Karl Marx

Declaration on the Conclusion of the Cologne Trial

New-Yorker Criminal-Zeitung.  
Nr. 39, 10 December 1852

Declaration.

Sir,

The undersigned consider it a duty towards themselves and their recently condemned friends in Cologne to lay before the English public a series of facts whose revelation, owing to the incomplete reports of the German press, has scarcely penetrated beyond the city walls of Cologne.

One and a half years have passed merely in the preliminary investigation of this trial. During this entire time our friends were in solitary confinement, deprived of all means of diversion and occupation altogether. Those who fell ill were refused medical aid or it was granted under such circumstances that completely paralysed its effectiveness. Even after the indictment was served, the defence lawyers, in contradiction to the law, were denied access to the accused, and the latter were deprived of all means of defence.

How was this long and cruel pre-trial detention justified? After nine months, the indictment chamber declared that “there was no objective factual case and — therefore the investigation had to be begun anew.” The investigation began anew. Three months later, at the opening of a new assize quarter, it was said that the pile of investigation files was too massive to be digested by the public prosecutor yet. After another three months, once the indictment was already in the hands of the prisoners, the proceedings were again suspended for three months, on the pretext that one of the government witnesses had fallen ill. What was the purpose of this unspeakable dragging out? The Prussian government was afraid to publicly confront its boastfully announced revelations with the actual facts.

At last the date could no longer be postponed, and the government succeeded in finding a jury such as Rhenish Prussia had never seen, composed of half a dozen of the most reactionary nobles, four financial aristocrats and two bureaucrats.

What material was laid before this jury? Above all, the absurd proclamations and correspondence of a band of fantastic conspirators, the tools and at the same time associates of Cherval, an avowed police agent.

These papers were partly in the possession of a certain Oswald Diez in London. At the time of the Industrial Exhibition, during Diez’s absence, the Prussian government had his desk broken open by a certain Reuter and the papers stolen. As a result of this theft, the so-called German-French plot in Paris was discovered.

During the Cologne proceedings, proof was indeed furnished that those fantastic conspirators and their agent Cherval are the political enemies of the accused and their undersigned London friends. The public prosecutor, on the other hand, advanced the striking logic that, in his opinion, only personal enmity had prevented the Cologne accused and their London friends from making common cause with Cherval and his associates. In this curious manner he proved the complicité morale. What is more, while the accused and the undersigned were held responsible for the actions of their enemies, the avowed friends of Cherval and his London allies appeared at the bar of the assizes, not as accused, but as crown witnesses.

The government itself became uneasy with this method of proceeding. Public opinion forced it to look for solid evidence. The entire police force of the Prussian state was set in motion, headed by Stieber, royal police councillor and chief of the Berlin criminal police, who figured as a witness at Cologne. At the session of 23 October, Stieber announced that an extraordinary courier had brought him on the 17th of the same month the most important documents from London, from which the complicity of the accused in a common plot with the undersigned emerged irrefutably. Among other things, he laid before the court the “original minute book” of a secret society allegedly directed by us.

Stieber first became entangled in the greatest contradictions with regard to the date on which his deus ex machina courier was supposed to have arrived from London. Counsel Schneider II therefore directly accused him of perjury, and Stieber could only extricate himself from the trap by pointing the court to the authority of the crown, which was personified in him, by posing as the incarnation of the Prussian government.

With regard to the so-called original minute book, Stieber twice assured on his oath that it was the genuine original minute book. Later, driven into a corner by the defence lawyers, he let the original minute book shrink into a mere notebook that one of his spies had drawn up after the meetings, from memory and on his own initiative. Finally, and indeed with the help of Stieber’s own testimony, it turned out that the book was nothing more than a mere made-to-order article fabricated by his London police agents Greiff, Fleury and Hirsch. The latter, who has admitted in writing that he drew up the book under the direction of Greiff and Fleury, would already have been handed over by us to the English courts for forgery, had not one of Cherval’s associates provided him with the means to escape prosecution by flight. Greiff, a Prussian police lieutenant and attaché to the embassy here, vanished from London before the end of the trial, and the identity of Fleury of Kensington cannot be established without his two accomplices. Incidentally, the falsity of the minute book was proved so crushingly that the public prosecutor himself acknowledged it and called the “document” a wretched book. Finally, a letter allegedly written by the co-signatory Marx was produced, whose falsity the prosecution likewise had to admit.

Thus all the documents that were supposed to contain more than a revolutionary tendency, that were supposed to contain actual proof of a plot, proved to be pure government fabrications. The government feared so greatly being exposed before the public that not only did the Prussian post office suppress documents sent to the defence, but Stieber even sought to intimidate the defence lawyers and induce them to suppress the evidence supplied to them, by threatening them at the public session before the opening of the defence speeches with prosecution for “criminal correspondence” with the undersigned.

