1 Volume 6. Weimar Germany, 191819–1933 Hambur.docx

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Volume 6. Weimar Germany, 1918/19–1933
Hamburg Schoolteacher Louise Solmitz on Hitler’s Seizure of
Power (January-February 1933)
Hamburg schoolteacher Louise Solmitz’s enthusiastic response
to the news that a cabinet of
“national” concentration had been formed with Hitler as
chancellor was characteristic of the
attitude of the nationalist conservative middle class. Like
Hitler’s allies in the conservative elite,
members of this segment of society believed that Hitler’s
radicalism would be tamed in an
alliance with conservative ministers. Besides Hitler, there were
only two other National
Socialists in the cabinet: Wilhelm Frick, Reich Interior
Minister, and Hermann Göring, Reich
Minister Without Portfolio and acting Prussian Interior
Minister. The promise of a vague chance
of national unity dispelled any reservations people may have
had about the National Socialists.
Louise Solmitz’s response also shows the extent to which anti-
Semitism was underestimated –
particularly in light of the fact that Solmitz herself was married
to a baptized Jew.

30. January 1933
And what did Dr H. bring us? The news that his double, Hitler,
is Chancellor of the Reich! And
what a Cabinet!!! One we didn’t dare dream of in July. Hitler,
Hugenberg, Seldte, Papen!!!
On each one of them depends part of Germany’s hopes. National
Socialist drive, German
National reason, the non-political Stahlhelm, not to forget
Papen. It is so incredibly marvelous
that I am writing it down quickly before the first discordant
note comes, for when has Germany
ever experienced a blessed summer after a wonderful spring?
Probably only under Bismarck.
What a great thing Hindenburg has achieved! How well he
neutralized Hammerstein who was
presumptuous enough to bring politics into the Reichswehr!
Huge torchlight procession in the presence of Hindenburg and
Hitler by National Socialists and
Stahlhelm, who at long last are collaborating again. This is a
memorable 30 January!
[ . . . ]
6. February 1933
Torchlight procession of National Socialists and Stahlhelm! A
wonderfully elevating experience
for all of us. Göring says the day of Hitler’s and the nationalist
Cabinet’s appointment was
something like 1914, and this too was something like 1914;
after Dr H. had only recently

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remarked that damned little of this spirit had survived on the
way from Berlin to Hamburg
between 30 January and 3 February.
On Sunday, the Reds waded through relentless rain—Gisela saw
them—with wives and
children to make the procession longer. The Socialists and Reds
will inevitably have to give in
now.
But now the weather was beautiful. Dry and calm, a few degrees
above freezing. At 9.30 p.m.
we took up our position, Gisela with us. I said she should stay
till the end for the sake of the
children. So far the impressions they had had of politics had
been so deplorable that they
should now have a really strong impression of nationhood, as
we had once, and store it in their
memories. And so they did. It was 10 p.m. by the time the first
torchlights came, and then
20,000 brown shirts followed one another like waves in the sea,
their faces shone with
enthusiasm in the light of the torches. ‘Three cheers for our
Führer, our Chancellor Adolf
Hitler....’ They sang ‘The Republic is shit’ and called the colors
‘black-red-mustard’1 and ‘The
murderous reds have bloody hands and we won’t forget the
murder at the Sternschanz.’
Dreckmann was murdered there and I happened to spot his name
on one of the flags, probably

the one of the section he had belonged to. The military
standards are much too Roman in
appearance.
Now came the Stahlhelm, a grey stream; quieter, more spiritual
perhaps. On their beautiful flags
they carried our old colors black-white-red,2 with mourning
crêpe at the top. [ . . . ] How
wonderful and uplifting it is that the quarrels between brothers
that once so depressed us have
been settled! It should always be like tonight.
But between the SA and the Stahlhelm there was marching a
delegation of nationalist students.
And they won the hearts of Hamburg. The women at the
greengrocery stalls and their
customers, all the women there were saying the same thing:
‘Those students! Simply charming.
They were the best, weren’t they?’
And it was a magnificent picture, the snow-white, scarlet, moss-
green and black colors, the
fantastic berets, boots and gauntlets in the dancing light of the
torches, the swords, the flags.
They were followed by the Stahlhelm with shining
Schellenbaum, playing the old Prussian army
marches.
The SS brought up the rear of the procession.
We were drunk with enthusiasm, blinded by the light of the
torches right in our faces, and
always enveloped in their vapor as in a cloud of sweet incense.
And in front of us men, men,

1 Black-red-gold were the colors of the Republican flag.
‘Mustard’ is particularly derogatory since the
German word can be used colloquially to mean ‘nonsense’.
2 The colors of the old imperial flag.
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men, brightly colored, grey, brown, a torrent lasting an hour and
20 minutes. In the wavering
light of the torches one seemed to see only a few types
recurring again and again, but there
were between twenty-two and twenty-five thousand different
faces!
Next to us a little boy of three kept raising his tiny hand: ‘Heil
Hitler, Heil Hitlerman!’
An SA man said to Gisela that morning: ‘One doesn’t say Heil
Hitler any more, one says Heil
Germany.’ ‘Death to the Jews’ was also sometimes called out
and they sang of the blood of the
Jews which would squirt from their knives. (subsequent
addition: Who took that seriously then?)
Opposite the Eimsbüttel Sports Hall (what a pity we could not
see it) stood the leader of the
Hamburg National Socialists—and beside him with his hand
touching his hat, the leader of the
Hamburg Stahlhelm, Lieutenant-Commander Lauenstein, who a
few months before had been
stabbed by SA men (ten minutes from where he now stood) and
now saluted the procession of
the SA, just as the SA leader saluted that of the Stahlhelm.

What moments!
What a marvelous thought
The National Socialists have much more new blood and young
people than the Stahlhelm.
Good looking, fresh, gay youths in the procession.
When everything was over, it was actually not yet over, for the
last SS men were joined by a
crowd of gay people with left-over torches, who made their own
procession, happy to join in the
occasion.
Finally, the torches were thrown together at the Kaiser Friedrich
embankment, after a march
from the Lübeck Gate. It was 11.30 p.m. before all was over.
Unity at last, at long last, but for how long? We are after all
Germans.
What must Hitler feel when he sees the hundred thousand
people whom he summoned, to
whom he gave a national soul, people who are ready to die for
him. Not only metaphorically
speaking but in bitter earnest. [ . . . ]
And these floods of people in Hamburg are only a small fraction
of Hitler’s support in the whole
Reich. [ . . . ]

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Source of English translation: Jeremy Noakes and Geoffrey
Pridham, eds., Nazism 1919-1945,
Vol. 1, The Rise to Power 1919-1934. Exeter: University of
Exeter Press, 1998, pp. 129-31.
Source of original German text: “Louise Solmitz: Auszüge aus
den Tagebüchern,” reprinted in
Werner Jochmann, ed., Nationalsozialismus und Revolution:
Ursprung und Geschichte der
NSDAP in Hamburg; 1922-1933. Frankfurt: Europäische Verl.-
Anst., 1963, pp. 421-24.
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Otto Meissner’s Minutes of the Second Meeting between Hitler
and Hindenburg
(August 13, 1932)
The July 1932 Reichstag elections witnessed a significant Nazi
victory. The Nazis received 37%
of the votes: the most of any party, but still shy of an absolute
majority. Rather than use these
newly won seats to support the Papen government, Hitler sought

to form his own Nazi
government. Hitler demanded the chancellorship for himself as
well as key cabinet positions for
Nazis. Papen refused Hitler’s proposal outright. Still, he
himself was unable to form a
government with a majority in the Reichstag. In the end,
political power rested with President
Hindenburg, who had recourse to Article 48 of the Weimar
Constitution and the right to appoint
a chancellor. Unlike the previous chancellor, Brüning, Papen
benefitted from the president’s
support, and Hindenburg refused to be swayed by Hitler’s case
when the two met on August 13,
1932. Hitler’s unsuccessful bid for the chancellorship resulted
in even stronger Nazi opposition
to the Papen government, but it also dealt a serious blow to the
advance of the Nazi movement.
Present were: President Hindenburg, Chancellor [Franz] von
Papen, State Secretary Dr. [Otto]
Meissner, Adolf Hitler, Minister Dr. [Wilhelm] Frick, Captain
(ret.) [Ernst] Röhm
The President of the Reich opened the discussion by declaring
to Hitler that he was ready to let
the National Socialist Party and their leader Hitler participate in
the Reich Government and
would welcome their cooperation. He then put the question to
Hitler whether he was prepared to
participate in the present government of von Papen. Herr Hitler
declared that, for reasons which
he had explained in detail to the Reich President that morning,
his taking any part in cooperation
with the existing government was out of the question.

Considering the importance of the
National Socialist movement he must demand the full and
complete leadership of government
and state for himself and his party.
The Reich President in reply said firmly that he must answer
this demand with a clear,
unyielding No. He could not justify before God, before his
conscience or before the fatherland
the transfer of the whole authority of government to a single
party, especially to a party that was
biased against people who had different views from their own.
There were a number of other
reasons against it upon which he did not wish to enlarge in
detail, such as fear or increased
unrest, the effect on foreign countries, etc.
Herr Hitler repeated that any other solution was unacceptable to
him.
To this the Reich President replied: ‘So you will go into
opposition?’
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Hitler: ‘I have now no alternative.’
The Reich President: ‘In that case the only advice I can give
you is to engage in this opposition
in a chivalrous way and to remain conscious of your
responsibility and duty towards the
fatherland. I have had no doubts about your love for the

fatherland. I shall intervene sharply
against any acts of terrorism or violence such as have been
committed by members of the SA
sections. We are both old comrades and we want to remain so,
since the course of events may
bring us together again later on. Therefore, I shall shake hands
with you now in a comradely
way.’
This discussion was followed by a short conversation in the
corridor between the Reich
Chancellor and me, and Herr Hitler and his companions, in
which Herr Hitler expressed the view
that future developments would lead to the solution suggested
by him and to the overthrow of
the Reich President. The Government would get into a difficult
position; the opposition would
become very sharp and he could assume no responsibility for
the consequences.
The conversation lasted for about twenty minutes.
Source of original German text: Walther Hubatsch, Hindenburg
und der Staat. Gottingen:
Musterschmidt Verlag, 1966, p. 338.

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Volume 6. Weimar Germany, 1918/19 –1933
Adolf Hitler, “Appeal to the German People” (January 31, 1933)
Hitler delivered his first radio address late in the evening of
February 1, 1933, reading a Reich
government appeal to the German people in his capacity as
Reich Chancellor. The
proclamation was also disseminated via posters and newspapers.
Hitler wrote most of the text
himself; the only changes were the passages added by Papen on
Christianity and the family. In
this address, Hitler portrayed November 9, 1918, as a fall from
grace for the German people – a
fall that had ushered in fourteen years of “Marxism” (i.e., the
SPD) and the dominance of the
“November parties” (i.e., the Weimar coalition). In a sweeping
condemnation, he described this
fourteen-year inheritance as “appalling” and warned against
“Bolshevism” and anarchy. At the
end of his address, as at the beginning, Hitler employed
religious rhetoric, calling on the
“Almighty God.” Since Reich President Paul von Hindenburg
had already approved Hitler’s
request to dissolve the Reichstag and hold new elections, this
speech effectively marked the
start of the election campaign.

Over fourteen years have passed since that unhappy day when
the German people, blinded by
promises made by those at home and abroad, forgot the highest
values of our past, of the Reich,
of its honor and its freedom, and thereby lost everything. Since
those days of treason, the
Almighty has withdrawn his blessing from our nation. Discord
and hatred have moved in. Filled
with the deepest distress, millions of the best German men and
women from all walks of life see
the unity of the nation disintegrating in a welter of egoistical
political opinions, economic
interests, and ideological conflicts.
As so often in our history, Germany, since the day the
revolution broke out, presents a picture of
heartbreaking disunity. We did not receive the equality and
fraternity which was promised us;
instead we lost our freedom. The breakdown of the unity of
mind and will of our nation at home
was followed by the collapse of its political position abroad.
We have a burning conviction that the German people in 1914
went into the great battle without
any thought of personal guilt and weighed down only by the
burden of having to defend the
Reich from attack, to defend the freedom and material existence
of the German people. In the
appalling fate that has dogged us since November 1918 we see
only the consequence of our
inward collapse. But the rest of the world is no less shaken by
great crises. The historical
balance of power, which at one time contributed not a little to
the understanding of the necessity
for solidarity among the nations, with all the economic

advantages resulting therefrom, has been
destroyed.
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The delusion that some are the conquerors and others the
conquered destroys the trust
between nations and thereby also destroys the world economy.
But the misery of our people is
terrible! The starving industrial proletariat have become
unemployed in their millions, while the
whole middle and artisan class have been made paupers. If the
German farmer also is involved
in this collapse we shall be faced with a catastrophe of vast
proportions. For in that case, there
will collapse not only a Reich, but also a 2000-year-old
inheritance of the highest works of
human culture and civilization.
All around us are symptoms portending this breakdown. With an
unparalleled effort of will and of
brute force the Communist method of madness is trying as a last
resort to poison and
undermine an inwardly shaken and uprooted nation. They seek
to drive it towards an epoch
which would correspond even less to the promises of the
Communist speakers of today than did
the epoch now drawing to a close to the promises of the same
emissaries in November 1918.
Starting with the family, and including all notions of honor and
loyalty, nation and fatherland,

culture and economy, even the eternal foundations of our morals
and our faith—nothing is
spared by this negative, totally destructive ideology. Fourteen
years of Marxism have
undermined Germany. One year of Bolshevism would destroy
Germany. The richest and most
beautiful areas of world civilization would be transformed into
chaos and a heap of ruins. Even
the misery of the past decade and a half could not be compared
with the affliction of a Europe in
whose heart the red flag of destruction had been planted. The
thousands of injured, the
countless dead which this battle has already cost Germany may
stand as a presage of the
disaster.
In these hours of overwhelming concern for the existence and
the future of the German nation,
the venerable World War leader [Hindenburg] appealed to us
men of the nationalist parties and
associations to fight under him again as once we did at the
front, but now loyally united for the
salvation of the Reich at home. The revered President of the
Reich having with such generosity
joined hands with us in a common pledge, we nationalist leaders
would vow before God, our
conscience and our people that we shall doggedly and with
determination fulfill the mission
entrusted to us as the National Government.
It is an appalling inheritance which we are taking over.
The task before us is the most difficult which has faced German
statesmen in living memory.
But we all have unbounded confidence, for we believe in our
nation and in its eternal values.

Farmers, workers, and the middle class must unite to contribute
the bricks wherewith to build
the new Reich.
The National Government will therefore regard it as its first and
supreme task to restore to the
German people unity of mind and will. It will preserve and
defend the foundations on which the
strength of our nation rests. It will take under its firm protection
Christianity as the basis of our
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morality, and the family as the nucleus of our nation and our
state. Standing above estates and
classes, it will bring back to our people the consciousness of its
racial and political unity and the
obligations arising therefrom. It wishes to base the education of
German youth on respect for
our great past and pride in our old traditions. It will therefore
declare merciless war on spiritual,
political and cultural nihilism. Germany must not and will not
sink into Communist anarchy.
In place of our turbulent instincts, it will make national
discipline govern our life. In the process it
will take into account all the institutions which are the true
safeguards of the strength and power
of our nation.
The National Government will carry out the great task of
reorganizing our national economy with
two big Four-Year Plans:

Saving the German farmer so that the nation’s food supply and
thus the life of the nation shall
be secured.
Saving the German worker by a massive and comprehensive
attack on unemployment.
In fourteen years the November parties have ruined the German
farmer.
In fourteen years they created an army of millions of
unemployed.
The National Government will carry out the following plan with
iron resolution and dogged
perseverance.
Within four years the German farmer must be saved from
pauperism.
Within four years unemployment must be completely overcome.
Parallel with this, there emerge the prerequisites for the
recovery of the economy.
The National Government will combine this gigantic project of
restoring our economy with the
task of putting the administration and the finances of the Reich,
the states, and the communes
on a sound basis.
Only by doing this can the idea of preserving the Reich as a
federation acquire flesh and blood.
The idea of labor service and of settlement policy are among the

main pillars of this program.
Our concern to provide daily bread will be equally a concern for
the fulfillment of the
responsibilities of society to those who are old and sick.
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The best safeguard against any experiment which might
endanger the currency lies in
economical administration, the promotion of work, and the
preservation of agriculture, as well as
in the use of individual initiative.
In foreign policy, the National Government will see its highest
mission in the preservation of our
people’s right to an independent life and in the regaining
thereby of their freedom. The
determination of this Government to put an end to the chaotic
conditions in Germany is a step
towards the integration into the community of nations of a state
having equal status and
therefore equal rights with the rest. In so doing, the Government
is aware of its great obligation
to support, as the Government of a free and equal nation, that
maintenance and consolidation of
peace which the world needs today more than ever before.
May all others understand our position and so help to ensure
that this sincere desire for the
welfare of Europe and of the whole world shall find fulfillment.

Despite our love for our Army as the bearer of our arms and the
symbol of our great past, we
should be happy if the world, by restricting its armaments, made
unnecessary any increase in
our own weapons.
But if Germany is to experience this political and economic
revival and conscientiously to fulfill
its duties towards other nations, a decisive act is required: We
must overcome the
demoralization of Germany by the Communists.
We, men of this Government, feel responsible to German
history for the reconstitution of a
proper national body so that we may finally overcome the
insanity of class and class warfare.
We do not recognize classes, but only the German people, its
millions of farmers, citizens and
workers who together will either overcome this time of distress
or succumb to it.
With resolution and fidelity to our oath, seeing the
powerlessness of the present Reichstag to
shoulder the task we advocate, we wish to commit it to the
whole German people.
We therefore appeal now to the German people to sign this act
of mutual reconciliation.
The Government of the National Uprising wishes to set to work,
and it will work.
It has not for fourteen years brought ruin to the German nation;
it wants to lead it to the summit.
It is determined to make amends in four years for the liabilities

of fourteen years.
But it cannot subject the work of reconstruction to the will of
those who were responsible for the
breakdown.
The Marxist parties and their followers had fourteen years to
prove their abilities.
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The result is a heap of ruins.
Now, German people, give us four years and then judge us.
Let us begin, loyal to the command of the Field-Marshal. May
Almighty God favor our work,
shape our will in the right way, bless our vision and bless us
with the trust of our people. We
have no desire to fight for ourselves; only for Germany.
Source of original German text: “Aufruf der Reichsregierung
vom 31. Januar 1933,” reprinted in

Hans-Adolf Jacobsen and Werner Jochmann, eds., Ausgewählte
Dokumente zur Geschichte
des Nationalsozialismus, 1933-1945. Vol. 2, Bielefeld, 1961, no
page number (Document 31. I.
1933).
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Hitler’s Speech to the Industry Club in Düsseldorf (January 27,
1932)
Many business leaders were highly skeptical of the NSDAP,
which they viewed as a socialist
and anti-capitalist party. Hitler tried to dispel their doubts
through personal statements and
speaking appearances at companies. At these events, he tried to
seem as respectable as
possible. He invoked general national feelings, largely refrained
from anti-Semitic attacks, and
stressed his anti-Marxism. Thanks to these tactics, he often
made a positive impression, but the
business community still remained distrustful of the NSDAP.
The Keppler Circle (named after
Hitler’s economic adviser Wilhelm Keppler) and the
Arbeitsstelle Hjalmar Schacht also
attempted to improve relations between the Nazis and business
leaders. Nevertheless, only a
few major industrialists – such as Emil Kirdorf and Fritz

Thyssen – openly supported Hitler and
his party in the period before January 30, 1933. The speech
printed below was given on
January 27, 1932, in the large ballroom at the Park Hotel in
Düsseldorf. Around 650 members of
the Industry Club were in attendance.
[ . . . ] People say to me so often: ‘You are only the drummer of
national Germany’. And
supposing that I were only the drummer? It would today be a far
more statesmanlike
achievement to drum once more into this German people a new
faith than gradually to squander
the only faith they have [ . . . ]. The more you bring a people
back into the sphere of faith, of
ideals, the more will it cease to regard material distress as the
one and only thing that counts.
And the weightiest evidence for the truth of that statement is
our own German people. We will
never forget that the German people waged wars of religion for
150 years with prodigious
devotion, that hundreds of thousands of men once left their plot
of land, their property, and their
belongings simply for an ideal, simply for a conviction. We will
never forget that during those
150 years there was no trace of even an ounce of material
interest. Then you will understand
how mighty is the force of an idea, of an ideal. Only so can you
comprehend how it is that in our
movement today hundreds of thousands of young men are
prepared to risk their lives to
withstand our opponents. I know quite well, gentlemen, that
when National Socialists march
through the streets and suddenly in the evening there arises a

tumult and a commotion, then the
bourgeois draws back the window-curtain, looks out, and says:
‘Once again my night’s rest is
disturbed: no more sleep for me. Why must these Nazis always
be so provocative and run about
the place at night?’ Gentlemen, if everyone thought like that,
then, true enough, no one’s sleep
at night would be disturbed, but then also the bourgeois today
would not be able to venture into
the street. If everyone thought in that way, if these young folk
had no ideal to move them and
drive them forward, then certainly they would gladly be rid of
these nightly fights. But remember
that it means sacrifice when today many hundreds of thousands
of SA and SS men of the
National Socialist movement have every day to mount on their
lorries, protect meetings,
2
undertake marches, sacrifice themselves night after night and
then come back in the grey dawn
to workshop and factory, or as unemployed to take the pittance
of the dole: it means sacrifice
when from the little they possess they have further to buy their
uniforms, their shirts, their
badges, yes and even pay their own fares. Believe me, there is
already in all this the force of an
ideal—a great ideal! And if the whole German nation today had
the same faith in its vocation as
these hundreds of thousands, if the whole nation possessed this
idealism, Germany would
stand in the eyes of the world otherwise than she stands now!

(loud applause). For our situation
in the world in its fatal effects is but the result of our own
underestimate of German strength.
(‘Very true!’) Only when we have once more changed this fatal
undervaluation of ourselves can
Germany take advantage of the political possibilities which, if
we look far enough into the future,
can place German life once more upon a natural and secure
basis—and that means either new
living space [Lebensraum] and the development of a great
internal market or protection of
German economic life against the world without and utilization
of all the concentrated strength of
Germany. The labour resources of our people, the capacities, we
have them already: no one
can deny that we are industrious. But we must first refashion
the political preconditions: without
that, industry and capacity, diligence and economy are in the
last resort of no avail; an
oppressed nation will not be able to spend on its own welfare
even the fruits of its own economy
but must sacrifice them on the altar of exactions and of tribute.
And so in contrast to our own official Government I see no hope
for the resurrection of Germany
if we regard the foreign politics of Germany as the primary
factor: our primary need is the
restoration of a sound national German body politic armed to
strike. In order to realize this end I
founded thirteen years ago the National Socialist movement:
that movement I have led during
the last twelve years and I hope that one day it will accomplish
this task and that, as the fairest
result of its struggle, it will leave behind it a German body
politic completely renewed internally,
intolerant of anyone who sins against the nation and its

interests, intolerant of anyone who will
not acknowledge its vital interests or who opposes them,
intolerant of and pitiless towards
anyone who shall attempt once more to destroy or undermine
this body politic, and yet ready for
friendship and peace with anyone who has a wish for peace and
friendship (long and
tumultuous applause).
Source of original German text: Max Domarus, Hitler – Reden
und Proklamationen 1932-1945.
Wiesbaden: R. Löwit, 1973, pp. 89-90.
1
Government Guidelines for Radio Broadcasters (1932)
i. The German radio serves the German people. Its programs
unremittingly penetrate the

