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Special pages :
The March Association, March 10, 1849
Written by Marx on March 10, 1849;
First published: in Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 243, March 11, 1849
Cologne, March 10. The Frankfurt so-called "March Association" [1] of the Frankfurt so-called "Imperial Assembly" [2] has had the insolence to send us the following lithographed letter:
"The March Association has decided to compile a list of all newspapers which have given us space in their columns and to distribute it to all associations with which we are connected in order that with the assistance of these associations the newspapers indicated will be given preference in being supplied with any relevant announcements.
"In informing you herewith of this list, we believe it is unnecessary to draw your attention to the importance of the paid 'announcements' of a newspaper as a source of income for the whole enterprise.
"Further, the Central March Association has decided to recommend the associations to favour with their support the Teutsches Volksblatt, a democratic-constitutional newspaper appearing in Würzburg, edited by Dr. Eisenmann, in view of the fact that this newspaper is under the threat of succumbing to the competition of anti-democratic newspapers, and the editor has stated that he is not in a position to make further sacrifices over and above those he has already made. Frankfurt, end of February 1849.
The Managing Committee of the Central March Association"
In the enclosed list of newspapers which "have given space in their columns to the March Association" and to which the supporters of the "March Association" should give preference in supplying "relevant announcements", one finds also the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, which, in addition, is given the honour of an asterisk.
We hereby announce to all the left-handed and the extreme left-handed members [3] of this so-called "March Association" of the ci-devant "Imperial Assembly" that the Neue Rheinische Zeitung has never consented to become the organ of a parliamentary party, least of all of a party of the comical Frankfurt imperial club, that our newspaper has never given space in its columns to the so-called "March Association" of this club, and that in general the Neue Rheinische Zeitung has no knowledge of any "March Association". If, therefore, the "March Association" in its lithographed report to those newspapers which have really given it space in their columns designates our newspaper as one of its organs, this is simply calumny against the Neue Rheinische Zeitung and absurd boasting on the part of the "March Association". No doubt the patriotic upright men of the "March Association" will know how to reconcile this with their "conscience".
The reference of the "March Association" to our newspaper becomes still more ill-mannered owing to the "decision" of the Association to recommend the "democratic-constitutional" newspaper (the Germanic periodical: Teutsches Volksblatt) of "Dr. Eisenmann". Who would not be touched by the sad fate of the great "Germanic" primeval martyr Eisenmann! What upright man will not feel it as a blow that "Dr." Eisenmann, who sold his prison reminiscences to the "democratic-constitutional" King of Bavaria for 12,000 guldens, cannot make "further sacrifices" and is under the threat of succumbing to the publishing "competition" of the ordinary newspapers that are not imposed and that are against the "March Association"? We leave it to the patriots to calculate into what deep neglect the Teutsches Volksblatt must have fallen if Eisenmann, the martyr with 12,000 guldens and deputy with a 5-taler salary, has to appeal for public "support". In any case, things must have gone badly, very badly, with the "democratic-constitutional" Eisenmanns if they produce a fictitious begging letter from the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, the only newspaper in Germany which has always attacked the "shameless, mean beggars" from among the patriots and imperial-beggarly assemblies.
To the dirty remark of the profit-greedy competition-goaded patriots about "the importance of the paid announcements of a newspaper as a source of income for the whole enterprise", we, of course, do not reply. The Neue Rheinische Zeitung has always differed from the patriots not only generally but also in that it has never regarded political movements as a territory for swindlers or a source of income.
- ↑ The Central March Association which had branches in different cities of Germany was set up at the end of November 1848 in Frankfurt am Main by the Left-wing deputies to the Frankfurt National Assembly. The leaders of the March associations, which derived their name from the March 1848 revolution in Germany, were petty-bourgeois democrats including Fröbel, Simon and Vogt. These confined themselves to revolutionary phrase-mongering, were both indecisive and inconsistent in the struggle against the counter-revolution and were sharply criticised by Marx and Engels on this account
- ↑ The phrase "Imperial Assembly" refers to the German National Assembly which opened on May 18, 1848 in St. Paul's Church, in the free town of Frankfurt am Main. It was convened to effect the unification of the country and to draw up its Constitution. Among the deputies elected in various German states late in April and early in May were 122 government officials, 95 judges, 81 lawyers, 103 professors, 17 manufacturers and wholesale dealers, 15 physicians and 40 landowners. The liberal deputies, who were in the majority, turned the Assembly into a mere debating club. At the decisive moments of the revolution, the liberal majority in fact condoned the counter-revolution When writing this and other articles on the Frankfurt National Assembly, Marx and Engels made use of the shorthand reports of its sittings which later appeared as a separate publication, Stenographischer Bericht über die Verhandlungen der deutschen constituirenden Nationalversammlung zu Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt am Main, 1848-49.
- ↑ An allusion to the Left wing of the Frankfurt National Assembly which consisted of two factions: the Left (Fröbel, Vogt, Venedey and others) and the extreme Left known as the Radical-Democratic Party (Ruge, Schlöffel, Zitz, Trüzschler, Simon and others). Though the Neue Rheinische Zeitung supported the extreme Left rather than the more moderate groups of democrats, it criticised the former for their vacillations and halfway stand on the basic problems of the German revolution -- abolition of feudal survivals and unification of the country