Even one of the 
Vice-Presidents of the Royal Prussian Supreme Tribunal, Dr. Gétze, 
has declared in the Prussian Upper House that Prussian law was 
embarrassed by the disturbances of the years 1848, 1849 and 
1850, and needed some time to orientate itself. Who can 
guarantee that Dr. Gotze has not miscalculated the time required 
for orientation? The fact that in Prussia the right to take action 
against a Slanderer, for example, depends on the _ interim 
“ruling” of an official whom the government, moreover, may 
punish for so-called “derelictions of duty while in office’, with 
censure, fines, forced transfer and even dishonourable dismissal 
from the judiciary (see the interim ordinance of July 10, 1849 

Herr Vogt.—XI. A Lawsuit 271 

and the Law concerning discipline of May 7, 1851*)—how shall I 
even begin to make this credible, if not clear, to English readers? 

For it is my intention to publish an English pamphlet about my 
case against F. Zabel.° And when Edmond About wrote his La 
Prusse en 1860 what would he not have given for the information 
that in the entire realm of the Prussian monarchy the right to sue 
does not exist anywhere but in the Rhine Province, which has been 
“blessed” with the possession of the Code Napoléon”*'! Men must 
suffer everywhere under the courts, but only in a very few 
countries are they forbidden to sue. 

In the circumstances it is understandable that my action against 
Zabel in the Prussian courts had to change into my dispute with the 
Prussian courts about Zabel. Leaving the theoretical beauties of the 
law to one side, let us now cast a glance at the charms of applying 
it in practice. 

On June 8, 1860 the Royal Municipal Court in Berlin issued the 
following “ruling”’: 

“Ruling regarding the suit for libel brought on June 5, 1860 

“Marx contra Zabel. M. 38 de 1860 

“1. The suit is dismissed for lack of an indictable offence, because the two 
incriminating leading articles of the local ‘National-Zeitung’ merely make the political 
views of the Augsburg ‘Allgemeine Zeitung’ and the history of the anonymous pamphlet 
‘Zur Warnung’ the object of discussion. The statements and assertions contained therein, 
insofar as they are those of the author himself and are not merely quotations from other 
persons, do not exceed the bounds of legitimate criticism. In accordance with § 154 of 
the Penal Code, therefore, since the intention to insult is evident neither from the 

form of these utterances, nor from the circumstances in which they were made, they 
cannot be held to be punishable. 

Berlin, June 8, 1860 
“Royal Municipal Court, Criminal Division 
“Commission I for Libel Cases (L.S.»)” 

Thus the Municipal Court forbids me to sue F. Zabel and 
absolves Zabel of the irksome necessity of having to answer for his 
public libels!| And why? “For lack of an indictable offence.” The 
Public Prosecutor’s Office refused to take action against Zabel on 
my behalf because no discernible public interest was involved. The 
Municipal Court forbids me to proceed against Zabel on my own 
behalf because there is no indictable offence. And why is there no 
indictable offence? 

a “Verordnung, betreffend die Dienstvergehen der Richter ... vom 10. Juli 
1849” and “Gesetz, betreffend die Dienstvergehen der Richter ... vom 7. Mai 
1851” — Ed. 

b Locus sigilli: the place of the seal.— Ed. 

First: “Because the two leading articles of the ‘National-Zeitung’ 
merely relate to the political views of the ‘Allgemeine Zeitung’.” 

Because Zabel has for the time being deceitfully transformed me 
into a “correspondent of the ‘Allgemeine Zeitung’” he has the right to 
make me the whipping-boy in his feud with that paper, and I do 
not even have the right to complain about this “ruling” of the 
mighty Zabel! Brimstone Gang, Bristlers, complot franco- 
allemand, revolutionary congress in Murten, Cologne communist 
trial, fabrication of counterfeit paper money in Geneva, “work of 
the ‘Rheinische Zeitung’”’, etc., etc.—all this “merely relates to the 
political views of the ‘Allgemeine Zeitung’ ”. 

Second: F. Zabel had “no intention to insult”. Of course not! The 
good fellow only had the intention of killing me off politically and 
morally with his lies. 

When “democrat” F. Zabel asserts in the National-Zeitung that 
I have counterfeited money on a massive scale, fabricated docu- 
ments in the name of third persons, politically compromised 
people in Germany so as to extort money from them by 
threatening to denounce them, etc., it is evident that according to 
legal terminology he can have had only one of two things in mind: 
either to libel me or to denounce me. If the first, then he is legally 
punishable; if the second, then he must prove the truth of his 
assertions in a court of law. What do I care for any other private 
intentions of “democrat” F. Zabel? 

Zabel libels me, but without “the intention to insult”. He injures 
my reputation like the Turk who cut off the head of a Greek, but 
without intending to injure him. 

If one speaks of “insulting” and “the intention to insult”, if 
one speaks of the kind of infamous actions which “democrat” 
F. Zabel imputes to me, then the specific “intention” to “insult”, 
the utterly malicious intention of the good Zabel—why it breathes 
from every pore of his leading articles Nos. 1 and 2. 

Vogt’s “Magnum Opus”, appendices included, has no fewer 
than 278 pages. And F. Zabel, who is accustomed “to draw out the 
thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument’”,* our 
conceited F. Zabel, Dunce Zabel has succeeded in compressing 
these 278 pages into approximately five small newspaper columns 
without forgoing a single one of Vogt’s libels against me and my 
party. F. Zabel provides an anthology of the most scurrilous parts 
and a table of contents for the less drastic portions. F. Zabel, 
accustomed to expanding two molecules of ideas into 278 pages, 

a Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act V, Scene 1.— Ed. 

Herr Vogt.—XI. A_ Lawsuit 273 

now condenses 278 pages into two leading articles without losing a 
single atom of dirt in the process. Ira facit poetam.* How potent a 
malice it must have been to transform the hydrocephalic Zabel 
into a hydraulic press of such force! 

On the other hand, his malice blinds him to such an extent that 
he ascribes miraculous powers to me, actual miraculous powers, 
only to enable him to make one more slanderous insinuation at my 
expense. 

Having begun in the first leading article with a description of 
the Brimstone Gang under my command, and having happily 
turned me and my associates into the “confederates of the secret police 
in France and Germany”, having recounted, inter alia, that “these 
people” hated Vogt because he was continuously rescuing 
Switzerland from their clutches, he goes on: 

“Now when last year Vogt had brought an action against the Allgemeine Zeitung, 
the latter received a communication from another London accomplice, Biscamp.... In 
the most shameless manner the writer offered ... his services as a second 
correspondent along with Herr Liebknecht. [...] A week after Biscamp Marx, too, wrote to 
the ‘Allgemeine Zeitung’, offering it a ‘legal document’ as evidence against Vogt about 
which” » (the document, the evidence or Vogt?) “we shall perhaps speak at a later date.” 

Zabel gave this promise on January 22 and carried it out as 
early as January 25 in the National-Zeitung, No. 41, where we can 
read: 

“So Blind denies being the author of the pamphlet; he is ... referred to as such 
for the first time in Biscamp’s letter to the ‘Allgemeine Zeitung’ of October 20.... To 

strengthen the case for Blind’s authorship Marx wrote to the ‘Allgemeine Zeitung’ on 
October 29.” 

So F. Zabel credits me, not once, but twice, first on January 22 
and then again on January 25, having had three days to think it 
over, with the magic power of writing a letter in London on 
October 29, 1859 which had been in the possession of the 
Augsburg District Court on October 24, 1859. And both times he 
credits me with this magic power in order to establish a link 
between the “document” I forwarded to the Allgemeine Zeitung, 
and the objectionable letter sent to it by Biscamp,‘ i.e. to make my 
letter look like the pedisequus* to Biscamp’s. So was it not malice, 
pigheaded malice which made F. Zabel stupid to the point of 

a Anger makes the poet (Virgil, The Aeneid, Book VII, 507, paraphrased).— Fd. 

b In German: von dem, but dem can refer either to the document, the evidence or 
Vogt.— Ed. 

© See this volume, p. 127.— Ed. 

d Sequel.— Ed. 

beginning to believe in magic, far beyond the average degree of 
duncedom? 

But, the Municipal Court “argues further”, Zabel’s leading 
article No. 2 “merely makes the history of the anonymous pamphlet 
Zur Warnung” the “object of discussion”. The object? Read 
pretext. : 

Eisele-Beisele, concealed this time under the name of “German 
Patriots”, had, it appears, sent an “open letter” in November 
1859 to the “National Association” which was printed in the 
reactionary Neue Hannoversche Zeitung.’ This “open letter” of- 
fended against the “democracy” of Zabel, a democracy in which 
the heroic courage to attack the Habsburg dynasty was neatly 
balanced by the servility shown to the Hohenzollern dynasty. The 
Neue Preussische Zeitung took the opportunity provided by the 
“open letter” to make the not very original discovery that once 
democracy has got under way it need not necessarily end up 
in—F. Zabel and his “organ of democracy”. Zabel flew into a rage 
and wrote leading article No. 2, “Wie man radikale Flugblatter 
macht” [ “How Radical Pamphlets Are Made’’). 

“By inviting the Kreuz-Zeitung,” Zabel begins portentously, “to go through the 
history of the pamphlet (Zur Warnung) with the help of the documents and 
explanations provided by Vogt, we express the hope that it will finally admit that we 
were in the right when we said two months ago that the open letter to the National 
Association was something for it, not for us, that it had been designed for its 
columns, not for ours.” 

So “democrat” Zabel, who has been so radically initiated by 
Vogt into the mysteries of radicalism, wishes for his part to read 
the Kreuz-Zeitung a lecture on the mystery of “how radical 
pamphlets are made”, or as the Municipal Court expresses it: “he 
merely wishes to make the history of the pamphlet ‘Zur Warnung’ 
the object of discussion’. And how does F. Zabel set about his 
task? 

He starts with the “tactics” of the “‘proletarian’ party under 
Marx”. First, he recounts how, in the name of a Workers’ 
Association but behind its back, the “proletarians under Marx” 
send letters from London for foreign workers’ associations “which 
are to be compromised”, hatch “intrigues”, set up a secret league, 
etc.; and how they, finally, compose “documents” which “inevitably 
attract the protests of the police” to those associations ‘which are 
to be compromised”. Thus in order to teach the Kreuz-Zeitung 
“how radical pamphlets are made”, Zabel begins by explaining 
that “the ‘proletarian’ party under Marx” manufactures police 
“reports” and “documents”, which are not “pamphlets” at all. In 

Herr Vogt.— XI. A. Lawsuit 275 

order to explain “how radical pamphlets are made” he goes on to 
recount that the “proletarians under Marx” manufactured “counter- 
feit paper money on a massive scale” in Geneva in 1852, which are 
likewise not “radical pamphlets”. In order to demonstrate “how 
radical pamphlets are made”, he reports that the “proletarians 
under Marx” carried out “manoeuvres” hostile to the Swiss and 
compromising for the associations during the Lausanne Joint 
Festival in 1859—and these too are not “radical pamphlets”. He 
explains that “Biscamp and Marx” with the aid of funds whose 
source was known only “to the gods” produced Das Volk, which 
was not a “radical pamphlet” either but a weekly journal. And 
after all this he puts in a good word for the immaculate purity of 
Vogt’s recruiting agency, which once again was no “radical 
pamphlet”. In this way he fills 2 of the 3'/, columns of the article 
entitled “How Radical Pamphlets Are Made”. Thus for these */; of 
the article the history of the anonymous pamphlet serves merely as 
a pretext for reproducing those of Vogt’s slanders which F. Zabel, 
his “friend” and accomplice, has not dealt with under the heading 
“Political Views of the ‘Allgemeine Zeitung’”’. Lastly at the very end 
Dunce I comes to the art of “making radical pamphlets”, namely 
to “the history” of the pamphlet Zur Warnung. 

“Blind denies being the author of the pamphlet; he is impudently referred to as 
such for the first time in Biscamp’s letter to the Allgemeine Zeitung of October 20.... 
To strengthen the case for Blind’s authorship Marx wrote to the Allgemeine Zeitung on 
October 29: ‘I have obtained the accompanying document because Blind refused to 
stand by statements which he made to me and to other persons.’” 

Now Zabel suspects this document in particular because 
Liebknecht ... “strangely enough” adds: “We requested the 
magistrate (?)” (this question mark stands in Zabel’s text) “to 
authenticate our signatures” and Zabel has resolved once and for 
all not to recognise any magistrate but the Berlin magistrate. Zabel 
goes on to report the contents of Vogele’s declaration which had 
caused Blind to send the statements of Hollinger and Wiehe to the 
Allgemeine Zeitung to prove that the pamphlet had not been printed on 
Hollinger’s press and was therefore not composed by Blind. He 
continues: 

“Marx, always ready with an answer, replied in the Allgemeine Zeitung on Novem- 
ber 15.” 

Zabel lists the various points in my reply. Marx says this ... 
Marx says that..., “in addition, Marx refers”. So since I do not say 
anything ‘in addition”, surely Zabel has informed his readers of 
all the points I make in my reply? But we know our Zabel! He 

conceals, leaves out, suppresses the decisive point of my reply.* In 
my declaration of November 15” I make a number of points, all of 
which are numbered. Thus “1. ... 2. ... and finally, 3. ...”: “It so 
happened that the reprint” (of the pamphlet) “in Das Volk was 
made from the type still standing in Hollinger’s print-shop. Thus 
without the need to call witnesses, a simple comparison of the 
pamphlet and the reprint of it in Das Volk would be sufficient to 
prove to a court that the former came from F. Hollinger’s print-shop.” 
That’s the conclusive piece of evidence, Zabel said to himself. My 
readers must not hear of this. So he spirits away the strongest 
point of my reply and instead burdens my conscience with a 
suspect gift of repartee.“ Thus Zabel’s account of “the history of 
the pamphlet” contains two intentional falsehoods. He falsifies 
first the chronology and then the contents of my declaration of 
November 15. His twofold falsification prepares the way for his 
conclusion that I “fabricated” the pamphlet, and that I did so in such 
a way that it “looked like Blind’s fabrication” and hence that in 
sending Vogele’s testimony to the Allgemeine Zeitung I likewise 
sent a false testimony, and did so knowingly. The accusation of 
fabricating documents with the intention of saddling a third 
person with responsibility for them does not, in the view of the 
Berlin Municipal Court, “exceed the bounds of legitimate criticism” 
and even less does it imply “an intention to insult”. 

At the end of his recipe describing “how radical pamphlets are 
made” it suddenly occurs to Zabel that there is one shameless 
invention of Vogt’s that he has omitted to make use of, and so 
right at the end of his leading article No. 2 he hastily adds the 
following note: 

“In 1850 another circular” (as Vogt recollects) “written by Parliamentary Wolf, 

alias Casemate Wolf, was sent to the ‘proletarians’ in Germany, and simultaneously 
allowed to fall into the hands of the Hanover police.” 4 

With this pretty police anecdote about one of the former editors 
of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, our stout party, democrat Zabel, 
grins and takes his leave of his readers. The words “alias 

a Marx puns on the words unterschlagen (suppress) and schlagend (decisive).— 
Ed. 

b See this volume, pp. 8-9. The italics were introduced by Marx in Herr 
Vogt.— Ed. 

¢ Marx puns on the words Schlagkraft (forcefulness, striking power, here— 
strongest point) and Schlagfertigkeit (gift of repartee).— Ed. 

