The Hohenzollern Press Bill

[“Neue Rheinische Zeitung”
No. 252, 22 March 1849]
*Cologne, March 21. In accordance with our promise we return to the
siege-inspired Hohenzollern projects for “reforming” freedom of the press
and the right of association.¹⁷²¹ Today it suffices to show, by comparing
the earlier plans for a penal law¹⁷³¹ which had already been rejected by the
Rhenish Estates under the Camphausen opposition aegis, what glorious
“achievements” the Rhinelanders have to thank the Berlin March
insurrection for, with what new love of onslaught, rooted in the General
State Laws, the Rhenish code of procedure¹⁷⁴¹ has been considered by the
“unimpaired” crown¹⁷⁵¹ of the Grand Duke of Berlin. |

Two years ago, on the United Diet,¹⁷⁶¹ of patented memory, the Junker
Thadden-Triglaff from the Pomeranian March¹⁷⁷¹ entered the lists for
freedom of the press. The associate of the Westphalian “valiant” young
knight Vincke brandished his lance:

“Yes, public, but really public proceedings with the gentlemen of letters:
freedom of the press, and the gallows alongside it!”¹⁷⁸¹|

The octroy draft bills of the November ministry¹⁷⁹¹ are the
breakthrough of these old, pre-March patent studies. The “strong crown
of Prussia” appeals to the hated provisions of the Code pénal, to the
acquitting verdicts of Rhenish juries against tax-recalcitrants and rebels:

“Yes, public, but really public proceedings:

freedom of the press, and alongside it the gallows, the gallows of the Prussian
General State Laws!”

The Hohenzollern Press Bill 36

The provisions of the Code pénal know nothing of the insulting
vulnerability of Hohenzollern royal feelings. Rhineland juries, despite
census and police sifting, are not to be found to punish the nameless crime
of lèse-majesté otherwise than as the defamation of a “private individual”
with 5 francs fine. The imperial despotism held itself too high to declare
that it could be “insulted” in its majesty; but the Christian-Germanic
consciousness of being a Landesvater, which, understandably, cannot
bear comparison with the height of Napoleonic pride, has again, in its
Rhenish grand duchy, the “deeply felt need” to re-establish the protection
of its Old Prussian dignity. The “strong” crown does not dare to abolish
Rhenish procedure, but it grafts into that procedure the far more promising
scion of General State Law legal concepts, and cries:

“Public, really public proceedings, and alongside it the gallows of the
Prussian General State Laws!” |

Concerning the “public proceedings” which are for the time being to be
octroyed upon the Rhenish code, §22 of the bill may be read as follows: |

“The police authorities are entitled to sequester any printed matter intended for
dissemination, even when its issue has already commenced, wherever they find it,
insofar as ... its content supplies grounds for a crime or delict which can be prosecuted
ex officio.”

The police are entitled to confiscate, in the post office and in offices,
newspapers which do not please them, even if their “issue has already
commenced,” i.e., if the police “preventive measures” are precisely
supposed to cease “as such” and the matter has already, “by law,” passed
into the jurisdiction of the courts; the police have this right of confiscation
in all cases where the “content” of the printed matter, newspapers, etc.,
“supplies grounds for a crime or delict” which can “be prosecuted”
“ex officio,” i.e., by the police, i.e., at any time when the police wish to
satisfy their Uckermark¹⁸⁰¹ lust for the role of the public prosecutor and
think it necessary to justify this bent with the favourite pretext of any
“crime or delict” or other facts “susceptible of prosecution”; finally, they
can confiscate all such printed matter, c’est-à-dire,¹ everything that stands
in the pleasure of the master and his holy Hermandad,¹⁸¹¹ wherever they
find it, i.e., they can force their way into houses, into the secrets of family

¹ that is

366 Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels · “Neue Rheinische Zeitung”

life, and, where there is no reason for siege and Croat protection of property,
arrange, under the rule of the constitutional legal order, a police plundering
of the private property of quiet citizens.
The bill moreover speaks of all printed matter “intended” for
dissemination, “even when” its issue has already commenced; it thus “as
a matter of course” presupposes the right of confiscation of materials whose
dissemination has not yet commenced, which cannot yet supply grounds for
any “crimes or delicts,” and thereby extends police robbery also to the
private possession of objects legally not at all “susceptible of prosecution.”
The French September laws,¹⁸²¹ the sabre censorship of Cavaignac’s
military dictatorship, and indeed even the draft penal laws proposed to the
old provincial Estates and Committees “in the event of the most supreme
displeasure” at least respected private property that “still supplies no
grounds for crimes and delicts”; the press bill that rests upon the Berlin
March achievements, by contrast, organises a public police hunt against
the property and private possession of citizens and forcibly drags personal
relations, which in no way have anything to do with penal law, into the
public eye in the name of Christian-Germanic police morality.

“Public, really public proceedings and alongside it the gallows of the
Prussian General State Laws!”

Hand in hand with the development of this public procedure goes the
development of the provisions of the Prussian General State Laws.

