¹ A circular from the Prussian Ministry of the Interior, dated 29 July 1893 and signed by Botho Eulenburg, even envisaged a part for the bourgeoisie in the struggle against the SPD: in requestinga sharpening of methods employed by local authorities against the Party, it invited a closer collaboration between the state and the middle-classes.

Staatsarchiv Bremen, 3 – S 30, Nr 27, Verhalten von Polizeibehorden gegen sozialdemokratische Agitatoren.

² Reports carried in the Militärisches Wochenblatt, widely regarded as the voice of the Prussian Ministry of War, early in 1893, suggested that lieutenants in the army should be employed as secondary school teachers, since their qualifications included a well-developed sense of loyalty to the system (Pflichttreue). SPD papers were quick to point out that such a proposal brought Wilhelmine Germany back to the days of Frederick the Great, when the education of the young and military training were very closely associated. The struggle was carried out at higher levels too: the library of the University of Munich was forbidden to subscribe to the SPD central party newspaper, the Vorwärts.

³ See for example, Hohn, Reinhard, Die Armee ah Erziehungsschule der Nation (Bad Harzburg, 1963). Stiff penalties were enforced against Social–Democrats who attempted to spread socialist propaganda amongst the army or influence new recruits. This partly explains the vigour with which the SPD tended to hit back with its endless chronicles of ‘Soldatenmisshandlungen’, of cases of ill-treatment in the army.Google Scholar

⁴ Quoted in Heidenheimer, Arnold J., The Governments of Germany (London, 1965), p. 137.Google Scholar

⁵ Fremdenblatt, 31 December 1897.

⁶ For a closer analysis of the operation of this single law, see my ‘The Kaiser, the Wilhelmine State and Majestatsbeleidigung’ in German Life & Letters (Jan. 1974). Heinrich Mann, in the second part of his trilogy entitled ‘Das Kaiserreich’, Der Untertan (1918), describes in ch. 4 a typical case of lese-majeste and provides elsewhere, in the figures of Herr Assessor Dr Jadassohn and Landgerichtsrat Fritzsche, an all-too-realistic character portrayal of Wilhelmine legal officialdom.

⁷ For a commentary on the penal code see, Olshausen, Justus, Kommentar zum Strafgesetzbuch fur das Deutsche Reich, 8. Auflage (Berlin, 1909).Google Scholar

⁸ Fraenkel, Ernst, in Zur Soziologie der Klassenjustiz (Darmstadt 1968), p. 11,Google Scholar makes the point that whereas judges in England were drawn from the ranks of outstanding defence lawyers, in Germany they emerged almost exclusively from energetic prosecuting counsel. Since a high degree of financial independence and apparently limidess patience during the long period of training and pupillage were required of aspirant members of the judiciary, there was every reason to suppose that the whole chain of command remained firmly ‘kaisertreu’. For a fuller analysis of the implications for the social structure of the judiciary, see esp. Eckart Kehr's essay, ‘Zur Genesis der preussischen Biirokratie’, in Kehr, , Der Primat der Innenpolitik (ed. Wehler, H.-U., 2nd edn, Berlin, 1970), pp. 48 ff.CrossRefGoogle ScholarKehr, , op. cit., pp. 56 ff.Google Scholar on the role of the Prussian Reserve Army officer, describes the deliberate exclusion by the Prussian Minister of the Interior Puttkamer (1881–8) of all non-conservative legal students from entry into the service. The effect was such as to make Puttkamer's influence, in Kehr's view, second only to that of Bismarck in shaping the internal structure of German society. Judges appointed in the Wilhelmine period were nearly all products of this ‘new course’ of administrative policy in the 1880s. Further observations on the social and financial considerations affecting the composition of the judiciary may be found in Hannover, Heinrich and Hannover-Druck, Elisabeth, Politische Justiz 1918–1933 (Frankfurt/Main 1966), pp. 24 ff.Google Scholar For an illuminating eye-witness account of the processes under which the law was regularly manipulated in the interests of the state, see the recollections of a German lawyer, Grimm, Friedrich, Politische Justiz, die Krankheit unserer Zeit (Bonn 1953), pp. 16–23.Google Scholar

