Prohibition of the Meeting of the Rhenish Municipal Councils

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Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 2 May 1849


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Source: Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 9, p. 389;
First published: in Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 288, May 3, 1849.
Collection(s): Neue Rheinische Zeitung
Keywords : Germany, Repression

Cologne, May 2. It is with especial satisfaction that we inform our readers that the meeting of the representatives of municipal councils of the Rhine Province convened by the praiseworthy Cologne municipal council has been prohibited by a simple government order.[1] The “good citizens”, who felt so “comfortable” when meetings of democrats were prohibited in September, [2] can now offer thanks to their lords and masters. In September 1848 the democrats’ right of assembly was destroyed at least by the respectable violence of the state of siege; the Cologne municipal council’s right of assembly, on the other hand, has met its end by a kick at a time when the legal basis is in finest flower.

  1. ↑ On May 1, 1849 the Cologne municipal council, which consisted mainly of liberal bourgeois representatives, addressed all other municipal councils in the Rhine Province with a proposal to convene a meeting on May 5, 1849 in connection with the new situation that had arisen in Prussia after the dissolution of the Second Chamber. The Prussian Government banned this meeting (the ban was published in the Kölnische Zeitung No. 104, May 2, 1849). Even so, the Cologne municipal council convoked a congress of delegates from the Rhine cities on May 8, 1849 in Cologne. The Congress came out in favour of the imperial Constitution and demanded the convocation of the dissolved Provincial Diet. It was made clear that, if the Prussian Government ignored the Congress’s resolution, the question of the Rhine Province’s secession from Prussia would be raised. This threat, however, was not supported by decisive action and remained merely an empty declaration, because the liberal majority of the Congress rejected the proposal to arm the people and to resist the authorities by force
  2. ↑ On September 26, 1848 the authorities, frightened by the upsurge of the revolutionary-democratic movement in Cologne, declared a state of siege there “to safeguard the individual and property”. The military commandant’s office issued an order prohibiting all associations pursuing “political and social aims”, banned all meetings, disbanded and disarmed the civic militia, instituted courts martial and suspended publication of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung and a number of other democratic newspapers. A protest campaign compelled the Cologne military authorities to lift the state of siege on October 2. The Neue Rheinische Zeitung resumed publication on October 12
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