4 From the article “Wie man radikale Flugblatter macht”, National-Zeitung, 
No. 41, January 25, 1860.— Ed. 

Herr Vogt.—XI. A Lawsuit ra 

Casemate Wolf” belong not to Vogt but to F. Zabel. His Silesian 
readers were to be clearly informed that he is talking about their 
countryman W. Wolff, the former co-editor of the Neue Rheinische 
Zeitung. How assiduously our good Zabel toils to ensure that the 
connection between the Neue Rheinische Zeitung and the police in 
France and Germany is established down to the last detail! His 
Silesians might imagine otherwise that it was Zabel’s own B. Wolff 
that was under discussion, Zabel’s natural superior’ who, as is well 
known, rearranges world history with the aid of telegrams and in 
“secret league’ with such well-known manufacturers of false 
reports as Reuter in London and Havas in Paris. Sigmund 
Englander, the notorious secret police agent, is the heart and soul 
of the Reuter bureau and hence the presiding genius of the trinity 
B. Wolff-Reuter-Havas. 

Despite all this and despite democrat Zabel’s intention not to 
insult, the Berlin Municipal Court declares that Zabel’s two leading 
articles do indeed “contain statements and assertions” which 
“exceed the bounds of legitimate criticism’ and are therefore 
“punishable”, or at least actionable. So produce this Zabel! Hand 
him over and let him wriggle in court! Not so fast! the Municipal 
Court exclaims. The “statements and assertions” contained in the 
two leading articles, the Municipal Court says, do not, “insofar as 
they are those of the author” (Zabel) “himself and are not merely 
quotations from other persons”, exceed “the bounds of legitimate 
criticism” and are not “punishable”. Hence Zabel is not only not 
punishable, he is not even actionable and “the costs are therefore 
to be borne by the plaintiff”. So the libellous part of Zabel’s 
“statements and assertions” is “mere quotation”. Voyons! 

It will be remembered from the opening part of this chapter 
that my action for libel was based on four passages in Zabel’s two 
leading articles. In the passage dealing with Das Volk’s financial 
resources (sub 2 of the points listed above), Zabel himself does not 
claim to quote nor does he quote in fact, for: 

Zabel (National-Zeitung, No. 41) 

“Where the money for this generous- 
ly distributed paper” (Das _ Volk) 
“came from, is known to the gods; 
men, however, are well aware that 
Marx and Biscamp have no money to 
spare.” 

Vogt (‘Magnum Opus”, p. 212) 

“The regular correspondent of the 
Allgemeine Zeitung is a collaborator on 
this paper” (Das Volk) “which was 
established with the aid of unknown 
funds, for neither Biscamp nor Marx 
have the requisite means for it” (i.e. 
to establish a paper on the basis of 
unknown funds?). 

* Marx gives the English phrase in brackets after its German equivalent.— Ed. 

In the second incriminating passage (see above sub 4), in which 
I am accused of fabricating a document in Blind’s name, Zabel 
even states explicitly that he is speaking in his own name, as Zabel, 
and not in Vogt’s. 

“It appears to us”, as monarch in the Kingdom of Dullness? Zabel naturally 
makes use of the pluralis majestatis,> “it appears to us that the latter” (the Marx 
party) “did not find it too difficult to turn him” (Blind) “into a scapegoat.... By 
making use of Blind’s assertions and turns of phrase the pamphlet could be 

fabricated and made to look as if he” (Blind) “had concocted it” (National-Zeitung, 
No. 41). 

The third of the incriminating passages (see above sub 3) must 
be “quoted” again in full: 

“In this way a conspiracy of the most infamous sort was devised in 1852, which 
aimed at damaging the Swiss workers’ associations by manufacturing counterfeit 
paper money on a massive scale. (See Vogt for further details.) This conspiracy would 
have caused the greatest difficulties for the Swiss authorities if it had not been 
uncovered in time.” 

Is this “merely a quotation”, as the Municipal Court 
maintains, is it in fact a quotation of any kind? It is indeed partly 
plagiarised from Vogt, but it is not a quotation in any sense. of the 
word. 

In the first place Zabel himself does not claim that he is quoting, 
but implies that he is speaking in his own right when he remarks 
in a parenthesis: “See Vogt for further details.”” And now look at 
the passage itself! In Geneva it was known that Cherval did not 
arrive in Geneva before spring 1853 and that his “conspiracy” and 
flight took place in spring 1854. So Vogt, writing in Geneva, does 
not venture to assert that the “conspiracy ... was devised in 1852”. 
This lie he leaves to our good Zabel in Berlin. Furthermore, Vogt 
says: 

“Various stone and copper plates had already been engraved for this purpose” 
(the manufacture of counterfeit banknotes, etc.) “by Nugent” (Cherval) “himself” 
(“Magnum Opus”, p. 175). 

Hence various stone and copper plates had. already been 
engraved for the forgery, but the banknotes and treasury bills had 
not yet been manufactured. According to Zabel, however, “the 
manufacture of counterfeit paper money” had already taken 
place, and “on a massive scale’, moreover. Vogt states that the 
Statutory “purpose” of Cherval’s conspiracy was 

“to attack despotism with its own weapons, by manufacturing counterfeit 
banknotes and treasury bills on a massive scale” (loc. cit.). 

4 Marx uses the English word.— Ed. 
b The royal plural.— Ed. 

Herr Vogt.—XI. A_ Lawsuit 279 

Zabel deletes the attack on despotism and holds fast to the 
“manufacture of counterfeit paper money on a massive scale’”’. In 
Zabel, then, what we have is an ordinary criminal act which is not 
even palliated for the benefit of the members of the “secret 
league” by the pretence of a political purpose. And this is how 
Zabel “quotes” from the “Magnum Opus” throughout. Vogt felt it 
necessary to turn his tall stories into a “book”. So he fills it with 
details, spins it out, scrawls, splutters, colours, daubs, arranges, 
develops, complicates, explains, fantasises, fa del cul trombetta* with 
the result that at every point his Falstaffian soul shines through 
the purported facts, which are once more dissolved by his own 
narrative, though he is not aware of this, into the void from which 
they had emerged. Zabel, by contrast, who had to compress the 
book into two leading articles and did not wish to omit a single 
slander, suppresses everything but the caput mortuum? of every 
purported “fact”, he strings the dry bones of these slanders 
together and then counts his rosary with the zeal of a Pharisee. 

Take the following case. Starting with the fact revealed first by 
myself, that Cherval was a secret police agent and agent provocateur 
in the pay of various embassies, Vogt’s imagination takes wing. He 
says inter alia: 

“Various stone and copper plates had already been engraved for this purpose” 
(forgery) “by Nugent” (Cherval) “himself; the gullible members of the secret 
league had already been selected to go to France, Switzerland and Germany with 
packets of these” (as yet unmanufactured) “counterfeit banknotes. But denuncia- 

tions had already been made to the police and scandalously enough these also 
incriminated the workers’ associations, etc.” (“Magnum Opus”, p. 175.) 

Vogt thus makes Cherval denounce his own operations to the 
police even though he has done no more than engrave the stone 
and copper plates for the intended forgery, even before the 
purpose of his conspiracy has been achieved, before a corpus delicti 
has appeared and anyone apart from himself has been compro- 
mised. But the Vogtian Cherval is eager to “scandalously” incrimi- 
nate “the workers’ associations” in his “conspiracy”. The foreign 
embassies that make use of Cherval are as stupid as he is and are 
equally precipitate 

“in indicating to the Swiss police in confidence that political intrigues were 
being devised in the workers’ associations, etc.’’¢ 

a Makes a bugle of his rear (Dante, The Divine Comedy, Inferno, Canto 
XXI).— Ed. 

b Literally: dead head; a term used in chemistry for the residuum left after 
distillation; here: remainder, residue.— Ed. 

© op. cit., S. 176.— Ed. 

