To His Excellency the Royal Police President 
Baron von Zedlitz, Knight p.p. 

Your Excellency, 

I have the honour to reply to your letter dated March 30 and 
received yesterday that the facts, referred to by Your Excellency, 
relating to my discharge from my Prussian citizenship in 1845 
cannot be fully known to Your Excellency, since otherwise Your 
Excellency’s decision of March 30 would certainly not have been 
taken. | 

The following facts and legal grounds will convince Your 
Excellency that the status of a Prussian cannot be denied me at the 
present time. 

1. In 1844, during my residence in Paris, an order for my arrest 
was issued by the Royal Governor of the Rhine Province, on the 
grounds of the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbtucher edited by me, and 
was sent to the border police authorities to be carried out as soon 
as I set foot on Prussian soil. 

This placed me in the position of a political refugee from that 
time on. 

But the Royal Prussian government was not content with that. 
In January 1845 it obtained my expulsion from France from the 
Guizot ministry." 

I went to Belgium. But the persecution of the Royal Prussian 
government followed me there too. Still on the pretext that I was 
a Prussian, which entitled the Prussian government to take steps 
concerning me via their embassies abroad, here too my expulsion 
was demanded by the Prussian government. 

4 Marx left Paris for Brussels on February 3, 1845.— Ed. 

Prevented from returning to my fatherland by the order of 
arrest, the only thing left me of my nationality as a Prussian was 
the capacity for being persecuted; the only thing left me was to be 
persecuted and expelled everywhere abroad at the instance of the 
Prussian government. 

This made it necessary for me to deprive the Prussian 
government of that period of the possibility to persecute me 
further, and for this reason I asked in 1845 for that discharge 
from Prussian citizenship. 

Even at that time, it was not in the least my intention to give up 
my Prussian nationality. This can be formally proved. Anyone who 
gives up his nationality can only do that with the intention of 
getting himself admitted to another nationality. I have never done 
this. I have not had myself. naturalised anywhere, and, when the 
provisional government of France offered me naturalisation in 
1848, I refused it.**! 

That application in 1845 for discharge from Prussian citizenship 
was therefore not, as Your Excellency writes in error, a surrender, 
“by my own free will’, of my status as a Prussian, but merely a 
device, forced on me by extreme persecution, to free myself from 
the continuing device of this persecution. It was a pretext employed 
against another pretext, not at all a serious intention to give up my 
status as a Prussian. 

Your Excellency will see from the foregoing that it is impossible 
for you to rely on that proceeding in 1845. 

To try to rely on it would mean supporting the era of the worst 
absolutist persecutions of German writers, perpetuating them in 
their effects, and trying to take advantage of them. It would mean 
trying, on the basis of the political oppression of that period and 
the means thereby forced on me of saving myself from un- 
bounded persecution, to deprive me of my Prussian nationality, 
which I never seriously intended to give up. 

Finally, with reference to the expulsion in 1849 mentioned by 
Your Excellency, I will remark by way of supererogation that I 
returned to Prussia immediately after March 1848 and took up 
my domicile in Cologne and was admitted as a citizen by the 
municipality of Cologne without further ado. To be sure, the 
Manteuffel ministry ordered my expulsion in 1849 as an alleged 
foreigner. But this action is one of the most illegal deeds of 
violence of that ministry and hence cannot in any way be adduced 

as a decisive precedent, and even at that time I would not have 
yielded to it had not a number of political press prosecutions 
forced me to go abroad as a refugee, quite apart from that 
expulsion. 

After the foregoing explanations, I regard Your Excellency as 
just as unable to wish to rely on those facts as it is objectively 
impossible to deduce from them anything against me. 

However, this is also 

2. quite impossible because of the Royal decree on the amnesty. 
By it “unimpeded return to the Prussian states” is assured all 
political refugees. That is, unimpeded return even if they had in 
the meantime legally lost their status as Prussians. Unimpeded 
return, whatever the way in which they might have lost that status, 
whether by the law itself* as the result of absence for ten years or 
by reason of an added verbal declaration of withdrawal from 
Prussian citizenship. The amnesty does not distinguish between 
these two modes of loss of the status of a Prussian. Neither does it 
distinguish between the refugees of 1848-49 and those of an 
earlier period; it does not distinguish between those who lost the 
rights of native-born Prussians as a result of the conflicts in 1848 
and those who lost them as a result of the political conflicts of 
earlier years. 

“Unimpeded return” is assured all political refugees, from 
whatever time their political conflicts and the resulting loss of their 
rights as native-born [Prussians] may date; all these are thereby 
restored to their previous rights as native-born. 