⁹ Staatsarchiv Hamburg, Senat Cl. 1 Lit. T. No. 7 vol. 6 Fasc. 11b Inv. 9. See also, Frohme, Karl, Politische Polizei und Justiz im monarchischen Deutschland (Hamburg 1926), p. 73.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Caprivi's memorandum is quoted by Fricke, Dieter, Der Essener Meineidsprozess von 1895–ein Beispiel preussischer Klassenjustiz (Geschichte in der Schule 1957, Heft 4), p. 184.Google Scholar The complete text of von Schelling's circular is in Lipinski, Richard, Die Sozialdemokratie von ihren Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart Bd. 11 (Berlin 1928), 136 ff.Google ScholarHuber, Ernst Rudolf, Nationalstaat und Verfassungsstaat, Studien zur Geschichte der modernen Staatsidee (Stuttgart 1965), p. 150, makes the point that the police tended to view the courts as their executive arm, ratifying and giving official approval to their various actions.Google Scholar

¹¹ See Olshausen, , op. cit., pp. 588–621.Google Scholar

¹² Berliner Volkszeitung, 7 Aug. 1892.

¹³ Hamburger Echo, 6 Aug. 1892.

¹⁴ Frohme, , op. cit., p. 129.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Echo, 28 Feb. 1892. Staatsarchiv Hamburg S. 1365 Bd. 28 Teil 8. Romen was himself responsible for authorizing at least one search of the editorial offices of the Echo, following an article which appeared in the paper in January 1893, HH. StA. S. 1365 Bd. 1.

¹⁶ Hamburger Volksblatt, 17 Aug. 1892.

¹⁷ Echo, 15 July 1892. Frohme, , op. cit., p. 131, claims responsibility for writing the editorial.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Echo, 19 July 1892.

¹⁹ Frohme, ibid., Echo, 29 July 1892, Hamburger Volksblatt, 17 Aug. 1892.

²⁰ These articles continued daily well into August and were described by establishment papers, such as the Volksblatt, as ‘wütende Hetzartikel’.

²¹ SPD Protokpll 1891, p. 47, SPD Protokpll 1893, p. 109. Bebel referred to SPD editorial offices as the universities of the coming generation of party activists. Quoted in Stampfer, Friedrich, Erfahrungen und Erkenntnisse (Cologne, 1957), p. 27.Google Scholar

²² The anarchist paper Der Sozialist reported in its edition for 20 August that as a result of its propaganda campaign arising from the Romen affair, the circulation of the Echo had substantially increased.

²³ Frohme, , op. cit., p. 132.Google Scholar

²⁴ HH. StA. S. 1365 Bd. 1, Meineids-Prozesse 1889–1903. The quarterly police report dated 9 Oct. 1892 and prepared by Chief Inspector Rosalowsky, includes a separate accompanying report on the Romen affair. This speaks of a ‘kindling of party fanaticism’ by the SPD press and records that all the remaining copies of five further editions of the paper were confiscated.

Senat CI. VII Lit. Me No. 12 vol. 18 Fasc. 7 Inv. 5c Anlage 7.

²⁵ HH. StA. S. 1365 Bd. 1.

²⁶ Ibid.

²⁷ Echo, 7 Aug. 1892.

²⁸ Hamburger Volksblatt, 17 Aug. 1892.

²⁹ Hamburger Fremdenblatt, 10 Aug. 1892.

³⁰ Die Nation, No. 45, 6 Aug. 1892.

³¹ Freisinnige Zeitung, 7 Aug. 1892.

³² Norddeutsche Volkszeitung, 7 Aug. 1892.

³³ HH. StA. S. 1365 Bd. 1.

³⁴ Women were forbidden to enrol as members of the SPD.

³⁵ There are frequent references to the seriously overcrowded conditions in the meeting-halls. According to police reports which, for obvious reasons, often tended to underplay the extent of SPD influence, all the halls were packed out. At one of them, 3,000 people were present and between 300 and 400 had to be excluded. Outside another hall, 200 people were waiting on the street and struggling for admittance. Total attendances were estimated by the police at between 15,000 and 20,000, by the Vorwärts, 11 August, at 20,000 and by the Echo itself, 11 August, at 30,000. Similar meetings called to discuss the Romen controversy were held at Bergedorf on 13 August, attracting an audience of 600, and at Geesthacht on 28 August.

HH. StA S. 1365 Bd. 1.

³⁶ One further example of the kind of grass-roots action initiated by a local paper and resulting in popular protest meetings, was the action taken by the SPD and its local paper, the Bürgerzeitung, in Bremen in 1910, when a number of teachers were dismissed because of their political views. See Moring, Karl-Ernst, Die sozialdemokratische Partei in Bremen 1890–1914 (Diss. Hamburg 1968), p. 120 ff.Google Scholar

³⁷ HH. StA. Senat, Cl. VII Lit. Me No. 12 vol. 18 Fasc. 7 Inv. 5c, Rosalowsky's quarterly report dated 2 Oct. 1892.

