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Marx and Engels in Neue Rheinische Zeitung November 1848

The Organ of Manteuffel and Johann — The Rhine Province and the King of Prussia


Source: MECW Volume 8, p. 96;
Written: on November 29, 1848;
First published: in Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 156, November 30, 1848.


Cologne. The Neue Preussische Zeitung confirms Manteuffel’s statement which we have already published concerning the Frankfurt Central Authority and Assembly. Manteuffel’s organ says:

The proclamation of the Imperial Regent may be very well meant. We Prussians, however, must decisively reject it, the people no less than the Crown.”

Manteuffel’s organ has guessed our inmost thoughts.

The same official newspaper instructs us as follows about the validity of the Frankfurt decisions [114]:

We Prussians have no other master than our King. And only what he approves in the Frankfurt decisions, only that will be binding for us, because He” (Prussian style!) “finds it good and for no other reason.

We “Prussians"!!! In the great haggling over human beings in Vienna, we Rhinelanders had the good fortune to win an “Archduke” of the Lower Rhine, who has not fulfilled the conditions on which he became “Archduke”.[115] A “King of Prussia” exists for us only through the Berlin National Assembly, and since no Berlin National Assembly exists for our “Archduke” of the Lower Rhine, no “King of Prussia” exists for us. We fell to the lot of the Archduke of the Lower Rhine owing to the haggling over nations! As soon as we have got so far that we no longer recognise the selling of human souls, we shall ask the “Archduke of the Lower Rhine” about his “title to ownership”.