280 ~ Karl Marx 

Simultaneously, these ambassadorial numskulls, who are too 
impatient to allow the conspiracy hatched by Cherval on their 
orders to come to fruition and who, in their childish impatience, 
reveal the identity of their own agent to no purpose, have police 
lying in wait at “the frontiers” to receive Cherval’s emissaries, “if 
matters had developed to such a pitch” as they had prevented 
them from developing, “to receive them with counterfeit bank- 
notes” whose manufacture they had thwarted, 

“and turn the whole affair into an occasion for a general witch-hunt in which 

masses of innocent people would have had to pay for the misdeeds of a few wicked 
men”. 

When Vogt goes on to say that “the plan of the whole conspiracy 
had been monstrously conceived”, everyone will agree that its 
conception was monstrously stupid, and when he concludes with the 
boast 

“I cannot deny that I contributed a substantial part in frustrating these devilish 
plans’, 

everyone will get the point and collapse with laughter at the 
whimsical devil. But compare this with the ascetic account given in 
Zabel’s annals! 

“In this way a conspiracy of the most infamous sort was devised in 1852, which 
aimed at damaging the Swiss associations by manufacturing counterfeit paper 
money on a massive scale. (See Vogt for further details.) This conspiracy would 
have caused the greatest difficulties for the Swiss authorities if it had not been 
uncovered in time.” 

Here, condensed into a single brief sentence, we find a whole 
bundle of facts, as dry as they are scandalous. “A conspiracy of 
the most infamous sort” dated 1852. “Manufacture of counterfeit 
paper money on a massive scale”, i.e. an ordinary criminal act. 
The intentional compromising of the “Swiss workers’ associations”’, 
i.e. betrayal of one’s own party. The “greatest difficulties” which 
might have arisen for the “Swiss authorities”, i.e. agent provocateur 
against the Swiss Republic in the interests of Continental despots. 
Lastly, “timely discovery of the conspiracy”. Here criticism is 
deprived of all the vital clues provided by Vogt’s account, they 
have been simply conjured away. One has to believe or disbelieve. 
And this is how Zabel treats the entire “Magnum Opus” insofar as 
it deals with my party associates and myself. As Heine so rightly 
says, no human being is as dangerous as an addle-brained ass. 

2 ibid., S. 177.— Ed. 
b ibid.— Ed. 

Herr Vogt—XI. A Lawsuit 281 

Lastly, the fourth incriminating passage (see above sub 1) with 
which leading article No. 1 opens its revelations about the 
“Brimstone Gang”. It is true that Zabel begins with the words: 
“Vogt reports on p. 136 et seq.” But Zabel does not make it clear 
whether he is summarising or quoting. He takes care not to use 
quotation marks. In fact, he does not quote. There could be no 
doubt about it from the outset since he condenses pp. 136, 137, 
138, 139, 140 and 141 of the “Magnum Opus” into 51 lines of 
about 48 letters each, does not indicate omissions, but packs the 
sentences as tightly as Dutch herrings, and lastly even has space in 
these 51 lines for reflections of his own. Wherever he comes upon 
a particularly vile sentence, he incorporates it more or less as it 
stands. For the rest, he mixes up his excerpts so that they do not 
follow the pagination of the “Magnum Opus” but are brought in 
as and when they suit his purpose. He equips the head of one 
Vogtian sentence with the tail of another Vogtian sentence. Or 
again, he composes a single sentence from the keywords of a 
dozen of Vogt’s sentences. Should it occur that in Vogt’s original 
the stylistic rubble prevents the light from falling right on the 
slander, Zabel clears away the rubble. For example, Vogt talks of 

“compromising people at home in Germany in such a way that they could no longer 
resist the attempts to blackmail them and were forced to pay money”. 

According to Zabel, however, this reads: 

“compromising people in such a way that they were forced to pay money”. 

Elsewhere Zabel alters anything that appears to him to be 
ambiguous in Vogt’s unstylish mess. Thus Vogt: 

“they were forced to pay money so that the gang should preserve the 
secret of their having been compromised”. 

Whereas in Zabel: 

“so that the gang should preserve their secret without compromising [them]”. 

Finally, Zabel interpolates entire sentences of his own invention, 
such as: 

“The Brimstone Gang maintained a frightfully strict discipline among its 
supporters” and “they’’—namely “the fellows who continued the work of the ‘Rheinische 
Zeitung’ among the refugees” —‘‘they became the confederates of the secret police in 
France and Germany.” 

Thus of the four passages regarded by me as libellous three 
stem from Zabel on Zabel’s own admission, while the fourth alleged 
‘quotation’, although containing quotations, is not a quotation, and 
even less is it “merely a quotation”, as the Municipal Court 

maintains, and least of all is it a quotation “from other persons” in 
the plural, as the same Municipal Court contends. Conversely, 
among all Zabel’s “statements and assertions’’ about me there is not a 
single line of “criticism and appraisal” (‘“legitimate” or “‘illegiti- 
mate’). 

But even supposing that the actual assumption of the Municipal 
Court is as true as it is false; even supposing that Zabel’s libellous 
statements about me were merely quotations, would the Municipal 
Court because of this circumstance be legally justified in forbidding 
me to bring an action against F. Zabel? On the contrary, in a 
“ruling” handed down by the Royal Prussian High Court which 
we Shall give in extenso, we find that 

“It would not affect the situation as laid down in §156 of the Penal Code if the 
facts set out in the aforementioned articles turned out to be the author’s own 
assertions or quotations from the assertions of third persons.” 

So whether he quotes or not, “democrat” Zabel remains 
responsible for his “assertions”. The Municipal Court has already 
declared that Zabel published assertions about me which are in 
themselves “punishable”; but these assertions are quotations 
and hence unassailable. Away with this pretext, which is legally 
untenable, cries the High Court. So finally I shall be able to lay 
hands on Zabel; the doors of the law will open, Italiam, Italiam!? 

My lawyer appealed from the Municipal Court to the High Court 
and on July 11, 1860 he received the following “ruling”: 

“In the leading articles published in Nos. 37 and 41 of the National-Zeitung on 
January 22 and 25 of this year under the titles ‘Karl Vogt and the Allgemeine 
Zeitung’ and ‘How Radical Pamphlets Are Made’, a libel on the plaintiff Dr. Karl 
Marx of London cannot be found. Even though it would not affect the situation as 
laid down in §156 of the Penal Code if the facts set out in the aforementioned 
articles turned out to be the author’s own assertions or the assertions of third 
persons, it would be wrong to restrict the right of the press to subject the activities 
of the parties and the published expression of their disagreements to analysis and 
criticism, insofar as the form of the polemic does not indicate an intention to insult. 
In the present case this intention cannot be presumed to exist. 

“In the aforementioned articles light is thrown above all on the conflict that 
prevailed between the views of Dr. Karl Vogt, on the one hand, and the Augsburg 
Allgemeine Zeitung, on the other, concerning the support expressed for the interests 
of the Italians and for the interests of Austria on the occasion of the recent war; in 
this context the intervention of the so-called German emigration in London on the 
side of the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung and against Vogt, as well as some of the 
factional quarrels and the machinations of these refugees among themselves, are also 
discussed! 

a Virgil, The Aeneid, Book III.— Ed. 

