4, THE COMMUNIST TRIAL IN COLOGNE 

From the “office” of the Regent of the Empire in Geneva to the 
Royal Prussian Court of Assizes in Cologne. 

“In the Cologne trial Marx played an outstanding part.” 
Undoubtedly. 

“In Cologne his confederates were on trial.” ° Granted. 

The Cologne accused were held in detention for 1'/, years 
pending the trial. 

The Prussian police and the Embassy, Hinckeldey with his entire 
clan, postal and municipal authorities, the Ministries of the 
Interior and of Justice—all made the most strenuous efforts 
during these 1'/, years to give birth to a corpus delicti. 

Here then, in his research into my “activities”, Vogt has at his 
disposal, as it were, the assistance of the Prussian state and he 
even had authentic material contained in my Revelations Concerning 
the Communist Trial in Cologne, Basle, 1853, a copy of which he 
discovered in the Geneva Workers’ Association and which he 
borrowed and “studied”. This time, then, young Karl really will 

settle my hash. But no! For once Vogt is “at a loss”, he just sets 
off a few of his home-made smoke-bombs and_stink-bombs*- 
before beating a hasty retreat, stammering: 

“The Cologne trial is of no particular significance for us’ (“Magnum Opus’, p. 
172). 

In the Revelations I was compelled to attack Herr August Willich 
among other people. Willich commenced his defence in the 
New-Yorker Criminal-Zeitung of October 28, 1853 ** by describing 
my work as “a masterly critique of the savage procedures adopted by the 
central police of the German Confederation”? Jacob Schabelitz fils, the 
publisher of the pamphlet, wrote to me from Basle on December 
11, 1852 after receiving the manuscript: 

“Your exposure of the perfidy of the police is unsurpassable. You have erected 
a permanent monument to the present regime in Prussia.” ¢ 

He added that his judgment was shared by experts, chief among 
these “experts” being a man who is at present a Genevan friend 
of Herr Karl Vogt. 

Seven years after the publication of the Revelations Herr 
Eichhoff of Berlin, whom I do not know at all, made the following 
statement in court (it is well known that Eichhoff was on trial,” 
accused of having slandered Stieber): 

“He had made a detailed study of the Cologne communist trial and not only 
adhered to his original opinion that Stieber had committed perjury but had to 
extend it to assert that everything Stieber said during the trial was false.... The 
verdict passed on the accused in Cologne was due entirely to Stieber’s testimony... 
Stieber’s whole testimony was perjury from start to finish” (first supplement to the 
Berlin Vossische Zeitung, May 9, 1860).4 

* “Smoke-bombs or stink-bombs are used chiefly in mine warfare. One works with an 
ordinary flare-charge which must however contain rather more sulphur than usual 
and as much feathers, horn, hair and other rubbish as the charge will take. This is put 
in a container and the shell fired with a fuse” (F. C. Pliimicke, Handbuch ftir die 
Koniglich Preussischen Artillerie-Offiziere, Erster Teil, Berlin, 1820). 

** T replied with a pamphlet called The Knight of the Noble Consciousness, New York, 
1853. [See present edition, Vol. 12.] 

Criminal-Zeitung, October 28 and November 4, 1853.— Ed. 

(supplement), May 9, 1860.— Ed. 

Vogt himself admits: 

“He” (Marx) “did everything in his power to provide the defence with the 
materials and instructions necessary for the conduct of their case....” 

It is a known fact that “false documents, manufactured by the agents 
themselves”, i. e. Stieber, Fleury, etc., “were presented to the court” (in Cologne) 
“as ‘evidence’ and that in general an abyss of perfidy was exposed among this police 
rabble that makes one shudder to contemplate” (“Magnum Opus”, pp. 169, 170). 

If Vogt can show his hatred of the coup d’état by making 
propaganda for Bonapartism, why should not I reveal “my 
collusion” with the secret police by exposing their abysmal perfidy? 
If the police had genuine proofs, why manufacture false ones? 

