An Edict by Eichmann

*Neue Rheinische Zeitung*, No. 147, 19 November 1848

* Cologne, 18 November. The appeals for a refusal to pay taxes that are making themselves heard impel me to issue a serious admonition against them to the province entrusted to my care.

Now that the King has publicly set forth the weighty reasons for the transfer of the National Assembly from Berlin, now that a large part of the deputies have recognised the right of the Crown, and the German National Assembly, like the Central Authority in Frankfurt, has joined in this recognition, it cannot be my intention also to add my voice to the opinion now forming among the inhabitants of the Rhine Province about this act of the government.

But my office commands me to repel, with all the means at my disposal, any attack upon the laws and their observance, without which no state can exist. Such an attack lies in the appeals to cease paying taxes, the indispensable means for the maintenance of order and justice, taxes which have been imposed by legal procedure and can only be altered by virtue of a law.

From my experience of the respect for the laws that lives in the inhabitants of the province, I cannot suppose them capable of a consequential violation of these laws; I rather trust that, to their honour and the common weal, they will unwaveringly resist such temptations. For the unforeseen cases in which this trust should nevertheless prove to have been misplaced, however, I expect from all provincial and local authorities that they will, with all the power the laws confer upon them, enforce the payment of taxes and fulfil their official duty without wavering.

Cologne, 17 November 1848.
The Chief President of the Rhine Province,
(signed) Eichmann

Such was the reply of the former minister and Chief President Eichmann to the edict of the “Rhenish Committee of Democrats”. When Herr Eichmann wrote this, his epistle to the Thessalonians, did he already know of the National Assembly’s decision on the refusal of taxes?

Eichmann formerly represented the Brandenburg-Manteuffel faction in the bosom of the Pfuel ministry. He now represents it at the head of the Rhine Province. Eichmann is the counter-revolution in the government in the Rhine Province.

The edicts of Herr Eichmann thus have the same worth as the edicts of Herr Brandenburg. Indictment for high treason will, sooner or later, most fittingly conclude the career of Herr Eichmann, that worthy man – who in his younger years with tireless fiery zeal dispatched the “high traitors” to the fortresses.

Herr Chief President Eichmann declares himself in the above edict an open enemy of the National Assembly, in complete contrast to Herr Chief President Pinder in Silesia, who is known to be a royalist. Herr Eichmann has therefore ceased to be Chief President, just as his master Brandenburg has ceased to be a minister. Herr Eichmann has deposed himself. The officials who carry out his counter-revolutionary orders do so at their own peril.

If the inhabitants of the Rhine Province wish to support the National Assembly in a more effective manner than through mere addresses, if they do not want to bend their knees before the knout in dull-witted, unresisting fashion, they must force all authorities, especially the government presidents, district administrators, burgomasters and municipal authorities, to make a public declaration as to whether they recognise the National Assembly and intend to carry out its decisions, oui ou non? In the event of refusal, and even more of direct action contrary to these decisions, these officials are 1) to be declared deposed, 2) to be proclaimed high traitors, and in their stead provisional committees of safety are to be appointed, whose orders alone and exclusively are to be regarded as legally valid. Wherever the counter-revolutionary authorities seek forcibly to prevent the formation and official activity of these committees of safety, every kind of force must be met with force. Passive resistance must be grounded on active resistance. Otherwise it resembles the struggling of a calf against its slaughterer.