Karl Marx: A biography by David McLellan

BRUSSELS H^5

meeting agreed to disagree and Moll continued his trip to other German

towns but with little success.

Meanwhile pressure on the Neue Rheinische Zeitung mounted. Marx's

paper - and Marx himself - came in for attention from the military as

well as the civil authorities. On 2 March two NCOs called on Marx in

his home to ask for the name of the author of an article reporting on the

conviction of an officer for the illicit sale of army material. Marx described

the encounter in a subsequent letter of complaint to the Cologne

Commandant:

I answered the gendemen (1) that the article had nothing to do with

me as it was an insertion in the non-editorial part of the paper; (2) that

they could be provided with free space for a counterstatement; (3)

that it was open to them to seek satisfaction in the courts. When the

gentlemen pointed out that the whole of the Eighth Company felt itself

slandered by the article, then I replied that only the signatures of the

whole of the Eighth Company could convince me of the correctness of

this statement which was, in any case, irrelevant. The NCOs then told

me that if I did not name 'the man', if I did not 'hand him over', they

could 'no longer hold their people back', and it would 'turn out badly'.

I answered that the gentlemen's threats and intimidation would achieve

absolutely nothing with me. They then left, muttering under their

breath.^76

Engels, in a much later letter, made it plain that it was not only Marx's

bitter irony that made the soldiers leave so fast: 'Marx received them

wearing a dressing gown in whose pocket he had placed an unloaded

pistol with the handle showing. The sight of this was enough to make

the NCOs stop asking for any further explanation. In spite of the sabre

bayonets with which they were armed, they lost their self-possession and

departed.'^77 Engels also recounted later that many wondered

how we were able to conduct our business so unhampered in a Prussian

fortress of the first rank in face of a garrison of 8000 men and right

opposite the main guard post; but the eight bayonets and the 250 sharp

cartridges in the editorial room and the red Jacobin hats of the typeset-

ters made our building also look like a fortress to the officers and one

that could not be taken by any mere surprise attack.^78

But the days of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung were evidently numbered.
One month before the end Marx took the most dramatic step of his year
in Cologne: he broke the ties with the Democrats that he had, till then,
been so eager to foster. On 15 April the Neue Rheinische Zeitung carried
the brief announcement, signed by Marx, Schapper, Anneke, Becker and
Wolff: