Announcement by the Editors of the Rheinische Zeitung of their Reply to Oberpräsident Von Schaper

Add a subpage to this text

Read the help page for usage.

 

The Rheinische Zeitung No. 348, December 14, 1842, carried, on Marx’s initiative, an unsigned article marked “Von der Mosel”, written by the democratic lawyer P. I. Coblenz. The situation in the Mosel was also dealt with in another article marked “Bemkastel, 10. Dez.”, published in issue No. 346. They were printed for the purpose of drawing public attention to the distress of the Mosel peasants and censuring the prejudiced and inattentive attitude of the government circles towards their complaints. The publication of these articles led to two resclipts from von Schaper, Oberpräsident of the Rhine Province, to the newspaper, accusing the Mosel correspondent of distorting the facts and slandering the government. Von Schaper demanded answers to a number of questions, in the hope of securing in effect a disavowal of the accusations levelled at the government. On December 18, issue No. 352 of the Rheinische Zeitung published the rescripts and asked the author to write a reply to them. However, as Coblenz was unable to produce sufficient grounds for his theses and disprove the accusations made against him, Marx took the task upon himself in order to use the polemics against von Schaper to expose the Prussian sociopolitical system. At the time the present announcement of the forthcoming reply to the Oberpräsident was published Marx was gathering material for his article “Justification of the Correspondent from the Mosel”.

Cologne, January 2. Since the “corrections” made by Herr Oberpräsident von Schaper and the explanations requested of the Rheinische Zeitung have been widely aired in the press, we take this occasion to state that our reply, which has been delayed only because a number of investigations have become necessary, will follow in the coming week.