page_title: Rheinische Zeitung
section_title: Suppression
hierarchical_section_title: Rheinische Zeitung / Publication history / Suppression
caption_attribution_description: English: Political cartoon showing Karl Marx as Prometheus, chained to a printing press while the eagle of Prussian censorship rips out his liver as figures representing the citizens of Rhineland plead fruitlessly for mercy. Published March 1843.
context_page_description: The Rheinische Zeitung was a 19th-century German newspaper, edited most famously by Karl Marx. The paper was launched in January 1842 and terminated by Prussian state censorship in March 1843. The paper was eventually succeeded by a daily newspaper launched by Karl Marx on behalf of the Communist League in June 1848, called the Neue Rheinische Zeitung.
context_section_description: With the paper's fortunes on the rise, the Rheinische Zeitung continued to draw the government's ire, with the publication in January 1843 of a series of articles documenting the government's refusal to take seriously the complaints of the local peasantry. A defiant tone of some published correspondence and growing sentiment for democracy among the populus further alienated the authorities. On 21 January 1843 the Cabinet, with the King in attendance, decided that the Rheinische Zeitung should be suppressed.
  The intelligentsia of the Rhineland saw the suppression of the newspaper as a personal affront and a delegation was sent to Berlin in an attempt to forestall the paper's final closure. Subscriptions had risen to more than 3,000—very few German papers of the day were larger and none more widely quoted. Moreover, thousands of citizens signed petitions calling for the publication's continuation.
  Regardless of the appeals of the citizenry on behalf of the paper, King Friedrich Wilhelm IV refused to grant an audience to hear a personal appeal and the mass of public petitions gathered were pointedly ignored.
  In desperation shareholders in the paper demanded that the Rheinische Zeitung tone down its aggressive political line, a move which prompted Marx to submit his resignation as editor on 17 March 1843. The local censor was enthusiastic about this change in the newspaper's staff, noting that a "really moderate though insignificant man" named Oppenheim had taken over the editorial chair and recommending that the decision to close the paper be reversed.
caption: German political cartoon from the time of the 1843 closure of the Rheinische Zeitung, showing Karl Marx as Prometheus, bound to a printing press while the imperial eagle of Prussian censorship rips out his liver.[13]
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