The 18th of March

German romanticism had degenerated completely in the course of the 1840s. Incapable of creation, it was helpless in the face of the new developing forces of industry and trade. Its last rites were adminstered in the long royal speech with which the King of Prussia greeted the United Landtag in 1847. The increasing dissatisfaction of the educated and trading classes and, much more important, that importunate persuader, a shortage of money, had forced him to unite the Landtage of the eight Provinces together into one body. With that, he was satisfied that he had fulfilled his father’s old promises of a constitution.

The United Landtag was not intended to be a modern parliament but a feudal assembly of the Estates, and that is what it was. The members of the eight provincial Landtage were divided into two houses, a House of Lords which consisted of 72 members of the great aristocracy, and a House of the Three Estates in which the knights had 231 seats, the towns 182 and the peasants 120. The powers of the Landtag were limited to the approval of loans in times of peace and the approval of new or increased taxes, and in addition the consideration of draft new laws, should the Crown condescend to place such proposals before them. In his royal speech the King swore that no power on earth would ever succeed in making him a constitutional monarch; he would absolutely never permit, he said, a written sheet of paper to thrust itself between his Lord God in Heaven and his country like a second Providence, to rule with its paragraphs and to replace the old loyalty with them. He explained ‘the very brief meaning of the very long speech’ not nearly so romantically but much more succinctly and clearly in a confidential letter to his friend Bunsen in the following terms: one would have to be a seven-fold ox (1) to demand a constitution and (2) an even bigger ox to give a constitution if there already was one. The Crown Prince of Prussia, as Heir Apparent, took the same amiable attitude, but more logically. He thought that the United Landtag itself marked the downfall of the old Prussia.

Nevertheless, for all his reactionary narrow-mindedness, he had a healthier instinct than his gifted brother and a healthier instinct than the ideologists of the bourgeoisie, who simply shrugged their shoulders contemptuously at this fulfilment of their old ideals, and in part advised against the acceptance of that kind of constitution. In this they found no ready listeners in their class, who also had their healthy instinct. Round-shouldered and tame as they were, and moreover terrified by the first confused signs of life on the part of the proletariat, they were content both with what the King offered and with the way he offered it. Together with bourgeoisified elements of the nobility who, through their involvement in agrarian-industrial commodity production, had been forced into the sphere of interest of the big bourgeoisie, and with behind them many of the large and middle peasants, who represented the peasant class in this corporation of the Estates, the bourgeoisie formed the liberal opposition in the United Landtag. With his inspired phrase, ‘Money matters are no joke,’ Hansemann simply threw the kindly romanticism of the King’s speech out of the window. The Landtag kept its hands on the purse-strings. It did not simply want to be what they used to call a ’pumping-station’ for bankrupt absolutism and declared itself incompetent to approve the requested loan of some twenty million talers for the construction of the eastern railway until it had secured periodic recall and extended its rights. On this issue the Landtag quarrelled with the King, without particularly worrying about it. They knew he would have to come back to them.

The storm of world history, however, soon burst upon this Prussian idyll. A series of bad harvests and the great trade crisis of 1847 convulsed Europe. All that was rotten in the structure fell apart. The Parisian workers smashed the throne of Louis hilippe and in the metropolis of the world market, Chartism raised its mighty head. For the first time the modern working class appeared in a bourgeois revolution with independent demands. A flesh and blood proletariat sat in the provisional government of the French republic. ‘It was not just a flash of lightning like 1830. This was the storm of forty-eight.’ Thus the German poet, Freiligrath, celebrated the advance of the February revolution over the July revolution. The storm raged through Europe to the very borders of Russia. The uprising of the Western European proletariat was answered by the heroic independence struggles of the oppressed nations, the Irish, the Poles, the Italians and the Hungarians.

In Germany, the first breath of this revolutionary wind from the West swept away a mass of old rubbish. In all the small and medium-sized states the thronelets tottered. Their occupants rushed to find supporting caryatids in the shape of the liberal ministers of March. In the process they were pleasantly surprised to find that it was easier to rule through these fine fellows than through cloth-eared bureaucrats and stiff-necked Junkers. Their joint gaoler, the Federal Diet (Bundestag), already capitulated at the beginning of March and hoisted the Black-Red-Gold flag as the official banner of Germany, the very flag that it had so often execrated and despised, for whose sake it had wiped out hundreds and thousands of men in the prime of their lives. But it only sank the more quickly under the weight of general scorn. On March 5, fifty-one liberals, mainly South Germans, with only four Rhenish Prussians and one Austrian among them, met in Heidelberg and called on men enjoying the confidence of the public from all over Germany to Frankfurt-am-Main to ‘offer the Fatherland and its rulers their collaboration’ for the most rapid possible convocation of a German Parliament.