Herr Vogt.—XI A Lawsuit 283 

“If in the course of these discussions the relations of the plaintiff to these parties 
and his partial involvement in their aspirations and in particular his efforts to assist 
the Augsburg ‘Allgemeine Zeitung’ in its polemic against Vogt by supplying it with 
evidence are drawn into the debate, the relevant allegations concerning this 
involvement which are contained in the two articles are not so much refuted as the 
plaintiff intended, but rather confirmed by the facts which he himself includes in his 
complaint. If on the other hand he goes on to assert that he is identified, in a 
defamatory manner, with those political activities, on which the articles in question 
admittedly pass severe strictures, referring to them as eccentric, and even 
unprincipled and dishonourable, this assertion cannot be regarded as substantiated. For 
when the first article quotes from Vogt’s account: ‘that the refugees of 1849 gradually 
congregated in London, where they revered the above mentioned Marx as their visible 
leader’; and refers to a letter by Techow: ‘in which we see how Marx, puffed up with 
Napoleonic pride in his intellectual superiority, rules the members of the Brimstone 
Gang with a rod of iron’—what we have here is in essence only a description of what 
Vogt calls the ‘Brimstone Gang’, and not an invective against Marx, who is portrayed 
rather as a restraining influence and intellectually superior. Least of all is his person 
associated with those people who are accused of blackmail and denunciation. Likewise, 
in the second article, it is nowhere stated that the plaintiff ascribed the authorship of 
the pamphlet Zur Warnung to the abovementioned Blind against his better knowledge, 
and that he knowingly sent false testimonies of third persons to that effect to the 
Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung. However, the fact that the testimony of the compositor 
Vogele was disputed is conceded by the plaintiff himself in his complaint when he cites 
the conflicting statements by Hollinger, the printer, and Wiehe, the compositor. 
Furthermore, on his own admission a certain Schaible later disclosed that he was the 
author of the pamphlet, and he did this moreover only after the two articles in the 
National-Zeitung had appeared. 

“The appeal of the 21st of last month against the negative ruling of the Royal 
Municipal Court of the 8th of the same month is adjudged to be without foundation 
and is therefore dismissed. Twenty-five silver groschen in costs for assessing the 
unfounded appeal are to be paid to the Treasury of the local Municipal Court without 
delay on pain of distraint. 

“Berlin, July 11, 1860 
Criminal Senate of the Royal High Court 
Second Division 
Guthschmidt Schultze 
“To D. Phil. Karl Marx c/o Legal 
Counsellor Weber” 

When I first received this “ruling” from my lawyer, I did not 
notice the address and conclusion on the first reading and, 
unfamiliar as I am with Prussian law, I imagined that I had been 
sent a copy of the defence handed in to the High Court by 
“democrat” F. Zabel. I said to myself that what Zabel had to say 
about “the views” (see Appendix 15) “of Dr. Karl Vogt and the 
Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung’, and about “the interests of the 
Italians and the interests of the Austrians”, all this must have 
accidentally strayed into his petition from a leading article 
intended for the National-Zeitung. 

In any event, “democrat” F. Zabel does not mention in so much 
as a single syllable either these views or those interests in the four 
‘columns that concern me in his two leading articles (which 
themselves amount to hardly six columns). In his petition Zabel 
says that I 

“assisted the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung in its polemic against Vogt by 
supplying it with evidence”. 

He refers to Vogt’s legal action against the “Allgemeine Zeitung” 
as the polemic of the “Allgemeine Zeitung” against Vogt. If legal ac- 
tion and polemic were identical things why should I require the 
permission of the Public Prosecutor, the Municipal Court, the 
High Court, etc., for my “polemic” against Zabel? And Zabel even 
asserts that the “relevant allegations” in his two leading articles 
concerning my relations with the Allgemeine Zeitung were “not so 
much refuted as I had intended, but rather confirmed by the facts I 
had myself included”. Not so much—but rather! In jus? it must be 
either-or. And what “relevant allegations” were made by Zabel? 

The “relevant allegations” in Zabel’s leading article No. 1 
concerning my relations with the Allgemeine Zeitung were as 
follows: 

1. Liebknecht became correspondent for the Allgemeine Zeitung 
on the strength of a reference which I had given him officially. I 
declared, in my complaint, that Zabel was lying, but thought it 
unnecessary to advance any further “facts” on such an absurdity. 
2. According to Zabel I sent a “legal document” to the Allgemeine 
Zeitung from London on October 29, which in fact had been in 
the possession of the Augsburg District Court on October 24, and 
he found this “allegation” confirmed by the “facts” produced by 
me! From the facts I had advanced in my complaint, Zabel could 
indeed see that, quite apart from any political motives, it had 
become necessary for me to send in a document relating to the 
origins of the pamphlet Zur Warnung, because Vogt had publicly 
attempted to saddle me with the authorship of it even before the 
institution of legal proceedings. 3. Zabel’s “allegation” that I was 
one of the correspondents of the Allgemeine Zeitung was refuted 
by me with the aid of authentic documents. Zabel’s leading article 
No. 2, “How Radical Pamphlets Are Made”, contained, as shown 
earlier on, no “allegations” concerning my relations with the 
Allgemeine Zeitung, other than the “allegation” that I myself had 
fabricated the pamphlet, that I had then laid it at Blind’s door and 

a Law.— Ed. 

Herr Vogt—XI. A Lawsuit 285 

tried to prove that it was his work by means of Végele’s false 
testimony. Were all these “relevant allegations not so much 
refuted as I had intended, but rather confirmed by the facts 
included ‘in my complaint”? Zabel himself admits the opposite. 

Could Zabel have known that Schaible had written the pamphlet 
Zur Warnung? Did Zabel have to believe that compositor Végele’s 
testimony, which on my own admission was “disputed”, was in fact 
correct? But where in the world have I laid down that Zabel must 
have this knowledge or that belief? My complaint refers “rather” to 
Zabel’s “relevant allegation” that I “fabricated the pamphlet and 
made it look as if he” (Blind) “had concocted it” and that I later 
used Vogele’s testimony to try and prove that it was Blind’s work. 

Finally, I came across an argument in Zabel’s defence which at 
least looked interesting. 

“If on the other hand he” (the plaintiff Marx) “goes on to assert that he is 
identified, in a defamatory manner, with those political activities” (of the Brimstone 
Gang), “on which the articles in question” (Zabel’s leading articles) “admittedly pass 
severe strictures, referring to them as eccentric, and even unprincipled and 

dishonourable, this assertion cannot be regarded as substantiated... Least of all is his 
person associated with those people who are accused of blackmail and denunciation.” 4 

Zabel is manifestly not one of those Romans of whom it is said: 
“memoriam quoque cum voce perdidissimus.”” He has lost his 
memory, but not his tongue. He transforms not just brimstone but 
the Brimstone Gang from its crystalline state into a liquid and 
from a liquid into a gas, and he uses the red gas to throw dust in 
my eyes.‘ The Brimstone Gang, he claims, is a “party” with whose 
“activities” he has never “identified” me, and with whose 
“blackmail and denunciations” he never even associated people 
“associated” with me. It is essential to convert this sulphurous gas 
back into the original flowers of sulphur. 

In leading article No. 1 (National-Zeitung, No. 37, 1860) Zabel 
opens his “relevant allegations” about the Brimstone Gang by 
describing “Marx” as its “visible leader”. The second member of 
the Brimstone Gang whom he alludes to “to fill in the picture”, 
but does not name, is Frederick Engels. He refers in particular to 
the letter in which Techow reports on his meeting with Fr. Engels, 
K. Schramm and myself. Zabel draws attention to the two last as 
illustrations of the “Brimstone Gang”. Immediately after he men- 
tions Cherval as a London emissary. Then it is Liebknecht’s turn. 

a See this volume, p. 283.— Ed. 

b “We lost our memories along with our vices” (Tacitus, Vita Julii Agricolae).— Ed. 

© Marx puns on roter Dampf (red gas) and blauen Dunst vormachen (literally: to 
produce blue smoke; figuratively: to throw dust in someone’s eyes).— Ed. 

“This Liebknecht, in nomine omen? one of the most servile supporters of Marx.... 
Immediately after his arrival Liebknecht took up service with Marx, and his labours 
were to the complete satisfaction of his master.” 

“Ohly”, who marches directly behind Liebknecht, is “likewise a 
channel of the Brimstone Gang”. Finally, “another London 
accomplice, Biscamp’’. All these details follow in quick succession in 
leading article No. 1, but at the end of leading article No. 2 yet 
another member of the Brimstone Gang is named, W. Wolff— 
“Parliamentary Wolf, alias Casemate Wolf”—who had _ been 
entrusted with the vital mission of “sending out circulars”. 
According to Zabel’s “relevant allegations”, then, the Brimstone 
Gang consists of: Marx, leader of the Brimstone Gang; F. Engels, 
illustration of the Brimstone Gang; Cherval, London emissary of 
the Brimstone gang; Liebknecht, “one of the most servile 
supporters of Marx”; Ohly, “likewise a channel of the Brimstone 
Gang”; Biscamp, “another” London “accomplice”; lastly, Wolff, 
the Brimstone Gang’s writer of circulars. 

