XI. A Lawsuit

At the end of January 1860 two numbers of the Berlin National-Zeitung arrived in London containing two leading articles, the first bearing the title "Karl Vogt und die 'Allgemeine Zeitung'" (National-Zeitung, No. 37), and the second, "Wie man radikale Flugblätter macht" (National-Zeitung, No. 41). Under these headings F. Z a b el presented a version of Vogt's "Magnum Opus"[a] prepared in usum delphini[227]. The "Magnum Opus" itself did not reach London until much later. I decided at once to start proceedings for libel against this F. Zabel in Berlin.In the previous ten years a vast number of vilifications of myself had appeared in the German and German-American press, but they only rarely drew any literary response from me, and then only if a real party interest seemed to be at stake, as with the Cologne communist trial. In my view the press has the right to insult writers, politicians, actors and other public figures. If I regarded an attack to be worth answering my motto in such case's was: à corsaire, corsaire et demi.[b]

Here the position was different. Zabel accused me of a series of criminal and infamous actions and he did so for the benefit of a public whose political prejudices inclined it to credit the greatest atrocities and who, moreover, in view of my eleven-year absence from Germany, had nothing to enable it to form a judgment of me. Quite apart from any political considerations, I therefore owed it to my family, my wife and children, to have Zabel's defamatory accusations tested in a court of law.

The method of procedure I selected excluded from the outset any legal comedy of errors along the lines of Vogt's action against the Allgemeine Zeitung. Even if I had indulged in the fantastic idea of appealing against Vogt before the same Fazyesque court which had already quashed one criminal action in Vogt's interests[c], there were a number of important and even decisive points that could only be settled in Prussia and not in Geneva. Conversely, the only one of Zabel's statements for which he might have sought proof from Vogt was based on alleged documents which Zabel could produce just as easily in Berlin as his friend Vogt in Geneva. My "complaint" against Zabel contained the following points:

1. In No. 37 of the National-Zeitung dated January 22, 1860, in an article entitled "Karl Vogt und die 'Allgemeine Zeitung'" Zabel writes:

"Vogt reports on p. 136 et seq.: Among the refugees of 1849 the term Brimstone Gang, or the name of the Bristlers, referred to a number of people who, originally scattered throughout Switzerland, France and England, gradually congregated in London, where they revered Herr Marx as their visible leader. The political principle of these fellows was the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' and with the aid of this illusion they succeeded in deceiving for a while not only some of the best among the refugees but also the workers from Willich's volunteer corps. They continued the work of the 'Rheinische Zeitung'[d] among the refugees. In 1849 this paper had counselled against any participation in the movement and had also constantly attacked all the members of Parliament because the Imperial Constitution was the only aim of the movement. The Brimstone Gang maintained a frightfully strict discipline among its supporters. Any of them who sought in any way to make a decent living in the bourgeois world was branded a traitor to the revolution merely for attempting to become independent. It was expected that the revolution would break out again at any moment and it was vital to keep its soldiers mobile and ready to be sent into battle. With the aid of rumours, letters, etc., dissension, brawling and duels were artificially fomented in this carefully nurtured class of loafers. Each one suspected the other of being a spy and a reactionary; distrust was universal. One of the chief occupations of the Brimstone Gang was to compromise people at home in Germany in such a way that they were forced to pay money so that the gang should preserve their secret without compromising them. Not just one, but hundreds of letters were written to people in Germany, threatening to denounce them for complicity in this or that act of revolution unless a certain sum of money had been received at a specified address by a given date. Following the principle that 'whoever is not unconditionally for us, is against us', the reputation of anyone who opposed these intrigues was 'ruined', not just among the refugees, but also by means of the press. The 'proletarians' filled the columns of the reactionary press in Germany with their denunciations of those democrats who did not subscribe to their views; they became the confederates of the secret police in France and Germany. To fill in the picture Vogt publishes among other documents a long letter by Techow, a former lieutenant, dated August 26, 1850, in which the principles, the intrigues, the feuds and the various hostile secret unions of the 'proletarians' are described, and in which we see how Marx, puffed up with Napoleonic pride in his intellectual superiority, rules the members of the Brimstone Gang with a rod of iron."

We should note at once, so as better to understand what follows, that Zabel, who was ostensibly allowing Vogt to "speak for himself" in the passage quoted above, now goes on in his own name to throw further light on the Brimstone Gang, by mentioning one after the other the Cherval trial in Paris, the communist trial in Cologne, the pamphlet I wrote about the last[e], Liebknecht's revolutionary congress in Murten and his relations with the Allgemeine Zeitung in which I acted as mediator, Ohly, who is "likewise a channel of the Brimstone Gang", and lastly, Biscamp's letter of October 20, 1859 to the Allgemeine Zeitung. He concludes with the statement:

"A week after Biscamp Marx, too, wrote to the Allgemeine Zeitung, offering it a 'legal document' as evidence against Vogt about which we shall perhaps speak at a later date. These then are the correspondents of the 'Allgemeine Zeitung'."

Of the whole of this leading article No. 1, I made use only of the section printed under 1. in my submission, and in that passage I was concerned only with the following sentences:

"One of the chief occupations of the Brimstone Gang" (commanded by Marx) "was to compromise people at home in Germany in such a way that they were forced to pay money so that the gang should preserve their secret without compromising them. Not just one, but hundreds of letters were written to people in Germany, threatening to denounce them for complicity in this or that act of revolution unless a certain sum of money had been received at a specified address by a given date."

Here, of course, what I required from Zabel was proof that his claims were true. In my first advice to my lawyer, Legal Counsellor Weber in Berlin, I wrote that I did not require Zabel to produce "hundreds of threatening letters"[g], or even one, but just a single line showing that any one of my notorious party associates had been guilty of the infamous deeds imputed to them. Zabel, after all, only needed to turn to Vogt, who could have sent him dozens of "threatening letters" by return. And if by any chance Vogt were unable to produce even a single line from the hundreds of threatening letters, he would in any case still be able to give the names of the several hundred "people in Germany" who had been plundered in the manner described. Since these people are to be found in "Germany" they would undoubtedly be more accessible to a court in Berlin than to one in Geneva.

Thus my ground of complaint against Zabel's leading article No. 1 confined itself to a single point: political compromising of people in Germany for the purpose of extorting money from them. In order at the same time to refute the other statements made in his leading article No. 1, I produced a series of facts. Here I did not require Zabel to prove that his claims were true; I showed that they were false.

As to the Brimstone Gang or Bristlers, Johann Philipp Becker's letter has thrown sufficient light on them. As far as the character of the Communist League was concerned, and my involvement with it, H. Bürgers of Cologne, one of the condemned in the Cologne communist trial, belonged to those people who could have been subpoenaed as witnesses to Berlin and made to testify under oath during the proceedings. Furthermore, Frederick Engels had discovered amongst his papers a letter dated November 1852[i] and authenticated by its postmarks in London and Manchester, in which I informed him of the dissolution of the League at my suggestion together with the reasons for that dissolution as they were set forth in the resolution: viz. that since the arrest of the accused in Cologne all contacts with the Continent had been broken off and that a propaganda society of this kind was no longer opportune. As for Zabel's shameless allegations about my contacts "with the secret police in Germany and France", these were supposed to have been verified partly by the Cologne communist trial and partly by the Cherval trial in Paris. I shall have more to say about the latter in due course. With reference to the former I sent my defence counsel a copy of my Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne, which had appeared in 1853, and pointed out that the lawyer Schneider II could be subpoenaed from Cologne to Berlin where he could testify under oath to my part in uncovering the nefarious activities of the police[j]. Zabel's claim that my party associates and myself. had "filled the columns of the reactionary press in Germany with denunciations of those democrats who did not subscribe to our views"—this claim was to be confronted with the fact that I never either directly or indirectly wrote for German newspapers from abroad, with the single exception of the Neue Oder-Zeitung. My printed contributions to that paper and, if need be, the testimony of one of its editors, Dr. Elsner, would prove that I never thought it worth the trouble to mention even one "democrat" by name. As for Liebknecht's reports to the Allgemeine Zeitung, they began in the spring of 1855, three years after the "League" was dissolved, and moreover they appeared without my knowledge, and as a scrutiny of the back numbers will reveal they contain accounts of English politics written from his political standpoint, but not a word about "democrats". When, during my absence from London, Liebknecht sent a pamphlet printed in London and attacking the "democrat" Vogt[k] to the Allgemeine Zeitung, he was perfectly entitled to do so for he knew that the pamphlet had been published by a "democrat" whom the "democrat" Vogt had himself invited to collaborate on his "democratic" propaganda, i.e. whom Vogt had recognised as a "democrat" of equal standing with himself. Zabel's comic tale making me a "correspondent of the Allgemeine Zeitung" was utterly refuted by a letter written to me by Herr Orges a few days before the opening of the Augsburg trial (see Appendix 10), in which he, inter alia, sought to correct my presumed "liberal" prejudices against the Allgemeine Zeitung. Lastly, Zabel's lie that "a week after Biscamp Marx, too, wrote to the Allgemeine Zeitung" collapsed of its own accord since Biscamp's letter was dated October 20, 1859 and the brief note I sent to Herr Orges along with the "document" he had asked for, was already in the hands of the Augsburg Court on October 24, 1859 and so could not possibly have been written in London on October 29, 1859.

For the benefit of the court it seemed appropriate to supplement the evidence already mentioned with a few documents which would serve to reflect back on "democrat" Zabel the grotesquely defaming light in which he had sought to place my situation within the emigration and my "intrigues" abroad.