The longed-for acts of lèse-majesté are “constituted” in § 12 in the
following manner:

“Whoever, by word, writing, print or signs, pictorial or material depiction,
violates the reverence due to the King shall be punished with imprisonment of from two months to
five years.”

If the Rhenish subjects do not know what degree of “reverence” their
Hohenzollern Grand Duke, octroyed upon them by the Viennese crude
traffic in peoples,¹⁸³¹ has the right to claim, they may consult the Berlin
motive reports on the penal law.

The Prussian General State Laws¹⁸⁴¹ have hitherto threatened lèse-majesté
with the maximum sentence of two-year imprisonment, violations of
reverence with the maximum sentence of one-year imprisonment or
fortress arrest. (General State Laws II. 20. §§ 199, 200). |

These provisions, however, seem not to have afforded a sufficient barrier
to the royal sentiments of the “strong crown of Prussia.” In the “Draft
penal law for the Prussian states” submitted to the United Committees of
1847,¹⁸⁵¹ “utterances in word or writing, or

The Hohenzollern Press Bill 367

by depictions etc., which intentionally violate the honour of the King
(§ 101), were already threatened with hard labour of from six months to five years,” while

“utterances and actions which, though not in themselves to be regarded as insults
of the King, nevertheless violate the reverence due to him (§ 102) were threatened
with imprisonment of from six weeks to one year.” In the official motives for this
draft it is stated that the Saxon Estates (with reference to the similar draft of 1843)
had indeed moved that the “violation of reverence” be more narrowly defined by
the addition of “intentional,” in order to prevent utterances and actions being
drawn under the law “in which there had not been the remotest intention
of violating the reverence due to the King”; but that such an addition would have
to be rejected by the government, since it would “blur the distinction between
lèse-majesté and violation of reverence” and since “intentional” violations of
“reverence” were to be regarded as “insults.”

From these motives, which are still decisive for the press-law concepts
that are soon to be octroyed, it thus emerges that the “violation of
reverence” which at present, like lèse-majesté, is punished with imprisonment
of from two months to five years, consists precisely of “unintentional”
insult.

At the same time the “motives” recount that the maximum of the
penalty for the “violation of reverence” was then fixed at only one year,
upon the motion of the Rhenish Estates.

The advantage of the “March achievements” for the Rhinelanders is
clear as day. The first supplements to the Code pénal drawn from the
General State Laws¹⁸⁶¹ octroyed upon the Rhinelanders the new crimes
of lèse-majesté with two years’ imprisonment and of “violation
of reverence” with one year’s imprisonment; in the bills of 1843 and
1847 the insulted majesty rose to the value of five years, while the violated
reverence, upon the motion of the Rhenish Estates, had to retain its rate
of one year; under the siege achievements of the March insurrection, the
(unintentional) “violation of reverence” is also raised to five-year
imprisonment and the Rhenish code of laws is brought closer by yet further
new crimes to Old Prussian morals drawn from the General State Laws.

“Freedom of the press, public siege proceedings and the gallows alongside it!”

368 Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels · “Neue Rheinische Zeitung”

[“Neue Rheinische Zeitung”
No. 253, 23 March 1849]
*Cologne, 22 March.

“The provisions concerning lèse-majesté,” it is declared in Manteuffel’s
motives on § 12 of the bill, “could be omitted all the less as in the greater part of
the Rhine province the penal laws relating to lèse-majesté were put out of application
in consequence of the decree of 15 April 1848, while this gap has since not been filled.”

The Manteuffel motives state that this part of the Hohenzollern press
legislation, which outdoes even the Old Prussian General State Laws and
the most supreme revelation of majesty contained in the draft penal laws of
1843 and 1847, appeared necessary principally with the Rhine province
in mind. The decrees of 15 April 1848,¹⁸⁷¹ i.e., the promises to which
“the crown that had fallen in the dust” (see Neue Preußische Zeitung
of the 20th instant) accommodated itself under the impact of the March
insurrection, placed the so laboriously octroyed General State Law
supplements “out of application” in the Rhine province and restored the
Code pénal in its first defective purity; but in order to fill this March-
achieved “gap” appropriately and at the same time to testify to the
progressive capacity for development of the Hohenzollern value of
majesty, the “strong” November ministry proposes to the Rhinelanders
not, perhaps, the old pre-March provisions of the General State Laws,
no – a new declaration of reverence which exceeds all earlier penal-law
studies by double. Le roi est mort, vive le roi! Before March 1848 the still
“unimpaired” dignity of the Landesvater stood in the General State Law
price of one-year imprisonment; in March 1849 the violation of the crown
that “has fallen in the dust” has risen to the value of five-year
imprisonment. Before March 1848 the Rhenish code was only
supplemented with the patriarchal additions of the General State Laws;
in March 1849 Manteuffel’s November achievements are octroyed upon it:

“Freedom of the press, sabre censorship and the gallows alongside it!”