³⁸ Ibid.

³⁹ This attempt to ‘buy’ the acquiescence of the SPD, although only a single example of cooperation at the local level at a time of human misfortune, was not without its consequences for the future. It increasingly became apparent to the most perceptive members of the Kaiser's governments, especially to Berlepsch in the early 1890s, that the power of the SPD might be tamed by appropriate ‘concessions’ and a policy of paternalistic welfare: from these insights was born Posadowsky's policy of social reforms in the early 1900s, which had but a limited success, if only because of the timidity of its conception.

⁴⁰ Munchener Allgemeine Zeitung, 12 Aug. 1892.

⁴¹ Kölnische Volkszeitung, 12 Aug. 1892.

⁴² Der Socialist, 20 Aug. 1892.

⁴³ Kreuzzeitung, 12 Aug. 1892.

⁴⁴ HH. StA. Senat, Cl. VII Lit. Me No. 12 vol. 18 Fasc. 7 Inv 5e.

⁴⁵ Echo, 10 Aug. 1892.

⁴⁶ Echo, 13 Oct. 1892.

⁴⁷ Echo, 20 June 1893.

⁴⁸ Vorwärts, 4 May 1893, Echo, 5 May 1893.

⁴⁹ Published in Hamburger Fremdenblatt, 19 June 1893.

⁵⁰ Frohme, , op. cit., p. 135.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Berliner Tageblatt, 3 Dec. 1893, Hamburger Fremdenblatt, 18 Dec. 1893.

⁵² The Echo published several articles at the time of the Eulenburg trials referring to the Romen affair, remarking cynically that none of the establishment press had printed a word about the possibility of perjury by Count Eulenburg himself. See for instance Echo, 1 July 1908.

⁵³ Echo, 30 Sept. 1904.

⁵⁴ Echo, 30 Apr. 1907. The Hamburger Fremdenblatt, 23 Nov. 1907, passed unfavourable comment on the highly considerate treatment being accorded to Leopold Romen by the authorities, and the Vorwärts, 21 Nov. 1907, wondered why, four years after conviction, he had still not commenced his sentence.

⁵⁵ Amongst Romen's suggested remedies against subversion were an extension of the existing blasphemy laws with stiffer penalties, and the reintroduction of corporal punishment on the basis of ‘he who behaves like a beast, must be punished like one’. The Vorwärts, 4 Oct. 1912, had no doubt that Romen's successful career owed much to his sustained ‘hate campaigns’ against the SPD. In 1906, for example, he was appointed a Wirklicher Geheimer Kriegsrat (a rare title corresponding to a privy councillorship) and awarded the Order of the Imperial Crown Third Class, in 1913 he was bestowed with the Order of the Red Eagle Second Class with oak leaves, and in 1915, as a major in the reserves, he was awarded the Iron Cross First Class. On various occasions he was reported as considering the offers of a parliamentary constituency. In June 1910 he resigned from the legal service because of ill health, but he later collaborated in editing a handbook of military law, Romen, A. and Risson, C., Militärstrafgesetzbuch für das Deutsche Reich (Berlin 1912).Google Scholar

⁵⁶ As Kitchen, Martin, The German Officer Corps 1890–1914 (O.U.P. 1968), p. 153, points out, state prosecutors were always prepared to co-operate with the War Ministry in prosecuting Social-Democrats who had tried to influence soldiers.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Leipziger Volkszeitung, 12 Mar. 1910, HH. StA. S. 1365 Bd. 27 Teil 2, Meineids-Prozesse 1908–15.

⁵⁸ The Münchener Post, 8 Sept. 1892, for example, called Schmidt ‘a slanderous liar’, and concluded a long discussion of the case by remarking that Romen's action had triggered off a chain-reaction throughout the country. The precedent that Romen set had many strange variants. In 1897, the presiding judge of a court in Liibeck which was trying a case of theft, remarked that the ownership of property was never taken seriously by the SPD, since their view was that ‘All property is theft‘. Vorwärts, 18 June 1897.

⁵⁹ The official protocol of the SPD party conference held at Berlin in 1892 refers, pp. 27–31, to the Romen affair and its aftermath at Breslau. It prints in full the letter sent to Schmidt by the executive, as well as the text of an official statement issued in an attempt to ‘put the record straight’.

