Appendix
The Way to Save the German Nation
In
the year 1858, Hermann Grimm wrote
an essay entitled “Schiller and Goethe.” It begins with these
words: “The true history of Germany is the history of the spiritual
movements among her people. Only when enthusiasm for some great thought
has inspired the nation and set its frozen forces flowing, do deeds
of great and shining fame occur.” And further on we read: “...
the names of the German emperors and kings are not milestones of the
nation's progress.”
Only
a revival of the attitude underlying such words can shed light upon
the troubled time that has come upon the German people. That something
else from this attitude may yet awaken amid the commotion and labor
of present times is the one hope to be cherished by he who holds it
necessary above all for the German people to turn for help to the saving
power of thoughts. Those who say today that one must first wait to see
what shall come of the general situation and what relations with the
people of the West and East shall result from new world conditions,
have no concept of the age's necessities.
This view
has led to everything said in these pages about the idea of the threefold
social order. I believe that in the previous essays I have sufficiently
answered the constant objection that our first thought must be the outcome
of our relations with foreign nations before we can turn our attention
to social ideas, like that of the threefold system. This objection rests
on a fallacy that may prove bitterly fatal to the German people. Germany
has come out of the world catastrophe in such a way that she must first
create a basis for future relations with the nations around her. Her
economic life (if its development were detached from the political life
of laws and from the cultural field) would take on a form that could
give it a place in the whole system of world economy. As I have tried
to show in these essays, it would be in the interest of other nations
to give an economic life of this kind its place in the system of world
economy. An independent cultural life can be regarded by no other nation
as a ground for hostility; a political-legal life among the German people
based on the equality of all adults could not be viewed as a hostile
element by non-Germans without their deriding themselves.
However,
an idea like the threefold order must come before the world with the
driving force of a definite will in public affairs. The moment this
idea is observed on the way toward becoming fact, it can become
such a revelation of the innermost German being as will give the rest
of the world something firm with which to reckon. Facing modern circumstances,
facing the lack of faith in the practical efficacy of living ideas,
one might well ask what has become of the German spirit. In ideas such
as those written by Hermann Grimm sixty years ago, the voice of the
greatest spirits of their own history speaks to the German people. In
such ideas, these great spirits intended to utter the deepest will and
purpose of their people. Shall the descendants of these spirits be deaf
to them?
These descendants are in a situation where truly it is not enough merely
to remember the ideas of their forefathers, but where they must carry
forward these ideas in a new form suited to modern times. Would the
German deny his own being through lack of faith in ideas, and thus lose
his very self? Surely the best part of the German spirit lies in this
faith in the potency of ideas. And a revelation of the German spirit,
once displayed in its genuine truth, would be one with which the world
must reckon.
A large enough number of Germans who share the heritage of faith in
the intellectual world, and bring to it all the forces of their souls,
must be the saving of their people. No negotiations with the world abroad
will be of any good to the German people if carried on with indications
of disbelief in ideas and their practical utility, for in all such negotiations
the very core of the German spirit is absent.
All objections
stemming from the view that now is not the time to indulge in ideas
should be silenced. There can be no question of any time that will bear
in it the seeds of any real possibility of life for the German people,
until the power of ideas has been recognized by a sufficiently large
number of people. Not a faith that trims its ideas according to outer
events, but a faith in ideas—that shall be the force that moves
the German nation. What results may be confidently awaited in the same
faith; to thrust it aside and to wait idly in a round of false activity
while destiny pursues its course — this, for every German, is
a sin against his own being, a sin against the spirit of this world
hour, a sin against the demand of true self-awareness.
Is
not the influence of this sin plain enough to see? Are not the grievous
effects of this sin already with us? Do not distress and want proclaim
the sin in language comprehensible enough? Have the German people
lost the power to recognize the sin they have committed against their
own true spirit? These are questions that may well tear at the souls
of all who study the public life of the German people. The pain should
rightly lead to an awakening. Were the great spirits of the German past,
with their faith in ideas, mere dreamers? Such questions find answers
only in real life. What kind of solution can be found? Yes, they were
dreamers if their descendants dream away their ideas; but they were
radiant spirits of reality if these descendants receive their ideas
as a force for living, awakened will and purpose.
|