At about this time Gottfried Kinkel came to London and together with him or soon afterwards a number of other exiles partly from France, partly from Switzerland and Belgium: Schurz, Strodtmann, Oppenheim, Schimmelpfennig, Techow, etc. These new arrivals some of whom had already tried their hand at forming provisional governments in Switzerland, infused new life into the London emigration and for Arnold the moment seemed more favourable than ever. At the same time Heinzen again took over the Schnellpost in New York and so Arnold could now make his frequent appearances on the other side of the ocean and not just in the local Bremen paper. Should Arnold ever find his Strodtmann the latter would surely declare the monthly numbers of the Schnellpost from the beginning of 1851 on to be a priceless source of information. One has to see this infinitely feeble mixture of gossip, silliness and nastiness, this ant-like self-importance with which Arnold deposits his dung, for otherwise one would not believe it. While Heinzen portrays Arnold as a European Great Power, Arnold treats Heinzen as an American newspaper oracle. He tells him the secrets of European diplomacy and in particular the latest events in the history of world emigration. Arnold sometimes figures as the anonymous correspondent in London and Paris in order to keep the American public informed of some of the great Arnold's fashionable movements. Meanwhile in contrast to the Mazzini Committee a plebeian European Committee was formed with the support of the inferior refugees and the migr dregs of the various European nations. At the time of the battle of Bronzell this committee had issued a manifesto that included the following outstanding German signatories: Gebert, Majer, Dietz, Sch rttner, Schapper, Willich. This document was couched in peculiar French and contained the information that at that moment (10 November 1850) the Holy Alliance of Tyrants had assembled 1,330,000 soldiers backed by another 700,000 armed lackeys in reserve; that the German papers and the Committee s own contacts had revealed the secret intentions of the Warsaw Conferences  and that these were to massacre all the republicans of Europe. This was followed by the inevitable call to arms. This manifeste-Faneron-Caperon-Gout as it was described by the Patrie (to whom they sent it) was overwhelmed with ridicule by the reactionary press. The Patrie called it the manifesto of the dii minorum gentium, written without chic, without style and equipped with only the most banal clich s, serpents , sicaires and gorgements . The Ind pendence Belge states that it was written by the most obscure soldiers of democracy, poor devils who had sent it to their correspondent in London even though their paper was conservative. Greatly as they longed to get into print, they would nevertheless not publish the names of the signatories as a punishment. Despite their attempts to beg from the reaction these noble people did not manage to obtain recognition as dangerous conspirators. The establishment of this rival firm spurred Arnold on to even greater efforts. Together with Strave, Kinkel, R. Schramm and Bucher, etc. he tried to found a Volksfreund, or, if Gustav were to insist, a Deutscher Zuschauer. But the plan fell through. Partly because our good-humoured Gottfried demanded payment in cash whereas Arnold shared Hansemann's view that in money matters there is no room for good humour. Arnold's particular aim was to impose a levy on the Reading Circle, a club of German watchmakers, well-paid workers and petty bourgeois, but in this too he was frustrated. But soon there arose another opportunity for Arnold to make one of his frequent appearances . Ledru and his supporters among the French migr s could not let 24 February (1851)  pass without celebrating a Fraternal Feast of the nations of Europe. In fact only the French and the Germans attended. Mazzini did not come and excused himself by letter: Gottfried who was present went home fuming because his mute presence failed to produce the magical effect he expected; Arnold lived to see the day when his friend Ledru pretended not to know him and became so confused when he arose to speak that he kept quiet about the French speech he had prepared and which had been approved in high places; he just stammered a few words in German and retreated precipitately, exclaiming: la restauration de la r volution! to the accompaniment of a general shaking of heads. On the same day a rival banquet took place under the auspices of the competing committee referred to above. Annoyed that the Mazzini-Ledru committee had not invited him to join them from the beginning Louis Blanc took himself off to the refugee mob, declaring that the aristocracy of talent must also be abolished . The whole lower emigration was thus assembled. The chivalrous Willich presided. The hall was festooned with flags and the walls were emblazoned with the names of the greatest men