Liebknecht gives a full accounting of the recent elections and damns Prussian militarism as a distorting drain on the German nation.

‘Letter from Leipzig, XIV’ by Wilhelm Liebknecht from Workingman’s Advocate (Chicago). Vol. 7 Nos. 38. May 27, 1871.

Leipzig, March 26, 1871.

To the Editor of the WORKINGMAN’S ADVOCATE:

When the resolution of the social-democratic congress of Stuttgart concerning the elections to the Reichstag was published, there were several middle-class democrats of undoubted honesty who blamed us for treating Mr. Bismarck’s parliamentary performances as a hollow sham and a comedy to befool the multitude. Universal suffrage, these gentlemen told us, was something to be respected; it was a good weapon even in its present state and it would be foolish not to use the arms furnished to us, simply because they were furnished by an enemy. This reasoning would have been correct, if we were at liberty to use the weapon. I have explained to you already, that we are not. The most conclusive practical proof has been afforded by the last election. Not only have the different governments exercised the greatest pressure in favor of the official¹ or officious candidates, but, not satisfied with this, they have also crippled in every way the actions of the opposition. It would be a vain task for me, in this letter, to give American readers an idea of the numberless means which our governments have of influencing their subjects; I should have to set forth our whole political system, our administrative centralization, the absolute power of those that rule and the abject dependence of those that are ruled. Suffice it to say: the pressure exercised by the authorities was this time far greater than at any former election, and, as if that had not been enough yet, the King-Emperor himself was made an electioneering agent. The official news of the acceptance of the peace by the French Assembly, which was known at the Prussian headquarters early in the morning of the second of March, was kept back for 24 hours, and telegraphed to Germany, with the King-Emperor’s signature, on the following day, which was election day, just in time to produce a most substantial effect. I am sure this clever piece of–statesmanship has caused a few hundred thousand peace-loving burghers to vote for Mr. Bismarck’s men. But much more serious, although perhaps not productive of more immediate effect, was the unscrupulous interference with the liberties of those parties that oppose the existing state of things-chiefly of social democracy.

From all parts of Germany we hear that obstacles of every kind were thrown in the path of all the members of our party: meetings forbidden placards confiscated and the bearers arrested; and in one case the candidate himself sent to prison on the day before the election.² Thus the first whole German Parliament, as our national liberals call it lyingly, was elected. And this is our newest era, which is so much to the taste of your president that, as a citizen loving his country, he ought to introduce the like practices in the United States, together with the other blessings of the same nature appertaining to this our newest era.

And yet, in spite of adverse circumstances and influence, in spite of the systematic persecutions directed against our party we polled here in Saxony alone 42,000 votes, in Berlin above 6,000, in the rest of Prussia about as many, and in the Southeastern States at least 10,000; a total of some sixty thousand, while at the election of 1867 our candidates had only 20,000 votes, and that for a program far less precise and advanced than our present one (the Eisenach program) is. Nor is this all. In the last Reichstag besides our own representatives were sitting four socialists that belonged to either of the two societies which claim to be the continuation of Lassalle’s “Universal German Workingmen’s Society.” but which are in reality the tools of scheming intriguers, one of whom, Mr. Schweitzer, is without any doubt in the pay of Mr. Bismarck.” This time the candidates put forward by those two societies have been defeated everywhere, and the only one who has a chance to be elected by a second poll, is also supported by our party. This signal victory of true democratic socialism will render the election of 1871 forever memorable in the history of the German working classes movement.

In the meantime the glory fever is slowly decreasing, and sober truth is steadily making its way. One of our most rabid national-liberal newspapers, the German Universal Gazette, of Leipzig, brought yesterday the following, in a Berlin correspondence:

“The progress Germany has made in military things since 1866 is really immense. Prussia [h the writer forgets the customary cant, and calls Germany by the right name] had then 18 divisions: today the German Emperor commands more than twice as many, viz., 37 divisions.”

If the writer continues in a fit of mental abstraction, if on other fields similar results had been achieved, the German nation would not only be the most powerful, but also the happiest and freest in this part of the globe. Unfortunately in the inner development of the German Empire there is much to be desired still. I should think so! That our immense progress in military things is the reason why we are not the happiest and freest people of the world, the poor fool of a correspondent seems unable to understand. Still it is a hopeful sign, that even in these quarters doubts begin to arise. Doubt is the father of knowledge. Another instance of returning sense and judgment deserves to be recorded. You recollect the stupid myth of the “Prussian schoolmaster,” that won the “Prussian battles.” Well, the People’s Friend (Volksfreund), at Berlin, organ of the left wing of the nationals liberals published in its last number a long letter from a Prussian Landwehr officer, who, the editor tells us, is a district judge and thoroughly acquainted with the Prussian school system. In this letter it is plainly said, that the French village schools, which the writer had an opportunity to inspect, were far superior to the Prussian village schools, the school buildings as well as the teaching. We must take care, the writer concludes, otherwise the French schoolmaster will beat the German schoolmaster. Very likely! And the more so, since the German schoolmaster is already beaten at home by victorious militarism. Those that have made this war are no friends of the schoolmaster; on the contrary, it is a matter of life and death for them, to oppress and lower him, while, on the other hand, it is a matter of life and death for France, to raise the schoolmaster upon whom her chief hopes rests.

The schoolmaster reminds me of the professor, species of the genus homo, peculiar to Germany.

NOTES

1. No avowedly official candidates have been proposed by our governments, as was done in the French Empire: but the authorities in every district were informed for which candidate they had to interest themselves which essentially amounts to the same, only that it is less sincere.

2. At Munich Mr. Franz, who had a very good chance, of course, destroyed by his arrest.

The Chicago Workingman’s Advocate in 1864 by the Chicago Typographical Union during a strike against the Chicago Times. An essential publication in the history of the U.S. workers’ movement, the Advocate though editor Andrew Cameron became the voice National Labor Union after the Civil War. It’s pages were often the first place the work of Marx, Engels, and the International were printed in English in the U.S. It lasted through 1874 with the demise of the N.L.U.

PDF of issue: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn89077510/1871-05-27/ed-1/seq-2/