* Cologne. The principal fruit of the revolutionary movement of 1848 is not what the peoples have won, but what they have lost—the loss of their illusions.

June, November, December of the year 1848—these are the giant milestones of the disenchantment and sobering-up of the European popular mind.

Among the last illusions that hold the German people captive, the foremost is its superstitious belief in the judiciary. The prosaic north wind of the Prussian counter-revolution is snapping even this flower of the popular imagination, the true motherland of which is Italy—eternal Rome.

The acts and declarations of the Rhenish Court of Cassation, the Supreme Tribunal of Berlin, the Higher Land Courts of Münster, Bromberg, Ratibor against Esser, Waldeck, Temme, Kirchmann, Gierke prove once again that the French Convention is and remains the lighthouse of all revolutionary epochs. It inaugurated the revolution by dismissing all officials by a decree. Judges, too, are nothing but officials, as the above-named courts are testifying before the whole of Europe. Turkish kadi and Chinese colleges of mandarins could confidently countersign the latest decrees of those “high” courts of justice against their colleagues.

Our readers are already familiar with the decrees of the Supreme Tribunal of Berlin and the Higher Land Court of Ratibor. For today, we have to concern ourselves with the Higher Land Court of Münster. But first, a few words about the Rhenish Court of Cassation residing in Berlin, the *summus pontifex* of Rhenish jurisprudence.

It is well known that the Rhenish jurists (with a few commendable exceptions) had nothing more pressing to do in the Prussian Agreement Assembly than to cure the Prussian government of its old prejudices and its old resentment. They proved to it in fact that their former opposition signified little more than the opposition of the French parlements before 1789—the obstinate and liberal-swaggering assertion of corporate interests. Just as in the French National Assembly of 1789 the liberal members of the parlements, so in the Prussian Assembly of 1848 the liberal Rhenish jurists were the bravest of the brave in the army of servilism. The Rhenish Prussian prosecution offices put the old Prussian inquisitorial judges to shame with their “political fanaticism”. Of course, after the dissolution of the Agreement Assembly, the Rhenish jurists also had to uphold their reputation. The laurels of the old Prussian Supreme Tribunal gave the Rhenish Prussian Court of Cassation no rest. Its Chief President, Sethe, issued a similar letter to Chief Revision Counsellor Esser (not to be confused with the “loyal” Cologne “Essers”), as the President of the Supreme Tribunal, Mühler, had to Privy Supreme Tribunal Counsellor Waldeck. But the Rhenish Prussian court knew how to outdo the old Prussian one. The President of the Rhenish Court of Cassation played a trump card against his competitor by committing the perfidious indiscretion of communicating the letter to Herr Esser to the Berlin public in the *Deutsche Reform* before he had communicated it to Herr Esser himself.

We are convinced that the entire Rhine Province will respond to Herr Sethe’s letter with a monster address to our venerable aged compatriot, Herr Esser. It is not that something is rotten in the “state of Denmark”; everything is.

Now to Münster! Our readers have already heard of the protest by the Higher Land Court of Münster against the reinstatement of its Director Temme. The matter hangs together as follows:

The Ministry of the Counter-Revolution had, directly or indirectly, insinuated to the Privy Supreme Tribunal, the Rhenish Court of Cassation and the Higher Land Courts in Bromberg, Ratibor and Münster that the King would be displeased if Waldeck, Esser, Gierke, Kirchmann and Temme, because they had continued their deliberations in Berlin and taken part in the resolution on the refusal of taxation, were to return to their high judicial posts. They should therefore protest against this. The high courts of justice (at the first moment the Rhenish Court of Cassation wavered—great artists achieve their success not by appearing first but by appearing last) all fell in with this unreasonable demand and sent protests, to and from Berlin. The Higher Land Court of Münster was stupid enough to turn directly to the King (the so-called constitutional king) with a protest against Temme, in which it states verbatim:

“That by participation in the illegal sittings of a fraction of the adjourned National Assembly he placed himself in open rebellion against His Majesty’s Government, and by voting for the motion for the refusal of taxation entered upon the ground of revolution and sought to hurl the firebrand of anarchy into the fatherland”

and it continues:

“It is contrary to our sense of justice, to the demands of the public for the integrity of the director of a provincial judicial college, to his obligations with regard to the training of junior judicial officers and his position vis-à-vis the lower court officials, that after such occurrences the etc. Temme should remain in his official position with the college here. We therefore feel compelled in our conscience most humbly to express to Your Majesty the urgent wish to be placed outside official connection with Director Temme.”

