Routledge Library Editions karl marx

September Days

This case was the war begun by the Prussian government after the 18th of March against Denmark at the instructions of the German League in the Sleswig-Holstein question.

Holstein was a German district and belonged to the German League. Sleswig was not a member of the League and its Northern section at least was preponderatingly Danish. Both Duchies were connected with Denmark by a joint ruling house, although in Sleswig-Holstein the principle of exclusively male succession prevailed whilst in Denmark, which was very little larger and very little more populated than the two Duchies, both male and female succession were permissible.. Sleswig and Holstein had a joint administration and enjoyed State independence together.

That at least was the formal relation of Denmark to the two Duchies according to international treaties, but in fact up to the verge of the nineteenth century the German spirit was dominant in Copenhagen and the German language was the official language of the kingdom whilst the nobles of Sleswig- Holstein exercised decisive influence in Danish governmental circles. During the Napoleonic wars national antagonisms began to develop. In the Vienna Treaties Denmark had to pay for its loyalty to the heir of the Great French Revolution with the loss of Norway, and in the struggle for existence it was compelled




to annex Sleswig-Holstein because the gradual expiration of the male line of its ruling house imminently threatened the complete separation of the two Duchies from Denmark because in such circumstances they would fall into the possession of a collateral line. Denmark began to emancipate itself as far as possible from German influence, and as it was too small to develop a really national spirit it began to foster a sort ofartificial Scandinavianism with a view to uniting itself with Norway and Sweden in a joint cultural community.

The attempts of the Danish government to obtain complete control over the two Elbian Duchies met with obstinate resistance within the latter and the conflict soon developed into a national question for Germany. Particularly after the formation of the Zollverein Germany began to recognize the importance of the Sleswig-Holstein isthmus for its flourishing trading and maritime relations, and it welcomed the resistance to Danish propaganda in Sleswig-Holstein with increasing approval. From 1844 onwards the song Schleswig-Holstein meerumschlungen became a sort of national anthem.¹ The movement certainly did not go much beyond the usual sleepy and boring tempo of pre-March agitation, but the German governments were not able to free themselves completely from its influence. In 1847 King Christian VIII of Denmark made a decisive move in the game by issuing a Royal Letter declaring the Duchy of Sleswig, and even a part of the Duchy of Holstein, to be integral parts of the Kingdom of Denmark, and then even the Germanic Diet pulled itself together sufficiently to lodge a lame protest instead of declaring itself non-competent as was its custom whenever it was necessary to defend the interests of the German people against princely violence.

The Neue Rheinische Zeitung naturally felt not the least sympathy with the sea-surrounded pot-thumping enthusiasms of the bourgeoisie, which it regarded as the reverse side of Scandinavianism, “ enthusiasm for a brutal, grubby, piratical Old- Nordic nationality which is unable to express its deep-seated aspirations in words, but certainly can in deeds, namely, in brutality towards women, chronic drunkenness, and alternate tear-sodden sentimentality and Berserker fury ”. The situation shifted in the most extraordinary fashion because it was the bourgeois opposition in Denmark which fought under the banner of Soo.ndinavianism, the party of the so-called Eider- Danes, which wanted to make the Duchy of Sleswig Danish, to extend Denmark’s economic activities and to consolidate the Danish State by giving it a modern constitution, whilst on the

¹ “ Sleswig-Holstein sea-surrounded.“




other hand the fight of the two Duchies for their old-established rights developed more and more into a struggle for feudal traditions and dynastic privileges.

In January 1848 Frederick VII came to the throne of Denmark as the last of the male line, and in accordance with the death-bed advice of his father he immediately began to prepare a liberal constitution for Denmark and for the two Duchies. A month later the February revolution in Copenhagen awakened a vigorous people’s movement which brought the Eider-Danes into power, and the latter immediately began to put their programme into execution with relentless energy, aiming at the annexation of the Duchy of Sleswig up to the River Eider. The two Duchies then declared themselves independent of the Danish Royal House, formed a provisional government in Kiel and raised an army of 7,000 men. The aristocracy had the upper hand in the provisional government and instead of mobilizing the resources of the two Duchies, which were quite in a position to pit themselves against Denmark, the government appealed to the Germanic Diet and to the Prussian government for assistance, for it had no cause to fear that either of these bodies would attempt to interfere with the feudal privileges of the aristocracy.

It found willing support from these two bodies which gladly seized on “ the defence of the German cause ” as a convenient opportunity of recovering from the heavy blows dealt by the revolution. After the signal defeat of his Guards Regiments at the hands of the Berlin barricade fighters on the 18 th of March the Prussian King was anxious to re-establish their prestige by a military walk-over, and Denmark, which was militarily weak, seemed to offer the desired opportunity. The King hated the Eider-Danish Party as one of the fruits of the revolution, but at the same time he regarded the Sleswig-Holsteiners as rebels against a God-given authority, and he therefore instructed his generals to perform their “ lackey service for the revolution ” in as dilatory fashion as possible. At the same time he sent a secret envoy to Copenhagen in the person of Major von Wilden- bruch to inform the Danish government that he wished above all that Slcswig-Holstein should retain its ducal rulers and that he was intervening merely in order to forestall the radical and republican elements.

However, Denmark was not deceived by this message and it appealed to the Great Powers for assistance, and both Great Britain and Russia proved very willing to grant it. Their help permitted little Denmark to pummel big Germany like a schoolboy. The Danish men-of-war struck crippling blows at




Germany’s maritime trade, but the German Federal Ar^y under the command of the Prussian general Wrangel invaded the two Duchies and despite miserable generalship pressed back the weak Danish forces only to find its military successes rendered nugatory by the diplomatic intervention of the Great Powers. At the end of May Wrangel received orders from Berlin to withdraw his troops from Jutland, whereupon, on the 9th of June, the National Assembly announced that the cause of the two Duchies was the cause of the German nation and therefore came within the province of the Assembly, which would undertake to defend Germany’s honour.

The war was, in fact, being conducted in the name of the German League, and its leadership should have been in the hands of the National Assembly and the Habsburg prince it had elected Reich’s Regent; but the Prussian government ignored these facts, and on the 28th of August, under English and Russian pressure, it concluded the seven months’ truce of Malmoe, at the same time treating with contempt the conditions put forward by the Reich’s Regent and utterly ignoring his representative. The terms of the truce were ignominious for Germany : the provisional government of Sleswig-Holstein was dissolved and supreme control for the period of the truce placed in the hands of a Danish supporter, the decrees of the provisional government were cancelled and the Sleswig and Holstein troops separated from each other. Germany also suffered a distinct military disadvantage from the truce which embraced the whole of the winter season, during which the Danish fleet would have been helpless and unable to blockade the German coasts whilst the German troops would have been able to take advantage of the ice to cross the Little Belt and conquer Fyen, thus reducing Denmark to the island of Zealand.

The news of the signing of the armistice arrived in the first days of September and burst like a bomb-shell in the Frankfort National Assembly, whose deputies were endlessly discussing “ with the washerwoman loquacity of medireval scholastics ” the “ fundamental rights ” of the future Reich’s Constitution. In their first consternation the deputies actually decided on the 5th of September to inhibit the armistice, and this caused the resignation of the Reich’s Ministry.

This decision was welcomed with lively satisfaction, but without any illusions by the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, which demanded the prosecution of the war against Denmark as a result of historical development quite apart from any treaty rights : “ The Danes are a people unconditionally dependent on Germany commercially, industrially, politically and in