Since the Royal amnesty does not distinguish whether those 
rights were lost by virtue of the law itself because of absence for 
ten years or because of an added declaration, it is absolutely 
impermissible to try, by interpretation, to introduce a limitation 
and a distinction into the Royal amnesty which it never makes 
itself. 

Your Excellency will be aware of this firmly-established princi- 
ple, that an amnesty may never be interpreted restrictively. This 
principle has been consecrated by the jurisprudence of all times 
and all countries with unanimity like no other principle. If this has 
been the inviolable principle of every tribunal that has had 
to apply and interpret amnesty decrees, it must equally be the 
principle of administrative authorities when it behoves them to 
make this interpretation. Any restrictive interpretation would 

Eigenschaft als Preussischer Unterthan... vom 31. Dezember 1842”.— Ed. 

signify: abbreviating the amnesty after the event and repealing it in 
part. 

This will certainly not be Your Excellency’s intention. If I 
refrain from adducing the juridical materials on this matter that 
are at my disposal, the reason is that it will suffice to call Your 
Excellency’s attention to the fact that any other interpretation of 
the Royal amnesty than mine would contain a restriction thereof. 

Your Excellency will see from the foregoing that in fact 
everything comes down to whether, as I stated in my latest 
memorandum,* the refugees are reintegrated into the status of 
native-born Prussians by the Royal amnesty, although all of them 
had lost the same under the law in view of their staying abroad for 
ten years without permission. If this is conceded, and Your 
Excellency yourself accepts this in your rescript dated March 30, it 
is a matter of total indifference if there has been, in addition to 
this legal loss of native-born status, which is set aside by the 
amnesty, a declaration by the individual in question in the past, 
and posing such a distinction would constitute an impermissible 
restriction of the amnesty. 

But this is the case not only because of the wording of the 
amnesty and of the favourable spirit in which amnesties must 
always be interpreted, but likewise 

3. in conformity with the legal nature of the situation under 
consideration. For in fact, what difference should it make to the 
Royal amnesty whether the rights as native-born, which the 
amnesty restores, as Your Excellency yourself does not dispute, 
were lost under the law itself or by reason of an added declaration 
on the part of the individual? As little as an individual declaration 
by a refugee of unwillingness to lose his status as a native-born 
Prussian, despite the law, would change his losing it under the law, 
just so little could that declaration either set this losing aside or 
reinforce it. The declaration by an individual that something 
should take place which would have taken place in any event by 
virtue of the law—discharge from Prussian citizenship—remains a 
déclaration surérogatoire,” a totally indifferent, superfluous declara- 
tion, whose absence is no hindrance and whose presence is 
ineffectual. 

Your Excellency seems to wish to see a distinction in that the 
status of a Prussian was allegedly given up by me “of my own free 
will”, whereas for the other refugees it was brought about 

involuntarily by a ten-year absence. But this too is incorrect. 
Formally, the refugee’s remaining out of the country for ten years 
likewise constitutes a voluntary abandonment of the status of a 
Prussian, for as a matter of fact none of the refugees was 
prevented from returning before this time had elapsed and 
presenting himself before the Prussian courts. Inasmuch as he did 
not do this, he voluntarily preferred to lose the status of a 
Prussian. The last day of the ten-year stay abroad without 
permission is thus completely the equivalent of a written declara- 
tion to the Prussian government of a desire to relinquish Prussian 
citizenship. Since this absence is just as free an act of the will as a 
document addressed to the government, the same declaration was 
submitted by voluntas tacita* on the last day of this ten-year 
absence by all the refugees as the one that you have in your files 
submitted by me in 1845. 

So far as form is concerned, there is just as voluntary a 
surrender of the rights of the native-born on the part of all the 
refugees as there is on mine. 

It is true that in point of fact those refugees were prevented 
from returning unless they wanted to expose themselves to the 
harm of arrest and a criminal procedure, and hence they were, in 
point of fact, under compulsion. But the same real compulsion 
was present in my case as well, as Your Excellency will have seen 
from Point 1. I too was, in point of fact, prevented in the same 
way from returning by the warrants of arrest that had been issued 
and I gave up the status of a Prussian only under exactly the same 
compulsion as,that under which the other refugees surrendered it 
on the last day of their ten-year absence. Indeed, I was also 
compelled to this ostensible surrender by the persecution extend- 
ing into foreign countries. 

Thus, whether Your Excellency takes the formal or the real side 
of the question into consideration, that affects me in precisely the 
same way as it does all other refugees, and if, as Your Excellency 
does not deny, the native-born status lost by ten-year absence has 
been restored to the refugees by the amnesty, it is equally restored 
to me despite the enforced disavowal, which is completely 
equivalent to this loss under the iaw. 

As has been shown, my having declared in writing that I desired 
to lose the status of a Prussian, which I had lost anyway by virtue 
of the law, this declaration, which is totally without effect after the 

loss incurred lege ipsa,’ is not the essential point. It could at best 
only be seen as constituting a difference, although not a valid one, 
if I had assumed a new nationality elsewhere. This and only this 
would have been a voluntary action. The mere surrender of 
Prussian citizenship was enforced and would have taken place 
anyway lege ipsa. But I have never and nowhere had myself 
naturalised. Very many refugees did in fact do this. If even for 
these cases the Royal amnesty must be regarded as unconditionally 
sufficient grounds for granting them renaturalisation, in the event 
that they desire it, then in the case of myself, who have never 
taken out naturalisation in any other state, the restoration of the 
status of a native-born [Prussian] must of necessity be recognised as 
effected by the amnesty itself. 

4. In the foregoing I have explained to Your Excellency that I 
have undoubtedly” regained my status as a native-born Prussian, 
even if I had lost it in 1845, by virtue of the Royal amnesty. But 
an equally decisive ground for my claim is the circumstance that I 
have already won back my rights as a Prussian citizen by the decision of 
the Federal Diet dated March 30, 1848‘ 

That decision declared that all the political refugees had the right 
to vote and to be elected to the German National Assembly who 
were to return to Germany and declare that they desired to 
regain the rights as citizens of the state. By this decision, which is 
binding on Prussia and towards which the Prussian government 
contributed, all political refugees were thus restored to their rights 
as citizens of the state in the state to which they had previously 
belonged or in the one in which they now wished to take it 
out. 

As a consequence of this decision I went from Paris to Cologne 
at once, there reassumed my rights as a citizen of the Prussian 
state, obtained permission without difficulty from the Cologne City 
Council to take up domicile there and hence was undoubtedly in 
lawful possession from then on of the status of a native-born Prussian, 
which cannot in any way be altered by the unlawful coup, in 
violation of the Federal Diet’s decision, of the expulsion attempted 
by the Manteuffel ministry. 

This fact of law is so decisive that it would be superfluous to 
add even a single word to it. 

Your Excellency will be as convinced of this as I am and will 
equally regard it as not in the interest of the Prussian government 
to force me to appeal to the Federal Diet against a violation of its 
decisions by the Prussian government. It would be too contradic- 
tory a position if Prussia, which continues to recognise the 
reactivated Federal Diet, should wish to change over to refusing to 
recognise the few scattered decisions of the old,original Federal Diet 
that were issued in the interest of the people and in a liberal 
direction. | 

Such a procedure would be, juridically and_ politically, too 
exorbitant a monstrosity to be taken into consideration even 
tentatively. 

As Your. Excellency will see, it is not even necessary for me to 
refer to the decision, independent of the Federal Diet decision, of 
the Preparliament,”’ likewise recognised de facto by the Prussian 
government, according to which even those German refugees who 
had been naturalised in other countries in the interim were also 
entitled to reassume their previous rights as citizens. 

Pursuant to the decision of the Federal Diet dated March 30, 
1848, to my removal to Cologne as a consequence thereof, and my. 
declaration to the Prussian ministry dated August 22, 1848,°* 
which is in Your Excellency’s files, I have therefore been once 
more in possession of the rights of a native-born Prussian since 
1848, even if I did lose them in 1845. 

Accordingly, I am still in possession thereof today since, as Your 
Excellency yourself does not deny, the loss thereof which ensued 
by reason of the subsequent ten-year absence has been cancelled 
again by the present amnesty. 

Although the foregoing demonstration that I already am in 
possession of the rights of a native-born Prussian and require only 
recognition of that status is so clear and irrefutable I have, in 
returning to my fatherland, only a practical purpose in mind and 
not that of a fruitless juridical-theoretical conflict. 

If Your Excellency should, as it seems, conceive the relevant 
situation in such a way that J must first obtain a new 
naturalisation, that can and should be a matter of indifference 
to me _ provided that Your Excellency, since you are the 
competent authority to do this pursuant to § 5 of the law of 
December 31, 1842, declares your willingness to grant the 
naturalisation. Only then and only insofar can I yield up my 
already existing full right, if and insofar as Your Excellency 
prefers to issue a new naturalisation without difficulties. Up to 
that point I must maintain my rights and therefore request you, in 

this sense and reserving all rights, to treat this letter, in that case, 
also as a possible request to obtain a new naturalisation." 

Your Excellency’s obedient servant, 

Dr Karl Marx