Sitting of the Second Chamber in Berlin. April 13

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Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 19 April 1849


MIA-banniĂšre.gif
Source: Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 9, p. 295;
First published: in Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 277, April 20, 1849.
Collection(s): Neue Rheinische Zeitung
Keywords : Germany, Parliament

Cologne, April 19. For a change, let us return once more to our dear Second Chamber in Berlin. It has checked the elections, issued Addresses, produced standing orders, and with quite exceptional interest it has discussed a question which, as is well known, belongs to the feature section of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, i.e. the question of the German Emperor.[1] All this passed quite unnoticed in view of the cannonades at Novara and Pest, and even the “naval battle” at Eckernförde and the storming of the DĂŒppel fortifications[2] made a greater impression than all the speeches from the Right and the Left in the Prussian people’s representative body.

Now, however, when the honourable Chamber is busy with the three gagging laws[3] — the law on posters, the law on associations and the law on the press — when it has already finished dealing with one of them, the law on posters, now the matter more closely concerns us, now it will be more interesting to see how our deputies do their utmost to make up deficiencies in the imposed Constitution.

Let us look at the verbatim report of the 26th sitting on April 13.

First of all Deputy Lisiecki put a question to the Ministry about the use of the Polish army reserve in the war against Denmark.

According to § 61 of the law on the army reserve, [4] it can only be mobilised in the event of unexpected hostile attacks on the country. Its entire organisation is so constituted that in general it is only to be employed when the standing army and reserves are insufficient. But now the army reserve is being mobilised in the war against little Denmark, which can be dealt with by the troops of the line of a single army corps!

That is not all. Although the allegedly German part of Posen could be tricked into joining the German Confederation only through breach of faith and brutal violence, although, according to all the treaties, the part of Posen lying on the other side of the famous demarcation line has nothing to do with the German Confederation, [5] part of the army reserve sent to Schleswig from Posen has been taken from both sides of the demarcation line.

These army reserve men of purely Polish nationality, half of whom do not even belong to the German Confederation, are being sent to Schleswig to let themselves be killed there for the greater glory of Germany as German imperial troops with the German black-red-and-gold imperial cockade on their helmets!

The Croats decided the outcome of the “German war” in Lombardy; the Czechs, Ruthenians [6] and, again, the Croats decided the outcome of the “German” struggle against Vienna; the Poles will decide the outcome of the “German” war in Schleswig. It is with such soldiers that nowadays the “victories of German arms” are being won!

And that is how the King keeps the promise he gave the Poles on April 11 through his plenipotentiary commissioner:

“Accordingly, no recruits born in the Grand Duchy of Posen are to be incorporated in a Silesian or other German regiment and, conversely, no German recruits are to he incorporated in a Polish regiment. The training and commanding of troops are to be in their own language ... all arms of the Polish military service are likewise to form a completely independent entity” etc.

Lisiecki enumerated these various points in a calm, but resolute, tone. In conclusion he drew attention to the special malice shown by recruiting three battalions of the army reserve precisely in the one province which last year had suffered heavily from the civil war imposed on it by Prussia.

Herr Strotha, Minister of War, rose to speak.

The Minister delivered a lecture to the Assembly at some length to the effect that

“the entire Prussian army organisation is based on a combination of troops of the line and the army reserve, and in war this combination in the composition of corps and divisions reaches as far as the composition of brigades”, that the dispatch of “mere troops of the line without the army reserve to a distant theatre of war essentially hinders the organic formation of several troop units and gives rise to many kinds of serious drawbacks when mobilising the remaining units” etc.

All this was very suitable for opening the eyes of the philistines and civil officials in the Chamber to the organisation of “My glorious army”. [7]

It may be so. It is possible that “the troops of the line of My glorious army” cannot manage without “the army reserve of My glorious army”. It may be that the dangerous potato war [8] with Denmark compels the Government to set in motion all the chicanery of the glorious Prussian military organisation. But why is it that precisely the Poles have been made the victims of this fate, which derives from the glorious Prussian military organisation?

Because — well, “because it is justified by the immediate circumstances! ”

That is all we are told. That is how a Prussian Minister of War answers questions.