The address is signed by the whole college, with the exception of a single counsellor, a brother-in-law of the Minister of Justice Rintelen.

This Minister of Justice sent a copy of this address to Herr Temme in Münster on 18 December, “for his decision”, after Temme had already resumed his office here, without any objection from the cowards.

On the morning of 19 December, Temme appeared, as the *Düsseldorfer Zeitung* reports, “for the first time in the plenary session of the Higher Land Court and took his seat as director next to the acting Chief President v. Olfers. Immediately after the beginning of the session he asked for the floor and in brief set forth roughly the following: He had received a rescript from the Minister of Justice with a copy enclosed. This enclosure contained a petition from the ‘high college’, which he now had the honour of belonging to, in which protest was entered against his reinstatement in his post. The Minister of Justice had communicated this petition to him for his perusal and ‘in order that he might take his decision accordingly’. The protest of the ‘high college’ was evidently based on his political activity; but he did not wish to speak here of this, nor of his political views generally, since he was not answerable for them to the ‘high college’. What further his

...‘decision’, he had already put it into effect by taking his seat here as a director, and he gave the ‘high college’ the assurance that he would not vacate it until forced to do so by due process of law. For the rest, it was not implied that the difference of political views need necessarily disturb the collegial relationship; so far as it lay with him, he would avoid that as far as possible.” The bravest of the brave were as if thunderstruck. They sat there, mute, motionless, petrified, as if the head of Medusa had been hurled into the mandarin college. The brave Higher Regional Court at Münster! In its official zeal it has brought a host of people under investigation and caused them to be taken into custody because they sought to carry into effect the National Assembly’s resolution on the refusal of taxes. By its pronouncement on Mr Temme, delivered, indeed, directly at the steps of the throne, the brave Higher Regional Court has now constituted itself as – a party, has delivered a prejudgment and can thus no longer possibly play the judge’s part vis-à-vis the other party.

It will be recalled that the coercion allegedly exerted on the Prussian National Assembly by the Berlin mob had to serve as the pretext for the first coup d’état of the Brandenburg ministry. So as not to exercise any coercion upon the deputies, it now resumes the “wild hunt” upon them, begun in Berlin, even after their return to their places of residence! The Minister of Justice, Rintelen, says in his decree, printed by us further below: “The delusion, intentionally nourished by many, that the criminal laws hitherto in force, especially regarding crimes against the state, are no longer valid since March of this year, has done much to augment the anarchy and may perhaps also have acquired a dangerous influence among certain courts.” Most of the acts of Mr Rintelen and the courts enfeoffed to him prove anew that in Prussia, since the forcible dissolution of the National Assembly, only one law prevails any longer – the arbitrariness of the Berlin camarilla.

On 30 March 1844, the Prussian government had enacted the notorious disciplinary law against judges, according to which they could be removed from their posts, transferred, or pensioned off by a mere resolution of the ministry of state. The last “United Diet” repealed this law and once again asserted the principle that judges may only be removed, transferred, or pensioned off by due process of law. The octroyed constitution confirms this principle. Are these laws not trampled underfoot by the courts which, according to the recipe of the Minister of Justice Rintelen, seek to drive their politically compromised colleagues, by moral coercion, to resign their offices? Are these courts not transforming themselves into officers’ corps that throw out any member whose political view does not suit their royal Prussian “honour”? And is there not also a law concerning the irresponsibility and inviolability of the representatives of the people? Mere smoke and sound! If the Prussian constitution did not already annul itself through its own paragraphs and through the manner of its origin, it would be annulled by the simple fact that the Supreme Tribunal at Berlin is its final guarantor. The constitution is guaranteed by the responsibility of the ministers, and the irresponsibility of the ministers is guaranteed by the court imposed upon them, which is none other than the Supreme Tribunal at Berlin, which finds its classic representative in Mr Mühler. The latest rescripts of the Supreme Tribunal are thus nothing more nor less than the glaring – cassation of the octroyed constitution.

In Austria the bourgeoisie, through the government’s direct threats of fire-levy against the bank, which remained untouched by the Viennese people in the moments of its greatest and most righteous fury against the financial feudalists, realises that its betrayal of the proletariat delivered up what this betrayal imagined it was securing – bourgeois property. In Prussia the bourgeoisie sees, through its cowardly trust in the government and its treacherous mistrust of the people, the indispensable guarantee of bourgeois property threatened – bourgeois judicial administration. With the dependence of the judiciary, bourgeois judicial administration itself becomes dependent on the government; i.e., bourgeois law itself gives way to bureaucratic arbitrariness. La Bourgeoisie sera punie par où elle a péché – the bourgeoisie will be punished by the very thing by which it sinned – by the government. That the servile declarations of the highest Prussian courts are only the first symptoms of the impending absolutist transformation of the courts is attested by the following latest decree of the Ministry of Justice:

“By the general ordinance of 8 October of this year, my predecessor in office has already recalled that it is pre-eminently the task of the judicial authorities to uphold the respect for and the effectiveness of the law, that by fulfilling this task they serve the country best, because true freedom can flourish only on the ground of the law. Since then there have unfortunately occurred in many places the most severe outbreaks of anarchical goings-on scornful of the laws and of order; even in individual parts of the country violent insurrections against the authorities have taken place, which have not everywhere been countered with energy. In view of so deplorable a state of affairs I turn, now that the government of His Majesty the King has taken a decisive step to save the state, which was being driven to the abyss, I turn anew to the judicial authorities and the gentlemen public prosecutors of the whole country, to call upon them to do their duty everywhere and without respect of persons. Whoever the guilty party may be, he must not escape the legal punishment which is to be brought about by the swiftest path. It has been with particularly deep regret that I have been forced to learn, both from individual reports of the provincial authorities and from the public press, that individual officials of the judiciary, unmindful of their special professional duties, have partly allowed themselves to be carried away into committing manifestly unlawful acts, and partly have not shown the courage and intrepidity with which alone terrorism could be successfully confronted. I expect that action will also be taken against those persons by establishing the facts of the case, and, where applicable, by initiating an investigation, without indulgence and with serious expedition, for the officials administering justice, to whom the safeguarding of the authority of the laws is entrusted, have erred doubly through their own violation of the law; the acceleration of the proceedings against them is, however, particularly necessary, because the administration of law must not be left in the hands of such officials. Should there be among the guilty persons officials against whom, in accordance with the existing regulations, a formal investigation or the suspension from office, which in cases of this kind must each time be taken into dutiful consideration, may not be ordered without higher authorisation, then the circumstances are to be ascertained for the purpose of grounding the investigation without special instruction, and thereafter the required authorisation is to be obtained with all dispatch. With regard to the junior barristers and auscultators, it is not to be overlooked that special regulations exist concerning their dismissal from state service. The delusion, intentionally nourished by many:

that the criminal laws hitherto in force, especially regarding crimes against the state, are no longer valid since March of this year,

has done much to augment the anarchy and may perhaps also have acquired a dangerous influence among certain courts. Given the excellent spirit of the Prussian judicial officials, which has also on the whole proved itself now, it requires only the reference to the familiar legal principle that laws retain their force until they are repealed or amended through the legislative process, as well as to the express provision of Article 108 of the Constitutional Charter of the 5th of this month, to be certain that the honourable Prussian judicial officials, with all their interest in true, moral, and civic freedom, will place the authority of the laws and order above everything else. With these principles and with contempt for all personal dangers we wish to advance, confident of victory over crime, over anarchy. Precisely thereby we shall contribute most essentially to ensuring that the formerly so brilliant Prussian state may once again show itself in its moral strength and no longer tolerate, to speak with a worthy deputy at Frankfurt, that depravity and brute force continue to carry on their doings in our midst. The gentlemen presidents of the courts as well as the Lord Procurator-General at Cologne are hereupon to cause the necessary instructions to be issued to the officials of their departments and to inform me thereof, indicating against which officials and for what offences suspensions and investigations have been initiated. Berlin, 8 December 1848. The Minister of Justice, Rintelen.”

When the revolution in Prussia one day triumphs, it will not, like the February revolution, need to abolish the irremovability of the old judiciary by a special decree. It will already find the documented renunciation by this caste of its privilege in the authentic declarations of the Rhenish Court of Cassation, the Supreme Tribunal at Berlin, the Higher Regional Courts of Bromberg, Ratibor and Münster.