mingled with scenes of Galician fury.” 176 

There followed on January 20 a new article by Wolff* which 
dealt with this field. The party of reaction had got a village mayor, 
Krengel from Nessin near Kolberg, and a number of day 
labourers to address an inquiry to the King” whether it was true 
that His Majesty really intended to split up landed property and turn 
it over to the propertyless. 

“One can imagine”, says Wolff, “the mortal terror and sleepless nights of the 
day labourers of Nessin when they heard of such intentions. What? The King 
wants to split up landed property? We day labourers who have up till now tilled the 
field of our worthy lords so joyously for 5 silver groschen a day—are we supposed 
to cease being day labourers and work on our own fields? Our worthy lord, who 
owns 80 to 90 domains and a mere few hundred thousand morgenc—is he to be 
forced to give up so and so many morgen to us?—No, at the mere thought of such 
a frightful disaster our day labourers were atremble in every limb. They had never 
a peaceful moment until they were reassured that they were not to be pitched into 
this bottomless misery, that the menacing morgen of land were to be warded off and 
the worthy lords left in peace just as before.” 

January 20, 1849 (in the section Deutschland. Koln).— Ed. 

IV 

All that, however, was still only skirmishing. Around the 
beginning of 1849 the French Social-Democrats started with 
increasing frequency to raise the proposal made earlier that the 
thousand million francs given by the state to the aristocrats 
returning from emigration in 1825 as compensation for estates lost 
in the Great Revolution should be demanded back and employed 
in the interest of the working masses.* On March 16, the Neue 
Rheinische Zeitung carried a leading article on this question and on 
the very next day Wolff published a piece called The Prussian 
Milliard. 

“The knight Schnapphanski” (Lichnowski) “is dead.!77 But highwaymen we still 
have in plenty. The Junkers of Pomerania and Brandenburg have joined forces with 
the other Prussian Junkers. They have donned the holy coat of the respectable 
bourgeois and call themselves ‘Association for the Protection of Property of All 
Classes of the People’, feudal property naturally... Their intention is nothing less 
than to cheat the Rhine Province, among others, out of some 20 million talers and to 
pocket the money. The plan is not a bad one. The Rhinelanders may particularly 
pride themselves on the fact that the Junkers of Thadden-Trieglaff in Eastern 
Pomerania, the von Arnims and the von Manteuffels as well as a few thousand 
cabbage Junkers wish to do them the honour of paying their debts in Rhenish 
money.” 

The fact of the matter was that Mr. von Builow-Cummerow, 
then known as Bilow-Kummervoll,” had hit on a little plan‘* and 
got it accepted by the above association of Junkers—or as Wolff 

called it, the Junker Parliament—and sent to the government and 
the chambers as a petition, a plan for settling the question of land 
tax in Prussia. On the one hand, the landowning peasants, 
especially of the Western Provinces, were complaining that they 
had to pay too much land tax; on the other, the aristocratic big 
landowners of the Eastern Provinces were paying no land tax at 
all, although the law of October 27, 1810* had imposed it on them 
along with all other landowners. The Junker Parliament had 
found a way of alleviating both evils. Let us listen to Wolff: 

“The Junkers are willing ‘to make sacrifices in order to eliminate the discord 
now prevailing’.> So they say. Who would have expected such magnanimity of 
them? Of what do these sacrifices consist, however? They propose that the revenue 
from all land-holdings should be fixed by a rough assessment, and then the land 
tax distributed throughout the state at the same percentage of this revenue. Well, 
their generosity is by no means large, since they are now simply intending to do 
what they have been legally obliged to do for the last 38 years. But to continue! Do 
they demand that the Junkers and the landowning knights who have hitherto 
illegally refused to pay tax—should repay this tax, perhaps? No: since from now on 
they are to have the grace to pay their taxes, they should be compensated by an 
appropriate capital payment” —namely, 25 times the amount of the future tax. “On 
the other hand, those who have hitherto been unfairly debited an excessive land 
tax should—not, for instance, have the excess refunded to them—but, on the 
contrary, they should be enabled to discharge the surplus’, by buying themselves out 
with a single payment of 18-20 times the amount involved, according to the 
circumstances.—‘“ The higher taxes will be paid by the peasants in the Eastern 
Provinces and, apart from them, particularly by the Rhine Province. The peasants 
of Altland and the Rhinelanders are thus now expected to pay for this with their 
capital too. Hitherto the noble landowners of the Eastern Provinces have been 
paying no land taxes at all, or very little.... And they, then, are to receive the 
money which the Rhinelanders and the peasants are supposed to raise.” 

