[Drei neue Gesetzentwürfe]

[“Neue Rheinische Zeitung”  
No. 244 of March 13, 1849,  
Extraordinary Supplement]

* Cologne, March 12. The Prussian monarchy at last deems it time to unfold its full glory. The “undiminished” crown by the grace of God octroys upon us today three new draft laws on clubs and assemblies, on posters and on the press, in which the Chambers are called upon to load upon us a closed phalanx of the most charming September laws.

Tomorrow we shall give the text of the drafts together with the explanatory memoranda, as far as they have come to us. We shall return — more than once — to these splendid Prussian products.[5] For today only a brief résumé!

I. Club Law. “All assemblies must be announced 24 hours in advance.” Assemblies hastily convened on the sudden occurrence of important events are thereby suppressed — and these assemblies are precisely the most important ones of all. Admission must be granted to everyone, thus it is prohibited to charge an entrance fee to cover the expenses of the assembly. For meetings of associations, one quarter of the space must be reserved for non-members of the association, so that the associations are forced to procure larger and more expensive premises, and so that paid police agents can, by shouting, roaring and blustering, disrupt every deliberation, make every assembly impossible. And if all this should not yet prove successful, every “delegate of the police authority” is at liberty to “immediately dissolve” any assembly on the first pretext that comes to hand, in the same manner as the supreme head of the “police authority”, His Majesty our Most Gracious King, “immediately dissolved” the Assembly of Agreement.

And as soon as the police declares the assembly dissolved, everyone must withdraw, unless he wishes to fare like the Berlin knights of agreement, i.e., unless he wishes to be removed from the hall by bayonets.

The clubs, it is true, do not require “prior authorisation”, but in return they have to fulfil such a multitude of prior notifications and formalities with the local authority that they are thereby already rendered half impossible. Public assemblies in the open air, processions, etc., etc., on the other hand, definitely require the prior authorisation of the police. And in order to put an end to red ribbons, cockades and caps, an additional, renewed enactment of the old orders for the hunting down of black-red-gold emblems is finally octroyed.

That is the “right of association and assembly” that the truth-loving and promise-keeping Hohenzollern guaranteed us a year ago with quivering lips!

II. Poster Law. All posters of political content, with the exception of invitations to lawful, permitted assemblies (all assemblies are therefore once again only graciously “permitted”!), are forbidden. The committees of the clubs may therefore not even call on the people to keep calm through posters in agitated times, so that the heroic soldiery may certainly not miss a single victim! Furthermore: The sale or distribution of printed matter on public streets is likewise forbidden, unless one possesses a concession that can be revoked at any time! In other words: The Prussian monarchy seeks to bless us with an improved edition of the law on the crieurs publics, which in France, during the worst period of Louis Philippe’s bourgeois despotism, was extorted from the Chambers by terror.

And the explanatory memorandum to this law? Because the posters and the colporteurs block the passage in the streets and many a public building is disfigured by posters!

III. Press Law. But all this is nothing at all compared with the charming proposals with which they intend to gag the press. It is well known that since 1830 the Hohenzollern popular bliss-making consisted solely in refining Prussian paternal patriarchalism by coupling it with the modern, refined bondage of Louis Philippe. The cudgel was retained and the bagnio added; censorship was left in place and we were at the same time blessed with the full bloom of the September legislation; in a word, we were allowed to enjoy simultaneously the advantages of feudal subjugation, of bureaucratic police management and of modern-bourgeois legislative brutality. That was called “the world-renowned liberalism of Frederick William IV”.

The new Hohenzollern press bill, after a long series of aggravating formal stipulations, blesses us with an unsurpassable amalgamation of 1. the Code Napoléon, 2. the French September laws, 3. and principally of the praiseworthy Prussian Landrecht,

§ 9 represents the Code: In the provinces where the Landrecht is in force, the attempt, the incitement to a crime, has hitherto been punished less severely, even when it was accompanied by success, than the crime itself. For these parts of the country, the provision of the Code is now introduced that incitement to a crime that is followed by success is made equivalent to the crime itself.

§ 10. the French September legislation: Anyone who attacks the foundations of bourgeois society resting on property or the family, or stirs up the citizens to hatred or contempt of one another, shall be liable to imprisonment for up to two years.

Cf. Law of Sept. 9, 1835, Art. 8: “Toute attaque contre la propriété... toute provocation à la haine entre les diverses classes de la société, sera punie”[1] etc.! Only that the Prussian translation: ‘stirs up the citizens in general to hatred, etc., of one another,’ is ten times more priceless.