of the people: Waldeck between Garibaldi and Kossuth, Jacoby between Blanqui and Cabet, Robert Blum between Barb s and Robespierre. That coquettish ape Louis Blanc read out in a whining voice an address from his old yes men [German: Ja Br der], the future peers of the social republic, the delegates of the Luxemburg of 1848. Willich read out an address from Switzerland the signatures to which had partly been collected under false presences. Later he was indiscreet enough to publish the address, which resulted in the mass expulsion of the signatories. From Germany no message had arrived. Then speeches. Despite the eternal brotherhood boredom could be seen on every face. The banquet gave rise to a highly edifying scandal which like the heroic deeds of the European central mob-committee, unfolded within the pages of the counter-revolutionary press. It had struck observers as very strange that during the banquet a certain Barth lemy should have given an extremely grandiose eulogy of Blanqui in the presence of Louis Blanc. The puzzle was now elucidated. The Patrie printed a toast that Blanqui had sent from Belle- le in response to a request from the orator at the banquet. In the toast he aimed some rough blows at the whole provisional government of 1848 and at Louis Blanc in particular. The Patrie expressed astonishment that this toast had been suppressed in the course of the banquet. Louis Blanc at once wrote to The Times declaring that Blanqui was an abominable intriguer and had never sent such a toast to the Banquet committee. The committee consisting of Messrs, Blanc, Willich, Landolphe, Schapper, Barth lemy and Vidil, announced simultaneously in the Patrie that they had never received the toast. The Patrie, however, did not allow the declaration to be printed until they had made inquiries of M. Antoine, Blanqui's brother-in-law, who had given them the text of the toast. Beneath the declaration of the Banquet committee they printed M. Antoine's reply: he had sent the toast to Barth lemy, one of the signatories of the declaration and had received an acknowledgement from him. Whereupon Mr. Barth lemy was forced to admit that it was true that he had lied. He had indeed received the toast but had thought it unsuitable and so had not informed the committee of it. But before this, behind Barth lemy's back his co-signatory, the French ax-captain Vidil had also written to the Patrie saying that his honour as a soldier and his sense of truth compelled him to confess that not only he but also Louis Blanc, Willich and all the other signatories of the first declaration had lied. The committee had consisted of 13 members and not 6. They had all seen Blanqui's toast, they had discussed it and after a long debate agreed to suppress it by a majority of 7 votes to 6. He had been one who had voted in favour of reading it in public. It is easy to imagine the joy of the Patrie when it received Barth lemy's declaration after Vidil's letter. They printed it with this preface: Hence the Anniversary of the March revolution in Vienna was used to give a German banquet. The chivalrous Willich declined the invitation; as he belonged to citizen Louis Blanc he could not collaborate with citizen Ruge who belonged to citizen&lrquo; Ledru. Likewise the ex-deputies Reichenbach, Schramm, Bucher, etc., recoiled from Ruge s presence. Not counting the silent guests there appeared Mazzini, Ruge, Struve, Tausenau, Haug, Ronge and Kinkel all of whom spoke. Ruge filled the role of the complete fool as even his friends admitted. The German public was however to experience even greater things. Tausenau s clowning, Struve s croaking, Haug s meanderings, Ronge s litanies turned the whole audience to stone and the majority drifted away even before that flower of rhetoric, Jeremiah-Kinkel, who had been saved for the dessert, could begin his speech. In the name of the martyrs for the martyrs, Gottfried spoke as a martyr and uttered lachrymose words of reconciliation to all from the simple defender of the constitution down to the red republican . At the same time as all these republicans, and even red republicans, like Kinkel, groaned away in this fashion, they also knelt down before the English constitution in humble adoration, a contradiction to which the Morning Chronicle politely drew their attention the following morning. The same evening Ruge saw the fulfilment of his desires as can be seen from a proclamation whose most brilliant sections we offer here: Johannes Ronge or Johannes Kurzweg as he likes to be known in his intimate circle, is certainly not the author of the Book of Revelations. There is nothing mysterious about him, he is banal, hackneyed, as insipid as water, luke-warm dish-water. As is well known Johannes became famous when he refused to permit the Holy Mantle  in Trier to intercede for him though it is wholly unimportant who intercedes for Johannes. When Johannes first made his appearance the elderly Paulus  