There follows a survey of the land tax paid by the various 
provinces in 1848 and their land areas, from which it emerges: 

“The Rhineland pays for every square mile on average approximately five times 
as much land tax as Prussia, Posen and Pomerania, and four times as much as the 
March of Brandenburg.” 

Admittedly the land is better; however, 

“at a conservative estimate, the Rhine Province probably has to pay about a million 
talers more in Jand tax than would be its due according to the average valuation. 
According to the Bill proposed by the Junker Parliament the Rhinelanders would 
thus have to pay as a punishment for this another 18 to 22 million talers in cash, 
which would flow into the pockets of the Junkers of the Eastern Provinces! The 
state would simply act as the banker. These are the tremendous sacrifices which 

these cabbage Junkers and pigs are inclined to make; that is the protection which 
they wish to extend to property. Just as every pickpocket protects property... 

“The Rhinelanders, especially the Rhenish peasants, and no less the 
Westphalian and Silesian ones, would do well to look around without delay to see 
where they can raise the money to pay the Junkers. A hundred million talers are 
not so easy to come by these days. 

“So whilst in France the peasants are demanding a thousand million francs 
from the aristocracy, in Prussia the aristocracy is demanding five hundred million 
francs from the peasants! 

“Three cheers for the Berlin March Revolution!” 

Mere defence, however, was not sufficient to counter the 
insolence of the Prussian Junkers. The Neue Rheinische Zeitung 
sought and found its strength in attack, and thus in the issue of 
March 22, 1849 Wolff commenced a series of articles called The 
Silesian ‘Milliard, in which he calculated what sums of money, 
money-value and landed property the Silesian aristocracy alone 
had wrested from the peasants since the redemption of feudal 
dues began. Few of the many inflammatory articles in the Neue 
Rheinische Zeitung had such an effect as these, eight in number, 
which appeared between March 22 and April 25. Orders for the 
newspaper from Silesia and the other Eastern Provinces increased 
at a furious rate; individual issues were requested and eventually, 
since the exceptional freedom of the press allowed us by Rhenish 
law was lacking in the other provinces, and there was no question 
of a reprint under their noble local law, someone came up with 
the idea of secretly reprinting in Silesia the entire eight issues as 
near to the original in appearance as possible and disseminating 
them in thousands of copies—a procedure to which the editorial 
board was naturally the last to object. 

Va 

In the Neue Rheinische Zeitung of March 22, 1849 Wolff 
opened his attack on the Silesian Junkers as follows: 

“Scarcely had the Chamber of the Court and cabbage Junkers” (which met on 
February 26, 1849 on the basis of the imposed constitution and the imposed electoral 
law !78)“‘been constituted when a motion for the settlement, i.e. redemption of feudal 
dues, was proposed. The worthy lords are in a hurry. They wish to squeeze enough 
out of the rural population before closing-time to be able to put by a tidy sum for 
any hard times that may be on the way and send it abroad in advance of their per- 
sons. 

“For the terror, for the nameless dread which they suffered during the period 
after the March ‘misunderstanding’ in Berlin and its immediate consequences, they 
are now seeking to extract a doubly dear balsam out of the pockets of their beloved 
village subjects. 

“ Stlesia, particularly, hitherto the golden land of feudal and industrial barons, is 
to be thoroughly rifled once again in order that the splendour of its land-owning 
knights may shine on, enhanced and fortified. 

“Immediately after the appearance of the imposed provisional Redemption Law 
in December last year, we demonstrated that it is solely calculated to benefit the 
worthy landowners, that the so-called little man is entirely at the mercy of the 
whims and caprices of the powerful, even in the composition of the court of 
arbitration. Nevertheless, the knights are still not content with it. They are 
demanding a law bestowing yet more concessions on the knightly purse. 

