Minutes of the Committee Meeting of the Cologne Workers' Association. February 15. 1849

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Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Karl Marx
Written 24 February 1849


First published in the Freiheit, Brüderlichkeit, Arbeit No. 6, February 24, 1849
Printed according to the newspaper
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 8
Collection(s): Freiheit‚ Brüderlichkeit‚ Arbeit
Keywords : Cologne, German Revolution, Labour movement, Minutes

COMMITTEE MEETING, FEBRUARY 15, 1849

The minutes of the previous meeting are read and adopted. Citizen Carstens[1] then proposes that the red flag, previously confiscated, should be recovered from the police authorities along with the 250 copies of Freiligrath poems which are rightful property of the Workers’ Association. The proposal is adopted. At the same time Citizen Schapper proposes that the money transmitted by the Workers’ Association to Citizen Esser, which at his arrest was unlawfully extorted from him to pay transport costs, should be recovered from the person concerned. This proposal too was adopted. Thereupon Citizen Schapper spoke on the current political issues and said, among other things, the following:

Although the elections are now over it is quite impossible to give an exact overall assessment of the strength of the various parties. It is true that the Second Chamber has hardly come up to our expectations but nevertheless it has still turned out fairly well in view of the bribery and threats of the wailers’ party.[2] As for the First Chamber, the whole verminous band of ultra-reactionaries and wailers is represented there, and it is therefore only of use to us insofar as, should it one day come to a clash, we then shall have the most splendid opportunity of removing the most active of the wailers.

The Chamber elected in Saxony has turned out to be very democratic. Already divided, Germany will be split up even further by the intended secession of Schleswig from Holstein,[3] and that through Germany’s impotent narrow-minded Central Authority, which has suffered further disgrace and humiliation over the Austrian question owing to the fathers of the Confederation at Frankfurt, intimidated by Austria’s threats, having declared the separation of Austria from Germany, against which the Austrian Cabinet has now protested.

In Hungary the Magyars have so far done well and would continue to do so were the French Government, quite inconsistendy with its own principle, not to look calmly on as the Russians entered Transylvania to suppress Hungarian freedom. The same applies to Italy where, despite counter-revolutionary activity, the revolution is once more in the ascendant, and where Tuscany, regardless of its pietist Grand Duke,[4] will unite with Rome to form a closer-knit republic.[5]

Citizen Schapper then spoke in detail about Hungary, Italy and also France where Bugeaud, the general of the army in the Alps, has stated that they are called upon to purge France of all its socialist elements, and so on. Then he spoke about Odilon-Barrot and the Chamber, and then about California, the land of gold, where despite the great quantities of gold there is nevertheless a shortage of all essential provisions. After that he spoke about the notorious petition initiated by a group of pietists from the Wupper valley, who demand that an ardent prayer be addressed to heaven each time a session of the Chambers is opened!

After that, on a motion by Engels, the Association decided to appoint a commission which is to contact one of the democratic associations to make the necessary arrangements for a banquet to be held here to celebrate the anniversary of the February revolution in France,[6] and that the commission be com nosed of Citizens Schapper, Röser and Reiff.

The meeting was then closed.

  1. ↑ Friedrich Lessner.— Ed.
  2. ↑ See Note 127.
  3. ↑ See Note 75.
  4. ↑ Leopold II.—Ed.
  5. ↑ After the flight of Grand Duke Leopold 11 on January 31, 1849, and the establishment on February 8 of the radical Government (triumvirate) consisting of Guerazzi, Montagnelli and Mazzini, the movement for a republic and unity with the Roman Republic intensified in Tuscany. The radicals regarded this as the beginning of a democratic achievement of Italian unity. On February 18, 1849, a public meeting in Florence proclaimed the foundation of a Tuscan republic. However, under pressure from the liberals and moderate democrats the Guerazzi Government postponed the formal proclamation of the republic until the convocation of the Tuscan Constituent Assembly. As moderate elements dominated the Assembly, the triumvirate again postponed the establishment of a republic on March 27, 1849. The republic had not yet been officially proclaimed when a counter-revolutionary revolt on April 11, 1849, brought Leopold II back to power. Guerazzi’s policy of yielding to pressure from the moderates also upset the plan for uniting Tuscany with the Roman Republic.
  6. ↑ See this volume, pp. 529-30.— Ed.
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