If now, despite the lack of all evidence, a conviction was achieved, then even before this jury such a result was only made possible by the retroactive application of the new Prussian penal code, under which even the “Times” and the “Peace Society” could be convicted of high treason any day. Moreover, the trial had, through its unusual duration and through the extraordinary means employed by the government, assumed such dimensions that an acquittal of the accused would have been tantamount to a condemnation of the government, and in the Rhenish province the view had generally taken hold that an acquittal would immediately entail the suppression of the institution of jury trials.

Finally, to characterise the Prussian government and courts, Dr. Jacobi, who was acquitted, is nevertheless kept in prison on the pretext that in a private letter addressed to a friend many years ago he used insulting expressions against Frederick William IV.

London, 18 November 1852.

(Signed) F. Engels. F. Freiligrath.
K. Marx. W. Wolff.

These papers, in the first instance, furnished the means of discovering the 
so-called Franco-German plot at Paris. Now the proceedings at Cologne 
proved that those conspirators and Cherval, and their Paris agent, were the 
very political opponents of the defendants and their undersigned London 
friends. But the public accuser pleaded that a mere personal quarrel had 
prevented the latter from taking part in the plot of Cherval and his associates. 
By such an argument it was intended to prove the moral complicity of the 
Cologne defendants in the Paris plot! And while the accused at Cologne were 
thus made responsible for the acts of their very enemies, the professed 
friends of Cherval and his associates were produced by the Government in 
court, not at the bar like the defendants—nay, in the witness-box, to depose 
against them. This, however, appeared too bad. Public opinion forced the 
Government to look out for less equivocal evidence. The whole of the police 
machinery was set to work, under the direction of one Stieber, the principal 
Government witness at Cologne, royal councillor of police, and chief of the 
Berlin criminal force. In the sitting of October 23, Stieber announced that 
an extraordinary courier from London had delivered to him most important 
documents, proving undeniably the complicity of the accused in an alleged 
conspiracy with the undersigned. "Amongst other documents the courier had 
brought him the original minute-book of the sittings of the secret society 
presided over by Dr. Marx, and with whom the defendants had been in 
correspondence." Stieber, however, entangled himself in discordant state- 
ments on the date on which the courier was to have reached him. 
Dr. Schneider, the leading counsel for the defence, charged him directly with 
perjury, upon which Stieber ventured no other reply than to fall back upon 
his dignity as the representative of the Crown, entrusted with a most im- 
portant mission by the very highest authority of the State. As to the minute- 
book, Stieber twice declared on his oath that it was the "genuine original 
minute-book of the Communist Society in London." But later on, closely 
pressed by the defence, he admitted that it might be a mere book of notes 
taken by one of his spies. At length, from his own evidence, the book was 

proved to be a deliberate forgery, and its origin traced back to three of 
Stieber's London agents, Greiff, Fleury, and Hirsch. The latter has since 
himself admitted that he composed the book under the guidance of Fleury 
and Greiff. So decisive was the evidence at Cologne on this point, that even 
the public accuser declared Stieber's "important document" a most un- 
fortunate book—a mere forgery. The same personage refused to take notice 
of a letter forming part of the Government evidence, in which the handwriting 
of Dr. Marx had been imitated; that document, too, having turned out a gross 
and palpable forgery. In the same manner every document brought forward 
in order to prove, not the revolutionary tendencies, but the actual complicity 
of the accused in some distinct plot, turned out a forgery of the police. So 
great were the fears of the Government of an exposure, that it not only caused 
the post to return all documents addressed to the counsel for the defence, 
but the latter to be intimidated by Stieber with a threatened prosecution for 
his "criminal correspondence" with the undersigned. 

If now, in spite of the absence of all convincing proofs, a verdict has 
nevertheless been obtained, that result has only become possible at the hands 
even of such a jury, by the retro-active application of a new criminal code, 
under which the "Times" and the Peace Society themselves might at any time 
be tried on the formidable charge of high treason. Moreover, the trial at 
Cologne had assumed, by its duration, and by the extraordinary means 
employed on the part of the accusation, such vast dimensions, that an ac- 
quittal would have equalled a condemnation of the Government; and a 
conviction prevailed generally in the Rhenish Provinces, that the immediate 

consequence of an acquittal would be the suppression of the entire institution 
of the jury. 

We are, Sir, your most obedient servants, 

F. Engels, 
F. Freiligrath, 
C. Marx, 

W. Wolff. 
London, 20th November 1852.