“In March and April 1848, many noble lords in Silesia made out written 
documents to their peasants renouncing all tithes and duties previously required of 
those subject to the estate. To save their manors from burning and themselves 
from becoming strange adornments on many a stately lime or courtly poplar, they 
gave away their so-called well-earned rights with a stroke of the pen. Luckily for 
them, paper was very patient at that time too. 

“When, instead of marching forward, the revolution got stuck in the bog of 
philistinism and complacent temporising, these gentlemen pulled out their deeds of 
renunciation, not in order to fulfil them but to submit them to the criminal court 
as evidence in the inquiry into the rebellious peasant mob.” 

Wolff now relates how the bureaucracy, under the leadership of 
the Oberprasident Pinder and with the aid of mobile military 
columns, forced the peasants to perform their old duties; how the 
peasants were left with no other hope but the Berlin Agreement 
Assembly; how Messrs. Agreers, instead of declaring first and 
foremost all feudal tithes abolished without compensation, frit- 
tered away the time with inquiries into the nature, origins, etc. of 
these admirable feudal duties and tithes, until the reactionaries 
had regained sufficient strength to send the entire Assembly 
packing before it had reached any decision at all about the 
abolition of feudal burdens; how the new Redemption Law was 
imposed and how even this arch-reactionary law failed to satisfy 
the worthy lords and they made even more extravagant demands. 

But our lord knights had reckoned without their host, this host 
being 
“the Silesian peasant, not the bourgeois peasant with three, four or more hides of 
land but that mass of smaller peasants, estate gardeners and free gardeners, 
cottagers and livers-in,!79 who have hitherto been the real beasts of burden of the big 
landowners and who, according to the plans of the latter, should continue as such in 
future in a different form. 

“In 1848 this mass would have been content with abolition of feudal burdens 
without compensation.... After the bitter apprenticeship of the final months of 
1848 and those that have elapsed of 1849, the Silesian agrarian population, the 
‘little man’, is increasingly coming to realise that the knightly landowners, instead of 
seizing new riches by means of a cleverly devised Redemption Law, should by right 
return at least that part of the booty with which they lined their pockets with the 
aid of the previous redemption laws.... From village to village people are now 
occupied with the question of how much our lords the robber knights have stolen 
from the rural people over the last thirty years alone.” 

The situation is not as simple as in France, where compensation 
of 1,000 million francs in round figures—almost 300 million 
talers—was extorted from the nation, so that “the French peasant 
knows how much he must be refunded in capital and interest”. In 
Prussia the exploitation took place year in, year out, and up till 
now only the individual peasant knew what he and his village had 
paid. 

“But now a rough estimate has been made for the whole province, showing that 
in the guise of redemption the rural population has paid the worthy lords more 
than 80 million talers, partly in land and partly in hard cash and interest. In 
addition to this there are the annual tithes and duties of the hitherto 

non-emancipated. For the last thirty years this sum amounts to at least 160 million 
talers, yielding together with the above a total of approximately 240 million talers. 

‘“‘Now that these calculations have come to their knowledge, the country people 
have seen the light, and its brightness is causing the feudal accomplices to cower in 
fear. They have devoured 240 million from the pockets of the country people and 
‘we must get back our 240 million at the first opportunity’—that is now the idea 
circulating among the Silesian country people; it is the demand which is already 
being spoken aloud in thousands of villages. 

“The ever-growing awareness that if there is to be any talk of compensation for 
feudal burdens then it is the peasants who must be compensated for the knightly 
robbery perpetrated on them—this is an ‘achievement’ which will soon bear fruit. 
It will not be overthrown by any dictatorial wiles. The next revolution will bring it 
to bear in practice, and the Silesian peasants will then probably be able to devise a 
‘Compensation Law’ restoring not only the stolen capital but also the ‘customary 
interests’ to the pockets of the people.” 