But, lectures Professor Vogt, 

“nevertheless the blow only fell on the members of the Marxian League in 
Cologne, only on the Marx party”. 

Indeed, Polonius! Had not the blow fallen on another party 
earlier on in Paris; did it not also strike another party later on in 
Berlin (the Ladendorf trial), and yet another in Bremen (League 
of the Dead), etc., etc.? 

As to the verdict passed on the Cologne accused I shall quote a 
relevant passage from my Revelations: 

“The miracles performed by the police were originally necessary 
to conceal the completely political nature of the trial. “The 
revelations you are about to witness, Gentlemen of the Jury,’ said 
Saedt when opening for the prosecution, ‘will prove to you that 
this trial is not a political trial.” But now” (at the conclusion of the 
case) “he emphasises its political character so that the police 
revelations should be forgotten. After the 1'/)-year preliminary 
investigation the jury needed objective evidence in order to justify 
itself before public opinion. 

“After the five-week-long police comedy they needed ‘politics 
pure and simple’ to extricate themselves from the sheer mess. Saedt 
therefore did not only confine himself to the material that had led 
the Indictment Board to the conclusion that ‘there was no factual 
evidence of an indictable offence’. He went even further. He 
attempted to prove that the law against conspiracy does not 
require any indictable action, but is simply a law with a political 
purpose, and the category of conspiracy is therefore merely a 
pretext for burning political heretics in a legal way. The success of 
his attempt promised to be all the greater because of the decision 
to apply the new [Prussian] Penal Code that had been promul- 
gated after the accused had been arrested. On the pretext that this 
code contained extenuating provisions the servile court was able to 

permit its retroactive application. But if it was simply a political 
trial why a preliminary investigation lasting 11'/, years? For 
political reasons” (loc. cit., pp. 71, 72). 

“With the unmasking of the minute-book” forged and planted 
by the Prussian police themselves “the case had advanced to a new 
stage. The jury was no longer free merely to find the defendants 
guilty or not guilty; they must either find the defendants 
guilty—or the government. 

acne acquit the accused would mean condemning the government: (loc. 

p. 70).* 

"The the Prussian Government of the day put a similar 
construction on the situation is plain from a communication that 
Hinckeldey sent to the Prussian Embassy in London while the 
Cologne trial was still in progress. In this he said that “the whole 
existence of the political police depended on the outcome of the trial”. He 
accordingly asked for a person who could appear in court in the 
guise of the witness H.> (who had disappeared), for which 
performance he would receive 1,000 talers reward. This person 
had actually been found when Hinckeldey’s next letter arrived: 

“The State Prosecutor hopes that thanks to the happy constitution of the jury it will 
be possible to get a verdict of guilty even without further extraordinary measures, 
and he” (Hinckeldey) “therefore asks you not to trouble yourselves further.” (See 
Appendix 4.) 

It was in fact the happy constitution of the jury in Cologne which 
inaugurated the Hinckeldey-Stieber regime in Prussia. “A blow 
will be struck in Berlin if the Cologne accused are condemned” 
was the view of the police rabble attached to the Prussian Embassy 
in London, as early as October 1852, even though the police mine 
(the Ladendorf conspiracy) did not explode in Berlin until the end 
of March 1853. (See Appendix 4.) 

The liberal outcry that follows an age of reaction is all the 
louder the greater the cowardice displayed by liberals in putting 
up with the reaction for years on end without protest. Thus at the 
time of the Cologne trial, all my efforts to expose Stieber’s system 
of deception in the liberal Prussian press were unavailing. The 
motto of the press, printed on its banner in block letters, ran: 
Reliability is the first duty of the citizen, and in this sign shalt 
thou—live. 

5. JOINT FESTIVAL OF THE GERMAN WORKERS’ 
EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATIONS IN LAUSANNE