All this only had political currency in the airy realm of dreams. The real decision lay in Vienna and even more in Berlin. As long as the Austrian Monarchy was immobilized by the national revolutions in its own bosom and by the general squabbles of its various national components, the Prussian state – with all its institutions and traditions, its absolutism and its feudalism, its army and its bureaucracy – was the German revolution’s only serious domestic opponent. In addition, Prussia was the leading state in the German Zollverein (customs union), and however hated the Prussian straitjacket was in Germany, the working class was starting to stir, and the German bourgeoisie had become accustomed to seeing the Zollverein as the means to achieving German unity, something they needed more and more as time went on. Once the French workers cleared away the Citizen King with their fists, the slow but sure methods of the United Landtag became impossible. On the other hand, while a victorious revolution in Prussia offered a much quicker process, it could well sweep away at a stroke all the liberal glory of March in the small and medium-sized states.

For the time being, the Prussia of the Vormärz (the period of reaction between the Congress of Vienna and the revolution of March 1848) had no intention of making even the modest concessions which would have satisfied the bourgeoisie’s demands. It relied on its army and other despotic resources, and the bourgeois class of the capital – a bourgeoisie that was still very young and a petty bourgeoisie that was forward in words but backward in deeds – did not oppose it in any terrifying form. Its first pronouncements in March were dictated less by love of freedom than by fear of the proletariat: a placatory article in the Vossische Zeitung of March 7 urging workers not to be seduced by the revolution in France from the conviction that they were always better off in the lap of capitalism, and a decision by the town councillors on March 9 to do somewhat more for the working classes than they had previously. They proposed to collect money from the more prosperous citizens to fund public works. On the same day, after endlessly long preparations, a municipal labour exchange was opened, at which six to seven thousand unemployed workers immediately registered, without more than a single one of them being referred to a job.

In all other things, the Crown thought the bourgeois opposition could be silenced by granting the United Landtag periodic recall, by convening it for April 27, and by promising in addition to make representations to the Federal Diet in favour of press freedom and to Metternich in favour of German unity. These wonderful promises did indeed arouse the highest enthusiasm of the Berlin philistines, whose newspaper-in-ordinary, the Vossische Zeitung and whose chosen representatives, the town councillors, trembled with ‘happy gratitude’ as ‘friends of prudent progress’ at such marvellous concessions. Naturally the Berlin proletariat was not satisfied with such meagre fare. Under-developed and immature as this class still was, it nevertheless provided the driving force for the great popular meetings that were held at the town gates. These meetings were already demanding not only freedom of the press and of association but also all the other civil liberties, guaranteed work and an Employment Ministry.

The Crown imagined – this was its downfall – that it could make short work of this opposition too. It tolerated the first few popular meetings, but then had them broken up by force of arms, had the masses beaten up and shot on the way home, and generally flooded the streets of the town with the military. The Guard had earlier been harangued in its barracks by the Prince of Prussia, and its fanatical bloodlust grew so quickly that in the end they were cutting down even completely harmless people who ventured onto the streets. This slaughter was repeated on March 13, 14 and 15. At first the bourgeois class watched unmoved, and even closed their doors to the fleeing victims of the soldiers’ fury. But when even ‘the quietest citizens’ were indiscriminately put to the sword, they became rebellious.

The news that, on March 13, the population of Vienna had overthrown Metternich’s system and expelled its chief fell like a spark onto this accumulated fuel. Now at last the government felt the flames burning their own fingers. Their realization was lent wings by a delegation that arrived under the leadership of the Rhenish Oberpräsident from Cologne and indicated fairly bluntly that unless they introduced out immediate reforms, they could reckon on the Rhineland seceding. Two Letters Patent were therefore hurriedly decreed, one of which was dated March 17 and the other March 18. The former promised conditional press freedom, the latter the convening of the United Landtag on April 2 with a general programme that provided for a federal German state under Prussian domination and a constitution for Prussia. Both Letters Patent were signed by the hated ministers of the Vormärz government.

