Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany

Contents

1. Note by the Editor (Eleanor Marx, 1896) 13 min 9

   Eleanor Marx introduces the first book edition (1896). She describes the family’s poverty in Dean Street, Soho, where two of the children died, the Tribune connection through Charles Dana, and Marx’s journalism on Palmerston and Russia, and explains that she has added the article on the Cologne trial in place of the missing twentieth letter. She believed her father wrote the series; it was in fact written by Engels, as the correspondence published in 1913 revealed.

2. I Germany at the Outbreak of the Revolution 24 min 13

   Engels insists that the defeat of 1848 must be explained by social conditions, not by the “betrayal” of leaders, and draws a class map of Germany on the eve of the revolution: a powerful feudal nobility; a bourgeoisie weakened by geography, wars and English competition but growing since the Zollverein and entering opposition from 1840; a numerous, vacillating petty bourgeoisie; a working class mostly of craft journeymen; and a divided peasantry unable to act alone. With no central capital, the conflict was bound to break into scattered local struggles.

3. II The Prussian State 26 min 9

   The rise of the Prussian liberal opposition after 1840: liberal lawyers in the small states, “Young Germany” and the Young Hegelians, the romantic, spendthrift Frederick William IV, the Rhenish Gazette, and the state’s growing deficit. Refused loans by the Provincial Diets and by Rothschild without a guarantee from a “Representation of the People,” the King summoned the United Diet in 1847, which refused the money. Meanwhile socialism and communism spread among the workers after the Silesian weavers’ revolt of 1844, and Germany stood on the eve of revolution.

4. III The Other German States 12 min 4

   The smaller German states: constitutions hollowed out after 1830, a Prussian-led “little Germany” scheme among the liberals later called the Gotha party, religious dissent (German Catholics and Free Congregations) serving as a cover for politics, and the contested ideal of German unity. By the end of 1847 a broad opposition led by the bourgeoisie faced weak, divided and penniless governments.

5. IV Austria 17 min 7

   Metternich’s Austria: a government balancing the feudal landlords against the great financiers, resting on a supranational army and bureaucracy, guilds and the stick, and sealing the empire off from the world through censorship. Industry, railways, the Hungarian Diet and smuggled literature from Leipzig nevertheless spread discontent among all classes. Includes an antisemitic aside about Austrian émigré writers.

6. V The Vienna Insurrection 9 min 5

   The March revolutions of 1848. In Vienna an almost unanimous population overthrew Metternich; the bourgeoisie became the theoretically ruling class, but students and armed workers kept the movement going. Engels states a general law: the alliance of classes that makes a revolution breaks up after victory, which is why revolutions advance a nation so quickly. The Austrian peasants, freed from feudal burdens, were the real gainers and became a force for quiet.

7. VI The Berlin Insurrection 12 min 4

   In Berlin the bourgeoisie, frightened by the workers’ revolution in Paris, allied with the crown on the very barricades. The Camphausen–Hansemann ministry kept the old army and bureaucracy intact. Engels describes the Democratic party of the petty bourgeoisie, the small proletarian party that marched with it while differing on three points, and the bourgeoisie’s betrayal of the peasants, whose feudal burdens were restored.

8. VII The Frankfort National Assembly 12 min 6

   The Frankfurt National Assembly: elected for all Germany but never securing an armed force, it deferred to the old Diet and the governments, elected an Austrian archduke as regent and debated in the clouds. Engels mocks it as the parliament of an imaginary country, while the real decisions fell in Vienna and Berlin; its acceptance of the Malmö armistice destroyed its popularity.

9. VIII Poles, Tschechs, and Germans 11 min 7

   The national questions of the revolution. Engels describes the German eastward expansion as the spread of civilisation, the Jewish trading population of eastern Europe, and the Prussian liberals’ betrayal of the Poles of Posen in April 1848, which rebuilt the Prussian army’s confidence. He predicts, wrongly, the death of Czech nationality. The chapter mixes material analysis with marked prejudice against Slavs and Jews.

10. IX Panslavism—the Schleswig–Holstein War 10 min 6

    Panslavism as a reactionary movement serving Russia; the Slavic Congress of Prague dispersed by Windischgrätz; Viennese volunteers fighting the Italian revolution; and the half-hearted Schleswig–Holstein war against Denmark. The liberal governments revived national hatreds and restored the armies’ confidence, and the armies then turned on the liberals: “I and my army, we are Austria.”

11. X The Paris Rising—the Frankfort Assembly 10 min 4

    The spring defeats of 1848 across Europe and the decisive June battle in Paris, after which counter-revolution everywhere took heart and armies learned they could win street battles. In Germany the Frankfurt rising of September 1848 against the Malmö armistice was crushed by troops summoned by the Assembly’s own government, which thereby lost all popular standing.

12. XI The Vienna Insurrection 15 min 5

    The road to the Vienna October rising. The court fled to Innsbruck and rebuilt its forces among the army and the Slavic deputies; the Viennese bourgeoisie, tired of disorder, attacked unemployed workers in August. When the government ordered troops against Hungary on 6 October, Vienna rose and lynched the war minister; the court fled to Olmütz and gathered 60,000 troops around a city divided by class mistrust.

13. XII The Storming of Vienna—the Betrayal of Vienna 21 min 8

    The storming of Vienna (October–November 1848): an untrained but heroic defence under Messenhauser, the Hungarians’ failure to march in time, and Engels’s argument that revolutionary war demands speed and that “legal” resistance against a lawless enemy is useless. Frankfurt’s response was farcical, its commissioners hoaxed; Robert Blum, who fought, was shot.

14. XIII The Prussian Assembly—the National Assembly 11 min 6

    November 1848 in Prussia: the King replaced the ministry with Brandenburg and Manteuffel, moved the Assembly and sent Wrangel into Berlin, where he met no resistance. The Assembly’s “passive resistance” and tax refusal collapsed. Engels argues that a well-contested defeat is worth as much as a victory, and that whoever gives up a decisive position without a fight deserves to be treated as a traitor. The King imposed a constitution.

15. XIV The Restoration of Order—Diet and Chamber 13 min 6

    Austria dissolved its Diet at Kremsier and imposed a centralist constitution; Prussia dissolved its Chambers. Engels’s notorious passage on the Slavs of Austria as “dying nations” bound to be absorbed by the Germans, with a warning against a Slav “Vendée,” is annotated critically. Frankfurt, insulted by Austria, threw itself at the feet of Prussia.

16. XV The Triumph of Prussia 11 min 5

    The Frankfurt Assembly’s Imperial Constitution and its election of the King of Prussia as Emperor of a Germany without Austria, by 290 votes with 248 abstaining. Engels mocks the democrats’ “parliamentary cretinism”: the belief that history is decided by votes in their own chamber.

17. XVI The Assembly and the Governments 10 min 4

    The King refused the crown; the middle classes and the democratic petty bourgeoisie rallied to the Imperial Constitution as a way to close the revolution; the governments dissolved the chambers that supported it and concentrated troops. With Hungary victorious and France in ferment, an armed collision became unavoidable.

18. XVII Insurrection 11 min 7

    The May 1849 risings in Dresden, the Rhineland, the Palatinate and Baden in defence of the constitution. Engels sets out the rules of “insurrection as an art” — never play with it; once begun, take the offensive; audacity above all — and shows the Frankfurt democrats doing the opposite, holding back risings and shouting down Wilhelm Wolff when he proposed outlawing the Regent.

19. XVIII Petty Traders 12 min 7

    The class composition of the May risings: town workers did the fighting, peasants followed, and the petty bourgeoisie took the lead and ruined the movement through fear of its own power. Dresden’s rising under Bakunin was crushed; in Baden and the Palatinate, where a whole state fell to the insurgents, Brentano’s government sapped the movement and Sigel’s command wasted it, until Mierosławski’s defeat and the fall of Rastatt in July 1849. Engels, who fought in the campaign, writes from experience.

20. XIX The Close of the Insurrection 14 min 4

    The end of the Frankfurt Parliament: the rump fled to Stuttgart, elected a regency and issued paper decrees until Württemberg troops closed it in June 1849. Engels’s verdict: liberal bourgeois rule is “forever impossible in Germany,” and the petty-bourgeois democrats, having proved themselves incapable, can revive only briefly.

21. XX The Late Trial at Cologne 16 min 6

    Marx’s own article on the Cologne Communist Trial of 1852: the Communist League, an organisation preparing for a long struggle rather than a conspiracy, was prosecuted on evidence forged by the Prussian police — a stolen and doctored archive, a fabricated “minute book” — and seven defendants were convicted. Added by Eleanor Marx as the closing chapter.