German home and are heard throughout the world. This
influence on nation and family and the
effect abroad place the directors and employees under a
particular obligation.
ii. The radio participates in the life work of the German nation.
The natural ordering of people in
home and family, work and state is to be maintained and
secured by the German radio. The
radio does not therefore speak to the listener only as an
individual, but also as a member of this
natural national order.
iii. German radio adheres to Christian beliefs and behavior and
respects the sincere convictions
of dissenters. That which degrades the Christian faith or
endangers the custom and culture of
the German people is excluded from German radio.
iv. Radio serves all Germans within and without the borders of
the Reich. It binds Germans
abroad with the Reich and permits Germans at home to share in
the life and fate of Germans
abroad. It is the duty of the German radio to cultivate the Idea
of the Reich.
v. Radio participates in the great task to educate the Germans as
nation state and to form and
strengthen the political thinking and will of the listener.
vi. The admirable strengths and goods inherited from past
generations of Germans and the
German Reich are to be respected and increased in the work of
the German radio. The radio
must also develop and cultivate an understanding for the
particular conditions and requirements

of the present.
vii. It is the task of all stations to cultivate the collectivity and
the entirety of the community of the
German people. The regional stations will therefore begin with
the particular characteristics of
the people in their catchment area and to communicate the rich
and varied lives of the German
clans and regions.
Source of English translation: Kate Lacey, Feminine
Frequencies, Gender, German Radio and
the Public Sphere, 1923-1945. Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1996, pp. 51-52.
2
Source of original German text: Erwin Fischer, Dokumente zur
Geschichte des deutschen
Rundfunks und Fernsehens. Göttingen: Musterschmidt, 1957,
pp. 85-86.
1

Ernst von Salomon, ―We and the Intellectuals‖ (1930)
We and the Intellectuals
[ . . . ]
The intellectual speaks and writes ―I.‖ He feels no
connectedness. He causes disintegration, the
disintegration of the mass of individual beings into the
particularized individual being, who
henceforth stands not under and not over the people, but at their
side. The means by which this
is accomplished is the misunderstood concept of ―education.‖
Education in the German sense
(Bildung) means giving form, both inner and outer. Form,
however, can only be given where
there is content, and content comes only from an idea. An idea
always manifests a
connectedness. A thought stands alone and is produced in a
brain. An idea is something
mutual. It grows out of the tensions between one individual and
another. Where there is tension,
there is also connectedness. For the intellectual, education is at
most a highly developed
acrobatics of thought and always only the property of the ―I.‖
The arrogance attached to the
concept of education could only have arisen in the intellectual’s
conception, and this conception
could only flourish in the empty space in which the intellectual

lives.
The emphatic ―we‖ of the new generation is a clear
renunciation of intellectualism. The ―we‖ of
the young, nationalistic generation comes about consciously.
We—that is the still small group of
men and, in the broad sense, masculine youth—have gone
beyond mere renunciation to
establish values in place of the old ones or in the empty space.
We have no intellectuals—we
say it with pride; we say it because we are reproached for this
alleged failing. What is
intellectual in nationalism is of a different sort than the
intellectual of the past historical period. It
is tied to blood. It knows no dialectic and where it seeks new
interconnections it does so in the
sense of responsibility for the whole. The intellectual content of
misconceived education knows
no whole and has its goal and its zenith in prominence. We
know a mutuality, from which we
draw force, and this mutuality is rooted not in the word but in
the deed and in the readiness to
commit the deed. The individuals who come from our ranks, and
whom we prize, do not in
consequence stand aside, for they drew their force from the
consciousness of connectedness
with the community, and they are, in the most heightened
moment, never dissolved from us but
over us, before us; they are leaders. Knowing about the
unconditioned nature of leadership and
2

