Marx in Neue Rheinische Zeitung February 1849
Source: MECW Volume 8, p. 392;
Written: by Marx on February 16, 1849;
First published: in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 225, February 18, 1849.
Cologne, February 16. A few days ago we offered condolences to the leading article of the Kölnische Zeitung signed D which saw in the elections to the Second Chamber (see No. 33 of the Kölnische Zeitung) the defeat of the “great Centre” of the German nation and discerned two Chambers, one of which would not yet be constitutional, the other not yet monarchical.
“Storms will blow from opposite poles, a dead past will fight against a distant, perhaps never attainable future.”
And what will become of the “Centre of the German nation"? Thus wailed Schwanbeck.
Brüggemann, of the three stars, is storming from the “opposite pole” against his friend in today’s issue of the same Kölnische Zeitung.
No Centre, says the man of the “legal basis”, the merry gentleman who, with solemn pedantry, invariably raises the status quo to an immortal principle; no Centre, that is the joke of it. No Centre, that is ,no cowardice, no indecision, no hollow ambition! No Centre, that is the doctrine of it! The Centre will in future dissolve into a “true” Left and a “true” Right! That is the true meaning of it.
Thus Brüggemann, the “true” man of “true” decision.
In other words: Brüggemann shifts from the Centre to the Right: the “parliamentary correspondence” has brought him to parleying. We tremble for the Right.
But let the melancholy D, dying of too much thinking in the night, argue with the merry three stars. Ça ne nous regards pas! [That does not concern us]