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Special pages :
The Organ of Manteuffel and Johann — The Rhine Province and the King of Prussia
First published: in Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 156, November 30, 1848.
Cologne. The Neue Preussische Zeitung confirms Manteuffel’s statement which we have already published concerning the Frankfurt Central Authority and Assembly. Manteuffel’s organ says:
“The proclamation of the Imperial Regent may be very well meant. We Prussians, however, must decisively reject it, the people no less than the Crown.”
Manteuffel’s organ has guessed our inmost thoughts.
The same official newspaper instructs us as follows about the validity of the Frankfurt decisions [1]:
We Prussians have no other master than our King. And only what he approves in the Frankfurt decisions, only that will be binding for us, because He” (Prussian style!) “finds it good and for no other reason.”
We “Prussians"!!! In the great haggling over human beings in Vienna, we Rhinelanders had the good fortune to win an “Archduke” of the Lower Rhine, who has not fulfilled the conditions on which he became “Archduke”.[2] A “King of Prussia” exists for us only through the Berlin National Assembly, and since no Berlin National Assembly exists for our “Archduke” of the Lower Rhine, no “King of Prussia” exists for us. We fell to the lot of the Archduke of the Lower Rhine owing to the haggling over nations! As soon as we have got so far that we no longer recognise the selling of human souls, we shall ask the “Archduke of the Lower Rhine” about his “title to ownership”.
- ↑ During the coup d'état in Prussia the Frankfurt National Assembly undertook to settle the conflict between the Prussian National Assembly and the Crown. For this purpose, first Bassermann (one of the liberal leaders) and then Simson and Hergenhahn went to Berlin as imperial commissioners. In mid-November the Frankfurt National Assembly adopted a decision calling on the Central Authority to help, through the imperial commissioners in Berlin, to form a Ministry which would enjoy the confidence of the country, that is a Ministry more acceptable to the Prussian bourgeoisie than the obviously counter-revolutionary Brandenburg-Manteuffel Ministry. However, this decision proved ineffective because the Frankfurt Assembly’s liberal majority openly disapproved of the campaign for refusal to pay taxes as a means of struggle against the coup d'état. The mediation of the imperial commissioners proved to be helpful to the counter-revolutionaries since it diverted the democratic forces in the German states from real support of the Prussian National Assembly in its struggle against the Brandenburg-Manteuffel Ministry.
- ↑ By decision of the Vienna Congress (1814-15) the lands on the left and the right banks of the Rhine were incorporated into Prussia, and among other tides bestowed on the King of Prussia was that of Archduke of the Lower Rhine. In his manifesto of April 5, 1815, issued on the occasion of the incorporation of this territory into Prussia, Frederick William III promised to introduce representative institutions in the Rhine Province and throughout the country