The Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne, which 
the Volksstaat now considers it timely to reprint, originally 
appeared in Boston (Massachusetts) and in Basle. Most of the 
latter edition was confiscated at the German border. The 
pamphlet saw the light of day a few weeks after the trial closed. At 
that point, it was of prime importance to waste no time, hence a 
good many errors of detail were inevitable. An example of this is 
the list of names of the Cologne jury. Thus, a certain Levy and not 
M. Hess is said to have been the author of the Red Catechism.™ 
And W. Hirsch assures us in his “Rechtfertigungsschrift”* that 
Cherval’s escape from gaol in Paris was pre-arranged by Greif, the 
French police and Cherval himself, in order that the latter might 
act as an informer in London during the court proceedings. This 
is likely, as the forgery of a bill of exchange committed in Prussia 
and the resultant risk of extradition were bound to bring Cramer” 
(Cherval’s real name) to heel. My account of the incident is based 
on Cherval’s “confessions” to a friend of mine. Hirsch’s statement 
casts an even harsher light on Stieber’s perjury, the intrigues of 
the Prussian embassies in London and Paris, and the shameless 
intervention by Hinckeldey. 

When the Volksstaat started to reprint the pamphlet in its 
columns, I was for a moment undecided whether or not it might 

be appropriate to omit Section VI (The Willich-Schapper Group).* 
On further consideration, however, any mutilation of the text 
appeared to me to be a falsification of an historical document. 

The violent suppression of a revolution leaves behind a shock in 
the minds of its protagonists, particularly those forced into exile 
far from the domestic scene—a shock that, for a time, renders 
even the most able people, as it were, not responsible for their 
actions. They are unable to accept the course of history; they are 
loth to realise that the form of the movement has changed. Hence 
the conspiratorial and revolutionary games they play, equally 
compromising for themselves and for the cause they serve; hence, 
too, the errors of Schapper and Willich. In the North American 
Civil War, Willich showed that he was more than a visionary, and 
Schapper, a life-long champion of the labour movement, confessed 
and acknowledged his momentary aberration soon after the 
Cologne trial. Many years later, on his death-bed, the day before 
he died, he spoke to me with scathing irony about that time of 
“refugee foolishness”.— Nevertheless, the circumstances in which 
the Revelations were written explain the bitterness of the attack on 
the involuntary accomplices of the common enemy. In times of 
crisis, thoughtlessness is a crime against the party calling for public 
expiation. 

“The whole existence of the political police depends on the outcome of 
this trial!’’ With these words, written during the Cologne court 
proceedings to the embassy in London (see my pamphlet Herr 
Vogt, p. 27°), Hinckeldey betrayed the secret of the Communist 
trial. “The whole existence of the political police” is not merely 
the existence and activities of the staff immediately concerned with 
this area. It is the subordination of the entire governmental 
machinery, including the courts (see the Prussian disciplinary law 
for judicial officials of May 7, 1851°) and the press (see reptile 
funds), to that institution, just as the entire state system of 
Venice was once subordinated to the State Inquisition.” The 
political police, paralysed during the revolutionary storm in 
Prussia, needed re-organising along the lines of the second French 
Empire. 

After the demise of the 1848 revolution, the German labour 

movement continued to exist only in the form of theoretical 
propaganda, confined to narrow circles; the Prussian Government 
was not for a moment deceived about its harmlessness in practice. 
The government's Communist witch-hunt served simply as a 
prelude to its reactionary crusade against the liberal bourgeoisie, 
and the bourgeoisie itself steeled the main weapon of this reaction, 
the political police, by sentencing the workers’ representatives and 
acquitting Hinckeldey-Stieber. Stieber thus earned his spurs at the 
assizes in Cologne. At that time Stieber was a humble low-ranking 
policeman ruthlessly pursuing a higher salary and promotion; now 
Stieber stands for the unrestricted rule of the political police in the 
new holy Prussian-German empire. Thus he has, to a certain 
extent, become a moral person, moral in the metaphorical sense, 
as, for example, the Reichstag is a moral creation. This time the 
political police is not striking at the workers in order to hit the 
bourgeoisie. Quite the reverse. Precisely in his position as dictator 
of the German liberal bourgeoisie, Bismarck considers himself 
strong enough to drive* the workers’ party out of existence. The 
German proletariat can, therefore, measure the progress of the 
movement it has achieved since the Cologne Communist trial by 
Stieber’s growth in stature. 

The Pope’s infallibility is small beer compared with that of the 
political police. After for decades sticking young hotheads in gaol 
in Prussia for advocating German unity,” the German Empire and 
the German monarchy, it is today even incarcerating bald-headed 
old men for refusing to advocate these divine gifts. Today it is just 
as vainly attempting to eradicate the enemies of the Empire as it once 
tried to eradicate the friends of the Empire. What glaring proof that 
it is not called on to make history, even if it were only the history 
of the quarrel over the Emperor’s beard! 

The Communist trial in Cologne itself brands the state power’s 
impotence in its struggle against social development. The royal 
Prussian state prosecutor ultimately based the guilt of the accused 
on the fact that they secretly disseminated the subversive 
principles of the Communist Manifesto” Are not the same 
principles being proclaimed openly in the streets in Germany 
twenty years later? Do they not resound even from the tribune of 
the Reichstag? Have they not journeyed round the world, in the 
shape of the Programme of the International Working Men’s 
Association,” despite all the government arrest-warrants? Society 

simply does not find its equilibrium until it revolves around the 
sun of labour. 

At the end of the Revelations it says: “Jena! ... that is the final 
outcome of a government that requires such methods in order to 
survive and of a society that needs such a government for its 
protection. The word that should stand at the end of the 
Communist trial is— Jena!’ * 

An accurate prediction indeed, giggles the first Treitschke to 
happen along, with a proud reference to Prussia’s latest feat of 
arms and the Mauser rifle. Suffice it for me to point out that there 
is not only an inner Düppel,” but also an inner Jena 

London, January 8, 1875 

Karl Marx 
January 27, 1875 and in the book: Karl paper, checked with the book 

FOR POLAND’! 

This year, too, a memorial celebration was held in London to 
commemorate the Polish uprising of January 22, 1863. Large 
numbers of our German party comrades took part in the 
celebration; several of them made speeches, among whom were 
Engels and Marx. 

“There has been talk here,” said Engels, “about the reasons for 
the revolutionaries of all countries to sympathise with Poland’s 
cause and intervene on its behalf. Only one thing has been 
forgotten to mention, namely this: that the political situation in 
which Poland has been placed is a thoroughly revolutionary one, 
leaving Poland with no other choice than to be revolutionary or to 
perish. This was already evident after the first partition, which was 
brought about by the efforts of the Polish nobility to maintain a 
constitution and privileges which had lost their right to existence 
and were harming the country and public order instead of 
preserving peace and securing progress.” Already after the first 
partition a section of the nobility acknowledged the mistake and 
came to the conviction that Poland could only be restored by 
revolution;—and ten years later we saw Poles fighting for 
liberty in America.” .The French Revolution of 1789 found an 
immediate echo in Poland. The Constitution of 17917 with the 
rights of man became the banner of revolution on the banks of 
the Vistula and turned Poland into the vanguard of revolutionary 
France, and that at the very moment when the three powers which 
had already despoiled Poland once were uniting in order to march 
to Paris and strangle the revolution.” Could they stand back and 
allow revolution to gain a foothold in the centre of the coalition? 
Unthinkable. Again they hurled themselves on Poland, this time 

with the intention of completely depriving it of its national 
existence. The unfolding of the revolutionary banner was one of 
the chief reasons for the subjugation of Poland. The country that 
has been dismembered and struck off the list of nations because it 
was revolutionary can seek its salvation nowhere else but in 
revolution. And for this reason we find Poles in all revolution- 
ary struggles. Poland realised this in 1863, and during 
the uprising whose anniversary we are celebrating today published 
the most radical revolutionary programme that has ever been 
drawn up in Eastern Europe. It would be ridiculous should one 
consider the Polish revolutionaries to be aristocrats wishing to 
reconstruct the aristocratic Poland of 1772, just because there 
exists a Polish aristocratic party. The Poland of 1772 is lost and 
gone forever. No power will be capable of raising it out of the 
grave. The new Poland, which the revolution will put on its feet, is 
as fundamentally different socially and politically from the Poland 
of 1772 as the new society towards which we are hastening is 
fundamentally different from present-day society. 

“One more word. No one can enslave a people with impunity. 
The three powers that murdered Poland have been severely 
punished. Look at my own country: Prussia-Germany. Under the 
signboard of national unification we brought upon us the Poles, 
the Danes and the French—and have a threefold Venice’; we have 
enemies everywhere, we have encumbered ourselves with debts 
and taxes in order to maintain countless masses of soldiers who 
must also serve to suppress the German workers. Austria, even 
official Austria, knows full well how dearly that little bit of Poland 
has cost her. At the time of the Crimean War, Austria was 
prepared to go to war against Russia provided that Russian Poland 
was occupied and liberated. However, that did not agree with 
Louis Napoleon’s plans, and still less with Palmerston’s. And as far 
as Russia is concerned, we see: in 1861 the first major movement 
broke out among the students, all the more dangerous since the 
people were everywhere in a state of great agitation as a result of 
the emancipation of the serfs; and what did the Russian 
government do, well realising the danger?—It provoked the uprising 
of 1863 in Poland”; for it has been proved that this uprising was its 
work. The movement amongst the students, the profound 
agitation of the people vanished at once, giving way to Russian 
chauvinism, which descended on Poland once it was a question of 

maintaining Russian rule there. Thus perished the first significant 
movement in Russia as a result of the calamitous struggle against 
Poland. The restoration of Poland is indeed in the interest of 
revolutionary Russia, and I hear tonight with pleasure that this 
opinion agrees with the convictions of the Russian revolutionaries” 
(who had expressed this view at the meeting”). 

Marx said roughly this: The Working Men’s Party of Europe 
takes the keenest interest in the emancipation of Poland, and the 
original programme of the International Working Men’s Associa- 
tion declares the restoration of Poland to be one of the goals of 
working-class politics.*. What are the reasons for this special 
interest of the Working Men’s Party in the fate of Poland? 

Firstly, of course, sympathy for a subjugated people, which by 
continuous heroic struggle against its oppressors has proved its 
historic right to national independence and self-determination. It 
is by no means a contradiction that the international Working 
Men’s Party should strive for the restoration of the Polish nation. 
On the contrary: only when Poland has re-conquered its indepen- 
dence, when it once again exercises control over itself as a free 
people, only then can its internal development recommence and 
will it be able to take part in its own right in the social transformation 
of Europe. As long as a viable people is fettered by a foreign 
conqueror, it must necessarily apply all its strength, all its efforts, 
all its energy against the enemy from without; for this length of 
time, then, its inner life remains paralysed, it remains unable to 
work for social emancipation. Ireland, Russia under Mongouan 
rule, etc., provide striking proof of this thesis. 

Another reason for the sympathy of the Working Men’s Party 
for the resurrection of Poland is its special geographical, military 
and historical position. The partition of Poland is the mortar 
binding together the three great military despotisms: Russia, 
Prussia and Austria. Only the reconstitution of Poland can break 
this bond and thus remove the greatest obstacle to the social 
emancipation of the peoples of Europe. 

The main reason for the sympathy of the working class towards 
Poland is, however, this: Poland is not merely the only Slavic tribe, 
it is the only European people that has fought and is fighting as 
the cosmopolitan soldier of the revolution. Poland shed its blood 
during the American War of Independence; its legions fought 
under the banner of the first French Republic; by its revolution of 

1830 it prevented the invasion of France that had been decided by 
the partitioners of Poland; in 1846 in Cracow it was the first in 
Europe to plant the banner of social revolution; in 1848 it played 
an outstanding part in the revolutionary struggle in Hungary, 
Germany and Italy; finally, in 1871 it supplied the Paris 
Commune with its best generals and most heroic soldiers. 

In the brief moments when the popular masses of Europe were 
able to move freely, they remembered what they owe to Poland. 
After the victorious March Revolution in Berlin in 1848, the first 
deed of the people was to release the Polish prisoners, Mieroslaws- 
ki and his comrades-in-suffering, and proclaim the restoration of 
Poland ”’; in Paris, in May 1848, Blanqui marched at the head of 
the workers against the reactionary National Assembly in order to 
force it to accept armed intervention for Poland As finally, in 1871, 
when the Parisian workers had constituted themselves as_ the 
government, they honoured Poland by entrusting its sons with the 
military leadership of their forces. 

Neither at the present moment does the German Working 
Men’s Party allow itself to be the least misled by the reactionary 
conduct of the Polish deputies in the German Reichstag; it knows 
that these gentlemen are not acting on behalf of Poland but of 
their own private interests; it knows that the Polish peasant, the 
Polish worker, in short, every Pole who is not blinded by class 
interests, must realise that Poland has and can only have one ally in 
Europe—the Working Men’s Party.— Long Live Poland!