Cologne, May 18. Some time ago Berlin demanded that the local authorities reintroduce a state of siege in Cologne. They intended to use martial law to suppress the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, but met with unexpected resistance. The municipal authorities of Cologne then turned to the judiciary here in order to achieve the same purpose by arbitrary arrests. But this failed on account of the legal scruples of the judiciary, just as it had failed twice before on account of the common sense of the Rhenish juries.  There was nothing for it but to resort to a Police ruse, and this, for the time being, has achieved its purpose. The Neue Rheinische Zeitung ceases publication for the present. On May 16, its Editor-in-Chief Karl Marx received the following official note: Why these absurd phrases, these official lies? The trend and tone of the latest pieces of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung do not differ a whit from its first "trial piece". In that "first piece" we wrote among other things: Well, gentlemen, what do you say now? As to our tendency, did not the government know it? Have we not declared before the jury that it was now "the duty of the press to undermine the whole basis of the existing order"? Regarding the Hohenzollern princeling one can read the following in the issue of October 19, 1848: Is that clear, gentlemen? And the "social republic"? Have we proclaimed it only in the "latest pieces" of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung? Did we not speak plainly and clearly enough for those dullards who failed to see the "red" thread running through all our comments and reports on the European movement? The November 7 issue of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung says, "Assuming that arms will enable the counter-revolution to establish itself in the whole of Europe, money would then kill it in the whole of Europe. European bankruptcy, national bankruptcy would be the fate nullifying the victory. Bayonets crumble like tinder when they come into contact with the salient 'economic' facts. But developments will not wait for the bills of exchange drawn by the European states on the new European society to expire. Is that clear, gentlemen? From the very beginning we did not consider it necessary to conceal our views. During a polemic with the judiciary here, we told you: And at that time we were speaking with the judiciary. We summed up the old year, 1848, in the following words (cf. the issue of December 31, 1848): Did we therefore have to advance our social republican tendency only in the "last pieces" of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung? Did you not read our articles about the June revolution, and was not the essence of the June revolution the essence of our paper? Why then your hypocritical phrases, your attempt to find an impossible pretext? We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror. But the royal terrorists, the terrorists by the grace of God and the law, are in practice brutal, disdainful, and mean, in theory cowardly, secretive, and deceitful, and in both respects disreputable. The Prussian official piece of paper goes even to the absurd length of speaking about the "right of hospitality which was disgracefully abused" by Karl Marx, the Editor-in-Chief of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. The right of hospitality which the insolent intruders, the anterior Russians (Borussians), forced upon us, inhabitants of the Rhineland, on our own land this hospitality was indeed "disgracefully" abused by the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. We believe that we have thereby rendered a service to the Rhine Province. We have saved the revolutionary honor of our homeland. From now on the Neue Preussische Zeitung alone will enjoy the full right of citizenship in the Rhine Province. In parting we should like to remind our readers of the words printed in the first issue we published in January: And in the East, a revolutionary army made up of fighters of all nationalities already confronts the alliance of the old Europe represented by the Russian army, while from Paris comes the threat of a "red republic".
Neue Rheinsiche Zeitung No. 301 February 1849