literature. It is a well-known fact that Hamburg is the capital of Denmark and not Copenhagen, and that Denmark derives its literary imports from Germany in the same way as it does its material imports. With the sole exception of Holberg, Danish literature is nothing but a feeble copy of German literature. . . . Germany must take Sleswig with the same justification that France took Flanders, Alsace and Lorraine, and sooner or later will take Belgium. It is the right of civilization against barbarism, of progress against stagnation. . . . The war which we are carrying on in Sleswig-Holstein is a real national war. Who has taken the side of Denmark from the beginning ? The three most counter-revolutionary powers in Europe : Russia, England and the Prussian government. As long as it possibly could the Prussian government waged the war only in appearances. Remember von Wildenbruch’s Note, the willingness with which Prussia evacuated Jutland at the request of England and Russia, and now the conclusion of this armistice. Prussia, England and Russia are the three powers which have most to fear from the German revolution and its firstfruit, German unity : Prussia because it would thereby cease to exist, England because the German market would be lost to its exploitation, and Russia because democracy would advance thereby not only to the Vistula, but to the Dvina and the Dnieper. Prussia, England and Russia have conspired together against Sleswig-Holstein, against Germany and against the revolution. The war which may come about as a result of the Frankfort decisions would be a war of Germany against Prussia, England and Russia. The German revolutionary movement needs such a war to rouse it from its lethargy, a war against the three great powers of the counter-revolution, a war which would finally make Prussia an integral part of Germany, which would make an alliance with Poland an urgent and unavoidable necessity, which would immediately give Italy its freedom and be waged directly against the old counter-revolutionary allies of Germany from 1792 to 1815, a war which would ‘ endanger the Fatherland ’ and save it just because the victory of Germany would depend on the victory of democracy.”

These clear and sharp passages from the Neue Rheinische Zeitung reflected what the revolutionary masses instinctively felt. Thousands of men streamed into Frankfort from a radius of fifty miles around, ready and eager for new revolutionary struggles, but, as the Neue Rheinische Zeitung pointed out, such a struggle would abolish the National Assembly itself, and the latter preferred suicide by cowardice to suicide by heroism. On the 16th of September it gave its approval to the Truce of Malmoe,




whilst, with one or two exceptions, the representatives of its left wing- rejected a demand that it should constitute itself as a revolutionary Convention. The only fighting which took place was a minor barricade engagement in Frankfort itself, and even this was deliberately permitted to grow by the worthy Reich’s Regent in order to give him a pretext for bringing in an overwhelming force of troops from the neighbouring federal garrison of Mayence and overawing the sovereign parliament with its bayonets.

At the same time the Hansemann Ministry in Berlin was overtaken by the miserable fate which the Neue Rheinische Zeitung had prophesied for it. It had strengthened the “ State power” against “ the forces of anarchy ”, thus assisting the old Prussian military, police and bureaucratic State to rise to its feet again after the buffeting it had received on the 18th of March, but it had not even succeeded in furthering the naked profit interests of the bourgeoisie for which it had betrayed the revolution. And above all, as a member of the Berlin Assembly sighed dolefully, “ Despite the breach in the March days the old military system is with us in its entirety again”. This was true, and since the Paris June days it had resumed its menacing sabre- rattling almost automatically. It was an open secret that one of the reasons why the Prussian government had agreed so readily to the truce with Denmark was its desire to recall Wrangel and his troops to the neighbourhood of Berlin in order to prepare a counter-revolutionary coup. On the 7th of September therefore the Berlin Assembly plucked up sufficient courage to demand from the Minister for War that he should issue an order warning all army officers against reactionary activities and calling upon all those officers whose political convictions ran counter to the existing constitutional situation to resign their commissions as a matter of honour.

This demand was really of no very great importance, particularly as similar appeals had in fact already been issued to the members of the bureaucracy without producing any result whatever, but it was more than militarism was prepared to stand from a bourgeois Ministry. The Hansemann Ministry fell and a purely bureaucratic Ministry was formed under General Pfuel, who then calmly issued the order in question to the officers corps as proof to the world that militarism no longer feared the bourgeoisie and was now in a position to mock at it.

In this way the “petulant, super-clever and impotent” Assembly experienced the fulfilment of the prophecy of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung that .one fine morning its left-wing would wake up to find that its parliamentary victory had coincided




with its material defeat. Replying to the hubbub raised by the counter-revolutionary press, which declared that the victory of the left wing had been won under the pressure of the Berlin masses, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung spurned the lame denials of the liberal newspapers and declared frankly: “The right of the democratic masses of the people to exercise a moral influence on the actions of constitutional assemblies by their presence is an old revolutionary right and no period since the English and French revolutions has seen its abandonment. History has to thank this right for almost all the energetic steps taken by such assemblies.” This hint was directed as much to the “parliamentary cretinism ” of the Frankfort Assembly in those.September days of I 848 as to the Berlin Assembly.

2. 
   The Cologne Democracy
   

The September crises in Berlin and Frankfort had strong repercussions in Cologne. The Rhineland represented the biggest anxiety of the counter-revolution and it was flooded with troops recruited from the Eastern provinces. Almost one-third of the Prussian army was quartered in the Rhineland and in Westphalia, and under the circumstances minor insurrections were quite useless. The need of the moment was the carrying out of a thorough and disciplined organization of democracy for the day when it would be possible to turn the half-hearted revolution into a whole one.

A congress of 88 democratic associations had taken place in Frankfort in June, and it had been decided to found a democratic organization. However, it was only in Cologne that this body took on any firm and solid form, whilst in the rest of Germany it remained a very loose affair. The Cologne democracy was organized in three big associations, each of which had several thousand members: the Democratic Association led by Marx and the advocate Schneider, the Workers Association led by Moll and Schapper, and the Association of Employers and Employees led by the young barrister Hermann Becker. When the Frankfort congress decided on Cologne as the centre for the Rhineland and for Westphalia these associations formed a joint central committee which then convened a congress of all the democratic associations in the Rhineland and in Westphalia to take place in the middle of August in Cologne. Forty delegates representing 17 associations came to the congress, and they con




firmed the joint central committee of the three Cologne democratic associations as the district committee for the Rhineland and Westphalia.

Marx was the intellectual leader of this organization as he was of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. He had the gift of leadership to a high degree, and the banal democrats were unwilling to forgive him this. Karl Schurz, who was then a nineteen-year-old student, saw him for the first time at the Cologne congress and afterwards described him from memory: “Marx was thirty years old at the time and already the acknowledged leader of a socialist school of thought. The thick-set man with his broad forehead and dark flashing eyes, his jet-black hair and full beard immediately attracted general attention. He had the reputation of being a very considerable scholar in his own field and, in fact, what he said was weighty, logical and clear, but never in my life have I met a man whose attitude was so hurtfully and intolerably arrogant”’ Schurz, who afterwards became one of the heroes of the bourgeoisie, always particularly remembered the cutting scorn and the contemptuous tone with which Marx invariably used the term “ bourgeois”—as though he were spitting something disagreeable from his tongue.

It was the same tune sung a couple of years later by Lieutenant Techov, who wrote after a conversation with Marx: “Marx impressed me not only by his unusual superiority, but also by his very considerable personality. If his heart were as big as his brain and his love as great as his hate I would go through fire for him, despite the fact that he indicated his low opinion of me on several occasions and finally expressed it quite frankly. He is the first and only one amongst us to whom I would ascribe the quality of leadership, the capacity to master a big situation without losing himself in insignificant details”’ And after that followed the usual litany that the dangerous personal ambition of Marx had eaten away everything else.

In the summer of 1848 Albert Brisbane, the American apostle of Fourier, was in Cologne as the correspondent of The New York Tribune together with its publisher Charles Dana, and his judgment of Marx was different : “I saw Karl Marx the leader of the people’s movement. At that time his star was just in the ascendant. He was a man in the ’thirties with a squat powerful body, a fine face and thick black hair. His features indicated great energy and behind his moderation and reserve one could detect the passionate fire of a daring spirit.” That was true—in those days Marx was leading the Cologne democracy with cool but daring courage.

Although the September crises had caused great excitement




in its ranks, the Frankfort Assembly was unable to summon up sufficient courage to organize a revolution, whilst on the other hand the Pfuel Ministry was not ready to organize a counterrevolution. A local insurrection would have had no chance of success whatever and therefore the authorities were anxious to provoke one in order to drown it in blood with ease. Legal proceedings were begun and police measures taken against the members of the democratic district committee and the editors of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. The pretexts put forward were so flimsy that they were soon abandoned even by the authorities. Marx raised a warning voice against the treacherous cunning of the authorities : at the moment no great question was exercising the people as a whole and urging it into a struggle, and therefore any attempt at a putsch must fail. An insurrection at the moment would be worse than useless because great events might take place in the near future and it behoved the democrats not to let themselves be disarmed before the day of battle arrived. If the Crown dared to organize a counter-revolution then the hour would strike for a new revolution on the part of the people.