A Note on the Amnesty (Marx, 1862)

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Author(s) Karl Marx
Written September 1862


Written in mid-September 1862
Printed according to the newspaper
First published in the Barmer Zeitung, No. 226, September 27, 1862
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 19
Collection(s): Barmer Zeitung
Keywords : Amnesty, Germany, Wilhelm Wolff

The article is based on data sent to Marx by Wilhelm Wolff from Manchester in a letter written between September 10 an d 12, 1862. It reveals the demagogic nature of the 1861 political amnesty in Prussia (see Note 257) and was rather widely read in Germany. The article appeared in the Barmer Zeitung and was reprinted in the Niederrheinische Volks-Zeitung and the Märkische Volks-Zeitung. p. 243

Wilhelm Wolff, former editor of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung and at present a teacher in Manchester, sent an application to the Breslau[1] authorities on January 4, 1862. In it he requested the restoration of his Prussian citizenship in accordance with the recently proclaimed amnesty.[2]

Nine months later he received the following piece of writing in reply:

“In response to your applications of January 4 and June 4 of this year,[3] we have to in form you that since you have by your flight withdrawn from the further continuation of the judicial proceedings brought against you in 1845 and 1848, we are not in a position to accede to your request to be reinstated in your rights as a Prussian subject (!). Furthermore, if you believe that the Royal Decree of January 12 renders the case against you null and void, this rests on a false interpretation of that Decree, according to which it is your duty to present yourself (!) to the authorities in these states so that the proceedings against you may be resumed and whose outcome you must await.

“Breslau, September 5, 1862

H. M. Government,

Ministry of the Interior, (signed) Stich

“To Mr. Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Wolff, student of philosophy, in Manchester.”

We may note in passing the curious circumstance that, although Wolff has lost his citizenship “in these states”, his status as “student” lives on in them for ever. But to the matter in hand. Since the Breslau authorities took three months to compose the document we have just cited, might we not have expected, at the very least, factual accuracy in the justification of their refusal?

However, the Breslau authorities appear to “believe” that the administration shares with the law the privilege of “fictiones juris “.[4]

Wolff became a refugee in 1846 (not 1845), after the press trial launched against him had gone through all the stages of investigation, after he had himself undergone all the interrogations and not long before judgment was due. He withdrew by his flight, therefore, from the judgment, and not from “the further continuation of the judicial proceedings brought against him”.

Furthermore, in 1848 the people wrested from the authorities a general amnesty as a result of which Wolff returned in the first place to Breslau. In April 1848 he was summoned to appear before the criminal court in Breslau in order to declare in writing—which he actually did—that he accepted the amnesty on his own behalf.

The Breslau authorities appear to “believe”, therefore, that the amnesty of 1848 and the rights obtained in consequence of it have been annulled by the amnesty of 1861. This type of “retroactive” legislation would certainly inaugurate a new era in the annals of law.

It is no less a “fiction” on the part of the Breslau authorities that Wolff “withdrew by his flight from the further continuation of the judicial proceedings brought against him in 1848”. Wolff became a refugee not in 1848 but in 1849 and this was in fact before any proceedings against him had begun. The latter related to his participation in the Rump Parliament.[5]

In the summer of 1849 Wolff made his way to Switzerland. At that time, no proceedings against him were in progress and he could not therefore “withdraw” from them. The warrant for his arrest was issued in the autumn of 1849, long after he had been abroad. Judicial proceedings that precede the flight and a warrant that follows it seem to be identical things in the eyes of the Breslau authorities.

What do government bodies pay a legal adviser[6] for, if such crude schoolboy violations of the simplest and most ordinary rules in interpreting the law are possible?

  1. ↑ Wroclaw.— F.d
  2. ↑ In connection with the enthronement of King William I of Prussia, an amnesty was granted on January 12, 1861 ("Supreme Decree on Amnesty for Political Crimes and Transgressions, January 12, 1861" , Königlich-Preußischer Staats-Anzeiger, January 13, 1861) guaranteeing all political refugees unhindered return to the domains of the Prussian state. p. 243
  3. ↑ See this volume, p. 335.— Ed.
  4. ↑ Legal fictions.— Ed.
  5. ↑ This refers to the Frankfurt Parliament or the German Assembly, which opened in Frankfurt am Main on May 18, 1848. It was convened to unify the country and draw up a Constitution. The liberal deputies, who were in the majority, turned the Assembly into a virtual debating club. At the decisive moment of the revolution, the liberal majority condoned the counter-revolutionary forces. In spring 1849, the liberals left the Assembly after the Prussian and other governments had rejected the Imperial Constitution that it had drawn up. The remainder of the Assembly moved to Stuttgart and was dispersed by the Württemberg forces on Jun e 18. Marx calls it the Rump by analogy with the remainder of the Long Parliament after it had been purged by Cromwell during the English Revolution of the 17th century. p. 244
  6. ↑ Marx means legal advisers on the staff of government bodies. p. 244
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