expressed his regrets that Hegel was dead as he would no longer be able to regard him as shallow were he alive and he added that the late lamented Krug was lucky to be dead as he thereby escaped the danger of acquiring a reputation for profundity. Johannes is one of those phenomena often met with in history who only begin to understand a movement centuries after its rise and fall and who then like children reproduce the content of the movement as if it had just been discovered, regurgitating it in the most feeble, colourless and philistinic manner imaginable. Such craftsmanship does not last very long and soon our Johannes found himself in a daily deteriorating situation in Germany. His watered-down version of the Enlightenment went out of fashion and Johannes made a pilgrimage to England where we see him reappear, without any notable success, as the rival of Padre Gavazzi.  The ungainly, sallow, tedious village parson naturally paled by the side of the fiery, histrionic Italian monk and the English bet heavily that this arid Johannes could not be the man who had set the deep-thinking German nation in motion. But he was consoled by Arnold Ruge who found that the German-Catholicism of our Johannes was remarkably similar to his own brand of atheism. Ludwig von Hauck had been a captain of engineers in the Imperial Austrian army, then co-editor of the Constitution in Vienna, later still leader of a battalion in the Viennese National Guard, where he defended the Burgtor against the Imperial army on October 30 with great courage, abandoning his post only after all was lost. He escaped to Hungary, joined up with Bem's army in Siebenburgen where in consequence of his velour he advanced to the rank of colonel in the general staff. After G rgy surrendered at Vilagos Ludwig Hauck was taken prisoner and died like a hero on one of the many gallows that the Austrians erected in Hungary to avenge their repeated defeats and to express their fury at the protection Russia had extended and which they so bitterly resented. In London Haug was long thought to be the incarcerated Hauck, an officer, who had so distinguished himself in the Hungarian campaign. However, it now seems to be established that he is not the late Hauck. Just as he was unable to prevent Mazzini from improvising him into a general after the fall of Rome, so too he could do nothing to stop Arnold Ruge from transforming him into the representative of the Viennese revolution and a member of the strong provisional government. Later he gave aesthetic lectures about the economic foundations of the cosmogony of universal history from a geological standpoint and with musical accompaniment. Among the migr s this melancholic man is known as "the poor wretch", or as the French say, "la bonne b te". Arnold could not believe his good fortune. He had a manifesto, a strong provisional government, a loan of ten million francs and even a homunculus to produce a weekly magazine with the modest title Kosmos, edited by General Haug. The manifesto came and went unread. The Kosmos died of malnutrition in the third number, the money failed to roll in, the provisional government dissolved into its components once more. At first, the Kosmos contained advertisements for Kinkel's lectures, for the worthy Willich's appeals for money for the Schleswig-Holstein refugees and for G hringer's saloon. It contained further a lampoon by Arnold. The old joker invented a certain hospitable friend called M ller in Germany whose guest, Schulze, he pretended to be. M ller expresses astonishment at what he reads in the papers about English hospitality; he fears that all this sybaritism may distract Schulze from his affairs of state but he does not grudge him this as when Schulze returns to Germany he will be so overwhelmed by state affairs that he will have to deny himself the pleasures of M ller's hospitality. Finally, M ller exclaims: Surely it was not the traitor Radowitz, but Mazzini, Ledru-Rollin, Citizen Willich, Kinkel and yourself (Arnold Ruge) "who were invited to Windsor Castle?" If after all this the Kosmos folded up after the third issue the failure could not be put down to lack of publicity, for at every possible English meeting the speakers would find it pressed into their hands with the urgent request to recommend it as they would find their own principles specially represented in it. Scarcely had the subscriptions for the ten-million-Franc loan been opened than the rumour went around that a list of contributors to a fund to dispatch Struve (and Amalia) to America, was circulating in the City. Gustav writes: Arnold was busy broadcasting the virtues of the Kosmos in the journal of his faithful disciple Heinzen, when it failed to appear, and at about the time when the strong provisional government was disintegrating Rodomonte-Heinzen was busy proclaiming military obedience towards it in his journal. Heinzen is famous for his love of the military in peacetime. As