Yet the king stood in need of the consent of the Estates of the realm to the carrying out of a project of the utmost importance for the whole country. The time of railways had come, and two matters had to be arranged, a loan of the money needed for the construction of State railways, and a State guarantee to the constructors of private lines. According to a law passed by Hardenberg in 1820, the consent of the Estates of the realm was imperative in both cases. The king evolved an impossible plan; he proposed to convoke an assembly of six hundred representatives chosen from the different provincial Landtage, and to let this assembly play the part of Reichstände (Estates of the realm). Metternich was obliged to interfere, and prove the utter impracticability of the scheme.[9]
[9] Sybel: Die Begründung des deutschen Reiches, i. 107.
It was at this juncture that a small pamphlet, Vier Fragen eines Ostpreussen ("Four Questions by an East-Prussian"), made a sensation throughout the whole of Germany. The little book appeared on the spiritual horizon like the first distant flash of lightning that preludes the storm. Purporting to be printed in Mannheim, it was scattered abroad everywhere in the end of February 1841. Such careful arrangements had been made that it found its way into the booksellers' windows of every town in Prussia on the same day—every town except Berlin, where it appeared a little later, a precaution taken to prevent confiscation before the general distribution.
The Four Questions which it contained foreboded the downfall of absolute monarchy. They were: What did the Estates ask? What right had they to make such a request? What answer did they receive? What remains for them to do?
The book's answer to the first question was that, as things now stood, the people had almost no share in their own government, although the general high level of education made it natural that they should wish it. And their desire for a representative constitution, for a national parliament, was made more ardent by the fact that they possessed no other means, such, for instance, as a free press, of expressing their opinions, and that they thoroughly distrusted the king's ministers because of their arbitrariness, servility, and pietistic tendencies. To the question: What right had the Estates to make such a demand? the author replied: The right of authority, an authority declared and recognised on the 22nd of May 1815. To the third question: What answer did they receive? the reply was: A recognition of their loyalty, a rejection of their proposal, and comforting promises of some vague future indemnification. The answer to the fourth question: What remains for the Estates to do? only occupied a line and a half. It was: To demand now as a demonstrable right what they had previously solicited as an act of grace.
The earnest, impressive tone of the pamphlet, its appeal to the people's sense of justice and self-respect, aroused a keen desire to know the name of the anonymous author. He himself had sent his book to the king, with his name written on the title page: Dr. Johann Jacoby, physician in Königsberg. The king at once ordered criminal proceedings to be instituted against him. It appeared that he was a man of means, and a very highly esteemed physician. In 1831, during the first and most violent epidemic of cholera in Poland, he had gone there to study the disease. At a later period he had had a protracted quarrel with a Warsaw doctor, a regular quack, who, when the cholera broke out again in 1837, advertised his discovery of an infallible remedy for "this trivial, easily curable disease." Jacoby wrote a short scientific article in disparagement of this man. The quack wrote an answer full of insulting imputations, which he published in the Berlin newspapers. By the help of influential friends he not only managed to secure the prohibition of the publication of Jacoby's retort, but also to defeat the latter's successive appeals to the Berlin censor's superior, to the highest council of censorship, to Rochow, the Secretary of State, and to the king himself. The publishers in Hamburg, Leipzig, Grimma, Basle, and Berne, one and all refused to print the documents throwing light on this affair. Any other man would now have given up the attempt to get his reply to an attack in a contemptible newspaper article published. Not so Jacoby. Month followed upon month. The manuscript travelled thousands of miles, and was published at last in Paris, under the title of Contribution to a Future Historical Account of the Censorship of the Press in Prussia.
Such was Jacoby's character. Here at last was found what Young Germany so sorely needed, what even Youngest Germany with its Herwegh had not produced, that first essential in public life—a man. At last the Germany of the Forties had found a strong political leader—not a statesman in the proper sense of the word, for time showed that he was incapable of accommodating himself to circumstances, that he could not be satisfied with aiming at the attainable; but a man of inflexible will, of absolute integrity, who with indomitable courage pressed onwards to his goal.
The Government organs, the libellous press, began a systematic attack upon him. There was nothing to lay hold of in his blameless personality, but he was of Jewish descent. In a little pamphlet published by the local magnates of a small town in the neighbourhood of Königsberg under the title of Stimme treuer Unterthanen seiner Majestät des Königs von Preussen ("Voice of a Few Faithful Subjects of his Majesty the King of Prussia"), we read: "Not from German, not from Christian lips did these words proceed.... East-Prussia would be disgraced if her sons had expressed such sentiments.... The seed of Jacob did not hearken to the voice of God, did not acknowledge his only begotten son, but put him to death; therefore they were cast off for ever, and scattered abroad among the nations of the earth." Presently, however, in all the booksellers' windows the portrait of Jacoby was to be seen; his face, with its clear-cut features, was surrounded by four marks of interrogation; he held his pen like a lance poised for attack.
The significance of the man who thus made his appearance was felt by the poets, even by those with least strength of character, even by Dingelstedt, who was then preparing to barter his oppositionist principles for the title of Hofrath (Privy Councillor). In Dingelstedt's fine collection of poems, Nachtwächters Weltgang, we find one with the heading: ????, evidently addressed to the King of Prussia:
"Du weisst, was das bedeuten will? Du wirst sie mir nicht streichen?
Es sind ja nur unschuldige—vier kleine Fragezeichen.
Die wurzeln tief, die ragen hoch; wie die gerühmten Eichen
Des freien deutschen Volkes stehn vier kleine Fragezeichen.
Du wolltest sie zwar nimmer sehn in deinen weiten Reichen,
Doch drängen sie sich immer auf, vier kleine Fragezeichen.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Und einst, wenn du gestorben bist, als Stempel dann und Aichen
Stehn gross an deinem Monument—vier kleine Fragezeichen."[10]