After the failed rising in early May, 1849 Prussian authorities shut down ‘Neue Rheinische Zeitung,’ ordered Marx deported, and began arrest proceedings against Engels for participation in the Elberfeld fighting. In response, Marx wrote this final, blistering editorial for an issue printed entirely in red ink. Translated by Ernest Untermann, it was addressed to the situation of Russia’s defeated Revolution of 1905.

‘To the Working People of Cologne’ (1849) by Karl Marx from The Worker (New York). Vol. 16 No. 25. September 22, 1906.

COLOGNE, May 18, 1849. Some time ago a request from Berlin to the authorities of Cologne asked for another proclamation of martial law. The intention was to remove the ‘Neue Rheinische Zeitung’ by court martial. But it met with unexpected obstacles. Later the royal government addressed the judiciary of this city, in order to accomplish the same purpose by arbitrary arrests. This plan was wrecked by the Judicial scruples of the judges, just as it had been wrecked twice before by the sound common sense of the Rheinish juries. Nothing remained but to resort to a police trick, and this has succeeded for the present. The ‘Neue Rheinische Zeitung’ will suspend publication for the moment. On May 16 its chief editor, Karl Marx, received a copy of the following government screed:

“In its latest articles, the ‘Neue Rheinische Zeitung’ has become more and more pronounced in its efforts to incite the people to a contempt of the government, to an overthrow of present society by force, and to an inauguration of the social republic. For this reason the hospitality extended to Its chief editor, Dr. Karl Marx, which he has so shamefully misused, is withdrawn, and since he has not obtained any permission to remain any longer in these states, he is ordered to leave them within twenty-four hours. If he should refuse to obey this order voluntarily, be is to be taken to the frontier by force.

THE ROYAL GOVERNMENT, “Signed: MOLLER.

“COLOGNE, May 11, 1849. “To the Royal Superintendent of Police, City.”

Why these silly phrases, these official lies?

The latest articles of the ‘Neue Rheinische Zeitung’ are not different in their language and tendency from the first “samples” of this paper. In the first issue we said, among other things:

“The project of Mr. Hüser, in Mayence, is but a part of the general plan of the Berlin reaction, which endeavors…to deliver us helpless into the hands of the army.”

Well, gentlemen, and what do you say now?

As for our tendency, was that unknown to the government? Did we not declare before the juries that “it is now the duty of the press to undermine all the foundations of the existing order?” So far as the government of the Hohenzollerns is particular concerned, we refer you to our issue of October 19, 1848, in which we said:

“The king is consistent. He would always have been consistent, if the March days had not unhappily shoved that fatal piece of paper between His Majesty and the people. His Majesty now seems once more, as he did before the March days, to believe in the “iron feet of the Russian people, but the people of Vienna may be the wizard who will transform the iron into clay.”

Isn’t that plain, gentlemen?

As for the “social republic”, have we proclaimed that only in our latest issues? Didn’t we proclaim it in frank and unmistakable words for all those slow-witted people, who might be unable to see the “red” thread winding its way thru our entire mode of conceiving and judging of the movement In Europe?

In our issue of November 7 we said: “If the counter-revolution should live in all Europe thru armed force, it would die in all Europe thru money. The fate that would follow upon its victory would be–the bankruptcy of Europe, the bankruptcy of the nations. The points of the bayonets are splintered like tinder by the economic points. But the development of things will not wait for the date on which these bills are due, which the European states have drawn upon the new European society. In Paris, the crushing blow of the June revolution will be delivered. The victory of the red republic in Paris will be the tocsin which will start the armies in the interiors of the various countries across their frontiers, and the actual strength of the various parties will be clearly revealed. Then we shall remember June. October, and it will be our turn to exclaim: Woe to the Vanquished! The useless butcheries since the days of June and October, the tedious sacrifices since February and March, the cannibalism of the counter-revolution itself, will convince the nations that there is but one way to shorten the last murderous convulsions of the old society and the bloody birth pangs of the new, only one way to simplify and concentrate them–revolutionary terrorism.”

Isn’t that plain and to the point. gentlemen?

We have considered it superfluous from the very beginning to conceal our view. In a controversy with judiciary of this city, we shouted into your ears:

“The real opposition of the ‘Neue Rheinische Zeitung’ will begin with the Tricolor and the Republic!”

We were then talking to the judiciary. And we summed up the old rear 1848 In our issue of December 31 with these words:

“The history of the Prussian bourgeoisie, and of the German bourgeoisie from March to December in general, proves that a purely bourgeois revolution and the establishment of a bourgeois supremacy under the form of a constitutional monarchy are impossible, that only an absolutist feudal counter-revolution is possible, or the republic of the social revolution.”

Was it only in our last issues, that we came forth unmistakably with our Social-revolutionary tendencies? Didn’t you read our editorial on the June revolution, and was not the soul of the June revolution the soul of our paper?

Why, then, do you resort to hypocritical phrases and seek an impossible pretext?

We are inconsiderate; we ask no consideration from you. When our turn shall come, we shall not idealize our terrorism. But the royalist terrorists, the terrorists by the grace of God and Law, are brutal, contemptible, indecent in practise, two-faced, cowardly, sneaking in theory, and equally dishonorable in both respects.

This screed of the Prussian government is silly enough to speak of a hospitality which the chief editor of the ‘Neue Rheinische Zeitung’, Karl Marx, is supposed to have “shamefully misused”.

It is true that the hospitality, which the insolent intruders, the Prussians, have forced upon us Rhinelanders, has been “shamefully misused” by the ‘Neue Rheinische Zeitung’. We hope to have earned the gratitude of the Rhinelanders by so doing. We have vindicated the revolutionary honor of our domestic soil. Henceforth only the ‘Neue Preussische Zeitung’ will enjoy full citizenship in the Rhine province. In taking leave, we remind our readers of our issue of January 1:

“A revolutionary uprising of the French working class, a world war that is the forecast for the year 1849. Already there is an army of revolutionists, composed of fighters of all nations, standing in the East and facing the combined old Europe represented by the Russian army. Already the “red republic” is sending its threats. from Paris!”

In conclusion, we warn you not to start any violence in Cologne. In view of the military situation in Cologne, you would be helpless and lost. You have seen in Elberfeld, that the bourgeoisie sent the working people to the firing line and then deserted them in the most disreputable manner. Martial law in Cologne would demoralize the entire Rhine province, and martial law would be the necessary outcome of any violence on your part at this time. It is your silence that will drive the Prussians to despair.

The editors of the ‘Neue Rheinische Zeitung’, in taking their departure, thank you for the sympathy you have shown to them. Their last word will always and everywhere be: The Emancipation of the Working Class!

THE EDITORS OF THE ‘NEUE RHEINISCHE ZEITUNG’

The Worker, and its predecessor The People, emerged from the 1899 split in the Socialist Labor Party of America led by Henry Slobodin and Morris Hillquit, who published their own edition of the SLP’s paper in Springfield, Massachusetts. Their ‘The People’ had the same banner, format, and numbering as their rival De Leon’s. The new group emerged as the Social Democratic Party and with a Chicago group of the same name these two Social Democratic Parties would become the Socialist Party of America at a 1901 conference. That same year the paper’s name was changed from The People to The Worker with publishing moved to New York City. The Worker continued as a weekly until December 1908 when it was folded into the socialist daily, The New York Call.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/the-people-the-worker/060922-worker-v16n25.pdf