In his first 51 lines Zabel makes this miscellaneously constituted 
Brimstone Gang figure variously under the names: “Brimstone 
Gang or Bristlers’”, ‘fellows who continued the work of the 
Rheinische Zeitung among the refugees”, the “proletarians” or, as 
we find in leading article No. 2, “the ‘proletarian’ party under 
Marx”. 

So much for the personnel and the names of the Brimstone 
Gang. In his “relevant allegations” Zabel gives a brief and 
impressive account of its organisation. “ Marx” is the “leader”. The 
“Brimstone Gang” itself comprises the circle of his “close” 
supporters or, as Zabel says in his second leading article, “the Marx 
party in the narrower sense”. Zabel even provides a touchstone for 
defining “the Marx party in the narrower sense”. A member of the 
Marx party in the narrower sense must have seen Biscamp at least 
once in his life. 

“He” (Blind), Zabel writes in leading article No. 2, “he declares that he has 
never seen Biscamp in the whole of his life. He is obviously not a member of the 
Marx party in the narrower sense.” 

The “Marx party in the narrower sense”, or the Brimstone 
Gang proper, is therefore the aristocracy of the gang, not to be 
confused with the third category, the mass of “supporters” or “this 
carefully nurtured class of loafers”. So first comes leader Marx, 
then the “Brimstone Gang” proper, or “the Marx party in the 

a The name says everything. Lieb-knecht—dear servant.— Ed. 

Herr Vogt.— XI. A Lawsuit 287 

narrower sense”, and lastly, the mass of “supporters” or the “class 
of loafers”. The Brimstone Gang, subdivided into these three 
categories, enjoys a truly Spartan discipline. “The Brimstone 
Gang,” says Zabel, “maintained a frightfully strict discipline among 
its supporters.” While at the same time “ Marx ... rules the members 
of the Brimstone Gang with a rod of iron”. It is obvious that in 
such a well-organised “gang” as this, its characteristic “activities’’, 
its “chief occupations”, the deeds the gang carries out qua gang, 
all take place on the orders of its leader and they are explicitly 
presented by Zabel as the actions of this leader with his rod of 
iron. And what was, if we may use the term, the official 
occupation of the gang? 

“One of the chief occupations of the Brimstone Gang was to compromise 
people at home in Germany in such a way that they were forced to pay money so 
that the gang should preserve their secret without compromising them. Not just 
one, but hundreds of letters were written to people in Germany, threatening to 
denounce them for complicity in this or that act of revolution unless a certain sum 
of money had been received at a specified address by a given date.... The 
reputation of anyone who opposed these intrigues was ruined, not just among the 
refugees, but also by means of the press. The ‘proletarians’ filled the columns of 
the reactionary press in Germany with their denunciations of those democrats who 
did not subscribe to their views; they became the confederates of the secret police in 
France and Germany, etc.” (National-Zeitung, No. 37.) 

After beginning the “relevant allegations” about the Brimstone 
Gang with the observation that I was its “visible leader”, and after 
listing its “chief occupations”, namely blackmail, denunciation, 
etc., Zabel concludes his general description of the Brimstone 
Gang with the words: 

“*\.. They became the confederates of the secret police in France and Germany. To fill in 
the picture Vogt publishes a letter by Techow, a former lieutenant, dated August 

26, 1850 ... in which we see how Marx, puffed up with Napoleonic pride in his 
intellectual superiority, rules the members of the Brimstone Gang with a rod of iron.” 

Having caused me to be “revered” as the “visible leader” of the 
Brimstone Gang in his introductory remarks, Zabel fears that the 
reader might imagine that behind the visible leader there was an 
invisible one, or that, like the Dalai Lama, I was content to be 
“revered”. So at the end of his description he transforms me (in 
his words, not Vogt’s) from the merely “visible” leader into the 
leader who wields a rod of iron, from the Dalai Lama into the 
Napoleon of the “Brimstone Gang”. And it is precisely this 
remark that he cites in his petition as proof that he does not 
“identify” me with the “political activities” of the Brimstone Gang, 

a Here and below cf. this volume, pp. 260-61.— Ed. 

on which “severe strictures are passed” and which are “referred 
to as eccentric, and even unprincipled and dishonourable”. Of course 
he doesn’t! Or not entirely! He does “identify” me with them, but 
not “in a defamatory manner’. “Rather” he has done me the honour 
of appointing me the Napoleon of blackmailers, threatening-letter 
writers, mouchards, agents provocateurs, forgers, etc. Zabel clearly 
takes his conception of honour from the vocabulary of the 
December Gang. Hence the epithet “Napoleonic”. But I am taking 
him to court because of this very honour he has shown me! With 
the “facts” adduced in my complaint I have proved, and 
proved so decisively that Zabel absolutely refuses to follow me to any 
public court, proved that all his “relevant allegations” about the 
Brimstone Gang are Vogtian inventions and lies, and that Zabel only 
“quotes” them in order to be able to “honour” me as the Napoleon 
of this Brimstone Gang. But am I not depicted by him as “a 
restraining influence and intellectually superior’? Does he not 
describe me as maintaining discipline in the gang? He himself 
explains what this restraint, this superiority and this discipline 
consisted in. 

“The Brimstone Gang maintained a frightfully strict discipline among _ its 
supporters. Anyone who sought in any way to secure a decent living in the 
bourgeois world was branded a traitor to the revolution merely for attempting to 
become independent.... With the aid of rumours, letters, etc., dissension, brawling 
and duels were fomented in this carefully nurtured class of loafers, etc.” 

But Zabel is not content with this general description of the 
“political activities” of the Brimstone Gang with which he has 
honourably “identified” me. 

Liebknecht, a “notorious member of the Marx party”, “one of 
the most servile supporters of Marx, whose labours were to the 
complete satisfaction of his master”, intentionally compromises the 
workers in Switzerland with the “revolutionary congress in 
Murten” and joyfully “leads” them “into the arms” of the waiting 
‘“gendarmes”’. “In the Cologne trial the authorship of the forged 
minute-book was attributed to this Liebknecht.” (Zabel omits to 
add, of course, that this lie of Stieber’s was publicly shown to be a 
lie of Stieber’s during the actual proceedings.) Wolff, the former 
co-editor of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, is accused of sending “a 
circular to the proletarians” from London and at the same time 
“allowing it to fall into the hands of the Hanover police”. 

While Zabel thus presents people who are “notoriously” 
connected with me as agents of the secret police, on the one hand, 
he also connects me with a “notorious” secret police agent, agent 
provocateur and forger, namely Cherval, on the other. Immediately 

Herr Vogt.—XI. A Lawsuit 289 

following his general description of the Brimstone Gang he makes 
‘“‘a number of people” including Cherval travel from London to 
Paris “in the double role of revolutionary seducers of workers and 
confederates of the secret police” and bring about the “so-called 
communist trial”, etc. In leading article No. 2 he takes up the 
story: 

“In this way a conspiracy of the most infamous sort was devised in 1852 which 

involved the manufacture of counterfeit paper money on a massive scale (see Vogt 
for further details), etc.” 

Now if the reader of the National-Zeitung carries out Zabel’s 
peremptory instructions and sees for further details in Vogt, what 
does he find? He finds that Cherval was sent by me to Geneva 
where under my direct orders he set in motion “the most 
infamous conspiracy involving counterfeit paper money”, etc. The 
reader, referred by Zabel to Vogt, will further find this: 

‘‘“However, the personal involvement of Marx is quite irrelevant in this context, 
for, as we have already remarked, it is a matter of complete indifference whether Marx 

does something himself or has it done by a member of his gang; his control over his people is 
absolute.” 