Meanwhile the revolution in Vienna had aroused a feeling of profound shame in the Berlin population. That the ‘city of the Intellect’, adept at rolling out high-sounding phrases like silken cloth, should inferior in political insight and energy to the despised city of fleshpots on the Danube, was too bitter a pill. It was precisely the most peaceful elements, the Civic Guard – which the municipal authorities had set up a few days previously to pacify ‘troublemakers’ – who decided to organize a peaceful mass meeting at midday on March 18 in front of the royal palace, the Schloss, to demand of the King: withdrawal of military forces, the organization of an armed Civil Guard, the grant of unconditional press freedom and rapid convocation of the United Landtag. The fourth of these points was completely conceded in the Letters Patent, and the third point partially. The second point, at least in the opinion of the vast majority of its originators, was in no sense intended to arm the people against the army, but to form a voluntary gendarmerie against the rebels from among the roll of citizens, in order to make it possible to answer the first demand, in importance as well as in its position in the list -the withdrawal of the military. This was the main point of the planned meeting. Fortunately it was the Vormärz despotism itself that exhausted the endless patience of its Vormärz subjects, with the military massacres, with the feeling that they were letting themselves be slaughtered like a herd of sheep at the whim of an oriental despot.

The revolution broke out over these points. At noon on March 18 masses of people filled the square in front of the Schloss. It is true they applauded the announcement of the Letters Patent, but they had been cheated by the pompous phrases of the romantic King and his feudal, bureaucratic ministry too often to be fooled over the decisive point of the whole situation. When, at gates of the Schloss, the Justice Minister, Savigny, argued with the jostling crowd that the King had granted more than had ever been demanded, a worker told him: ‘Old man, you don’t understand, he has given nothing’ – a remark which contains more historic sense than the whole of the Historical School put together. Calls for the withdrawal of the military became louder and louder, despite the King’s attempts to silence them from the balcony, and they swelled to a storm when a squadron of dragoons moved from the Tiltyard, and a company of infantry from the Schloss itself, to clear the square of people. Two shots from the ranks of the infantry then gave the signal for street fighting to commence.

The wearisome debate whether these shots were discharged accidentally, whether the Prince of Prussia did or did not give the order for the army to intervene, and all the rest of it, is completely incidental. It is possible that coincidence played a part in the discharge of the two muskets. It is even possible that the Prince of Prussia, who is generally held to be the instigator of the army’s intervention and earned the suspicion amply enough by his inflammatory speeches to the troops in their barracks, was not weaving his reactionary intrigues at that moment. The mighty collision was inevitable as soon as the withdrawal of the military became a question of practical burning importance on which neither of the two opposing sides could or would give way. If it had not happened under these accidental circumstances it would have happened under other accidental circumstances.

It is equally idle to argue over who won in the thirteen hours of fighting that followed. Victory in war means imposing one’s will on a resisting opponent and we do not see why this simple logic, which is presented to every Prussian schoolboy in the battles of old Blucher and ‘Old Fritz’, should not apply in the struggle between the Crown and the people. On the morning of March 19, the King withdrew the troops from the town, something which he had obstinately refused to do, at the risk of provoking street-fighting, on the afternoon of the 18th. It has been said on countless occasions by right-thinking historians that the order to withdraw the troops was given without any urgent reason and in a manner that has never been explained. But a military leadership whose decisive orders come, God knows why and from God knows who, is beaten not once but thrice. In fact, in the night of March 18-19, 1848, the old Prussia collapsed helplessly under the weight of its sins brought down on its head by the mighty blow of revolution.

The soldiers had been whipped up to the point where they waged the street fighting with great cruelty. Even patriotic veterans of the wars of liberation said that it put the Prussian Army to shame. The youths and men on the barricades on the other hand fought with gay and persistent courage with good-humoured humanity, a fact confirmed by all impartial witnesses and involuntarily conceded here and there in military reports. Despite their entirely inadequate armament, they were able to make things so hot for the 14,000 troops and 36 cannon that they faced that at 5 a.m the military commander ordered his exhausted troops to stop fighting. The fighters on the barricades drew ever-renewed strength from the sympathy of the population. There is no doubt that the spring storm of that March night raised the nucleus of the petty bourgeoisie above the narrow horizon of its usual peaceful outlook.

But the main burden of the fighting rested upon the proletariat. Among the 183 civilian dead who were buried in solemn procession on March 22 there was one young lawyer and two students, one of whom had not even taken part in the fighting but had been murdered by the blood-thirsty soldiers. The mass of the dead consisted of craftsmen, a few of whom were described in the lists as masters, but very many as journeymen, of workmen, mechanics, clerks and apprentices. That the 33 unclaimed corpses belonged exclusively to the working class is obvious. It was on these unknown victims that the reaction later pinned the infamous slander that the fighters of March 18 were foreign agents, rogues and criminals. They failed to prove any of it, and failed, despite all their efforts, to find among the recognised corpses or among the 700 prisoners a single agent, rogue or criminal, or even anyone with a criminal record, although in the Berlin of the Vörmarz even smoking on the street could lead to a criminal indictment. ‘It is frequently claimed that, among the dead, there were several dozen known thieves. There were obviously not going to be state councillors in their number! If that claim really were true, then those men were honoured by such a death.’ Thus Gneist , himself a Geiheimrat, deals with that impudent allegation.

