Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels
Gottfried Kinkel

Neue Rheinische Zeitung.
Politisch-ökonomische Revue.
H.4, April 1850

Gottfried Kinkel.

The slackness in the allegedly revolutionary party in Germany is so great that things which in France or England would conjure up a general storm pass by in Germany without occasioning even surprise that such things here meet with general approval. Herr Waldeck conducts before the jury a detailed proof by witnesses that he has always been a good constitutionalist, and is driven home in triumph by the Berlin democrats. Herr Grün in Trier, in open court session, denies the revolution in the most fatuous manner, and the people turn their backs on the condemned proletarians in the courtroom in order to cheer the acquitted industrialist.

A new example of what is possible in Germany is provided by the defence speech which Herr Gottfried Kinkel delivered on August 4, 1849 before the court-martial in Rastatt and which was published in the Berlin “Abend-Post” of April 6 and 7 of this year.

We know in advance that we shall arouse the general indignation of the sentimental humbugs and democratic declaimers by denouncing to our party this speech of the “imprisoned” Kinkel. This is completely indifferent to us. Our task is ruthless criticism, much more against the supposed friends than against the open enemies; and in maintaining this our position, we gladly renounce cheap democratic popularity. Our attack in no way worsens Herr Kinkel’s situation; we denounce him to the amnesty by confirming his confession that he is not the man he is pretended to be, by declaring that he is worthy not only of being amnestied, but even of entering the Prussian civil service. Moreover, the speech is published. We denounce the entire document to our party, and give here only the most striking passages.

Gottfried Kinkel

“I, too, have never held a command, so that I am also not responsible for the actions of others. For I protest against any association of my doings with the filth and scum which, I know it, unfortunately adhered to this revolution at the end.”

Since Herr Kinkel “entered the Besançon company as a private,” and since he here casts suspicion on all commanders, was it not his duty at least to exempt his direct superior, Willich, here?

“Never did I serve in the army, thus never broke any oath to the colours, nor applied against my fatherland any military knowledge that I might have acquired in the service of my fatherland.”

Was this not a direct denunciation of the captured former Prussian soldiers, of Jansen and Bernigau, who were shot soon afterwards, was it not a complete endorsement of the death sentence on Dortu, who had already been shot?

Thus Herr Kinkel further denounces his own party to the court-martial by speaking of plans to cede the left bank of the Rhine to France and declaring himself free of these criminal projects. Herr Kinkel knows very well that the annexation of the Rhine Province by France was spoken of only in the sense that, in the decisive struggle between revolution and counter-revolution, the Rhine Province would unconditionally side with the revolutionary party, whether this be represented by Frenchmen or Chinese. He equally does not fail, in contrast to the wild revolutionaries, to point to his mild character, which had enabled him to be on good terms with an Arndt and other conservatives as a human being, if not as a party man.

“My guilt is that in the summer I still wanted the same thing that all of you wanted in March, that the entire German people wanted in March!”

Here he presents himself as a pure fighter for the imperial constitution, who never wanted anything beyond the imperial constitution. We place this declaration on record.

Herr Kinkel goes on to speak of an article he wrote about a riot perpetrated by Prussian soldiers in Mainz, and says: “And what has happened to me for that? During this absence of mine from home, I was for that reason summoned to court a second time, and since I was unable to appear for my defence, I was, as I was recently told, deprived of eligibility for election for five years. Five years’ electoral disqualification has been pronounced upon me: for a man who has already once had the honour of being a deputy, that is an extremely harsh punishment” (!).

“How often have I had to hear the word that I am a bad Prussian; that word has wounded me — Well, then! My party has for the present lost the game in the fatherland. If the Crown of Prussia now at last pursues a bold and strong policy, if the royal highness of our successor to the throne, the Prince of Prussia, succeeds in forging Germany into one with the sword, for it will not be done otherwise, and in making her great and respected among our neighbours, and in really and lastingly securing internal freedom, reviving trade and transportation, distributing the military burden that now presses too heavily on Prussia evenly over all Germany, and above all in procuring bread for the poor of my people, whose representative I feel myself to be, — if your party succeeds in that, then, by my oath! The honour and greatness of my fatherland are dearer to me than my ideals of the state, and I know how to value the French republicans of 1793” — (Fouché and Talleyrand?) “who afterwards for the sake of France voluntarily bowed before Napoleon’s greatness; were this to happen, and were my people once more to do me the honour of electing me as its representative, I would be one of the first deputies to cry out with joyful heart: Long live the German imperial dignity! Long live the Hohenzollern Empire! If with such sentiments one is a bad Prussian, yes! Then I certainly do not desire to be a good Prussian.”

“Gentlemen, think a little too of wife and child at home! when you pronounce judgment upon a man who today, through the change in human fortunes, stands before you so low and unhappy.”

Herr Kinkel delivered this speech at a time when twenty-six of his comrades had been condemned to death and shot by the same courts-martial, people who understood how to face the bullet quite differently from the way Herr Kinkel faced his judges. Incidentally, if he presents himself as a wholly harmless person, he is perfectly right. He has only got into his party by a misunderstanding, and it would be an utterly senseless cruelty for the Prussian government to detain him any longer in prison.