There still remains the reply to the legal question: should not German troops be used in German imperial wars? On this Herr Strotha stated:

1) “The Grand Duchy of Posen, with the exception of a small part ... belongs to Germany.”

That is the Prussian translation of last year’s phrases to the effect that Posen should become Polish, “with the exception of a small part” of the frontier, which must become German. Things have now gone far enough for the phrases to be dispensed with and the perpetrated swindles to be admitted in blunt words.

2) “The delimitation of military areas in the entire Grand Duchy of Posen has so far undergone no change. Accordingly (!), therefore (!), the three mobilised battens consist to the extent of about half of inhabitants from one side of the demarcation line and one half of inhabitants from the other side of the demarcation line.”

In plain language that means: the whole farce with the demarcation line merely served to incorporate two-thirds of Posen into Germany directly, and the remaining one-third indirectly. And in order that the Poles finally abandon the illusion that this demarcation line has any practical meaning, we have at this very time recruited our imperial troops from those districts through which the demarcation line passes.

3) “In utilising troops of the line drawn from the Grand Duchy of Posen, no other consideration has ever been taken into account than that demanded by state reasons.”

And if the solemn pledges of March and April 1848 in regard to the troops of the line have been trampled under foot, then why should not the same happen in regard to the army reserve? Cannot a Polish army reserve man become as good a “soldier of the imperial troops” as a Polish regular soldier?

We have taken into consideration only “state reasons"!

And what are these “state reasons"?

They are quite obvious. Men capable of bearing arms and trained in the use of arms who live in areas not yet sufficiently merged in the “Prussian fatherland” are to be removed from their homeland. Objectionable primary electors who voted in an un-Prussian way are to be punished. The authorities wish to inculcate in these primary electors a better notion of the duties of a citizen by making them undergo a supplementary course of instruction in the school of “my glorious army”. By this Prussian treatment many a hated elector will be provoked to insubordination and then, with the greatest nonchalance, he can under martial law be awarded 15 years’ confinement in irons and perhaps even gunpowder and lead.

It is for this that the army reserve has been mobilised in Posen and also in part of the Rhine Province and Westphalia. Herr Strotha does not mention the Rhine Province, nevertheless the Clever battalion has already been sent to Schleswig. Or does Herr Strotha want to introduce a demarcation line in the Rhine Province as well and declare: The Rhine Province, “with the exception of a small part”, belongs to Westphalia?

But what has not yet happened can happen. Although up to now the greater part of the Rhine Province has been spared from mobilisation, we are nevertheless aware that, in spite of all official denials, there exists a firm intention to mobilise also the army reserve of the Eighth Corps, i.e. of the Rhine Province. Preparations for this have already been made, and the order will not be long in coming.

Of course, this also is dictated by “state reasons” and is justified by the “immediate circumstances”.

And if the Rhenish deputies put down a parliamentary question, Herr Strotba will reply to them just as he now replies to Herr Lisiecki: the matter “is in fact already settled” since “the Rhenish division is already concentrated at Flensburg"!

After Herr Strotha had concluded his speech, Herr Lisiecki wanted to make a factual correction. But the standing orders forbid factual corrections to replies by Ministers. And the standing orders are quite right. What un-Prussian insolence to imagine that a ministerial reply could be capable of undergoing factual correction!

  1. ↑ The Neue Rheinische Zeitung Nos. 265, 266, 267, 269 and 271 of April 6, 7, 8, 11 and 13, 1849, carried a series of feature articles by Georg Weerth ridiculing the servility of the liberal majority of the Frankfurt National Assembly who wished to unite Germany under the aegis of Prussia and resolved on March 28, 1849 to elect the Prussian King, Frederick William IV, “Emperor of the Germans.” The question of electing the King of Prussia to the throne of the German Empire was discussed in the Frankfurt National Assembly on its completion of the draft for an imperial Constitution which, though it proclaimed some civil liberties and introduced all-German central institutions, nevertheless attributed to the united German state the form of a monarchy. The liberal deputies of the Assembly who held pro-Prussian views were particularly insistent on handing over the imperial crown to the Hohenzollerns. They were opposed by the democratic wing, but pro-Prussian tendencies took the upper hand as a result of a compromise between the moderate democrats and the liberals. On March 27, 1849, the imperial Constitution was passed on second reading. On March 28, the Frankfurt Assembly elected the Prussian King. Frederick William IV “Emperor of the Germans”. Frederick William IV, however, rejected the imperial crown. On the causes of his refusal to accept the crown from the Frankfurt Assembly see Engels’ article “The Comedy with the Imperial Crown”.
  2. ↑ The battle at Novara between Piedmontese and Austrian troops lasted the whole day of March 22 and ended at dawn on March 23, 1849, in the defeat and retreat of the Piedmontese army. The battle for Pest — The battles for Pest were fought from April 6 to 25, 1849. They also continued after the main Austrian forces, beaten by Hungarian revolutionary troops, had been compelled to retreat north-west to the borders of Austria. After Pest was liberated, the Austrian garrison still held out in the fortress of Buda which was besieged by the Hungarians from May 4 to 21, 1849.. The battle at Eckmförde — see Note 211. On April 13, 1849, the so-called German federal troops stormed the Danish fortifications near DĂŒppel (a village in Schleswig)
  3. ↑ Gagging laws” — the name given to the six exceptional laws passed in England in 1819 after “Peterloo” — when participants in a mass meeting for electoral reforms in St. Peter’s Field near Manchester were shot by police and troops; the laws limited the freedom of assembly and the press
  4. ↑ This article written by Engels for the Neue Rheinische Zeitung was not published and has survived as an unfinished manuscript. The article was occasioned by the Prussian Government’s measures to call tip the army reserve. Among the pretexts for this was the war with Denmark resumed in Schleswig-Holstein. The Prussian ruling circles were obviously preparing the armed suppression of the revolutionary-democratic movement in Prussia and the rest of Germany. The army reserve (Landwehr) appeared in Prussia during the struggle against Napoleon. “Landwehr-Ordnung” defining the rules of enrolment, recruitment and service was adopted on November 21, 1815. In the 1840s, those to be enrolled in the army reserve had to he under 40 and go through three-years active service and be not less than two years in reserve. In contrast to the regular army, enlistment to the army reserve took place only in case of extreme necessity (war, or threat of war).
  5. ↑ After the March revolution, an insurrection of the Poles broke out in the Duchy of Posen for liberation from the Prussian yoke. Polish peasants and artisans took an active part in this, along with members of the lesser nobility. The Prussian Government was forced to promise that a reorganising committee would be set up in Posen and that the “reorganisation” would include: formation of a Polish army, appointment of Poles to administrative and other posts, recognition of Polish as an official language, etc. Similar promises were given in the convention of April 11, 1848, signed by the Posen Committee and representatives of the Prussian Government in Jaroslawiec. On April 14, 1848, however, the King of Prussia ordered that the Duchy of Posen be divided into an eastern Polish part and a western “German” part, which was not to be “reorganised” and was to remain formally part of the German Confederation. During the months following the suppression of the uprising by Prussian troops, the demarcation line was pushed further east and the promised “reorganisation” was never carried out. The German Confederation — the ephemeral union of German states founded in 1815 by decision of the Vienna Congress
  6. ↑ Ruthenian — the name given in nineteenth-century West-European ethnographical and historical works to the Ukrainian population of Galicia and the Bukovina, which was separated at the time from the bulk of the Ukrainian people.
  7. ↑ An allusion to the New Year's message of greetings from King Frederick William IV "To My Army" ("An mein Heer") which he signed in Potsdam on January 1, 1849; it was published in the Preußischer Staats-Anzeiger on January 3, 1849. The Neue Rheinische Zeitung used this to expose the counter-revolutionary actions of the Prussian military (see Marx's article "A New Year Greeting").
  8. ↑ Potato war — the name given ironically to the so-called war for the Bavarian succession between Prussia and Saxony, on the one hand, and Austria, on the other, in 1778 and 1779. The military actions consisted mainly of troop movements and of soldiers’ quarrels over potatoes. The war ended with the Peace of Teschen, compelling the Austrian Habsburgs to abandon their claims to Bavarian possessions
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