By what “legal title” the Junker gentlemen appropriated this sum 
is the lesson of the second article in the issue of March 25, 1849.* 

“With regard to the manner in which the ‘rights’ of the robber knights were 
acquired, eloquent testimony is provided not only by every page of mediaeval 
history but by every year right up to recent times. The mediaeval knightly sword 
managed splendidly to ally itself with the goose-quill of the lawyer and the civil 
service horde. Force was transformed with a fortune-teller’s sleight of hand into 
‘rights’, into ‘well-earned rights’. An example from last century. In the eighties in 
Silesia at the initiative of the aristocracy, commissions were created for the 
establishment of land registers,!89 the mutual duties and obligations of landowner 
and peasant.... The commissions, composed of nobles and their creatures, worked 
in exemplary fashion—in the interest of the aristocracy. Nevertheless these 
gentlemen by no means succeeded everywhere in producing land registers that 
were ‘confirmed’” (recognised by the peasants). “Where they did, though, it was 
solely by force or trickery.... It is rather naively stated in the introduction to a 
number of such deeds that the peasants had not consented to put their crosses to 
them (at that time only very few were able to write) and that they had been forced 
partly by threats and partly by the actual use of armed force to sign these 
documents defrauding themselves and their descendants. On the basis of such 
‘well-earned rights’ the worthy knights of Silesia have been able over the last thirty 
years to distil that tidy little sum of 240 million talers from the sweat and blood of 
the peasant estate into their ancestral coffers.” 

No. 255, March 25, 1849.— Ed. 

vi 

From the direct exploitation of the peasants by the aristocracy, 
Wolff proceeds to the various indirect forms, in which the 
participation of the state plays a major role. 

Firstly, land tax, which was still levied in Silesia in 1849 
according to'a land register devised in 1749.'*! In this land 
register the acreage entered for the land of the nobles was less 
than the real amount, and for the peasants more, right from the 
outset; the yield of a morgen of pasture or arable land was assessed 
at one taler and the land tax levied on this basis. Woods and 
pastures were exempt. Since then the nobles had cleared whole 
stretches of forestland and brought considerable areas of waste- 
land under cultivation. Tax continued to be paid according to the 
acreage of cultivable land entered in the land register of 1749! 
The tax remaining constant for both parties, the peasant with no 
wasteland to bring under cultivation was thus _ considerably 
overburdened, or to put it bluntly: swindled. Furthermore: 

“A large section of the knights, precisely that section which owns the largest and 

most lucrative estate complexes, has hitherto, under the style of ‘well-earned rights’ as 
mediatised peers not yet paid a penny in land tax. 

“If we estimate the land tax which the worthy knights have failed to pay (either 
too little or none at all) over the last thirty years at about 40 million talers—and 
that is probably letting them off lightly—and add to it the 240 million talers stolen 
directly from the pockets of the Silesian country people, we arrive at a total of 
280 million” (Neue Rheinische Zeitung of March 25, 1849). 

Then follows the graduated tax. A Silesian peasant, whom Wolff 
singles out of the masses, 

“owns 8 morgen of land of medium quality, paying a host of tithes annually to his 
‘worthy’ lord, is obliged to perform a large amount of statute labour every year, 
and still has to pay graduated tax of 7 Sgr. 6 Pf. per month, making 3 talers per 

annum. Contrasted with him we have a worthy lord with the most extensive estates, 
with forests and meadows, iron-works, zinc ore mines, coal mines, etc., e.g. 
arch-wailer,!85 Russophile, democrat-eater and Deputy to the Second Chamber, 
Count Renard. This man has an annual income of 240,000 talers. He pays on the 
highest grade 144 talers graduated tax annually. Compared with the above peasant 
owner with 8 morgen he should have been paying at least 7,000 talers per year in 
graduated tax, making 140,000 talers over 20 years. Thus in 20 years he has paid 
137,120 talers too little.” 

Wolff then compares the amount of graduated tax paid by the 
same Count Renard with the tax paid by a farmhand with a wage 
of 10 talers per year, paying '/, taler or 5 per cent of his cash 
income, and with that of a farm-maid who out of a wage of 
6 talers per year also pays '/, taler in graduated tax, or 8'/s per 
cent of her income. The result is that over 20 years the noble 
count has paid 237,120 talers graduated tax too little compared 
with the farmhand and even 397,120 talers too little compared 

with the maid. 

