A LONDON INTERLUDE 91
into Germany. In the scuffle which ensued, his coat was torn and
he was roughly handled by the police, who finally led their un
ruly prisoner back to jail. There they tried to extract a promise
that he would leave quietly, but the terror-stricken and disillu
sioned communist refused to make any commitments. Thereupon
he was tied and shackled, gagged, and thrown into a carriage
headed for Schaffhausen. En route Weitling kicked out the win
dows of the carriage. The party reached its destination about
noon. Later he recalled that it was a market day and asserted that
his rescuers had arrived in Zurich fourteen hours too late. Still
later he modified his account by fixing the interval at eight hours.
Weitling was surrendered to the German police at a little
frontier town in Baden, "seven hours" from Tuttlingen. From
there he was pushed on by the police of Baden, via Stuttgart,
until he could be delivered to the Prussians. Recounting his ex
periences in later years he described how he was passed from one
jail to another; the kind of food he received, in comparison with
conditions in Zurich; the kind treatment he received in Württem¬
berg, and the bad treatment in Bavaria. In Würzburg he watched
the Corpus Christi day procession, and in Erfurt he spent six days
in the jail. After crossing the boundaries of several of the little
German states, he finally was discharged from the custody of
gendarmes and permitted to proceed to Magdeburg.
The police of his native city were not eager to welcome their
new guest, and Weitling claimed that they tampered with his mail,
tried to keep him away from the taverns where workmen as
sembled, and forbade him to visit his mother. Nevertheless, he
saw his mother in Beynedorf, about two and a half hours' walk
from Magdeburg, where she was keeping house for a schoolmaster.
The reunion of mother and son after an interval of at least fourteen
years was dramatically described in the Gerechtigkeit. The
mother, now married and known as Frau Bern, did not recognize
her son immediately; then both were dissolved in tears. Weitling
reported regularly to the police, as was expected of transients, and
was permitted to remain in Magdeburg, on condition that he stay