I first lived in Paris from the end of 1843 until early in 1845, when I was expelled by Guizot. To indicate my position within the French revolutionary party during my stay in Paris I sent my counsel a letter from Flocon which in the name of the Provisional Government of 1848 revoked Guizot's decree of expulsion and invited me to return to France from Belgium (Appendix 14). I lived in Brussels from the beginning of 1845 until the end of February 1848, when Rogier had me expelled from Belgium. Subsequently the Brussels Municipal Council dismissed the police commissar who had arrested my wife and myself on the occasion of my expulsion. In Brussels there was an international democratic association[228] in which the aged General Mellinet who had saved Antwerp from the Dutch held the office of Honorary President. The lawyer Jottrand, a former member of the Belgian Provisional Government, was President; the Vice-President for the Poles was Lelewel, a former member of the Polish Provisional Government; the Vice-President for the French was Imbert, who had been Governor of the Tuileries after the February revolution of 1848, and I held the post of Vice-President for the Germans, having been elected at a public meeting consisting of the members of the German Workers' Association and the entire German emigration in Brussels. A letter from Jottrand to me at the time of the establishment of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (Jottrand belongs to what is known as the American school of republicanism, i.e. a trend alien to me), and a few otherwise insignificant lines from my friend Lelewel provide a sufficient indication of my position in the democratic party in Brussels. I added them therefore to the material in my defence (Appendix 14).

After I had been driven out of Prussia in the spring of 1849 and out of France in the late summer of the same year, I went to London, where following the dissolution of the League (1852) and the departure of most of my friends from London, I have been living without joining any associations whether public or secret, and indeed without society of any sort. I do, however, from time to time, with the permission of "democrat" Zabel, give free lectures on political economy to a select group of workers. The German Workers' Educational Society in London, from which I resigned on September 15, 1850, celebrated its twentieth anniversary on February 6, 1860. It invited me to attend the celebrations, at which it passed a unanimous resolution "to brand as slander" Vogt's allegation that I had "exploited" the German workers in general and the London workers in particular. Herr Müller, who was at that time the President of the Workers' Society, had this resolution authenticated on March 1, 1860 at the Police Court in Bow Street. Together with this document I sent my lawyer a letter from the English lawyer and leader of the Chartist Party, Ernest Jones (Appendix 14), in which he expresses his indignation about the "infamous articles"[l] of the National-Zeitung and draws attention inter alia to my unpaid collaboration over a period of years on the London organs of the Chartist Party. (It should be noted, incidentally, that Ernest Jones, who was born and brought up in Berlin, knows more German than Zabel.) I may also mention here that when the English Labour Parliament assembled in Manchester at the end of 1853[229], Louis Blanc and I were the only members of the London emigration to be invited to attend as honorary members.

Finally, since our honorary Vogt has represented me as "living from the sweat of the workers", from whom I have never either asked or received a penny, and since "democrat" Zabel has suggested that I have "compromised people in Germany" politically "in such a way that they were forced to pay money so that the gang should preserve their secret without compromising them", I requested Mr. Charles A. Dana, the managing editor[m] of the New York Tribune, the first Anglo-American paper which has 200,000 subscribers and is thus almost as widely known as the Biel Commis voyageur and Zabel's "organ of democracy"[n], to give me a statement in writing about my ten-year-long paid collaboration on the Tribune, the Cyclopaedia Americana, etc. His letter, extremely flattering for me (see Appendix 14), was the last document I thought it necessary to forward to my lawyer to defend myself against the stink-ball No. 1 of Vogt and Zabel.

2. In Zabel's leading article No. 2, "Wie man radikale Flugblätter macht" (National-Zeitung, No. 41, January 25, 1860), it is stated:

"Where the money for this generously distributed paper" (i.e. Das Volk) "came from, is known to the gods; men, however, are well aware that Marx and Biscamp have no money to spare."

Looked at in isolation this passage might appear to be no more than a frank expression of astonishment, as if I were to say: "How a certain stout party whom I knew in my student days in Berlin as a dunce bereft of all intellectual and material charms—he was the owner of a day nursery and his literary accomplishments prior to the revolution of 1848 were confined to a few furtive contributions to a literary local rag—how the above-mentioned stout dunce managed to become editor-in-chief of the National-Zeitung, a shareholder in it and 'a democrat in possession of spare money'—that is known to the gods. Men, however, who have read a certain novel by Balzac[o] and who have made a study of the Manteuffel era, may be able to hazard a guess."

Zabel's remark acquires quite a different, and far more malicious inflection from the circumstance that it follows his allegations about my connections with the secret police of France and Germany and my conspiratorial and police efforts to extort money with the aid of threatening letters, and leads on directly to the "manufacture of counterfeit paper money on a massive scale" to be treated under 3. Obviously he intends to imply that I obtained financial contributions for Das Volk in a disreputable manner.

In order to refute Zabel in court I obtained an affidavit from Manchester dated March 3, 1860 according to which all the money I gave to Das Volk (with the exception of a specified amount out of my own pocket) came, not, as Vogt opined, from "the other side of the Channel", but from the pockets of my friends in Manchester (see. "The Augsburg Campaign").

3. "To throw light on" the "tactics" of the "'proletarian' party under Marx", F. Zabel narrates the following story (leading article No. 2 inter alia):

"In this way a conspiracy of the most infamous sort was devised in 1852, which aimed at damaging the Swiss workers' associations by manufacturing counterfeit paper money on a massive scale. See Vogt for further details, etc."

This is how Zabel interprets Vogt's assertions about the Cherval affair and makes me the moral source and criminal accomplice in the "manufacture of counterfeit paper money on a massive scale". The evidence I assembled in refutation of these allegations by "democrat" Zabel extended over the whole period from Cherval's admission to the "Communist League" to his flight from Geneva in 1854. An affidavit taken out by Karl Schapper at the Police Court at Bow Street on March 1, 1860[q] proved that Cherval had been admitted to the League in London before I myself joined it. It showed further that when he was in Paris, where he lived from the summer of 1850 until the spring of 1852, he entered into relations not with myself, but with the rival League of Willich and Schapper which was hostile to me. Finally, it proved that after his feigned escape from the prison of St. Pélagie and his return to London (spring 1852), he joined the public German Workers' Educational Society there to which I had ceased to belong in September 1850. Here he was finally exposed, condemned and expelled. Moreover, the lawyer Schneider II in Cologne could be made to testify under oath that the revelations about Cherval made while the Cologne communist trial was in progress,. the account of his relations with the Prussian police in London, etc., all came from me. My Revelations, which were published in 1853, proved that I had publicly denounced him after the conclusion of the trial. Finally, Johann Philipp Becker's letter provided information about Cherval's Geneva period. 4. Having with genuinely dunce-like logic babbled about the pamphlet Zur Warnung, which had been aimed at Vogt, and having done his best to discredit Vögele's testimony about the origins of the pamphlet, which testimony I had forwarded to the Allgemeine Zeitung, "democrat" F. Zabel concludes his peroration in leading article No. 2 as follows:

"He" (Blind) "is obviously not a member of the Marx party in the narrower sense. It appears to us that the latter did not find it too difficult to turn him into a scapegoat, and if the charges levelled at Vogt were to carry any weight, they had to be attributed to a definite person who would have to be responsible for them. The Marx party could very easily saddle Blind with the authorship of the pamphlet because and after he had expressed similar views to those contained in it in conversation with Marx and in an article in The Free Press. By making use of Blind's assertions and turns of phrase the pamphlet could be fabricated and made to look as if he had concocted it.... Anybody is at liberty to regard either Marx or Blind as its author", etc.

Zabel here accuses me of having fabricated a document, viz. the pamphlet Zur Warnung, in Blind's name and of having subsequently, in a false testimony sent by me to the Allgemeine Zeitung, represented Blind as the author of the pamphlet fabricated by myself. The legal refutation of "democrat" Zabel's allegations was as decisive as it was simple. It consisted of Blind's letter to Liebknecht, cited earlier on, of Blind's article in The Free Press, the two affidavits of Wiehe and Vögele (Appendices 12 and 13) and the printed declaration of M. D. Schaible.

Vogt, who is known to have jeered at the Bavarian Government in his Studien[v], launched an action against the Allgemeine Zeitung at the end of August 1859. As early as September the Allgemeine Zeitung had to request a postponement of the hearing and although the postponement had been granted the trial actually took place on October 24, 1859. If this was possible in the obscurantist state of Bavaria, what might not be expected from the enlightened state of Prussia, quite apart from the proverbial truth that "in Berlin there are judges".

My lawyer, Counsellor Weber, formulated my case thus:

"The editor of the National-Zeitung, Dr. Zabel, has repeatedly and publicly libelled me in leading articles in Nos. 37 and 41 of that paper of this year. In particular he has accused me (1) of acquiring and having acquired money in a dishonourable and criminal manner; (2) of having fabricated the anonymous pamphlet Zur Warnung and of having not only represented a certain Blind as its author to the Allgemeine Zeitung against my better knowledge, but also of having sought to prove this assertion with the aid of a document of whose inaccurate contents I must have been convinced."

Counsellor Weber elected to proceed first by means of an official investigation, i.e. he denounced Zabel's libels to the Public Prosecutor with the idea that proceedings against Zabel should then be initiated by the Public Prosecutor's Office. This resulted in the following "ruling" which was handed down on April 18, 1860:

"The original documents are returned to Dr. Karl Marx c/o Counsellor Weber, together with the notification that no issue of public importance is raised by this matter which could make it desirable for me to take any action (Article XVI of the Prolegomena to the Penal Code of April 14, 1851)[w]. Berlin, April 18.

"Public Prosecutor at the Royal Municipal Court, (signed) Lippe"

My counsel appealed to the Chief Public Prosecutor and on April 26, 1860 he received a second "ruling" worded thus:

"To the Royal Counsellor Weber, acting on behalf of Dr. Karl Marx of London. I hereby return to you the documents accompanying the complaint of April 20 of this year concerning the denunciation against Dr. Zabel. The only criterion by which the Public Prosecutor may act in considering what discretion he is allowed by Article XVI of the Prolegomena to the Penal Code is, of course, the question whether prosecution is required by any discernible public interest. Concurring with the judgment of the Royal Public Prosecutor I must answer this question negatively in the present instance, and I accordingly reject your complaint. Berlin, April 26, 1860.

"Chief Public Prosecutor at the Royal High Court, (signed) Schwarck"

I found these two refusals on the part of Public Prosecutor Lippe and Chief Public Prosecutor Schwarck entirely justified. In every state throughout the world, and hence presumably in the state of Prussia also, the public interest is interpreted as the interest of the government. As far as the Prussian Government was concerned there neither was nor could there be "any discernible public interest" in the prosecution of "democrat" Zabel for libels against my person. If anything, the interest lay in the opposite direction. Moreover, the Public Prosecutor does not have the judicial authority to pass judgment; he has to follow blindly the regulations laid down by his superior, the Minister of Justice in the final instance, and he must do this regardless of his own views or convictions.

In actual fact, then, I am quite in agreement with the decisions of Messrs. Lippe and Schwarck, although I have legal reservations about Lippe's reference to Article XVI of the Prolegomena to the Penal Code of April 14, 1851. There is no paragraph in the Prussian Code which obliges the Public Prosecutor's Office to give a reason for its refusal to intervene. Nor is there any single syllable about this in the Article XVI referred to by Lippe. So why quote it?

My lawyer now proceeded to launch a civil action, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Though the Prussian Government had no public interest in prosecuting F. Zabel, I had the strongest private interest to defend myself. And I could now act in my own name. The verdict was a matter of indifference to me, if only I could compel F. Zabel to appear at the bar of a public court. But just imagine my astonishment! I was told that it was not yet a matter of instituting legal proceedings, but of a court hearing to settle the question whether I had a right to bring an action against F. Zabel.

I was disconcerted to discover that, according to the Prussian judicial regulations, before the judge can hear the action and proceed to judgment, every plaintiff must plead his case to the same judge to enable the latter to see whether the plaintiff has the right to sue. In the course of this preliminary investigation the judge may call for additional evidence, or he may suppress part of the old evidence, or he may find that the plaintiff has no right to sue. If he sees fit to allow the right to sue, the judge arranges the hearing; the case is heard and is settled by a verdict. If the judge refuses the right to sue, he simply stops the action by a decree, by a ruling. This procedure applies not only to actions for libel, but to all civil cases. Thus an action for libel, like any other civil action, can be dismissed in all instances by such an official ruling and therefore will never be settled.

It will be granted that a code of law which does not recognise the right of the private individual to sue in his own private interests, ignores the simplest and most basic laws of civil society. The right to sue, a self-evident right of the independent private individual, is turned into a privilege granted by the state through the agency of its judiciary. In every legal conflict the state intervenes placing itself between the private individual and the gateway to the court, which is its private property and which it opens or closes as it thinks fit. First the judge gives a ruling in his capacity as an official; later on he gives his verdict, in his capacity as a judge. The same judge who, without hearing the accused, without hearing the pros and cons of the case, prejudges the issue of whether there are grounds for an action, and who, let us say, places himself on the side of the plaintiff, who thus decides to a certain degree in favour of the legitimacy of the complaint, who decides therefore to a certain degree against the defendant, this very same judge is supposed subsequently, in the actual trial, to decide impartially between the plaintiff and defendant, i.e. to pass a verdict on his own prejudgment. B. boxes A.'s ears. A. cannot sue the attacker until he has civilly acquired a licence to do so from the court official. A. withholds from B. a piece of land that belongs to him. B. requires a preliminary licence enabling him to assert his property rights before the court. He may receive it or he may not. B. libels A. publicly in the press, and an official of the judiciary, sitting in camera, may "rule" that A. may not sue B. It is easy to see what monstrous injustices may be perpetrated because of this procedure even in civil cases in the strict sense of the word. Still more so in case of libels made in the press against political parties. In all countries, and even in Prussia, judges are known to be human beings like everyone else. Even one of the Vice-Presidents of the Royal Prussian Supreme Tribunal, Dr. Götze, has declared in the Prussian Upper House that Prussian law was embarrassed by the disturbances of the years 1848, 1849 and 1850, and needed some time to orientate itself. Who can guarantee that Dr. Götze has not miscalculated the time required for orientation? The fact that in Prussia the right to take action against a slanderer, for example, depends on the interim "ruling" of an official whom the government, moreover, may punish for so-called "derelictions of duty while in office", with censure, fines, forced transfer and even dishonourable dismissal from the judiciary (see the interim ordinance of July 10, 1849 and the Law concerning discipline of May 7, 1851[x])—how shall I even begin to make this credible, if not clear, to English readers?

For it is my intention to publish an English pamphlet about my case against F. Zabel[230]. And when Edmond About wrote his La Prusse en 1860 what would he not have given for the information that in the entire realm of the Prussian monarchy the right to sue does not exist anywhere but in the Rhine Province, which has been "blessed" with the possession of the Code Napoléon[231]! Men must suffer everywhere under the courts, but only in a very few countries are they forbidden to sue.

In the circumstances it is understandable that my action against Zabel in the Prussian courts had to change into my dispute with the Prussian courts about Zabel. Leaving the theoretical beauties of the law to one side, let us now cast a glance at the charms of applying it in practice.

On June 8, 1860 the Royal Municipal Court in Berlin issued the following "ruling":

"Ruling regarding the suit for libel brought on June 5, 1860

"Marx contra Zabel. M. 38 de 1860

"1. The suit is dismissed for lack of an indictable offence, because the two incriminating leading articles of the local 'National-Zeitung' merely make the political views of the Augsburg 'Allgemeine Zeitung' and the history of the anonymous pamphlet 'Zur Warnung' the object of discussion. The statements and assertions contained therein, insofar as they are those of the author himself and are not merely quotations from other persons, do not exceed the bounds of legitimate criticism. In accordance with § 154 of the Penal Code, therefore, since the intention to insult is evident neither from the form of these utterances, nor from the circumstances in which they were made, they cannot be held to be punishable.

Berlin, June 8, 1860

"Royal Municipal Court, Criminal Division "Commission I for Libel Cases (L.S.[y])"

Thus the Municipal Court forbids me to sue F. Zabel and absolves Zabel of the irksome necessity of having to answer for his public libels! And why? "For lack of an indictable offence." The Public Prosecutor's Office refused to take action against Zabel on my behalf because no discernible public interest was involved. The Municipal Court forbids me to proceed against Zabel on my own behalf because there is no indictable offence. And why is there no indictable offence?

First: "Because the two leading articles of the 'National-Zeitung' merely relate to the political views of the 'Allgemeine Zeitung'."

Because Zabel has for the time being deceitfully transformed me into a "correspondent of the 'Allgemeine Zeitung'" he has the right to make me the whipping-boy in his feud with that paper, and I do not even have the right to complain about this "ruling" of the mighty Zabel! Brimstone Gang, Bristlers, complot franco-allemand, revolutionary congress in Murten, Cologne communist trial, fabrication of counterfeit paper money in Geneva, "work of the 'Rheinische Zeitung'", etc., etc.—all this "merely relates to the political views of the 'Allgemeine Zeitung'".

Second: F. Zabel had "no intention to insult". Of course not! The good fellow only had the intention of killing me off politically and morally with his lies.

When "democrat" F. Zabel asserts in the National-Zeitung that I have counterfeited money on a massive scale, fabricated documents in the name of third persons, politically compromised people in Germany so as to extort money from them by threatening to denounce them, etc., it is evident that according to legal terminology he can have had only one of two things in mind: either to libel me or to denounce me. If the first, then he is legally punishable; if the second, then he must prove the truth of his assertions in a court of law. What do I care for any other private intentions of "democrat" F. Zabel?

Zabel libels me, but without "the intention to insult". He injures my reputation like the Turk who cut off the head of a Greek, but without intending to injure him.

If one speaks of "insulting" and "the intention to insult", if one speaks of the kind of infamous actions which "democrat" F. Zabel imputes to me, then the specific "intention" to "insult", the utterly malicious intention of the good Zabel—why it breathes from every pore of his leading articles Nos. 1 and 2.

Vogt's "Magnum Opus", appendices included, has no fewer than 278 pages. And F. Zabel, who is accustomed "to draw out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument"[z], our conceited F. Zabel, Dunce Zabel has succeeded in compressing these 278 pages into approximately five small newspaper columns without forgoing a single one of Vogt's libels against me and my party. F. Zabel provides an anthology of the most scurrilous parts and a table of contents for the less drastic portions. F. Zabel, accustomed to expanding two molecules of ideas into 278 pages, now condenses 278 pages into two leading articles without losing a single atom of dirt in the process. Ira facit poetam[aa]. How potent a malice it must have been to transform the hydrocephalic Zabel into a hydraulic press of such force!

On the other hand, his malice blinds him to such an extent that he ascribes miraculous powers to me, actual miraculous powers, only to enable him to make one more slanderous insinuation at my expense.

Having begun in the first leading article with a description of the Brimstone Gang under my command, and having happily turned me and my associates into the "confederates of the secret police in France and Germany", having recounted, inter alia, that "these people" hated Vogt because he was continuously rescuing Switzerland from their clutches, he goes on:

"Now when last year Vogt had brought an action against the Allgemeine Zeitung, the latter received a communication from another London accomplice, Biscamp.... In the most shameless manner the writer offered ... his services as a second correspondent along with Herr Liebknecht. [...] A week after Biscamp Marx, too, wrote to the 'Allgemeine Zeitung', offering it a 'legal document' as evidence against Vogt about which"[ab] (the document, the evidence or Vogt?) "we shall perhaps speak at a later date."

Zabel gave this promise on January 22 and carried it out as early as January 25 in the National-Zeitung, No. 41, where we can read:

"So Blind denies being the author of the pamphlet; he is ... referred to as such for the first time in Biscamp's letter to the 'Allgemeine Zeitung' of October 20.... To strengthen the case for Blind's authorship Marx wrote to the 'Allgemeine Zeitung' on October 29."

So F. Zabel credits me, not once, but twice, first on January 22 and then again on January 25, having had three days to think it over, with the magic power of writing a letter in London on October 29, 1859 which had been in the possession of the Augsburg District Court on October 24, 1859. And both times he credits me with this magic power in order to establish a link between the "document" I forwarded to the Allgemeine Zeitung, and the objectionable letter sent to it by Biscamp, i.e. to make my letter look like the pedisequus[ad] to Biscamp's. So was it not malice, pigheaded malice which made F. Zabel stupid to the point of beginning to believe in magic, far beyond the average degree of duncedom?

But, the Municipal Court "argues further", Zabel's leading article No. 2 "merely makes the history of the anonymous pamphlet Zur Warnung" the "object of discussion". The object? Read pretext.

Eisele-Beisele, concealed this time under the name of "German Patriots", had, it appears, sent an "open letter" in November 1859 to the "National Association" which was printed in the reactionary Neue Hannoversche Zeitung[232]. This "open letter" of-fended against the "democracy" of Zabel, a democracy in which the heroic courage to attack the Habsburg dynasty was neatly balanced by the servility shown to the Hohenzollern dynasty. The Neue Preussische Zeitung took the opportunity provided by the "open letter" to make the not very original discovery that once democracy has got under way it need not necessarily end up in—F. Zabel and his "organ of democracy". Zabel flew into a rage and wrote leading article No. 2, "Wie man radikale Flugblätter macht" ["How Radical Pamphlets Are Made"].

"By inviting the Kreuz-Zeitung," Zabel begins portentously, "to go through the history of the pamphlet (Zur Warnung) with the help of the documents and explanations provided by Vogt, we express the hope that it will finally admit that we were in the right when we said two months ago that the open letter to the National Association was something for it, not for us, that it had been designed for its columns, not for ours."

So "democrat" Zabel, who has been so radically initiated by Vogt into the mysteries of radicalism, wishes for his part to read the Kreuz-Zeitung a lecture on the mystery of "how radical pamphlets are made", or as the Municipal Court expresses it: "he merely wishes to make the history of the pamphlet 'Zur Warnung' the object of discussion". And how does F. Zabel set about his task? He starts with the "tactics" of the "'proletarian' party under Marx". First, he recounts how, in the name of a Workers' Association but behind its back, the "proletarians under Marx" send letters from London for foreign workers' associations "which are to be compromised", hatch "intrigues", set up a secret league, etc.; and how they, finally, compose "documents" which "inevitably attract the protests of the police" to those associations "which are to be compromised". Thus in order to teach the Kreuz-Zeitung "how radical pamphlets are made", Zabel begins by explaining that "the 'proletarian' party under Marx" manufactures police "reports" and "documents", which are not "pamphlets" at all. In order to explain "how radical pamphlets are made" he goes on to recount that the "proletarians under Marx" manufactured "counterfeit paper money on a massive scale" in Geneva in 1852, which are likewise not "radical pamphlets". In order to demonstrate "how radical pamphlets are made", he reports that the "proletarians under Marx" carried out "manoeuvres" hostile to the Swiss and compromising for the associations during the Lausanne Joint Festival in 1859—and these too are not "radical pamphlets". He explains that "Biscamp and Marx" with the aid of funds whose source was known only "to the gods" produced Das Volk, which was not a "radical pamphlet" either but a weekly journal. And after all this he puts in a good word for the immaculate purity of Vogt's recruiting agency, which once again was no "radical pamphlet". In this way he fills 2 of the 3¼ columns of the article entitled "How Radical Pamphlets Are Made". Thus for these 2/3 of the article the history of the anonymous pamphlet serves merely as a pretext for reproducing those of Vogt's slanders which F. Zabel, his "friend" and accomplice, has not dealt with under the heading "Political Views of the 'Allgemeine Zeitung'". Lastly at the very end Dunce I comes to the art of "making radical pamphlets", namely to "the history". of the pamphlet Zur Warnung.

"Blind denies being the author of the pamphlet; he is impudently referred to as such for the first time in Biscamp's letter to the Allgemeine Zeitung of October 20.... To strengthen the case for Blind's authorship Marx wrote to the Allgemeine Zeitung on October 29: 'I have obtained the accompanying document because Blind refused to stand by statements which he made to me and to other persons.'"

Now Zabel suspects this document in particular because Liebknecht ... "strangely enough" adds: "We requested the magistrate (?)" (this question mark stands in Zabel's text) "to authenticate our signatures" and Zabel has resolved once and for all not to recognise any magistrate but the Berlin magistrate. Zabel goes on to report the contents of Vögele's declaration which had caused Blind to send the statements of Hollinger and Wiehe to the Allgemeine Zeitung to prove that the pamphlet had not been printed on Hollinger's press and was therefore not composed by Blind. He continues:

"Marx, always ready with an answer, replied in the Allgemeine Zeitung on November 15."

Zabel lists the various points in my reply. Marx says this ... Marx says that..., "in addition, Marx refers". So since I do not say anything "in addition", surely Zabel has informed, his readers of all the points I make in my reply? But we know our Zabel! He conceals, leaves out, suppresses the decisive point of my reply[ae]. In my declaration of November 15[af] I make a number of points, all of which are numbered. Thus "1. ... 2. ... and finally, 3. ...": "It so happened that the reprint" (of the pamphlet) "in Das Volk was made from the type still standing in Hollinger's print-shop. Thus without the need to call witnesses, a simple comparison of the pamphlet and the reprint of it in Das Volk would be sufficient to prove to a court that the former came from F. Hollinger's print-shop." That's the conclusive piece of evidence, Zabel said to himself. My readers must not hear of this. So he spirits away the strongest point of my reply and instead burdens my conscience with a suspect gift of repartee[ag]. Thus Zabel's account of "the history of the pamphlet" contains two intentional falsehoods. He falsifies first the chronology and then the contents of my declaration of November 15. His twofold falsification prepares the way for his conclusion that I "fabricated" the pamphlet, and that I did so in such a way that it "looked like Blind's fabrication" and hence that in sending Vögele's testimony to the Allgemeine Zeitung I likewise sent a false testimony, and did so knowingly. The accusation of fabricating documents with the intention of saddling a third person with responsibility for them does not, in the view of the Berlin Municipal Court, "exceed the bounds of legitimate criticism" and even less does it imply "an intention to insult". At the end of his recipe describing "how radical pamphlets are made" it suddenly occurs to Zabel that there is one shameless invention of Vogt's that he has omitted to make use of, and so right at the end of his leading article No. 2 he hastily adds the following note:

"In 1850 another circular" (as Vogt recollects) "written by Parliamentary Wolf, alias Casemate Wolf, was sent to the 'proletarians' in Germany, and simultaneously allowed to fall into the hands of the Hanover police."[ah]

With this pretty police anecdote about one of the former editors of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, our stout party, democrat Zabel, grins and takes his leave of his readers. The words "alias Casemate Wolf" belong not to Vogt but to F. Zabel. His Silesian readers were to be clearly informed that he is talking about their countryman W. Wolff, the former co-editor of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. How assiduously our good Zabel toils to ensure that the connection between the Neue Rheinische Zeitung and the police in France and Germany is established down to the last detail! His Silesians might imagine otherwise that it was Zabel's own B. Wolff that was under discussion, Zabel's natural superior[ai] who, as is well known, rearranges world history with the aid of telegrams and in "secret league" with such well-known manufacturers of false reports as Reuter in London and Havas in Paris. Sigmund Engländer, the notorious secret police agent, is the heart and soul of the Reuter bureau and hence the presiding genius of the trinity B. Wolff-Reuter-Havas.

Despite all this and despite democrat Zabel's intention not to insult, the Berlin Municipal Court declares that Zabel's two leading articles do indeed "contain statements and assertions" which "exceed the bounds of legitimate criticism" and are therefore "punishable", or at least actionable. So produce this Zabel! Hand him over and let him wriggle in court! Not so fast! the Municipal Court exclaims. The "statements and assertions" contained in the two leading articles, the Municipal Court says, do not, "insofar as they are those of the author" (Zabel) "himself and are not merely quotations from other persons", exceed "the bounds of legitimate . criticism" and are not "punishable". Hence Zabel is not only not punishable, he is not even actionable and "the costs are therefore to be borne by the plaintiff". So the libellous part of Zabel's "statements and assertions" is "mere quotation". Voyons!

It will be remembered from the opening part of this chapter that my action for libel was based on four passages in Zabel's two leading articles. In the passage dealing with Das Volk's financial resources (sub 2 of the points listed above), Zabel himself does not claim to quote nor does he quote in fact, for:

Zabel (National-Zeitung, No. 41)

"Where the money for this generously distributed paper" (Das Volk) "came from, is known to the gods; men, however, are well aware that Marx and Biscamp have no money to spare."

Vogt ("Magnum Opus", p. 212)

"The regular correspondent of the Allgemeine Zeitung is a collaborator on this paper" (Das Volk) "which was established with the aid of unknown funds, for neither Biscamp nor Marx have the requisite means for it" (i.e. to establish a paper on the basis of unknown funds?).

In the second incriminating passage (see above sub 4), in which I am accused of fabricating a document in Blind's name, Zabel even states explicitly that he is speaking in his own name, as Zabel, and not in Vogt's.

It appears to us", as monarch in the Kingdom of Dullness[aj] Zabel naturally makes use of the pluralis majestatis[ak], "it appears to us that the latter" (the Marx party) "did not find it too difficult to turn him" (Blind) "into a scapegoat.... By making use of . Blind's assertions and turns of phrase the pamphlet could be fabricated and made to look as if he" (Blind) "had concocted it" (National-Zeitung, No. 41).

The third of the incriminating passages (see above sub 3) must be "quoted" again in full:

"In this way a conspiracy of the most infamous sort was devised in 1852, which aimed at damaging the Swiss workers' associations by manufacturing counterfeit paper money on a massive scale. (See Vogt for further details.) This conspiracy would have caused the greatest difficulties for the Swiss authorities if it had not been uncovered in time."

Is this "merely a quotation", as the Municipal Court maintains, is it in fact a quotation of any kind? It is indeed partly plagiarised from Vogt, but it is not a quotation in any sense of the word. In the first place Zabel himself does not claim that he is quoting, but implies that he is speaking in his own right when he remarks in a parenthesis: "See Vogt for further details." And now look at the passage itself! In Geneva it was known that Cherval did not arrive in Geneva before spring 1853 and that his "conspiracy" and flight took place in spring 1854. So Vogt, writing in Geneva, does not venture to assert that the "conspiracy ... was devised in 1852". This lie he leaves to our good Zabel in Berlin. Furthermore, Vogt says:

"Various stone and copper plates had already been engraved for this purpose" (the manufacture of counterfeit banknotes, etc.) "by Nugent" (Cherval) "himself" ("Magnum Opus", p. 175).

Hence various stone and copper plates had already been engraved for the forgery, but the banknotes and treasury bills had not yet been manufactured. According to Zabel, however, "the manufacture of counterfeit paper money" had already taken place, and "on a massive scale", moreover. Vogt states that the statutory "purpose" of Cherval's conspiracy was

"to attack despotism with its own weapons, by manufacturing counterfeit banknotes and treasury bills on a massive scale" (loc. cit.).

Zabel deletes the attack on despotism and holds fast to the "manufacture of counterfeit paper money on a massive scale". In Zabel, then, what we have is an ordinary criminal act which is not even palliated for the benefit of the members of the "secret league" by the pretence of a political purpose. And this is how Zabel "quotes" from the "Magnum Opus" throughout. Vogt felt it necessary to turn his tall stories into a "book". So he fills it with details, spins it out, scrawls, splutters, colours, daubs, arranges, develops, complicates, explains, fantasises, fa del cul trombetta[al] with the result that at every point his Falstaffian soul shines through the purported facts, which are once more dissolved by his own narrative, though he is not aware of this, into the void from which they had emerged. Zabel, by contrast, who had to compress the book into two leading articles and did not wish to omit a single slander, suppresses everything but the caput mortuum[am] of every purported "fact", he strings the dry bones of these slanders together and then counts his rosary with the zeal of a Pharisee. Take the following case. Starting with the fact revealed first by myself, that Cherval was a secret police agent and agent provocateur in the pay of various embassies, Vogt's imagination takes wing. He says inter alia:

"Various stone and copper plates had already been engraved for this purpose" (forgery) "by Nugent" (Cherval) "himself; the gullible members of the secret league had already been selected to go to France, Switzerland and Germany with packets of these" (as yet unmanufactured) "counterfeit banknotes. But denunciations had already been made to the police and scandalously enough these also incriminated the workers' associations, etc." ("Magnum Opus", p. 175.)

Vogt thus makes Cherval denounce his own operations to the police even though he has done no more than engrave the stone and copper plates for the intended forgery, even before the purpose of his conspiracy has been achieved, before a corpus delicti has appeared and anyone apart from himself has been compromised. But the Vogtian Cherval is eager to "scandalously" incriminate "the workers' associations" in his "conspiracy". The foreign embassies that make use of Cherval are as stupid as he is and are equally precipitate

"in indicating to the Swiss police in confidence that political intrigues were being devised in the workers' associations, etc."

[an] Simultaneously, these ambassadorial numskulls, who are too impatient to allow the conspiracy hatched by Cherval on their orders to come to fruition and who, in their childish impatience, reveal the identity of their own agent to no purpose, have police lying in wait at "the frontiers" to receive Cherval's emissaries, "if matters had developed to such a pitch" as they had prevented them from developing, "to receive them with counterfeit bank-notes" whose manufacture they had thwarted,

"and turn the whole affair into an occasion for a general witch-hunt in which masses of innocent people would have had to pay for the misdeeds of a few wicked men".[ao]

When Vogt goes on to say that "the plan of the whole conspiracy had been monstrously conceived", everyone will agree that its conception was monstrously stupid, and when he concludes with the boast

"I cannot deny that I contributed a substantial part in frustrating these devilish plans",[ap]

everyone will get the point and collapse with laughter at the whimsical devil. But compare this with the ascetic account given in Zabel's annals!

"In this way a conspiracy of the most infamous sort was devised in 1852, which aimed at damaging the Swiss associations by manufacturing counterfeit paper money on a massive scale. (See Vogt for further details.) This conspiracy would have caused the greatest difficulties for the Swiss authorities if it had not been uncovered in time."

Here, condensed into a single brief sentence, we find a whole bundle of facts, as dry as they are scandalous. "A conspiracy of the most infamous sort" dated 1852. "Manufacture of counterfeit paper money on a massive scale", i.e. an ordinary criminal act. The intentional compromising of the "Swiss workers' associations", i.e. betrayal of one's own party. The "greatest difficulties" which might have arisen for the "Swiss authorities", i.e. agent provocateur against the Swiss Republic in the interests of Continental despots. Lastly, "timely discovery of the conspiracy". Here criticism is deprived of all the vital clues provided by Vogt's account, they have been simply conjured away. One has to believe or disbelieve. And this is how Zabel treats the entire "Magnum Opus" insofar as it deals with my party associates and myself. As Heine so rightly says, no human being is as dangerous as an addle-brained ass. Lastly, the fourth incriminating passage (see above sub 1) with which leading article No. 1 opens its revelations about the "Brimstone Gang". It is true that Zabel begins with the words: "Vogt reports on p. 136 et seq." But Zabel does not make it clear whether he is summarising or quoting. He takes care not to use quotation marks. In fact, he does not quote. There could be no doubt about it from the outset since he condenses pp. 136, 137, 138, 139, 140 and 141 of the "Magnum Opus" into 51 lines of about 48 letters each, does not indicate omissions, but packs the sentences as tightly as Dutch herrings, and lastly even has space in these 51 lines for reflections of his own. Wherever he comes upon a particularly vile sentence, he incorporates it more or less as it stands. For the rest, he mixes up his excerpts so that they do not follow the pagination of the "Magnum Opus" but are brought in as and when they suit his purpose. He equips the head of one Vogtian sentence with the tail of another Vogtian sentence. Or again, he composes a single sentence from the keywords of a dozen of Vogt's sentences. Should it occur that in Vogt's original the stylistic rubble prevents the light from falling right on the slander, Zabel clears away the rubble. For example, Vogt talks of

"compromising people at home in Germany in such a way that they could no longer resist the attempts to blackmail them and were forced to pay money".

According to Zabel, however, this reads:

"compromising people in such a way that they were forced to pay money".

Elsewhere Zabel alters anything that appears to him to be ambiguous in Vogt's unstylish mess. Thus Vogt:

"they were forced to pay money so that the gang should preserve the secret of their having been compromised".

Whereas in Zabel:

"so that the gang should preserve their secret without compromising [them]".

Finally, Zabel interpolates entire sentences of his own invention, such as:

"The Brimstone Gang maintained a frightfully strict discipline among its supporters" and "they"—namely "the fellows who continued the work of the 'Rheinische Zeitung' among the refugees"—"they became the confederates of the secret police in France and Germany."

Thus of the four passages regarded by me as libellous three stem from Zabel on Zabel's own admission, while the fourth alleged "quotation", although containing quotations, is not a quotation, and even less is it "merely a quotation", as the Municipal Court maintains, and least of all is it a quotation "from other persons" in the plural, as the same Municipal Court contends. Conversely, among all Zabel's "statements and assertions" about me there is not a single line of "criticism and appraisal" ("legitimate" or "illegitimate"). But even supposing that the actual assumption of the Municipal Court is as true as it is false; even supposing that Zabel's libellous statements about me were merely quotations, would the Municipal Court because of this circumstance be legally justified in forbidding me to bring an action against F. Zabel? On the contrary, in a "ruling" handed down by the Royal Prussian High Court which we shall give in extenso, we find that

"It would not affect the situation as laid down in §156 of the Penal Code if the facts set out in the aforementioned articles turned out to be the author's own assertions or quotations from the assertions of third persons."

So whether he quotes or not, "democrat" Zabel remains responsible for his "assertions". The Municipal Court has already declared that Zabel published assertions about me which are in themselves "punishable"; but these assertions are quotations and hence unassailable. Away with this pretext, which is legally untenable, cries the High Court. So finally I shall be able to lay hands on Zabel; the doors of the law will open, Italiam, Italiam![aq] My lawyer appealed from the Municipal Court to the High Court and on July 11, 1860 he received the following "ruling":

"In the leading articles published in Nos. 37 and 41 of the National-Zeitung on January 22 and 25 of this year under the titles 'Karl Vogt and the Allgemeine Zeitung' and 'How Radical Pamphlets Are Made', a libel on the plaintiff Dr. Karl Marx of London cannot be found. Even though it would not affect the situation as laid down in §156 of the Penal Code if the facts set out in the aforementioned articles turned out to be the author's own assertions or the assertions of third persons, it would be wrong to restrict the right of the press to subject the activities of the parties and the published expression of their disagreements to analysis and criticism, insofar as the form of the polemic does not indicate an intention to insult. In the present case this intention cannot be presumed to exist.

"In the aforementioned articles light is thrown above all on the conflict that prevailed between the views of Dr. Karl Vogt, on the one hand, and the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung, on the other, concerning the support expressed for the interests of the Italians and for the interests of Austria on the occasion of the recent war; in this context the intervention of the so-called German emigration in London on the side of the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung and against Vogt, as well as some of the factional quarrels and the machinations of these refugees among themselves, are also discussed!

"If in the course of these discussions the relations of the plaintiff to these parties and his partial involvement in their aspirations and in particular his efforts to assist the Augsburg 'Allgemeine Zeitung' in its polemic against Vogt by supplying it with evidence are drawn into the debate, the relevant allegations concerning this involvement which are contained in the two articles are not so much refuted as the plaintiff intended, but rather confirmed by the facts which he himself includes in his complaint. If on the other hand he goes on to assert that he is identified, in a defamatory manner, with those political activities, on which the articles in question admittedly pass severe strictures, referring to them as eccentric, and even unprincipled and dishonourable, this assertion cannot be regarded as substantiated. For when the first article quotes from Vogt's account: 'that the refugees of 1849 gradually congregated in London, where they revered the above mentioned Marx as their visible leader'; and refers to a letter by Techow: in which we see how Marx, puffed up with Napoleonic pride in his intellectual superiority, rules the members of the Brimstone Gang with a rod of iron'—what we have here is in essence only a description of what Vogt calls the 'Brimstone Gang', and not an invective against Marx, who is portrayed rather as a restraining influence and intellectually superior. Least of all is his person associated with those people who are accused of blackmail and denunciation. Likewise, in the second article, it is nowhere stated that the plaintiff ascribed the authorship of the pamphlet Zur Warnung to the abovementioned Blind against his better knowledge, and that he knowingly sent false testimonies of third persons to that effect to the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung. However, the fact that the testimony of the compositor Vögele was disputed is conceded by the plaintiff himself in his complaint when he cites the conflicting statements by Hollinger, the printer, and Wiehe, the compositor. Furthermore, on his own admission a certain Schaible later disclosed that he was the author of the pamphlet, and he did this moreover only after the two articles in the National-Zeitung had appeared.

"The appeal of the 21st of last month against the negative ruling of the Royal Municipal Court of the 8th of the same month is adjudged to be without foundation and is therefore dismissed. Twenty-five silver groschen in costs for assessing the unfounded appeal are to be paid to the Treasury of the local Municipal Court without delay on pain of distraint.

"Berlin, July 11, 1860

Criminal Senate of the Royal High Court
Second Division

Guthschmidt Schultze

"To D. Phil. Karl Marx c/o Legal Counsellor Weber"

When I first received this "ruling" from my lawyer, I did not notice the address and conclusion on the first reading and, unfamiliar as I am with Prussian law, I imagined that I had been sent a copy of the defence handed in to the High Court by "democrat" F. Zabel. I said to myself that what Zabel had to say about "the views" (see Appendix 15) "of Dr. Karl Vogt and the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung", and about "the interests of the Italians and the interests of the Austrians", all this must have accidentally strayed into his petition from a leading article intended for the National-Zeitung. In any event, "democrat" F. Zabel does not mention in so much as a single syllable either these views or those interests in the four columns that concern me in his two leading articles (which themselves amount to hardly six columns). In his petition Zabel says that I

"assisted the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung in its polemic against Vogt by supplying it with evidence".

He refers to Vogt's legal action against the "Allgemeine Zeitung" as the polemic of the "Allgemeine Zeitung" against Vogt. If legal action and polemic were identical things why should I require the permission of the Public Prosecutor, the Municipal Court, the High Court, etc., for my "polemic" against Zabel? And Zabel even asserts that the "relevant allegations" in his two leading articles concerning my relations with the Allgemeine Zeitung were "not so much refuted as I had intended, but rather confirmed by the facts I had myself included". Not so much—but rather! In jus[ar] it must be either-or. And what "relevant allegations" were made by Zabel?

The "relevant allegations" in Zabel's leading article No. 1 concerning my relations with the Allgemeine Zeitung were as follows:

1. Liebknecht became correspondent for the Allgemeine Zeitung on the strength of a reference which I had given him officially. I declared, in my complaint, that Zabel was lying, but thought it unnecessary to advance any further "facts" on such an absurdity. 2. According to Zabel I sent a "legal document" to the Allgemeine Zeitung from London on October 29, which in fact had been in the possession of the Augsburg District Court on October 24, and he found this "allegation" confirmed by the "facts" produced by me! From the facts I had advanced in my complaint, Zabel could indeed see that, quite apart from any political motives, it had become necessary for me to send in a document relating to the origins of the pamphlet Zur Warnung, because Vogt had publicly attempted to saddle me with the authorship of it even before the institution of legal proceedings. 3. Zabel's "allegation" that I was one of the correspondents of the Allgemeine Zeitung was refuted by me with the aid of authentic documents. Zabel's leading article No. 2, "How Radical Pamphlets Are Made", contained, as shown earlier on, no "allegations" concerning my relations with the Allgemeine Zeitung, other than the "allegation" that I myself had fabricated the pamphlet, that I had then laid it at Blind's door and tried to prove that it was his work by means of Vögele's false testimony. Were all these "relevant allegations not so much refuted as I had intended, but rather confirmed by the facts included 'in my complaint'"? Zabel himself admits the opposite.

Could Zabel have known that Schaible had written the pamphlet Zur Warnung? Did Zabel have to believe that compositor Vögele's testimony, which on my own admission was "disputed", was in fact correct? But where in the world have I laid down that Zabel must have this knowledge or that belief? My complaint refers "rather" to Zabel's "relevant allegation" that I "fabricated the pamphlet and made it look as if he" (Blind) "had concocted it" and that I later used Vögele's testimony to try and prove that it was Blind's work.

Finally, I came across an argument in Zabel's defence which at least looked interesting.

"If on the other hand he" (the plaintiff Marx) "goes on to assert that he is identified, in a defamatory manner, with those political activities" (of the Brimstone Gang), "on which the articles in question" (Zabel's leading articles) "admittedly pass severe strictures, referring to them as eccentric, and even unprincipled and dishonourable, this assertion cannot be regarded as substantiated... Least of all is his person associated with those people who are accused of blackmail and denunciation."

Zabel is manifestly not one of those Romans of whom it is said: "memoriam quoque cum voce perdidissimus."[at] He has lost his memory, but not his tongue. He transforms not just brimstone but the Brimstone Gang from its crystalline state into a liquid and from a liquid into a gas, and he uses the red gas to throw dust in my eyes[au]. The Brimstone Gang, he claims, is a "party" with whose "activities" he has never "identified" me, and with whose "blackmail and denunciations" he never even associated people "associated" with me. It is essential to convert this sulphurous gas back into the original flowers of sulphur. In leading article No. 1 (National-Zeitung, No. 37, 1860) Zabel opens his "relevant allegations" about the Brimstone Gang by describing "Marx" as its "visible leader". The second member of the Brimstone Gang whom he alludes to "to fill in the picture", but does not name, is Frederick Engels. He refers in particular to the letter in which Techow reports on his meeting with Fr. Engels, K. Schramm and myself. Zabel draws attention to the two last as illustrations of the "Brimstone Gang". Immediately after he mentions Cherval as a London emissary. Then it is Liebknecht's turn.

"This Liebknecht, in nomine omen[av], one of the most servile supporters of Marx.... Immediately after his arrival Liebknecht took up service with Marx, and his labours were to the complete satisfaction of his master."

"Ohly", who marches directly behind Liebknecht, is "likewise a channel of the Brimstone Gang". Finally, "another London accomplice, Biscamp". All these details follow in quick succession in leading article No. 1, but at the end of leading article No. 2 yet another member of the Brimstone Gang is named, W. Wolff—"Parliamentary Wolf, alias Casemate Wolf"—who had been entrusted with the vital mission of "sending out circulars". According to Zabel's "relevant allegations", then, the Brimstone Gang consists of: Marx, leader of the Brimstone Gang; F. Engels, illustration of the Brimstone Gang; Cherval, London emissary of the Brimstone gang; Liebknecht, "one of the most servile supporters of Marx"; Ohly, "likewise a channel of the Brimstone Gang"; Biscamp, "another" London "accomplice"; lastly, Wolff, the Brimstone Gang's writer of circulars.

In his first 51 lines Zabel makes this miscellaneously constituted Brimstone Gang figure variously under the names: "Brimstone Gang or Bristlers", "fellows who continued the work of the Rheinische Zeitung among the refugees", the "proletarians" or, as we find in leading article No. 2, "the 'proletarian' party under Marx".

So much for the personnel and the names of the Brimstone Gang. In his "relevant allegations" Zabel gives a brief and impressive account of its organisation. "Marx" is the "leader". The "Brimstone Gang" itself comprises the circle of his "close" supporters or, as Zabel says in his second leading article, "the Marx party in the narrower sense". Zabel even provides a touchstone for defining "the Marx party in the narrower sense". Amember of the Marx party in the narrower sense must have seen Biscamp at least once in his life.

"He" (Blind), Zabel writes in leading article No. 2, "he declares that he has never seen Biscamp in the whole of his life. He is obviously not a member of the Marx party in the narrower sense."

The "Marx party in the narrower sense", or the Brimstone Gang proper, is therefore the aristocracy of the gang, not to be confused with the third category, the mass of "supporters" or "this carefully nurtured class of loafers". So first comes leader Marx, then the "Brimstone Gang" proper, or "the Marx party in the narrower sense", and lastly, the mass of "supporters" or the "class of loafers". The Brimstone Gang, subdivided into these three categories, enjoys a truly Spartan discipline. "The Brimstone Gang," says Zabel, "maintained a frightfully strict discipline among its supporters." While at the same time "Marx ... rules the members of the Brimstone Gang with a rod of iron". It is obvious that in such a well-organised "gang" as this, its characteristic "activities", its "chief occupations", the deeds the gang carries out qua gang, all take place on the orders of its leader and they are explicitly presented by Zabel as the actions of this leader with his rod of iron. And what was, if we may use the term, the official occupation of the gang?

"One of the chief occupations of the Brimstone Gang was to compromise people at home in Germany in such a way that they were forced to pay money so that the gang should preserve their secret without compromising them. Not just one, but hundreds of letters were written to people in Germany, threatening to denounce them for complicity in this or that act of revolution unless a certain sum of money had been received at a specified address by a given date.... The reputation of anyone who opposed these intrigues was ruined, not just among the refugees, but also by means of the press. The 'proletarians' filled the columns of the reactionary press in Germany with their denunciations of those democrats who did not subscribe to their views; they became the confederates of the secret police in France and Germany, etc." (National-Zeitung, No. 37.)

After beginning the "relevant allegations" about the Brimstone Gang with the observation that I was its "visible leader", and after listing its "chief occupations", namely blackmail, denunciation, etc., Zabel concludes his general description of the Brimstone Gang with the words:

"... They became the confederates of the secret police in France and Germany. To fill in the picture Vogt publishes a letter by Techow, a former lieutenant, dated August 26, 1850 ... in which we see how Marx, puffed up with Napoleonic pride in his intellectual superiority, rules the members of the Brimstone Gang with a rod of iron."

Having caused me to be "revered" as the "visible leader" of the Brimstone Gang in his introductory remarks, Zabel fears that the reader might imagine that behind the visible leader there was an invisible one, or that, like the Dalai Lama, I was content to be "revered". So at the end of his description he transforms me (in his words, not Vogt's) from the merely "visible" leader into the leader who wields a rod of iron, from the Dalai Lama into the Napoleon of the "Brimstone Gang". And it is precisely this remark that he cites in his petition as proof that he does not "identify" me with the "political activities" of the Brimstone Gang, on which "severe strictures are passed" and which are "referred to as eccentric, and even unprincipled and dishonourable". Of course he doesn't! Or not entirely! He does "identify" me with them, but not "in a defamatory manner". "Rather he has done me the honour of appointing me the Napoleon of blackmailers, threatening-letter writers, mouchards, agents provocateurs, forgers, etc. Zabel clearly takes his conception of honour from the vocabulary of the December Gang. Hence the epithet "Napoleonic". But I am taking him to court because of this very honour he has shown me! With the "facts" adduced in my complaint I have proved, and proved so decisively that Zabel absolutely refuses to follow me to any public court, proved that all his "relevant allegations" about the Brimstone Gang are Vogtian inventions and lies, and that Zabel only "quotes" them in order to be able to "honour" me as the Napoleon of this Brimstone Gang. But am I not depicted by him as "a restraining influence and intellectually superior"? Does he not describe me as maintaining discipline in the gang? He himself explains what this restraint, this superiority and this discipline consisted in.

"The Brimstone Gang maintained a frightfully strict discipline among its supporters. Anyone who sought in any way to secure a decent living in the bourgeois world was branded a traitor to the revolution merely for attempting to become independent.... With the aid of rumours, letters, etc., dissension, brawling and duels were fomented in this carefully nurtured class of loafers, etc."

But Zabel is not content with this general description of the "political activities" of the Brimstone Gang with which he has honourably "identified" me.

Liebknecht, a "notorious member of the Marx party", "one of the most servile supporters of Marx, whose labours were to the complete satisfaction of his master intentionally compromises the workers in Switzerland with the "revolutionary congress in Murten" and joyfully "leads" them "into the arms" of the waiting "gendarmes". "In the Cologne trial the authorship of the forged minute-book was attributed to this Liebknecht." (Zabel omits to add, of course, that this lie of Stieber's was publicly shown to be a lie of Stieber's during the actual proceedings.) Wolff, the former co-editor of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, is accused of sending "a circular to the proletarians" from London and at the same time "allowing it to fall into the hands of the Hanover police".

While Zabel thus presents people who are "notoriously" connected with me as agents of the secret police, on the one hand, he also connects me with a "notorious" secret police agent, agent provocateur and forger, namely Cherval, on the other. Immediately following his general description of the Brimstone Gang he makes "a number of people" including Cherval travel from London to Paris "in the double role of revolutionary seducers of workers and confederates of the secret police" and bring about the "so-called communist trial", etc. In leading article No. 2 he takes up the story:

"In this way a conspiracy of the most infamous sort was devised in 1852 which involved the manufacture of counterfeit paper money on a massive scale (see Vogt for further details), etc."

Now if the reader of the National-Zeitung carries out Zabel's peremptory instructions and sees for further details in Vogt, what does he find? He finds that Cherval was sent by me to Geneva where under my direct orders he set in motion "the most infamous conspiracy involving counterfeit paper money", etc. The reader, referred by Zabel to Vogt, will further find this:

"However, the personal involvement of Marx is quite irrelevant in this context, for, as we have already remarked, it is a matter of complete indifference whether Marx does something himself or has it done by a member of his gang; his control over his people is absolute."

But Zabel could not rest content even with this. At the end of his two leading articles he felt impelled to whisper a final word into the ear of his readers. He says:

"He" (Blind) "declares at the same time that he has never seen Biscamp in the whole of his life. He is obviously not a member of the Marx party in the narrower sense. It appears to us that the latter" (i.e. the Marx party in the narrower sense) "did not find it too difficult to turn him" (Blind) "into a scapegoat.... The Marx party could very easily saddle Blind with the authorship of the pamphlet because ... he had expressed similar views to those contained in it in conversation with Marx and in an article in The Free Press. By making use of Blind's assertions and turns of phrase the pamphlet could be fabricated and made to look as if he" (Blind) "had concocted it."

Hence "the Marx party" or "the Marx party in the narrower sense" alias the Brimstone Gang "fabricated" the pamphlet so that it looked as if Blind had concocted it? Having unfolded this hypothesis Zabel summarised its implications in the following laconic words: "Anybody is now at liberty to regard either Marx or Blind as its author." Thus it is not the Marx party or Blind, and not even Blind or the Marx party in the narrower sense, vulgo Brimstone Gang, but Blind or Marx, Marx sans phrase. Hence the Marx party, the Marx party in the narrower sense, the Brimstone Gang, etc., were merely pantheistic names for Marx, the person Marx. Zabel not only "identifies" Marx with the "party" of the Brimstone Gang, he personifies the Brimstone Gang in Marx. And the selfsame Zabel has the effrontery to assert before a court that, in his leading articles, he did not "identify the plaintiff" Marx with the "activities" of the Brimstone Gang in a "defamatory manner". With his hand on his heart he swears that "least of all" has he "associated" my "person with those people" whom he "accuses of blackmail and denunciation"! What a figure Zabel will cut in the public session of the court, I thought to myself. What a figure indeed! With this consoling exclamation, I turned once more to the document I had received from my lawyer and read it through again, vaguely noticing that it was signed by some such names as Müller and Schultze[ax]. But I soon discovered my error. What I had in my hands was not Zabel's proposed petition, but—a "ruling" handed down by the High Court over the signatures of Guthschmidt and Schultze, a ruling that refused me the right to proceed with my action against Zabel, and, to cap it all, by way of punishing me for my "complaint" it ordered me to pay 25 silver groschen to the Treasury of the Berlin Municipal Court without delay, on pain of distraint. I was indeed attonitus[ay]. However, on carefully reading the "ruling" once more my astonishment faded away.

*Example I*
Zabel prints in the leading article of the "National-Zeitung", No. 37, 1860: "Vogt reports on p. 136 et seq.: Among the refugees of 1849 the term Brimstone Gang, or the name Bristlers, referred to a number of people who, originally scattered throughout Switzerland, France and England, gradually congregated in London, where they revered Herr Marx as their visible leader."	Messrs. Guthschmidt and Schultze read in the leading article of the "National Zeitung", No. 37, 1860: "For when the first article quotes from Vogt's account: 'that the refugees of 1849 gradually congregated in London, where they revered the above mentioned Marx as their visible leader'".

Zabel says: Among the refugees of 1849 the term Brimstone Gang, or the name Bristlers, referred to a number of people, etc., who gradually congregated in London, where they revered myself as their visible leader. Messrs. Guthschmidt and Schultze, however, make Zabel say: The refugees of 1849 gradually congregated in London (which is not even true since a large proportion of the refugees congregated in Paris, New York, Jersey, etc.) where they revered me as their visible leader, an honour which I have not received, nor is it imputed to me by either Zabel or Vogt. Now Messrs. Guthschmidt and Schultze are by no means giving a summary, they quote in inverted commas a sentence nowhere printed by Zabel as if it were quoted by Zabel in his first article "from Vogt's account". Messrs. Guthschmidt and Schultze evidently had before them a secret edition of No. 37 of the National-Zeitung, known neither to me nor the public. This must be the explanation of all these misunderstandings. This secret edition of No. 37 of the National-Zeitung differs from the vulgar edition of the same issue not just by a different formulation of particular sentences. The entire context of the first leading article in the vulgar edition has nothing but a few words in common with its context in the secret edition.

*Example II*
Having appointed me the leader of the Brimstone Gang, Zabel goes on to say in No. 37 of the "National-Zeitung": "These fellows" (the Brimstone Gang) "...continued the work of the Rheinische Zeitung among the re fugees.... One of the chief occupations of the Brimstone Gang was to compromise people at home in Germany in such a way that they were forced to pay money.... The 'proletarians' filled the columns of the reactionary press in Germany with their denunciations ... they became the confederates of the secret police in France and Germany. To fill in the picture" (of the "Brim-stone Gang" or "proletarians") "Vogt publishes a letter by Techow ... in which the principles, the activities, etc., of the 'proletarians' are described, and in which we see how Marx, puffed up with Napoleonic pride in his intellectual superiority, rules the members of the Brimstone Gang with a rod of iron."	After Zabel has appointed me the leader of the refugees of 1849, Messrs. Guthschmidt and Schultze read in No. 37 of the "National-Zeitung": "and when it" (the first article in the National-Zeitung) "goes on to refer to a letter by Techow, 'in which we see how Marx, puffed up with Napoleonic pride in his intellectual superiority, rules the members of the Brimstone Gang with a rod of iron'".

Given that judges have the legal authority to grant or refuse private individuals the right to bring an action, it is clear that Messrs. Guthschmidt and Schultze were not only justified in refusing me the right to sue Zabel, they were obliged to do so. For the context of the leading article in No. 37 of the secret edition of the National-Zeitung, which they reproduce in nuce[az], flatly precludes any corpus delicti. For what in fact does Zabel say in this secret edition? In the first place he confers on me the undeserved honour of causing me to be "revered" as the "visible leader" by the entire community of refugees living in London in 1849. And why should I wish to "bring an action" against him for that? And secondly, he does me the no less undeserved honour of making me "rule with a rod of iron" over a Brimstone Gang without connecting me with that gang in any other way whatever, more or less as I had ruled over Zabel and his companions in 1848-49. And what is there in that to make me "bring an action" against Zabel?

It is obvious what confusions can arise when the law permits officials of the judiciary to "give a ruling" and "rule" in secret on the question of whether or not someone has the right to bring an action against another person, e.g. for libel in the National-Zeitung. The plaintiff sues on the basis of a vulgar edition of No. 37 of the National-Zeitung of which perhaps 10,000 copies are available to the public, and the judge bases his ruling on a secret edition of the same issue produced for him alone. So little care is taken in this procedure to preserve the identity even of the corpus delicti.

By making the right of private individuals to bring an action dependent on a judicial permit in each particular case, Prussian law proceeds from the assumption that the state is a paternal authority which must regulate and act as guardian over the civil existence of its children. But even from the standpoint of Prussian law the "ruling" of the High Court seems strange. The intention of Prussian law is evidently to prevent the bringing of frivolous actions and therefore, if I understand its spirit correctly, and if I am right in assuming that its aim is not the systematic refusal of justice, it gives the judge the right to refuse permission for a case to proceed, but only if the complaint is prima facie[ba] unfounded, if the suit appears frivolous on the face of it. Is that the case in the present instance? The Municipal Court concedes that Zabel's leading articles in fact contain "defamatory" and hence "punishable" statements about me. It only places F. Zabel beyond the reach of my legal vengeance because F. Zabel has "merely quoted" his libels. The High Court declares: defamatory statements are equally punishable by law whether they are quoted or not quoted, but it goes on to deny for its part that Zabel's leading articles contain any defamatory statements about myself whether quoted or unquoted. Thus the Municipal Court and the High Court have not merely divergent, but directly conflicting views of the facts of the case. The one finds defamatory statements about me where the other fails to do so. The contradictory judicial findings about the facts of the case demonstrate clearly that prima facie there are grounds for complaint. If Papinian and Ulpian say: This printed statement is defamatory; and if Mucius Scaevola and Manilius Brutus assert the opposite: This printed statement is not defamatory, what will the nation of quirites[233] think? Why should the people not believe with Ulpian and Papinian that Zabel had in fact published defamatory statements about me in Nos. 37 and 41 of the National-Zeitung? And if I assure the nation of the quirites that Mucius Scaevola and Manilius Brutus have given me a secret certificate stating that Zabel's "defamatory" statements and assertions in no way referred to my person, the nation of the quirites will undoubtedly shrug their shoulders and say: à d'autres.[bb]

Since the High Court is the final court of appeal as far as the facts of a case are concerned, in this case therefore it was the court of last instance that had to decide whether Zabel's two leading articles in fact contained defamatory statements about me and whether the intention to insult was present; and since the High Court denies that the facts of the case provided sufficient grounds for action, a further appeal to the Supreme Tribunal could only relate to the question whether the substantive findings of the High Court were not based on an error in law. In its "ruling" the High Court had established that Zabel had accused the Brimstone Gang of "unprincipled and dishonourable activities", "denunciations and blackmail", the same Brimstone Gang that in the same leading article the same Zabel had expressly described as "the Marx party", or "the Marx party in the narrower sense", with "Marx" as its visible "leader", ruling it with a rod of iron. Was the High Court within its legal rights in not regarding this as an insult to me? My lawyer, Counsellor Weber, comments on the question as follows in his submission to the Supreme Tribunal:

"It is true that it is nowhere stated in so many words" (by Zabel) "that Marx had extorted or forged money, or denounced anybody. But is anything more explicit required than the statement: Marx was the leader of a party which was engaged in the above-mentioned criminal and immoral activities? No sensible and unprejudiced person can deny that the leader of an association whose purpose and chief activities consist in the execution of crimes, not only condones these activities, but initiates and organises them and. enjoys their fruits. And this leader is, unquestionably, doubly responsible, both as participant and as the intellectual inspiration, even if it cannot be proved in any particular instance that he was actually implicated in a specific act of crime. The view expressed in the disputed ruling" (of the High Court) "would imply that a man's good name was utterly at the mercy of anyone who wished to discredit him. Instead of fraudulently asserting that A. had committed murder, a would-be slanderer would need only to say that somewhere or other a gang was engaged in committing murder and that A. was the leader of the gang. The view expressed by the High Court grants this slanderer complete impunity. According to the correct view, however, the same punishment for slander should be imposed on the slanderer irrespective of whether he falsely accuses a man of being a robber or a robber-chief."

From the standpoint of ordinary common sense a libel has undoubtedly been committed. Does it also exist in the view of Prussian law? The High Court says no, my lawyer says yes. If the High Court has ruled, contrary to the Municipal Court, that the form of a quotation should not grant immunity to a libeller, why should not the Supreme Tribunal rule, contrary to the High Court, that the libeller is not protected by the "tapeworm" form? My lawyer appealed to the Supreme Tribunal, hence so to speak to the Areopagus itself, on this legal point, on the argument that there had been an error in law on the part of the High Court in its appraisal of the facts of the case. The Supreme Tribunal "ruled":

"I. Your appeal of August 23 of this year against the ruling on July 11 of this year of the Criminal Senate of the Royal High Court in the action for libel brought by Dr. K. Marx against Dr. Zabel, editor of the National-Zeitung, is hereby dismissed as without foundation after consideration of the relevant documents. II. For the Royal High Court did not find an objective defamation of the plaintiff in the two leading articles of the National-Zeitung in question, nor did it find that there was an intention to insult the plaintiff. It was right, therefore, to refuse permission to proceed with the proposed action for libel. The question whether there is an objective act of defamation, or an intention to insult, essentially pertains to matters of fact and the conclusions regarding them can only be disputed by appeal to the Royal Supreme Tribunal if the decision of the Appeal judge is based on an error in law. III. However, such an error is not evident in the present instance. IV. The costs of this ruling are to be borne by you and for this purpose 25 silver groschen should be deposited with the Treasury of the local Royal Municipal Court within a week.

"Berlin, October 5, 1860

Royal Supreme Tribunal, von Schlickmann

"To Legal Counsellor Weber in Berlin"

For the sake of clarity I have numbered the various sections of the "ruling" of the Supreme Tribunal.

Sub I. Herr von Schlickmann states that the appeal against the High Court has been "dismissed". Sub II. Herr von Schlickmann informs us of the respective spheres of competence of the High Court and the Supreme Tribunal—evidently a didactic digression irrelevant to the matter in hand. Sub IV. Herr Weber is ordered to pay the sum of 25 silver groschen into the Treasury of the Berlin Municipal Court within a week. This is a consequence of the "ruling", but certainly not its reason.

Where then is the "dismissal" of the appeal substantiated? Where is the answer to the very detailed case set out by my lawyer? It is:

Sub III. "However, such an error is not evident in the present instance."

If we strike out the little word not from this sentence sub III, the explanation reads: "However, such an error is evident in the present instance." And this of course would overturn the ruling of the High Court. Thus this ruling is sustained only by the word "not" with which Herr von Schlickmann "dismisses" in the name of the Supreme Tribunal the appeal put forward by Counsellor Weber.

Αντότατος έφη[bc]. Not! Herr von Schlickmann does not refute the legal objections raised by my lawyer; he does not discuss them; he does not even mention them. Of course, Herr von Schlickmann had reasons enough for his "ruling", but he fails to state them. Not! The demonstrative force of this little word lies entirely in the authority of the man who utters it, in the position he holds in the hierarchy. In itself "not" proves nothing. Not! Αντότατος έφη.

Thus the Supreme Tribunal too forbade me to bring an action against "democrat" F. Zabel.

Thus ended my lawsuit with the Prussian courts.

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XI. A Lawsuit

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