Karl Marx: A Biography

COLOGNE 199

fortnight in a first-class hotel in Hamburg laying plans for further com-

munist activity with Karl von Bruhn and Konrad Schramm, both members

of the Communist League.^84 While Marx was in Hamburg, revolution

broke out in Germany for the last time for many years. The Frankfurt

Assembly had at length drafted a Constitution, but the King was in a

strong enough position to reject it and coined at this time the famous

phrase: against Democrats the only remedy is soldiers. In early May street

fighting broke out in Dresden and lasted for a week with such colourful

figures as Bakunin and the young Richard Wagner behind the barricades.

There were also shortlived revolts in the Ruhr, but it was only in Baden

that there was any extensive insurgency.

The renewed confidence of the authorities led to the expulsion of

Marx. The military authorities in Cologne had already in March applied

to the police for his expulsion. The request had gone so far as Manteuffel,

the Minister of the Interior, but was not immediately implemented as the

civil authorities in Cologne thought it would be unduly provocative to

expel Marx without any particular reason. By May, however, they felt

strong enough to do just that: on his return to Cologne on 9 May Marx

learnt that he was to be expelled; the authorities in Hamburg had already

issued him with a passport valid for Paris only. On the sixteenth he

received the order to leave Prussian soil within twenty-four hours 'because

of his shameful violation of hospitality'.^85 All the other editors of the Neue

Rheinische Zeitung were either expelled or threatened with arrest. The

paper could not continue. The last number appeared on 18 May, printed

in red. On the first page there appeared a poem by Freiligrath of which

the first stanza ran:

No open blow in an open fight,

But with quips and with quirks they arraign me,

By creeping treacherous secret blight

The Western Kalmucks have slain me.

The fatal shaft in the dark did fly;

I was struck by an ambushed knave;

And here in the pride of my strength I lie,

Like the corpse of a rebel brave!^86

Also on the first page was a message to the workers of Cologne from the
editors which warned them against any attempt at a putsch in Cologne
and finished: 'the last word of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung will always and
everywhere be: emancipation of the working class'.^87
Marx himself contributed a defiant article claiming - rather implausibly

• that the paper had always been revolutionary and had made no attempt
  to conceal its views: