Gatherings from the Press

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These reviews printed in Das Volk (see Note 283) in the section “Gatherings from the Press” were directed against the newspaper Hermann published in London by the petty-bourgeois democrat Gottfried Kinkel. Besides Marx, Elard Biscamp also took part in writing them. Because of the Italian war of 1859 and the revival of the activities of the petty-bourgeois democratic refugees, Marx maintained that one of the most important tasks of Das Volk should be to combat the influence of the petty-bourgeois ideology on the workers. In these reviews Marx sharply criticised the political unprincipledness and illusions of the petty-bourgeois ideologists, their philistinism and ignorance. His reviews forced Kinkel to withdraw from the editorial board of the Hermann.

The reviews published in this volume criticise the contents of issues Nos. 21, 24, 26 and 27 of the Hermann for May 28, June 18, and July 2 and 9, 1859.

“Our readers are clever people—sometimes, when their criticisms of the Hermann reach our ears, one could almost believe that the incalculable majority” (the incalculable majority of 600 readers might come to 599);”of readers are much cleverer than we ourselves” (Hermann).

Self-knowledge is good in all things, even when, as here, it comes rather late. However—

You greybeards, muster all your forces,

Let there be more heat in your blood!

In your last, holiest of causes,

For digging trenches you’re still good,

You must bring up the soil in baskets....

(Thusnelda consoles Hermann.)

“Wisconsin, the staunchest Republican state, has sent its clearest and soundest speaker, Herr Karl Schurz, to Massachusetts to agitate with bold words.... In an excellent and fiery speech he proved...” what—is hard to say, unless, as is said later, “that he does not consider himself a representative of that great nation of thinkers that is called the German nation”. (Student Schurz as calculable minority and autobiographer.)

You young men, sharpen up your sword-blades,

Be brave, as brave as Hermann was.

(Thusnelda.)

“We have seen a sample of this fireproof muslin and tested it with a candle. If it is drawn slowly through the flame, it does not burn at all; if it is held in the flame for a longer time, it chars, but the fire does not spread. But an English lady who had seen the larger piece at the exposition remarked that the stuff did not look as clear and fresh as untreated muslin” (Hermann—editorial note).

And you, O women, let the calling

Be piety for each and all!

(Thusnelda.)

It did our cosmopolitan heart good to read that Arminius, mindful of that sublime moment in which he presented

Mr. Kossuth with the revolution in the West in exchange for the one in the East, takes the “17 million Slavs” of Austria under his protection and “therefore has not only given space for the correspondent in question directly after this leading article but has even invited him to speak in the Hermann as representative of his nationality”.

As “it must remain an open question for republicans on which side one will stand in the Italian war”, half will declare for Prussia, half for Louis Napoleon, half for Italy, half for Little Germany, half for Great Germany, half for regency, half for the Imperial parliament, but all for Herr Bender, 8, Little Newport Street, Leicester Square, to whom “any one who has learned to read” (“Presse und Werkstatt”) need only apply to be initiated into the secrets of natural science without “laborious studies and lectures”.

* * *

A Czech says in the last number of the Hermann:

“We were ... the first champions ... of the social idea.”

To this the spiritual gentleman who holds that “Salon” remarks:

“Was it not the Swiss before the Czechs?”

The only social idea that the Swiss have championed is summed up in the words: Point d’argent, point de Suisses (Kein Kreuzer, keine Schweizer) The “New-Swiss” Vogt and the “New-Kreuzer” Kinkel know how to evaluate this “social idea” in its worldhistorical significance.

In the same “Salon” it is said:

“We find it understandable that English insurance companies are no longer willing to accept (!) German goods intended for overseas world markets.”

Well, how many “world markets” does the “spiritual” gentleman know?

Sample of coherence in the Wochenblatt aus London, alias the Hermann :

“A pair of swallows is nesting on the laurel-covered grave of Humboldt. The dreadful region of juvenile crime, whose germs should be rooted out phrenologically and physiatrically at the outset, has been recently illustrated again by a nine-year-old boy in Schmiedeberg. “

Hermann’s judgment on Metternich.—The judgment on Metternich’s policy is formulated as follows:

“Where Metternich and his men have committed infamy and crime for almost an entire century, for a long time no child of peace can sleep sweetly by the brook, as Schiller says. Just let him” (viz., Schiller) “try, e.g., on the Mincio.”

To change the Mincio into a “brook” is something that only the inventor of “overseas world markets” could succeed in doing.

Hermann explains in an article on “the vacancy at the Savoy Church in London” that “he” (Hermann) “makes himself dearer to his countrymen in London and at home every day”.

True enough. He gives less each week for 3d. This may be connected with the exact enumeration of the vacant “emolumerits”, an enumeration through which there shines the desire to transfer the “Salon” to the “Savoy Church”.

* * *

No. 26 of the Gottfried brings Hermann’s letter of resignation. It runs as follows:

“To our readers:

“With the present number my activity as editor of this paper ends. The only reason for my withdrawal is the condition of my health, which does not permit me to continue, along with my previous profession of teacher, this other and so diversifying activity.” (So the profession of teacher is one activity along with this other activity.) “Since I accordingly” (according to what?) “am no further responsible for the content of the paper” (he will rather not be responsible for its further contents), “I have also let the ownership pass into other hands. The enterprise, whose success is now” (viz., by Kinkel’s removal) “assured, will be carried on in the same spirit as previously” (cheap prices and real service) “and while I previously hardly found time and space even to write for it” (viz., the enterprise), “I will henceforward” (later), “free from the burdens of outside work, submit all the more numerous contributions as correspondent.” (If Gottfried appears “all the more numerously” as correspondent, the less “space” he found previously, what will become of the success of the enterprise, which now was to be “assured” by his disappearance as editor?) “I take leave of readers and co-workers with friendly thanks for their participation and support. ‘

“Gottfried Kinkel”

The last Gottfried carries an editorial announcement as final sample of the “so diversifying activity” to which Hermann bids such a friendly farewell:

“We” (namely Gottfried) “feel a kind of malicious joy every time one of our correspondents once comes a regular cropper; for as a rule someone (!) will be found among our readers for whom the blunder is an occasion” (why not rather a shock?)

“to make a penetrating and instructive communication about the thing” (penetrating about the thing) “aimed at” (rather, the thing hit, namely the blunder). “It is to such an oversight that we owe in this” (which?) “case as well the valuable correction from which every reader” (but certainly no correspondent!) “will soon see that its author, as they say on the Rhine, is a man who sticks to his guns.” (Isn’t that so, fair reader?) “Unfortunately the urgent political material, especially the wretched high politics of our correspondents, only today gave us the possibility of printing this article” (to wit, this editorial note).

We see that, despite his deeply-felt thanks, Hermann does not part from the “correspondents” without bitterness. In his own salon the poor man hardly found the space “earlier” to place “this article” on “the cropper” and “the man who sticks to his guns”. And here we say in respect of the “former” editor of the Gottfried: De mortuis nil nisi bene. But to the “later” correspondent, Hermann: We shall meet again at Philippi.

A diplomatic-strategic discovery.

The Hermann says:

“Prussia’s armed mediation, it is said, takes the Mincio line as its basis; well, after the battle of Solferino this line stands out in clearer relief. Only the shadows of the walls of Mantua and Peschiera still darken it. A siege must bring light into this darkness.”

The skilful columnist of the Hermann sends his articles, after they have been worn out in London, to Leipzig as well, to the Gartenlaube. To spice the report of the Humboldt festival arranged by the Association of German Men we are informed that

“a communist association, which now publishes a weekly paper, has made it its special task to vilify not only Kinkel’s journal but him personally, in the most offensive way, not stopping at the baldest lies, etc.”

On this we remark only that our journal, as the columnist must know from our repeated statements, is not a paper published by any kind of association and that the charges we have made against Herr Kinkel cannot be branded as lies until they have been refuted, and that has not happened yet and will never happen. By the way, we are indebted to the honourable reporter for the news that Kinkel’s sermon,

“the finest fragrance of thé festivities”, took as its text, “As thou forgetten Zion, so shalt thou be forgotten”,e and that he began it “raising his hand to the black-red-gold flag”.

The Hermann makes a joke. In a Hermann article on Austria, we hear that the Habsburgs have always been stepfathers for their hereditary lands but stepmothers for the German Empire. The author of the article in question, full of excerpts from Pölitz’s Weltgeschichte for German maidens, has adequately demonstrated that an old or a young man can be an old woman, but that a stepfather can be a stepmother is something we had not previously believed to be possible.

* * *

The rejuvenated Hermann under the editorship of E. J. Juch & Co. merits an exhaustive review. Let us begin at once with the first leader on “Prussia’s position”.

In the event that peace is concluded between France and Austria

“Prussia will remain for some time pretty much the same as it has been. At the same time it will gradually come into another position. Still more rapidly” (than gradually), “however, it must change its position, provided (!) the war continues; for it would then be (!) forced to act and, if it does not seek (!) a secure position for itself in good time, lose every solid foundation, in order to go under with the rest of the states of the German Confederation.” (Prussia might perhaps not be unwilling to lose “the solid foundation in order to go under”.)

The author now brings Prussia on in various more or less enticing poses plastiques Firstly, Prussia could act as a European great power, and, indeed, in a double fashion.

“Prussia could, by behaving as an independent great power, act completely on its own” (independently?). “This” (action!) “would be a purely European standpoint, whose purpose” (the purpose of a standpoint) ... “would prove to be a question of power; for preservation of the equilibrium, which the treaties will subserve, is the balancing of the power available to the” (which?) “national interest. In that case Prussia could take as its starting point the violation of the 1815 treaties caused by the present war, treaties to which it was a contracting party” (o father instead of one of the fathers), “while it sought to indemnify itself by material guarantees for the services it hereby” (by the violation of the treaties?) “rendered to the monarchical order of Europe.” Besides this crafty proceeding “Prussia could also as a European great power place itself on purely political ground, by opposing, for reasons of self-preservation, the overstrengthening of its French rival” (non bis in idem ; the balance of power has come up already). “It could plead on its own behalf that because England be (!!) still an open and Russia an already secret Ally of France, the enemy of Austria, etc.”

After Prussia has thus in so many ways proved itself as a European great power,

“it can thereafter take up an exclusively German standpoint. Here too it has a choice. That is, it can either take a place as a German great power above the other states” (including Turkey) “or, while assuming the humble attitude of an equal confederate, put itself below or alongside the small countries” (Swiss cantons?). (It is not quite clear why an equal confederate should occupy a lower place.)

In other words, either Prussian Kaiser rule or continuance of the German Confederation.

The first “would mean taking its place seriously at the head of Germany, like a power that knows that necessity makes a law” (for ordinary people necessity knows no law, for Gothaists it makes a law, and a very unpretentious one at that), “wherefore it” (necessity), “since its existence is at stake” (the existence of necessity is at stake), “must depart from inhibiting forms, etc.”

The reasons that “Prussia could adduce for such a revolutionary policy” involve our author in a true embarras de richesses. Among other things:

“The foreign countries hostile to the unity of Germany—Russia and England, which with the complicated seesaw system of German counterbalancing hindered the power development of the German great powers by continual mutual weakening—worked rather for themselves than for Germany in the establishment of the Confederation, etc.” (A strange plan of Russia and England, die foreign countries, to weaken each other in order to prevent the power development of Prussia!) “Finally, it” (Prussia) “shows that it completely understands the essential nature of the present war, which, like the Thirty Years’ War, has as its purpose the termination of the 1848 revolution.” “For these reasons” (that is, because the Thirty Years’War had the purpose of terminating the revolution of 1848) “Prussia no longer recognises the Federal Diet ... and regards the sovereignty of all the other German princes for extinguished, etc.” Finally, however, “the Prussian Government, if this revolutionary policy seemed too precarious to it” (i.e. Prussia), “could choose the conservative standpoint. It could choose it ... because the Prussian reigning dynasty as an equal” (to what?) “has to respect the maintenance of the others” (what others?), ... “because Prussia, while it is not independent, governs its conduct by those of neutral England, etc.”

Up to now it has “wavered”. It let “rival Austria” be defeated.

“It sought constantly to pull over the small states by means of treaties.” (To put one over on them, pull the wool over their eyes, or to win them over?) “It came back to Frankfurt” (from Erfurt466) “with almost the identical proposals which, i/they came from Hanover or Bavaria, Prussia would not have sanctioned.”

In the end the author designates this as a “routine procedure”, although it shows little routine in the consecutio temporum.

Unfortunately, the treaty of Villafranca at one blow brushed away all the Prussian positions that Gotha fantasy could arrive at. Accordingly, we turn from the “high policy” of Messrs. Juch & Comp, to Tyrtaeus, who sings of the battle of Solferino in the rejuvenated Hermann. This Tyrtaeus seems to be an easy-going fellow. He does not doubt for a moment that the Zouaves, Turcos, Croats, Raizen, Czechs et autres Zéphyres, who fought at Solferino,

“were it not for the two emperors}” would have, everywhere in the .world that chance might have brought them together, eaten and drunk, treated and greeted one another as harmless, amiable people”. (They would have eaten and drunk one another!

What cannibalistic amiability!)

The metre in which the battle is sung is that of the heroic epic, hexameter. Kleist, as we know, enlarged the hexameter with a short anacrusis. Our singer outdoes Kleist; a couple of anacrustic or complementary syllables more or less make no difference to him. On the other hand, these are hexameters that come straight from battle, and should be pardoned if here and there a foot is lacking or a member dislocated.

And so, a few samples:

“So mortally sickened

B£ exhaustion, heat, and by thTrst with its merciless torture.” “Only at least this recent decade burdened with curses.”

“Out in blistering sunshine, all bloody and thirsty, some struck by The coup de grace from a bayonet blade of a sudden descending, In most cases only, however, by

Slashes and blows on wide-open wounds,

Tö ä horrible death pain waking them.”

“The hot and naked summits flowed with steaming red blood, in Which there wallowed mutilated men.”

“An arm missing here, there ä leg, or

All thë jâw from ä face, or all the

Side öf ä head.”

“Then it all went

Still and sombre. From hills and from dales came shuddërings, cries and Moaning amain, now here, now there, everywhere hour-broad.”

“On the day of battle

All hot and burning, they had not ä drop of water to ease them.”

“Others panted and

Gurgled and showed the whites of their glazing ëyës

To the tardy surgeon.” 0

After the battle song, historical criticism. In an article from Paris the “thinker” of the rejuvenated Hermann reveals to us Louis Bonaparte’s relation to the revolution.