Cologne Communist Trial (1852)
쾰른 공산주의자 재판 (1852)
The political trial staged by the Prussian government before the Cologne jury court from 4 October to 12 November 1852 against eleven members of the Communist League for a "conspiracy in Cologne in 1848–1851". The police official Stieber produced evidence that was partly forged; four defendants were acquitted and seven sentenced to three to six years' fortress imprisonment. Immediately after the verdict the Communist League dissolved itself.
In depth
Frederick William IV ordered that the public be given the "yearned-for spectacle of an exposed and (above all) punished conspiracy". The occasion was the arrest of the tailor Nothjung at Leipzig station in May 1851 with League papers on him. The "minutes book of the Marx party" that Stieber produced on 23 October was also forged; Marx tried from London to prove the forgeries, and Willich, of the League's opposing faction, had the forger arrested by the English police.
Daniels, Jacobi, Klein and Erhard were acquitted; Roeser, Nothjung and Bürgers received six years, Reiff, Otto and Becker five, and Lessner three. Freiligrath escaped to London. Marx wrote Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne, and Engels made the trial the subject of the last piece of Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany.