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Special pages :
Three State Trials Against the Neue Rheinische Zeitung
First published: in Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 153 (second edition), November 26, 1848.
Cologne, November 24. At this moment three state trials against the Neue Rheinische Zeitung are impending — we do not include the judicial proceedings against Engels, Dronke, Wolff and Marx for alleged “un-newspaper-like” political offences. — We are assured from well-informed sources that at least a dozen more inquisitions have been instituted against the “scurrilous sheet” — the official expression of the ci-devant [former] Public Prosecutor and actual Chief Public Prosecutor Hecker (c'est du Hecker tout pur [it’s genuine Hecker]).[1]
First crime. Violent attack on the maidenly “delicacy” of six royal Prussian police officers and of the king of the Cologne Public Prosecutor’s office, Herr Chief Public Prosecutor Zweiffel[2] — people’s representative in partibus infidelium,[3] who carries out his duties for the time being neither in Berlin nor in Brandenburg, but in Cologne on the Rhine. On the Rhine! on the Rhine! there our vines do grow! [Matthias Claudius, Rheinweinlied] We, too, prefer the Rhine to the Spree and the Disch Hotel to the Mielentz Hotel.[4]
Va pour la délicatesse des gens d'armes! [so much for the delicacy of the police!] As far as the “delicacy” of Herr Zweiffel is concerned, for us it is a “ noli me tangere!” [not to he touched!] We were morally incensed at the indelicate vote of non-confidence by which his electors are said to have caused him to beat a retreat. As true guardians of the maidenly “delicacy” of Herr Zweiffel, we request him to refute publicly the statement of Herr Weinhagen of Cleve. Herr Weinhagen stated in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung over his signature that he could communicate facts injurious to the “honour and delicacy” of Herr Zweiffel. He could even provide proof of these facts, he wrote, but he was compelled to refrain from publishing them as long as Herr Zweiffel could take refuge in the article of the Code pénal, by which every denunciation, even the most well-founded, is prosecuted as calumny unless it can be proved by a judicial verdict or authentic documents. We appeal therefore to the “honour and delicacy” of Herr Zweiffel!
Second crime. The simple Hecker and the dichotomous Hecker.
Third crime. This crime, which took place in 1848, is being prosecuted on the demand of the Imperial Ministry. The crime — Schnapphahnski! A feature article as a criminal! [5]
In its indictment, the Imperial Ministry is said to have described the Neue Rheinische Zeitung as the worst newspaper of the “bad press”. For our part, we declare the imperial authority to be the most comic of all comic authorities.
- ↑ In addition to the proceedings instituted earlier against the editors of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, the Cologne Public Prosecutor Hecker gave instructions, in the autumn of 1848, to bring to court the editor-in-chief Karl Marx and the responsible publisher Hermann Korff, for publishing in their newspaper a number of items which were not to the liking of the authorities, including the proclamation “To the German People” by the republican Friedrich Hecker. Although the examining magistrate declared in October 1848 that there were no serious grounds for prosecution, the Public Prosecutor insisted on his former accusations and even advanced new ones. In his article “Public Prosecutor ‘Hecker’ and the Neue Rheinische Zeitung”, Marx sharply criticised the Cologne Public Prosecutor’s office, using the coincidence of the names of the Public Prosecutor and the republican to call the former either “simple Hecker” (“tout bonnement”) (“C'est du Hecker tout pur” — “it’s genuine Hecker”, as he wrote in French) or “the dichotomous Hecker”. This was the “second crime” of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung.
- ↑ The Neue Rheinische Zeitung was accused by the Cologne authorities of insulting police officers and Public Prosecutor Zweiffel in the summer of 1848, by publishing the article “Arrests” exposing the repressive measures against Gottschalk and Anneke, leaders of the Cologne Workers’ Association. Later this accusation was made at the trial of Marx and Engels.
- ↑ In partibus infidelium — literally: in parts inhabited by unbelievers. The words are added to the tide of Roman Catholic bishops appointed to purely nominal dioceses in non-Christian countries
- ↑ The Disch Hotel was in Cologne; the Mielentz Hotel — a hotel in Berlin where the Prussian National Assembly, driven out of its former premises, held its sitting on November 15, 1848
- ↑ At the end of September 1848, the Imperial Minister of Justice, Kisker, demanded that the Cologne Public Prosecutor should institute legal proceedings against the Neue Rheinische Zeitung editors for publishing a series of feature articles which ridiculed Prince Lichnowski, a reactionary deputy of the Frankfurt National Assembly, under the name of the knight Schnapphahnski. Written by Georg Weerth, the feature articles “Leben und Taten des berühmten Ritters Schnapphahnski” were published unsigned in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in August, September and December 1848 and in January 1849