But Zabel could not rest content even with this. At the end of 
his two leading articles he felt impelled to whisper a final word 
into the ear of his readers. He says: 

“He” (Blind) “declares at the same time that he has never seen Biscamp in the 
whole of his life. He is obviously not a member of the Marx party in the narrower 
sense. It appears to us that the latter” (i.e. the Marx party in the narrower sense) 
“did not find it too difficult to turn him” (Blind) “into a scapegoat.... The Marx 
party could very easily saddle Blind with the authorship of the pamphlet because ... 
he had expressed similar views to those contained in it in conversation with Marx 
and in an article in The Free Press. By making use of Blind’s assertions and turns of 
phrase the pamphlet could be fabricated and made to look as if he” (Blind) “had 
concocted it.” 

Hence “the Marx party” or “the Marx party in the narrower sense”’ 
alias the Brimstone Gang “fabricated” the pamphlet so that it 
looked as if Blind had concocted it? Having unfolded this 
hypothesis Zabel summarised its implications in the following 
laconic words: “Anybody is now at liberty to regard either Marx or 
Blind as its author.” 

Thus it is not the Marx party or Blind, and not even Blind or 
the Marx party in the narrower sense, vulgo Brimstone Gang, but 
Blind or Marx, Marx sans phrase. Hence the Marx party, the Marx 
party in the narrower sense, the Brimstone Gang, etc., were 
merely pantheistic names for Marx, the person Marx. Zabel not 
only “identifies’’ Marx with the “party” of the Brimstone Gang, he 

personifies the Brimstone Gang in Marx. And the selfsame Zabel 
has the effrontery to assert before a court that, in his leading 
articles, he did not “identify the plaintiff’ Marx with the 
“activities” of the Brimstone Gang in a “defamatory manner”. 
With his hand on his heart he swears that “least of all” has he 
“associated” my “person with those people” whom he “accuses of 
blackmail and denunciation”! What a figure Zabel will cut in the 
public session of the court, I thought to myself. What a figure 
indeed! With this consoling exclamation, I turned once more to 
the document I had received from my lawyer and read it through 
again, vaguely noticing that it was signed by some such names as 
Miller and Schultze.* But I soon discovered my error. What I had 
in my hands was not Zabel’s proposed petition, but—a “ruling” 
handed down by the High Court over the signatures of Guthschmidt 
and Schultze, a ruling that refused me the right to proceed with my 
action against Zabel, and, to cap it all, by way of punishing me for 
my “complaint” it ordered me to pay 25 silver groschen to the 
Treasury of the Berlin Municipal Court without delay, on pain of 
distraint. I was indeed attonitus” However, on carefully reading the 
“ruling” once more my astonishment faded away. 

Example I 

Zabel prints in the leading article of the Messrs. Guthschmidt and Schultze read in 
“National-Zeitung”, No. 37, 1860: the leading article of the ‘National- 

“Vogt reports on p. 136 et seq.: 
Among the refugees of 1849 the term 
Brimstone Gang, or the name Bristlers, 
referred to a number of people who, 
originally scattered throughout Swit- 
zerland, France and England, gradual- 
ly congregated in London, where they 

Zeitung”, No. 37, 1860: 

“For when the first article quotes 
from Vogt’s account: ‘that the refugees 
of 1849 gradually congregated in 
London, where they revered the above 
mentioned Marx as their visible 
leader’”’ 

revered Herr Marx as their visible 
leader.” 

Zabel says: Among the refugees of 1849 the term Brimstone Gang, 
or the name Bristlers, referred to a number of people, etc., who 
gradually congregated in London, where they revered myself as 
their visible leader. Messrs. Guthschmidt and Schultze, however, 
make Zabel say: The refugees of 1849 gradually congregated in 
London (which is not even true since a large proportion of the 
refugees congregated in Paris, New York, Jersey, etc.) where they 
revered me as their visible leader, an honour which I have not 

4 The names of two philistines, the characters of many skits and jokes in the 
satirical journal Kladderadatsch.— Ed. 
> Thunderstruck.— Ed. 

Herr Vogt—XI. A Lawsuit 291 

received, nor is it imputed to me by either Zabel or Vogt. Now 
Messrs. Guthschmidt and Schultze are by no means giving a 
summary, they quote in inverted commas a sentence nowhere printed 
by Zabel as if it were quoted by Zabel in his first article “from 
Vogt’s account”. Messrs. Guthschmidt and Schultze evidently had 
before them a secret edition of No. 37 of the National-Zeitung, 
known neither to me nor the public. This must be the explanation 
of all these misunderstandings. 

This secret edition of No. 37 of the National-Zeitung differs from 
the vulgar edition of the same issue not just by a different 
formulation of particular sentences. The entire context of the first 
leading article in the vulgar edition has nothing but a few words in 
common with its context in the secret edition. 

Example II 

Having appointed me the leader of the 
Brimstone Gang, Zabel goes on to say in 
No. 37 of the “National-Zeitung”’: 

“These fellows” (the Brimstone 
Gang) “...continued the work of the 
Rheinische Zeitung among the re- 
fugees.... One of the chief occupations 
of the Brimstone Gang was to com- 
promise people at home in Germany in 
such a way that they were forced to pay 
money.... The ‘proletarians’ filled the 
columns of the reactionary press in 
Germany with their denunciations ... 
they became the confederates of the 
secret police in France and Germany. 
To fill in the picture” (of the “Brim- 
stone Gang” or “proletarians’) “Vogt 
publishes a letter by Techow ... in 
which the principles, the activities, etc., 
of the ‘proletarians’ are described, and 
in which we see how Marx, puffed up 
with Napoleonic pride in his intellectu- 
al superiority, rules the members of the 
Brimstone Gang with a rod of iron.” 

After Zabel has appointed me the 

leader of the refugees of 1849, Messrs. 

Guthschmidt and Schultze read in No. 37 
of the “National-Zeitung”’: 

“and when it” (the first article in 
the National-Zeitung) “goes on to refer 
to a letter by Techow, ‘in which we see 
how Marx, puffed up with Napoleonic 
pride in his intellectual superiority, 
rules the members of the Brimstone 

39 

Gang with a rod of iron’”. 

Given that judges have the legal authority to grant or refuse 
private individuals the right to bring an action, it is clear that 
Messrs. Guthschmidt and Schultze were not only justified in refusing 
me the right to sue Zabel, they were obliged to do so. For the 
context of the leading article in No. 37 of the secret edition of the 
National-Zeitung, which they reproduce in nuce,* flatly precludes 

a In brnief.— Ed. 

any corpus delicti. For what in fact does Zabel say in this secret 
edition? In the first place he confers on me the undeserved 
honour of causing me to be “revered” as the “visible leader” by 
the entire community of refugees living in London in 1849. And 
why should I wish to “bring an action” against him for that? And 
secondly, he does me the no less undeserved honour of making 
me “rule with a rod of iron” over a Brimstone Gang without 
connecting me with that gang in any other way whatever, more or 
less as I had ruled over Zabel and his companions in 1848-49. And 
what is there in that to make me “bring an action” against Zabel? 

It is obvious what confusions can arise when the law permits 
officials of the judiciary to “give a ruling” and “rule” in secret on 
the question of whether or not someone has the right to bring an 
action against another person, e.g. for libel in the National-Zeitung. 
The plaintiff swes on the basis of a vulgar edition of No. 37 of 
the National-Zeitung of which perhaps 10,000 copies are available 
to the public, and the judge bases his ruling on a secret edition of 
the same issue produced for him alone. So little care is taken in this 
procedure to preserve the identity even of the corpus delicti. 

By making the right of private individuals to bring an action 
dependent on a judicial permit in each particular case, Prussian 
law proceeds from the assumption that the state is a paternal 
authority which must regulate and act as guardian over the civil 
existence of its children. But even from the standpoint of Prussian 
law the “ruling” of the High Court seems strange. The intention 
of Prussian law is evidently to prevent the bringing of frivolous 
actions and therefore, if I understand its spirit correctly, and if I 
am right in assuming that its aim is not the systematic refusal of 
justice, it gives the judge the right to refuse permission for a case 
to proceed, but only if the complaint is prima facie* unfounded, if 
the suit appears frivolous on the face of it. Is that the case in the 
present instance? The Municipal Court concedes that Zabel’s 
leading articles in fact contain “defamatory” and hence “punisha- 
ble” statements about me. It only places F. Zabel beyond the reach 
of my legal vengeance because F. Zabel has “merely quoted’ his 
libels. The High Court declares: defamatory statements are equally 
punishable by law whether they are quoted or not quoted, but it 
goes on to deny for its part that Zabel’s leading articles contain any 
defamatory statements about myself whether quoted or unquoted. 
Thus the Municipal Court and the High Court have not merely 
divergent, but directly conflicting views of the facts of the case. The 

a At first view.— Ed. 

Herr Vogt.—XI. A Lawsuit 293 

one finds defamatory statements about me where the other fails to 
do so. The contradictory judicial findings about the facts of the case 
demonstrate clearly that prima facie there are grounds for 
complaint. If Papinian and Ulpian say: This printed statement is 
defamatory; and if Mucius Scaevola and Manilius Brutus assert the 
opposite: This printed statement is not defamatory, what will the 
nation of quirites*** think? Why should the people not believe with 
Ulpian and Papinian that Zabel had in fact published defamatory 
statements about me in Nos. 37 and 41 of the National-Zeitung? And 
if I assure the nation of the quirites that Mucius Scaevola and 
Manilius Brutus have given me a secret certificate stating that Zabel’s 
“defamatory” statements and assertions in no way referred to my 
person, the nation of the quirites will undoubtedly shrug their 
shoulders and say: a d’autres.* 

Since the High Court is the final court of appeal as far as the 
facts of a case are concerned, in this case therefore it was the court 
of last instance that had to decide whether Zabel’s two leading 
articles in fact contained defamatory statements about me and 
whether the intention to insult was present; and since the 
High Court denies that the facts of the case provided sufficient 
grounds for action, a further appeal to the Supreme Tribunal 
could only relate to the question whether the substantive findings of 
the High Court were not based on an error in law. In its “ruling” 
the High Court had established that Zabel had accused the 
Brimstone Gang of “unprincipled and dishonourable activities’, 
“denunciations and blackmail”, the same Brimstone Gang that in the 
same leading article the same Zabel had expressly described as “the 
Marx party’, or “the Marx party in the narrower sense”, with “Marx” as 
its visible “leader”, ruling it with a rod of iron. Was the High Court 
within its legal rights in not regarding this as an insult to me? My 
lawyer, Counsellor Weber, comments on the question as follows in his 
submission to the Supreme Tribunal: 

“It is true that it is nowhere stated in so many words” (by Zabel) “that Marx 
had extorted or forged money, or denounced anybody. But is anything more 
explicit required than the statement: Marx was the leader of a party which was 
engaged in the above-mentioned criminal and immoral activities? No sensible and 
unprejudiced person can deny that the leader of an association whose purpose and 
chief activities consist in the execution of crimes, not only condones these activities, 
but initiates and organises them and enjoys their fruits. And this leader is, 
unquestionably, doubly responsible, both as participant and as the intellectual 
inspiration, even if it cannot be proved in any particular instance that he was 

actually implicated in a specific act of crime. The view expressed in the disputed 
ruling” (of the High Court) “would imply that a man’s good name was utterly at the 

2 Tell us another one.— Ed. 

mercy of anyone who wished to discredit him. Instead of fraudulently asserting that A. had 
committed murder, a would-be slanderer would need only to say that somewhere or other a 
gang was engaged in committing murder and that A. was the leader of the gang. The view 
expressed by the High Court grants this slanderer complete impunity. According to the 
correct view, however, the same punishment for slander should be imposed on the 
slanderer irrespective of whether he falsely accuses a man of being a robber or a 
robber-chief.” 

From the standpoint of ordinary common sense a libel has 
undoubtedly been committed. Does it also exist in the view of 
Prussian law? The High Court says no, my lawyer says yes. If the 
High Court has ruled, contrary to the Municipal Court, that the 
form of a quotation should not grant immunity to a libeller, why 
should not the Supreme Tribunal rule, contrary to the High 
Court, that the libeller is not protected by the “tapeworm” form? My 
lawyer appealed to the Supreme Tribunal, hence so to speak to 
the Areopagus itself, on this legal point, on the argument that there 
had been an error in law on the part of the High Court in its 
appraisal of the facts of the case. The Supreme Tribunal “ruled”’: 

“I. Your appeal of August 23 of this year against the ruling on July 11 of this 
year of the Criminal Senate of the Royal High Court in the action for libel brought 
by Dr. K. Marx against Dr. Zabel, editor of the National-Zeitung, is hereby 
dismissed as without foundation after consideration of the relevant documents. 
Il. For the Royal High Court did not find an objective defamation of the plaintiff 
in the two leading articles of the National-Zeitung in question, nor did it find that 
there was an intention to insult the plaintiff. It was right, therefore, to refuse 
permission to proceed with the proposed action for libel. The question whether 
there is an objective act of defamation, or an intention to insult, essentially pertains 
to matters of fact and the conclusions regarding them can only be disputed by 
appeal to the Royal Supreme Tribunal if the decision of the Appeal judge is based 
on an error in law. III]. However, such an error is not evident in the present 
instance. IV. The costs of this ruling are to be borne by you and for this purpose 
25 silver groschen should be deposited with the Treasury of the local Royal 
Municipal Court within a week. 

“Berlin, October 5, 1860 
Royal Supreme Tribunal, von Schlickmann 

“To Legal Counsellor Weber in Berlin” 

For the sake of clarity I have numbered the various sections of 
the “ruling” of the Supreme Tribunal. 

Sub 1. Herr von Schlickmann states that the appeal against the 
High Court has been “dismissed”. Sub II. Herr von Schlickmann 
informs us of the respective spheres of competence of the High 
Court and the Supreme Tribunal—evidently a didactic digression 
irrelevant to the matter in hand. Sub IV. Herr Weber is ordered to 
pay the sum of 25 silver groschen into the Treasury of the Berlin 

Herr Vogt.— XI. A_ Lawsuit 295 

Municipal Court within a week. This is a consequence of the “ruling”, 
but certainly not its reason. 

Where then is the “dismissal” of the appeal substantiated? Where 
is the answer to the very detailed case set out by my lawyer? It is: 

Sub III. “However, such an error is not evident in the present 
instance.” 

If we strike out the litthe word not from this sentence sub III, 
the explanation reads: “However, such an error is evident in the 
present instance.” And this of course would overturn the ruling of 
the High Court. Thus this ruling is sustained only by the word 
“not’’ with which Herr von Schlickmann “dismisses” in the name of 
the Supreme Tribunal the appeal put forward by Counsellor 
Weber. 
| Abtotatos Egy.* Not! Herr von Schlickmann does not refute the 
legal objections raised by my lawyer; he does not discuss them; he 
does not even mention them. Of course, Herr von Schlickmann had 
reasons enough for his “ruling”, but he fails to state them. Not! 
The demonstrative force of this little word lies entirely in the 
authority of the man who utters it, in the position he holds in the 
hierarchy. In itself “not” proves nothing. Not! Avtétatos Eon. 

Thus the Supreme Tribunal too forbade me to bring an 
action against “democrat” F. Zabel. 

Thus ended my lawsuit with the Prussian courts. 

a He himself hath spoken (the words are attributed to the disciples of 
Pythagoras).— Ed. 

[11-1808 

296 

XII