# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1851 02 04_S93
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

93

Annihilation of private property. —It is a matter of the destruction of all barriers which stand in the way of universal entitlement; it is a matter of tearing from every prevailing concept the protecting mask of the sacred.

But the labor movement in Germany goes still further! Not merely against God, the fatherland, and property is feud, a war of extermination, proclaimed, but the family also is to perish! Hear what Mr. Löwe demands and requires in his paper, which bears the title: “What Do I Still Lack?”

He demands:

1. The abolition of paternal authority and of marriage, in which no community of property shall any longer be permitted;

2. The complete emancipation of every person of twenty years;

3. The dissolubility of every so-called marriage, upon the mere desire of even one party alone, so that marriage may be a bond of which free men need not be ashamed.

4. The building of a foundling house for every 5000 souls, to which parents may deliver up their children.

This is the labor movement, socialism, the red democracy, in Germany. Compare now with this the pronouncement of the president of the Workers’ Congress, W. Rosenthal in Philadelphia: “I am an atheist! etc.” Compare with it the various essays which have appeared in the “sole organ” of the Workers’ Congress: the Republik der Arbeiter,” especially the extract which appeared in the Zuschauer No. 31, and which begins with the words: You want reform? Revolutions? Anarchy?” Hear what the Fackel, published by Ludvigh in New York, says in one of its numbers: “A curse upon faith, which is the curse of the world, the source of all misery on earth;— Root out the delusion of the nations, destroy the wonder-trumpery of the Jews and Christians! Renounce Christ!” In another place it says: “No idea is more comfortless and confused than that of the immortality of the soul, a radical absurdity, a holy stupidity!—But man has always worshiped his own stupidity, and only his foolish fear and his hope are the originators of his religion.—We descend from heaven to earth and help despised sensuality to its right; for everything fairest and dearest blooms here upon earth; and it is a lofty tinsel that glitters up above.”

The “Republik der Arbeiter” gives in its December number a list of the newspapers which have declared themselves favorable to social reform, or the labor movement:

The Demokrat in New York;
The New Yorker Staatszeitung;
The Schnellpost; (through correspondence-card.)
The Freie Presse in Philadelphia;
The Virginische Staatszeitung;
The Union in Cincinnati;
The Courier in Pittsburg;
The Fackel in New York;
The Illinois Staatszeitung;
The Correspondent in Baltimore;
The Volksfreund in Milwaukie;
The Herold in Baltimore;
The Tribüne in Detroit;
The Demokrat in Buffalo;
The Tribüne in St. Louis;
The Anzeiger des Westens;
The Volksblatt in Cincinnati;
The Beobachter in Louisville;
The New York Tribüne!
The Democrat (with considerable reserve) in Philadelphia;
The Republikaner in New Orleans;

On the other hand, the following have declared themselves against it:

The Zuschauer in Washington;
The Catholik;
Sion;
Wahrheitsfreund;
Kirchenzeitung;
Abendzeitung in New York;
Weltbürger in Buffalo;
Westbote in Columbus;

It is, to be sure, only a small number of the German newspapers appearing in the United States, but they are indisputably the most influential and, so to speak, the tone-setting ones.

I have now, Mr. Editor, shown:

1. That the chief organs of the Socialists mean to abolish Germany, religion, property and marriage — this is their aim, and the means by which it is to be brought about, the workers’ associations.

2. That the president of “the Congress of Workers” in the United States, as well as the “sole organ” of this Congress: “the Republik der Arbeiter,” strive to attain the same end;

3. That the “Republik der Arbeiter” has itself designated the most influential newspapers in the United States as striving with it toward the same goal;

4. That consequently the chief organs of the German population are working for the abolition of religion, of property, and of marriage.

Now do these chief organs of the Germans in the United States express the views of the German population? Are they the mouth through which the German population speaks? Are you, German fellow-citizens, ready to declare yourselves for the blasphemies of the Socialists? Are you ready to declare property a robbery, marriage a bond of which the free man must be ashamed? Are you ready, like religion and property, so also to destroy the bond of the family and to send your children, as an insupportable burden, to the nearest foundling house? If this, German fellow-citizens, is your intention—then let yourselves be seized by the whirlpool of the German labor movement and follow a Weitling, Rosenthal and consorts! If this is not the case; if you look upon this cause on the contrary with abhorrence, then express your disapproval in words of thunder; demand and require of the newspapers which you support, which accordingly are your organs, that they no longer go hand in hand with these miscreants, nor court their favor and good will, but earnestly and firmly set themselves earnestly and firmly against their criminal views. If they hearken not to your voices of disapproval, then withdraw your support from them and set up for yourselves organs which do not disgrace the German name but worthily represent it. If you further keep silence, you make yourselves partakers of the crime; if you but once show a stern countenance, you will soon see how men will hasten to have their names struck from the Weitling list, in order not to let their own pockets suffer want; for Max Stirner’s egoism is not wholly plucked out of the air. Should perhaps the “Republik der Arbeiter” have entered in its category the name of some journal whose editor does not agree with socialism and does not share its criminal, abominable designs, then he owes it to himself, to his paper, to his readers, to the whole civilized world, to protest against such misuse of his name. All German newspapers ought to speak out on this subject, that the German public may act in this matter with prudence and decision and may distinguish between friends and enemies of civil order.

(Sent in for the “Lutheraner” and translated by H. H. E.)

An Error — the Source of All.

(From Johann Gerhard’s great work on Christian doctrine.)

What we see befall a wanderer, that if he departs a little from the right path he thereafter strays ever farther, until at last, led into impassable mountain gorges or into the dens of wild beasts, he acknowledges the guilt of his error, and either returns to the highway or gives himself up to destruction: that is what is wont to befall men also in the course of this life; namely, that, turning aside a little from the royal path of heavenly doctrine, they fall from one error into another, and unless, enlightened by a higher light, they return betimes to the highway of catholic truth, give themselves up to eternal perdition, being compelled, namely, to interpret many things perversely because they will not rightly understand one thing. Chrysostom 1) explains the same by another similitude: As he who cuts off something of the impressed image on a royal coin makes the whole piece of money invalid, so everyone who perverts even the smallest particle of sound doctrine of faith utterly destroys it, in that he does not stop at the beginning but goes ever farther. Luther 2) uses

1) in epist. ad Gal. cap. 1. 2) in cap. 6. Ephes. tom. I. Witteberg. f. 418.