[London,] 15 May [1860] 

Dear Siebel, 

Herewith the answer from Berlin from which it appears that the 
criminal action has been dismissed. The civil action will never 
make any headway.* Kindly send the Mittelrheinische Zeitung a few 
lines setting forth the facts of the case. Let me have the letter back 
as soon as you’ve shown it to Gumpert and Lupus. 

I have not yet approached a publisher about the pamphlet” and 
am wondering whether to try Leipzig or Hamburg. 

Engels left here yesterday evening,’ sain et sauf< 

I have not received the Sphinx" from you but it doesn’t matter. I 
do not regard Boustrapa ” as a sphinx, still less Mr Karl Grün as 
an Oedipus. 

Salut. 

Your 
K. M. 

* See this volume, p. 129, - > K. Marx, Herr Vogt. - © safe and sound - 4 [K. Grün,] 
Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, die Sphinx auf dem franzdsischen Kaiserthron, Hamburg, 
1860. 

Apropos. 

If you were to send the Mittelrheinische Zeitung a note about the 
progress of my case, dated ‘Berlin’, you might take the opportuni- 
ty of slipping in a word or two about the Eichhoff-Stieber case,“ 
which was decided on 10 May in the Court of the First Instance in 
Berlin. For Eichhoff has been given an eighteen-month sentence 
for ‘libelling’ Stieber. The libel suit rested mainly on the 
denunciation of Stieber (in the London Hermann) for perjury, 
theft, etc., perpetrated by him in the course of the Communist 
trial in Cologne (1852).? Below I cite various instances that are 
characteristic of the proceedings in the Prussian law cout. 

1. Eichhoff’s denunciation rested (except for my pamphlet, 
which he could not, of course, mention) on the reports printed by 
the ‘Kélnische Zeitung’ during the proceedings in Cologne,” the 
authenticity of which has never been challenged either by Stieber 
or by anyone else. The court declared these reports to be 
inadmissible evidence. Whenever it was in the interests of Stieber, 
the court allowed as authentic the reports in the Vossische Zeitung‘ 
(probably deriving from Stieber himself), because they had been 
declared ‘authentic’ by Signor Stieber. Whenever it went against 
the interests of Stieber’s denunciator, the selfsame court declared 
the meagre record kept by the clerk of the court to be the only 
authentic source. 

2. Goldheim, a police official, and Greif, a police lieutenant, 
Stieber’s chief fellow-culprits and his subordinate tools in the 
Communist trial of 1852, were wholly exempted from _ cross. 
EXAMINATION because the court did not wish to expose these 
gentlemen to the alternative (as the presiding judge“ frankly 
stated) ‘of either committing perjury or testifying against them- 
selves’. On the other hand, their statements were allowed as 
evidence for Stieber’s defence. 

3. In 1851, Stieber and Greif had got the Prussian police spy 
Reuter to break into Oswald Dietz’s house and steal papers, which 
(although they were in fact quite irrelevant to the charge '*) were 
produced in evidence by Stieber during the Cologne trial. This 

« Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne - Reports on the 
Communist trial in Cologne were published in the Kélnische Zeitung from 5 
October to 13 November 1852, under the title ‘Assisen-Procedur gegen D. Herm. 
Becker und Genossen. Anklage wegen  hochverratherischen Complottes’. - 
© Reports on the Cologne Communist trial were published in the Kdéniglich 
privilegirte Berlinische Zeitung von Staats- und gelehrten Sachen (Vossische Zeitung) from 
6 October to 16 November 1852, under the title ‘Die Verhandlungen des grossen 
Kommunistenprozess vor dem Assisenhofe zu Koln. - 4 Gobel