⁶⁰ Acting on the official complaint contained in the SPD resolution of 12 Sept. 1892, the Minister-President of Silesia, von Kunowski, absolved Schmidt of all culpability in the matter.

⁶¹ Echo, 18 Dec. 1892. The Appeal Court at Leipzig rejected Thiel's appeal in Feb. 1893.

⁶² Vorwärts, 11 Oct. 1892. The tactic of local SPD branches in inviting the antagonist to a ‘people's hearing’ at which they were asked to defend their views was rapidly copied, even in South German towns like Augsburg. The ‘invitations’ were of course never accepted, Vorwärts, 10 Nov. 1892.

⁶³ Münchener Post, 17 Sept. 1892.

⁶⁴ Der Sozialist, 15 Oct. 1892.

⁶⁵ Echo, 20 Oct. 1892.

⁶⁶ Statistics are not always helpful, but some indications are better than none. In 1892, 1,552 persons were convicted of perjury, which compares with an average annual total of convictions in the years 1882–96 of 1520. The highest annual number of convictions was reached in 1895 with 1747. Thereafter the rate began to fall, but in 1902 it was still high, at 1,292 annual convictions.

Echo, 22 Feb. 1899, 25 Sept. 1904.

Even a comparatively liberal City State like Bremen shows a considerable jump in its convictions for perjury in the aftermath of the Romen affair – StA. HB. ad. Qq. 15. d. 1. (Jahresberichte der Gerichte). On a more general level, from 1890 until the summer of 1895 the courts passed a total of 78 years and 5 months penitentiary and 355 years prison sentences on Social-Democrats, as well as fining them the sum of M. 148,598. By way of a comparison, in the twelve years under the anti-socialist legislation prison sentences totalling 831 years and 6 days were passed. In neither of these two examples can the figures quoted be regarded as anything other than a minimum, Fricke, op. cit., p. 185.

⁶⁷ SeeZechlin, Egmont, Staatsstreichpläne Bismarcks und Wilhelms II 1890–1914 (Stuttgart & Berlin 1929);Google Scholar also Hohn, , op. cit., p. 157.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ SeeRassow, Peter and Born, Karl Erich (eds.), Akten zur Staatlichen Sozialpolitik in Deutschland 1890–1914 (Wiesbaden 1959), pp. 63–98.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Hohenlohe, , Denkwürdigkeiten, p. 98,Google Scholar quoted in Sievers, Kai-Detlev, Die Köllerpolitik und ihr Echo in der deutschen Presse 1897–1901 (Neumünster 1964), p. 24.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ See Fricke, Dieter, Zur Militarisierung des deutschen Geisteslebens im wilhelminischen Kaisereich. Der Fall Leo Arons (Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 1960, Heft 5), pp. 1069–107.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Quoted by Fricke, , Der Essener Meineidsprozess, p. 188.Google Scholar

⁷² Speech to the Reichstag on 8 May 1895, Stenographische Berichte 1804/95 Bd. 3, P. 2150. The SPD often seemed alone in its campaign. The Echo sharply criticized the speech made by the liberal leader Rudolf Bennigsen in a Reichstag debate, in which he claimed that the judicial procedures could be trusted to work impartially in the interests of the truth and the truth alone. Bennigsen was regarded as betraying the original principles of liberalism.

⁷³ Lütgenau, Franz, Der Essener Meineidsprozess vom. 14. bis 17. August 1895. Geschichte und Glossen (Berlin 1895)Google Scholar and Der Essener Meineidsprozess gegen Schroder und Genossen im Wiederaufnahmeverfahren (Dortmund 1911),Google Scholar are both contemporary factual accounts. Fricke, , op. cit., pp. 183–94,Google Scholar attempts a certain amount of analysis in the light of the system of ‘Klassenjustiz’, Frohme, op. cit., pp. 150–63 contributes valuable additional information.

⁷⁴ HH. StA. S. 5150 Bd. 1, Essener Meineidsprozess 1895–9. Vorwärts, 28 June 1895.

⁷⁵ The Vorwärts, 30 June 1895, viewed the events at Essen as one more link in the chain of attempted political repression through the courts.

⁷⁶ Vorwärts, 17 Aug. 1895. Frohme, op. cit., p. 150. The Vorwärts article contained a despatch from its own correspondent in Essen, who claimed that the prosecution viewed the trial as ‘an act of state against the SPD’.

⁷⁷ Fricke, op. cit., p. 185.

⁷⁸ According to the protocol of the party conference in 1898, the total reached M. 57,949, which included proceeds from various charity shows staged in several towns, as well as a contribution from Australia.

⁷⁹ Hamburger General-Anzeiger, 22 Aug. 1895.

⁸⁰ Not quite unanimous, since the Frankfurter Volksstimme was severely taken to task for its treatment of the case. By way of an explanation, the paper revealed that it had been intimidated by threats of legal action against it. This was a danger which faced any editor bold enough to print criticism. For libelling Miinter in their editorial comments on the case, the editors of the Vorwärts, the Rheinische Zeitung and the Rheinisch-Westfalische Arbeiterzeitung, were all sentenced to varying terms of imprisonment. The editor of the Münchener Post was even fined for conducting a collection in support of the dependent families.

⁸¹ The Vorwärts, 24 Aug. 1895, carried extracts from the right-wing agrarian paper, the Deutsche Tageszeitung, calling for a sharper and more rigorous application of the existing laws against the socialists, and from other conservative journals like Die Post.

⁸² The difficulties in securing a new hearing of the case stemmed from SS. 407 of the code of legal procedure (Strafprozessordnung), which decreed that the responsibility for accepting or rejecting an application for a re-hearing, rested with the court which had originally tried the case. This militated against re-hearings in many cases where doubtful verdicts had been pronounced in the first instance. Frohme, op. cit., p. 163.

⁸³ Vorwärts, 27 Feb. 1910, Frohme, op. cit., p. 155.

⁸⁴ Ibid.

⁸⁵ op. cit., p. 157. The Echo, 7 Feb. 1911, attacked the naive and plaintive editorials of several establishment papers which queried, ‘How was it all possible?’ The Deutsche Tageszeitung was one of a number of right-wing journals which roundly declared that the SPD was morally just as guilty as Miinter, for pursuing its unscrupulous agitation against the forces of authority.

⁸⁸ Vorwärts, 5 Feb. 1911. An interesting personal footnote is provided by the death of Schröder at the age of 66, in Essen in May 1914. Fearing the possibility of demonstrations, the police forbade the funeral cortege to pass through the town, and issued a prohibition against the use of red flags or red ribbons and garlands on the funeral wreaths. Echo, 23 May 1914.

⁸⁷ März, 21 Feb. 1911, article headed ‘Klassenjustiz ?’

⁸⁸ Echo, 25 Mar. 1900.

⁸⁹ The Echo, 29 Mar. 1900, spoke of a clear parallel with the Essen trial. It published, as it had done earlier after similar cases, a list of the names and occupations of the jurors, which revealed predominantly trades-people and members of the propertied classes. It also complained bitterly that the Gustrow case, which would have unleashed a storm of protest in any other country, was all but totally ignored by the bourgeois press, the only exceptions being the Frankfurter Zeitung and the Berliner Volkszeitung, which both spoke of a ‘disastrous miscarriage of justice’.

⁹⁰ Echo, 3 Apr. 1900.

⁹¹ Echo, 6 Dec. 1900.

⁹² Vorwärts, 21 Mar. 1903. It was a standard feature of the SPD press to maintain the contact of its readership with all martyrs under the system of ‘Klassenjustiz’, by recalling the details of cases, by printing release dates and in some cases encouraging welcoming parties to appear at the prison gates, and by reinforcing the general conclusions to be drawn from such cases.

⁹³ A case in 1894 against a group of demonstrators who had to be forcibly dispersed, was presided over by a Dr Brausewetter, who earned a lasting claim to fame in the columns of the SPD press, by pronouncing ‘Die Offentlichkeit existiert nicht’ (The public does not exist). The unfortunate man ended up in an asylum a few years later. See Ernst, Eugen, Polizeispitzeleien und Ausnahmegesetze 1878–1910 (Berlin 1911), pp. 106 ff.Google Scholar

⁹⁴ Vorwärts, 8 July 1911.

⁹⁵ Thimme, Annelise, Hans Delbrück als Kritiker der wilhelminischen Epoche (Dusseldorf 1955), p. 68. In his Preussische Jahrbüchcr Bd. 113 for August 1903, p. 377, Delbrück uttered ‘the belief, that we in Germany are not living in a society of equality before the law. It is a passionate hatred which is fed by this notion of “Klassenjustiz”’.Google Scholar