“According to the sovereign will of Frederick William IV, Eichhorn-Ladenberg 
and the rest of the Christian-Germanic fellowship, primary school” (cf. the 
Eichhorn rescripts until the beginning of 1848) “should be restricted purely to 
reading, writing and the most elementary arithmetic. The first four rules of 
arithmetic, then, would still be allowed to the peasants. There was no need for the 
primary school, however, to teach the peasant the various rules, particularly 
subtraction, or deduction and extraction. In Silesia, at least, the divinely favoured 
robber knights have subtracted so much from around him and out of him that he 
for his part now ought to succeed at the first possible opportunity with flying 
colours in this form of subtraction applied to the worthy lords.” 

Wolff then gives another example of this subtraction practice of 
the Silesian nobility: The waste hides. 

“Wherever rustic hosts” (i.e. peasants) “were ruined by war, epidemics, 
conflagrations or other disasters, the seigneur was swiftly at hand in order to 
absorb the land of the farm concerned, either wholly or partly, into his dominion 
as a ‘waste hide’. But you lords were careful not to take over land tax, house tax 
and the other burdens. These had to be borne either by the whole community or 
by the subsequent owner, who often only received a third, a sixth or an eighth of 
the previous land area in the bill of sale, but all the previous taxes, tithes and 
services. You did the same with common grazing and arable land when, for 
example, the above-mentioned causes had led to a more or less complete 
depopulation of the village. You seized these and other opportunities to combine as 
many lands as possible. But the communities and the individual peasants had to 
bear communal, school, church, district and other burdens unextenuated, as if they 
had never been deprived of a whit.... The yardstick with which you seek to 
measure us, shall be used to measure you, the peasant will reply to you. 

“In your raging appetite for compensation, you have blindly rushed into a 
veritable hornets’ nest of popular damages; if, provoked as they are, they one day 
fly out, you may easily find yourselves suffering scrupulously accurate damages as 
well as a good helping of damage!” (Neue Rheinische Zeitung of March 27). 

In the next article (in the issue of March 29) Wolff describes the 
procedure during redemption of the actual feudal dues. Under 
the notorious General Commissions, which were charged with the 
execution of this business throughout the province, there were the 
Royal Landed Estate Commissaries and their aides, the Royal 
Conductors of Surveying and the actuaries. As soon as the 
application for redemption had been made by the landowner or 
the peasant, these officials appeared in the village, where they 
were straightaway lavishly entertained and suborned by the worthy 
lord up at the manor-house. 

“Often this suborning had already taken place earlier, and since the worthy 
knights do not spare the champagne if anything may be thereby achieved, the 
seignorial efforts to please were generally successful.” 

Certainly there were incorruptible officials here and there, yet 
they were exceptions and even then the peasants were not helped. 

“In cases in which the Landed Estate Commissary himself observed the letter of 
the law, it was of little benefit to the peasants as soon as the Conductor or his 
officials were won over by the lord of the dominion. It was even worse for the 
peasants if, as was generally the case, the most cordial understanding prevailed 
between Landed Estate Commissary, Conductor and sovereign. Then the knightly 
heart was gay and rejoiced. 

“In all the plenitude of power with which the Old Prussian bureaucracy was adept 
at decking out its dependents, the Royal Commissary would now enter the district 
kretscham where the peasants were assembled. He would never fail to remind the 
peasants that he was here ‘in the name of the King’ to negotiate with them. 

“In the name of the King!’ At this phrase all the sombre figures such as 
gendarmes, executors, seignorial judges, district councillors, etc. appear simultane- 
ously in front of the peasant’s eyes. Had he not always been oppressed and 
exploited by them all in that name! ‘In the name of the King!’ That sounded to 
him like the stocks and prison, it sounded like taxes, tithes, statute labour and 
fees.184 For he was obliged to pay all these ‘in the name of the King’. If the 
Commissary’s introduction did not do the trick, if the community or the individual 
peasant proved to be refractory and went against the plans of the lord of the 
domain and Commissary, then the latter would be transmogrified into the 
Olympian Thunderer, hurling one holy hell and damnation after the other into the 
midst of the nonplussed peasant throng, then adding more mildly: If you persist in 
such foolish excesses, I tell you that you will pay for it in full. This symbolic seizure 
of the peasant’s purse would then generally decide the issue: obligations and 
counter-obligations could now be adjusted to suit the wishes of the lord.” 

Now came the surveying, and in the process the corrupt 
Conductor would cheat the peasants for the benefit of the 
landowner. For the assessment of usufruct, land quality, etc. the 
district mayors were brought in as experts, and these too would 
usually deliver judgment in favour of the landowner. After all this 
had been settled and the size in morgen of the land left for the 

peasants after the deduction of the area to be relinquished to the 
worthy lord as compensation for the loss of feudal dues had 
finally been established, the worthy knights generally prevailed on 
the Landed Estate Commissary to place the fields of the little man, 
if at all possible, on the worst side. The good land was added to 
that of the estate, and in return the peasants would be allocated 
estate fields which were regularly flooded in wet years. And then 
again, the peasants would be tricked out of another part of their 
fields by the Conductor during the final survey. In the vast 
majority of cases the peasants were helpless; as a rule anyone who 
brought a court case was ruined by it; only in quite exceptionally 
favourable circumstances was a peasant able to obtain his rightful 
dues. 

The end of the business came with the drafting and signing of 
all the recesses and documents of settlement by the General 
Commission and—the general expenses account, which betokened 
the real beginning of the countryman’s distress. 

“To characterise these accounts there is no other epithet than: shameless. No 
matter how the peasant protested or tore his hair: it was all to no avail. After all, it 
was his purse they were after; the exchequer took its share of stamp duty in 
advance, and the rest went to pay the General Commission, the Landed Estate 
Commission etc. This veritable swarm of officials lived in ease and plenty. Through 
their position as Landed Estate Commissary, poor lads have with the aid of 
knightly nefariousness risen very quickly to become the owners of knightly estates 
themselves. It scarcely needs pointing out that the power in the General 

Commission lay in the hands of the nobles. Without them the little deals of our 
worthy knights would not have prospered so well.” 

In good Old Prussian fashion, no account of the total expenses 
of the General Commission has ever been published, so the people 
even do not know how much the redemption of feudal dues, 
insofar as it had been effected by 1848, actually cost them. But the 
individual communities and peasants will never forget how much 
they were forced to “cough up” at this time. 

“For instance, a small village, whose peasants did not even own 30 morgen 
between them, had to pay recess expenses of 137 talers; in another, a peasant with 
7 morgen of fields incurs costs of no less than 29 talers... The robber-knights’ 
compensation dish was so delicious that, spiced with a few Christian-Germanic 
ingredients, it will not be missing from the table of the high and noble lords in 
days to come, either. This tastes of more!—say the Silesian robber-knights, wiping 
their whiskers with a chuckle and smacking their chops as the cabbage Junkers do.” 

Wolff wrote this 27 years ago, and the events he describes 
belong to the period 1820-48; but on reading them today one 
seems to be reading an account of the procedure by which the 
serfs of Russia were emancipated and became so-called free 

peasants after 1861. It agrees to the finest detail. In one feature 
after another this cheating of the peasants in favour of the worthy 
lords is the same. And just as in all official and liberal accounts the 
Russian redemption is described as an enormous benefit for the 
peasants, as the greatest step forward in Russian history, in the 
same way Official and national-servile historiography describes to 
us that piece of Old Prussian peasant-swindling as a world- 
liberating event which puts the great French Revolution—which 

in fact was the cause of the redemption business—in the 
shade! 

Vil 

The Silesian nobility’s list of sins is still not exhausted. In the 
Neue Rheinische Zeitung of April 5, Wolff recounts how the 
introduction of freedom of trade in Prussia offered the robber- 
knights a new opportunity to swindle the country folk. 

“As long as he was still under the obligation to join a guild, the rural artisan or 
tradesman paid the worthy landowner an annual fee, as a rule quite high, for his 
craft or business. In return he enjoyed the advantage of being protected by the 
landowner against competition from others through refusal of trading permits; and 
in addition, the landowner had to bring his work to him. This was precisely the 
position faced by the millers, brewers, butchers, smiths, bakers, kretscham- or 
inn-keepers, shopkeepers, etc.” 

When freedom of trade was introduced, the protection afforded 
to the privileged artisans ceased and everywhere competition