for Gottfried, his dramatic lectures for respectable city merchants did not allow him to compromise himself. But on the other hand, it was altogether too evident that the purpose of the manifesto of March 13 was none other than to provide support for the place Arnold had usurped in the European Central Committee. Even Gottfried could not fail to realise this: but it was not in his interest to grant Ruge such recognition. So it came to pass that shortly after the manifesto had been published, the K lnische Zeitung printed a declaration by that dama acerba, Mockel. Her husband, she wrote, had not signed the appeal, he was not interested in public loans and had resigned from the newly-formed committee. Whereupon Arnold gossiped in the New York Schnellpost to the effect that Kinkel had been prevented by illness from signing the manifesto, but he gave his approval, the plan to issue it had been conceived in his room, he had himself taken responsibility for despatching a number of copies to Germany and he only left the committee because it elected General Haug president in preference to himself. Arnold accompanied this declaration with angry attacks on Kinkel's vanity, calling him absolute martyr and the Beckerath of the democrats and affirming his suspicions of Mrs. Johanna Kinkel who had access to such prohibited journals as the K lnische Zeitung. In the meantime, Arnold's seed had not fallen on stony soil. Kinkel's beautiful soul resolved to turn the tables on his rivals and to raise the treasure of revolution alone. Johanna's statement dissociating him from this hare-brained scheme had scarcely appeared in the K lnische Zeitung when Gottfried launched his own appeal in the transatlantic papers with the comment that the money should be sent to the man who inspires the most confidence . And who could this man be but Gottfried Kinkel? For the time being he demanded an advance payment of 500 pounds sterling with which to manufacture revolutionary paper money. Ruge, not to be outdone, had the Schnellpost declare that he was the treasurer of the Democratic Central Committee and that Mazzini notes were already available and could be purchased from him. Whoever wished to lose 500 pounds sterling would do better to take the available notes than to speculate in something that did not even exist. And Rodomonte-Heinzen roared that unless Mr. Kinkel abandoned his manoeuvres he would be branded publicly as an enemy of the revolution . Gottfried had counter-articles published in the New-Yorker Staatszeitung, the direct rival of the Schnellpost. In this way full-scale hostilities were in progress on the other side of the Atlantic while kisses of Judas were still being exchanged in this side. By issuing an appeal for a national loan in his own name Gottfried had shocked the democratic rank and file, as he soon realised. To make good his blunder he now declared that this appeal for money, for a German national loan did not proceed from him. In all likelihood what had happened was that some all too zealous friends in America had made free with his name. This declaration provoked the following answer from Dr. Wiss in the Schnellpost: Thus did Gottfried sway like a reed, now advancing, now retreating, now launching a project, now dissociating himself from it, always tacking to adjust to the wind of popularity. While he officially allowed the aesthetic bourgeoisie to fete and feast him in London as the martyr of the Revolution behind the backs of the same people he indulged in forbidden commerce with the mob of the Emigration as represented by Willich. While living in circumstances that could be described as luxurious in comparison with his modest situation in Bonn, he wrote to St. Louis that he was living as befitted the "representative of poverty". In this way he behaved towards the bourgeoisie as etiquette required, while at the same time he deferred humbly to the taste of the proletariat. But as a man whose imagination far outweighed his understanding he could not help falling into the bad manners and the arrogant postures of the parvenu and this alienated many a pompous bonhomme from him. Wholly characteristic of him was the article on the Great Exhibition that he wrote for Kosmos. He admired nothing so much as the giant mirror that was exhibited in the Crystal Palace. The objective world reduces itself to a mirror, the subjective world to a clich . Under the pretext of seeing only the beautiful side of things he aestheticises everything and this process he designates poetry, self-sacrifice or religion, as the occasion demands. Fundamentally, everything is used to exalt himself. It is inevitable that in practice the ugly side should make its appearance, as imagination turns into lies and enthusiasm into baseness. In any case it was to be expected that Gottfried would soon cast off his lion's skin when he fell into the hands of old, experienced clowns like Gustav and Arnold.
Heroes of the Exile