Yet the “gap” in the Rhenish code of laws has still other depths.
§ 12 of the Berlin press reform continues in its supplements:

“Equal punishment” (imprisonment from two months to five years) “shall be incurred by anyone who in the aforementioned manner” (by word, writing, signs, pictorial and other representations) “insults the Queen. Anyone who in the same manner insults the Heir to the Throne(?) or any other member of the Royal House ... shall be punished with imprisonment of one month to three years.”

1 The King is dead, long live the King!

The Hohenzollern Press Bill

As noted, the old Prussian Landrecht imposed only two years for insulting “the very Head of State”. The progressiveness of the press bill, which prescribes five years’ imprisonment for insulting the subordinate persons, the Queen, and three years’ for insulting the Heir to the Throne (?) and “other” members of the “Royal House”, is obvious.

Rhenish law knows as little of an insult to the “Queen”, etc., as it knows of an insult to the “very Head of State”. Rhenish newspapers were able, up to now, to fable with impunity about “the court’s hopes of an unexpected event”, which on medical grounds may nevertheless sometimes be an injury to honour.

The expatented penal bill of the United Committees, finally, subordinated the insulting of the “Queen” to the insulting of the “Head of State”, in that it threatened the former (§ 103) not with five years’ but with three years’ imprisonment. And as to the equal punishment of insults to the “Queen” and those to the other members of the Royal Family, the motives of 1847 declare that the Estates of the Rhineland, Silesia, Saxony and Pomerania had already wanted a distinction to be made between these persons; but the government said it could not accede to such deplorable “casuistry”.

The strong Manteuffel ministry has not considered the “casuistry” of the old Rhenish, Silesian and Saxon Estates beneath its dignity. Did not the silk-spinning von der Heydt also belong to the patent-casuists of that time? The Manteuffel–von der Heydt press bill “constitutes” the casuistic distinction between the Queen and other members of the R[oyal] House; it constitutes it in accordance with the progressive development of the general post-March feelings of majesty’s dignity.

The old Rhenish, Silesian and Pomeranian Estates demanded a distinction between the Queen and the other family groups, so that the uniform penalty of three years’ imprisonment for insulting the latter might be mitigated; the strong Manteuffel–von der Heydt ministry accepts the distinction, in order instead to raise the penalty for the insulted Queen to the newly heightened degree of insult to the Sovereign.

Of the same capacity for development as concepts of majesty bears witness the attached provision of the same paragraph, according to which insults to any “German head of state” are to be punished like the insult to the “Heir to the Throne” with three years’ imprisonment.

Under Rhenish law, insults against third “heads of state” are punished like injuries against private persons (fine of 5 francs), and indeed on the application of the insulted person, not by reason of any criminal-law duty attaching to his public character. According to the penal bill already rejected in 1843 to “His Majesty’s highest displeasure” by the Rhenish Estates and proposed anew in 1847, the insulting of foreign rulers and “their consorts” was to be punished with imprisonment of two months up to two years’ hard labour, the Prussian Estates at the time moving the complete deletion of this provision, while the Westphalian Cabbage Junker opposition declared the original penalty too high.

The Manteuffel–von der Heydt ministry finally fills the alarming post-March gaps in Rhenish legislation by raising the penalty contested by the Rhenish-Westphalian census men from two years to three years, and enters the lists for the Pomeranian Don Quixote of the United Diet:

“Freedom of the press, genuine public procedure and the gallows beside them!”

In the press reform studies inspired from on high, § 19 still has its memorable, merry significance:

“Whoever 1. insults one of the two Chambers (“as such”), 2. a member of the two Chambers during the duration of their sessions, 3. any other political corporation, a public authority, a public official ... by word, writing, print, signs, pictorial or other representation, shall be punished with imprisonment up to 9 months.”

While the Manteuffel–von der Heydt disperse the “political corporations”, agreement assemblies and Chambers with bayonets, new crimes are botched into the “defective” Code pénal of the Rhinelanders for the “protection of these assemblies”. The Manteuffel–von der Heydt ministry octroys upon the country a patriotic constitution out of a fount of divine-royal grace!?, in order to octroy upon the Rhenish law book a new, hitherto unknown crime in the “insulting of the Chambers”:

“Freedom of the press, public procedure and the gallows beside them!”

Let the Rhinelanders beware in good time. The history of the earlier “landrechtifications” of the Rhenish law book, the Hohenzollern botching of the March promises will tell them what they have to expect from the trans-Rhenish achievements.

What the previous martial-law assaults on the Code had in view was nothing but the complete incorporation of the Rhineland into the old Prussian provinces, an incorporation which is not complete as long as the Rhine province is not yet entirely brought under the Prussian Landrecht’s stick. But by the new bill, under the pretext of making up for the “gaps” in the Rhineland’s own legislation with the advantages of the Landrecht, the Landrecht for the old provinces is even perfected in its “defective” mildness.

However wretched the present Chamber is, we nevertheless do not expect it to adopt these bills. But we expect then that the Hohenzollern press gallows will also be octroyed upon us, and that is precisely what we desire.