The Prince of Prussia left the city with the troops and fled in disguise to London, after what one can only describe as heroic adventures. The most hated of the former ministers and a mass of waverers from among the top ten thousand also left Berlin. The King entrusted Count Arnim with the formation of a new ministry, a big landowner with occasional liberal tendencies. However, no-one was keen to grasp the trailing reins of government. Boundless confusion reigned in the Schloss and a growing crowd jostled and pushed in its courtyard. From every part of the town, driven by a common instinct, the fighters from the barricades streamed in through the portals. With their victorious weapons in their hands and their faces still glowing from the fight, they bore on their shoulders the biers with the corpses of their fallen brothers, their wounds laid bare, their bloody foreheads adorned by women’s hands with laurel and immortelles. In silence the crowd received them, with quivering lips and flowing tears; the firm tread of the bearers alone echoed in the courtyard, and from time to time the name of one of the fallen was called out loud by the bearers: ‘Father of five small children’; ‘Hit by grapeshot on the barricade at the Köllner Rathaus’; ‘Cut down without mercy after he had surrendered’; ‘Fifteen years old, shot down by my side, my only son’. And then there burst over the Hohenzollern a judgement such as no Stuart and no Capet suffered even on the steps of the scaffold, a judgement whose shattering power has been preserved for ever in Freiligrath’s immortal verses, describing how the King was forced to pay homage to the martyrs of the rising.

So war’s! Die Kugel in der Brust, die Stirne breit gespalten, So habt ihr uns auf schwankem Brett auf zum Altan gehalten! ‘Herunter!’ – und er kam gewankt – gewankt an unser Bette; ‘Hut ab!’ – er zog – er neigte sich! (so sank zur Marionette, Der erst ein Komödiant war!) – bleich stand er und beklommen! Das Heer indes verliess die Stadt, die sterbend wir genommen! Dann ‘Jesus, meine Zuversicht!’, wie ihr’s im Buch konnt lesen; Ein ’Eisen, meine Zuversicht!’ war pässlicher gewesen!

[So it was! Shot through the heart, our heads split open,! you carried us on boards, held us up to the balcony. 'Get down!’ – he staggered down – staggered to our biers; ‘Take off your hat!’ – he did; he bowed! (So did this erstwhile actor sink to a puppet.) Blenching, uneasy he stood there. ‘Jesus, be my faith!’ – so the book says. Iron, be my faith!’ would have been more fitting.]

The silent reproof that the dead in this poem direct at the living has often been levelled at the victorious fighters on the barricades. Why twist the knife of an unforgettable humiliation in his heart instead of smashing the throne with cold-blooded determination? The reproof is as justified or as unjustified as criticizing those who stormed the Bastille for not immediately declaring the republic. In a high-hearted uprising the proletariat had broken a humiliating yoke, in one day’s blood they had washed away the shame of centuries and drawn a historic boundary, back over which no power on earth could return. Certainly it could overthrow the throne for a moment, but it could not enter into a rule for which it was too underdeveloped and immature by far; it could not fulfil a task, the very first basis of which it was barely beginning to lay down. It did not forget the ‘iron be my faith’, for the funeral procession to the Schloss was not only an expiation taken from a guilty prince by popular justice; it was much more placing the crown on the work of March 18 by taking from him his right to approve the arming of the people. The proletariat could do no more than clear the board for the bourgeoisie, the class which, in the conditions of historical development, was now called upon to seize power. The duty of settling accounts with absolutism and feudalism lay on them, as did the duty of deciding whether the bold work of March 18 was to be crowned or betrayed.

They betrayed it, and their bad conscience permitted the graveyard to grow wild where the fallen pioneers were laid to rest. Rust gnawed at the letters and figures on the crosses, and the grass waved over the untended grave-mounds. But then came the day when the awakened class-consciousness of the proletariat grasped the historical significance of the March Revolution and reconsecrated the graveyard on the Friedrichshain. What Marx later said of another March 18 is true of these martyrs: they are enshrined in the great heart of the working class. On March 18, 1871, the Paris Commune, the government of the revolutionary working people of Paris, was proclaimed. It ended, cruelly and bloodily suppressed, on May 28, 1871. Marx commemorated its martyrs with the words: ‘Working-men’s Paris, with its Commune, will be for ever celebrated as the glorious harbinger of a new society. Its martyrs are enshrined in the great heart of the working class. Its exterminators history has already nailed to that eternal pillory from which all the prayers of their priests will not avail to redeem them.’