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Special pages :
Letter to Wilhelm Stieber, about December 29, 1848
Published in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 38
To Wilhelm Stieber in Berlin
This is a draft reply to the letter sent from Berlin on 26 December 1848 by Wilhelm Stieber to the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. fir it Stieber tried to disprove information on his spying activities in Silesia during and after the Silesian weavers’ uprising in 1844 (he went there disguised as an artist, under the name Schmidt), and on his secret mission to Frankfurt am Main in September 1848 in connection with a popular uprising there. This information was given in a report from Frankfurt am Main published in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, No. 177, 24 December. Marx agreed to make a correction as regards Stieber’s visit to Frankfurt (the supplement to No. 182 stated that he went there on private business) but did not disavow the information on his spying in Silesia. Later, in his Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne (end of 1852), exposing Stieber as an organiser of police persecution of the Communist League members and disclosing his attempts to blacken the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, Marx quoted in full Stieber’s letter to the newspaper editors of 26 December 1848. Marx stressed that the reply to Stieber was sent by another editor. It may be assumed that the final version of the letter was signed by Wilhelm Wolff, who was well aware of Stieber’s activities in Silesia.
[Draft] Cologne, about 29 December 1848[edit source]
The editorial department is in receipt of your letter and accepts the correction dated Frankfurt [’stieber’, Neue Rheinische Zeitung, 30 December 1848, supplement]. As to your threat of a libel action, this only reveals your ignorance of the Code pénal, whose paragraph relating to libel does not apply to the report appearing in No. 177.[1] Moreover, to set your mind at rest be it said that this report was sent to us by a Frankfurt Deputy before the Neue Preussische Zeitung divulged the same news. Your earlier activities in Silesia did not seem to us to belie the contents of the said report, although we did, on the other hand, think it strange that you should exchange your more remunerative and honourable post in Berlin for one which, albeit legal, is precarious and equivocal.
As to your protestations regarding your activities in Silesia [Neue Preussische Zeitung, 20 December 1848], we shall endeavour to place material at your disposal, either publicly or in private, as you wish.
On the grounds of their novelty, we shall excuse the lectures on democracy and democratic organs contained in your letter.
- ↑ The Code Pénal was adopted in France in 1810 and introduced into the regions of West and South-West Germany conquered by the French. It remained in force in the Rhine Province even after its incorporation into Prussia in 1815.
The reference is to ‘Livre troisième. Titre II. Chapitre 1. Section VII. 2. Calumnies...’