All the following paragraphs of the draft are fabricated solely in order to bless the Rhine Province once more with the same Landrecht splendours of which we were deprived soon after March 18, after having enjoyed them in fullest measure for 33 years. Among other things, they wish to octroy upon us the following new crimes, entirely unknown to our own Rhenish legislation:

1. Arousing hatred and contempt against the institutions of the state or the state government by means of factual untruths or facts legally unprovable.

2. “Utterance” about a religious body existing by law (under the octroyed constitution even Turks and heathens are religious bodies existing by law!) in a manner which is liable (!) to spread hatred and contempt against it.

These two new crimes introduce a) the old Prussian “stirring up of discontent” and b) the old Prussian concept of blasphemy among us, and are punishable with imprisonment for up to 2 years.

3. Lèse-majesté, specifically as violation of the reverence (!) towards a) the King (!) b) the Queen (!!) c) the heir to the throne (!!!) d) any other member of the royal house (!!!!) – punishable with imprisonment from 1 month up to five years!

4. The edifying provision that even the assertion of facts provably true is to be punished as an insult if the intention of insult arises from it!

5. Insulting 1) one of the two Chambers, 2) one of their members, 3) an authority (the Code knows no insult of corporations as such); 4) an official or member of the armed force. All “in relation to their profession”. Imprisonment up to 9 months.

6. Insult or slander by private means. The Code Napoléon knows only publicly uttered or disseminated insults or slanders. The new draft law, on the contrary, seeks to subject all utterances made in private conversation, in one’s own home, in the bosom of the family, in private letters, to the control of the police and of the public prosecutor’s office, or to declare them punishable, i.e. to organise the most despicable, universal espionage. The military despotism of the all-powerful French Empire at least respected the freedom of private conversation; it halted — at least in legislation — at the threshold of the dwelling. Prussian paternal-constitutional supervision and chastisement extends into the innermost part of the private house, into the most secret asylum of family life, regarded as inviolable even by barbarians. And the same law, three articles earlier, punishes all attacks on the family with two years’ imprisonment!

These are the new “achievements” they want to guarantee us. The complementing of the three most brutal legislations, one through the other, in order to attain a summit of brutality and perfidy that has hitherto been unheard of — that is the price for which the undiminished crown wants to barter away to the Chambers the lifting of the state of siege in Berlin!

What they want is obvious. The press bill at least does not octroy very much that is new on the old provinces. The Landrecht was already bad enough. The main wrath of the incorporated grace of God is directed against us Rhinelanders. They want to burden us once more with the same infamous Landrecht from which we have barely freed ourselves and since whose removal we have at last, for as long as we are chained to Prussia, again breathed somewhat more freely.

What the crown by the grace of God wants, it clearly proclaims in the explanatory memorandum to the charming document, through the mouth of its lackey Manteuffel: It wants the “establishment of a legal situation as uniform as possible” — i.e. the expulsion of the hated French law and the general introduction of the disgraceful Landrecht. It further wants to “fill the gap” that has arisen “in the greater part of the Rhine Province” (do you hear!) through the abolition of “the penal laws relating to lèse-majesté as a result of the decree of April 15, 1848”!

That is, the new penal code is to take from us Rhinelanders the only thing we still possess from the consequences of the so-called revolution of 1848: the uncurtailed validity of our own law.

We are to become Prussians at any price, Prussians after the heart of the Most Gracious One, with Landrecht, arrogance of the nobility, bureaucratic tyranny, sabre rule, cudgel-blows, censorship and obedience to orders. These legislative proposals are only the first beginning. The plan of the counter-revolution lies before us, and our readers will be astonished at the plans they have in mind. We do not doubt that the gentlemen in Berlin will once again be remarkably mistaken about the Rhinelanders.

We shall, however, return again and again to these disgraceful legislative proposals, for which alone the ministers must be impeached. But this we must say today: If anything goes through in the Chamber that bears even the remotest resemblance to this draft, it is the duty of the Rhenish deputies to withdraw immediately from the Chamber which, by such decisions, wants to hurl their constituents back into the patriarchal barbarism of the old Prussian legislation.


[5] See present volume, pp. 346-350, 364-371, 427-430 and 434-443

[1] Law of Sept. 9, 1835, Art. 8: “Any attack against property ... any incitement to hatred between the various classes of society shall be punished” etc.