the purification of this concept of all base superfluousness—
that is what primarily distinguishes
us from liberalism. The liberal system knows no leadership.
Instead of leaders it has
intellectuals. Marxism knows no leadership. Its first guides and
masters were racially alien
intellectuals and what it then, uneasily, bore in the way of
―leaders‖—those were philistines
selected and thrown up from below; Marxists themselves call
them ―bosses.‖ The system that
collapsed in November of 1918 had ―representatives‖ who
derived their leadership solely from
―tradition.‖ The system was completely liberal and collapsed
for one reason—because the ruling
forces, who stood invisibly behind events waiting for the failure
of those in charge, either wanted
the collapse, or possessed, in their merchant’s mentality, no
notion of leadership, or—and this is
a special chapter—saw in every form of leadership a danger that
could spoil business for them.
Whatever the case may be, we are now confronting a new
situation. The structure of our
movement is a particular one. It is rooted in the people. Every
movement must be, and not only
every movement, but every inspired thing that seeks to grow
straight. But we draw conclusions
from our commitment to the people. That only those who are
conscious of their nationality can
be part of the German people, that is one conclusion. That all
ideas by which one lives must in
turn exclusively serve the nation, that is another. That all the
phenomena of our multifaceted life
are to be recognized, tested, and embraced or repudiated
according to the values by which we

live, that is a third. Intellectualism we repudiate. It has been
weighed and found too light. Our
―we‖ grows out of our will and our service. And our will and
our service belong, to the point of
ultimate fanaticism, to the German people. Since we have in
anguish become persuaded that it
is different with others, we use this ―we.‖
Source of English translation: Ernst von Salomon, ―We and the
Intellectuals‖ (1930), in The
Weimar Republic Sourcebook, edited by Anton Kaes, Martin
Jay, and Edward Dimendberg. ©
1994 Regents of the University of California. Published by the
University of California Press, pp.
302-04. Reprinted with permission of the University of
California Press.
Source of original German text: Ernst von Salomon, ―Wir und
die Intellektuellen,‖ Die
Kommenden 5, no. 18 (May 2, 1930), pp. 206-07.
1
Joseph Goebbels, “Around the Gedächtniskirche” (1928)

Like Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, who became Gauleiter of Berlin-
Brandenburg in November 1926,
had a conflicted relationship with the city of Berlin. On the one
hand, it was the declared goal of
the Nazis to seize political power in the capital of Prussia and
the Reich. On the other hand, the
political left and the organized labor movement were
particularly well-rooted and represented
there. Furthermore, Goebbels also objected to the dynamism of
the pulsating metropolis, its
masses of people, and its cosmopolitanism and cultural
openness. He described Berlin
unflatteringly as a “pit of iniquity” and a “stone desert.”
Goebbels’ discomfort with modernism
and his belief in the necessity of a national “rebirth” find clear
expression in this article.
Around the Gedächtniskirche
Thousands and thousands of electric lights spew illumination
into the grey evening, so that
brightness covers the Kurfürstendamm, as if by day. The bells
on streetcars ring, buses clatter
by honking their horns, stuffed full with people and more
people; taxis and fancy private
automobiles hum over the glassy asphalt. The red, yellow, and
green signal lights regulate the
stop and go of traffic; in the midst of all the bustle the green
one stands high atop its post,
releasing the black throng of people to their breakneck passage
from one side of the street to

the other, Squeals and squeaks so assault the ear that the
novices run the constant risk of
losing their calm disposition. In front of the huge cinemas the
newest hits of the season shine
forth in dazzling red: Killed by Life, The Girl from Tauentzien
Avenue, Just One Night. The
fragrance of heavy perfume floats by. Harlots smile from the
artful pastels of fashionable
women’s faces; so-called men stroll to and fro, monocles
glinting; fake and precious stones
sparkle. All the languages of the world fall on the ear; there
goes the yellow Indian next to the
garrulous Saxon; an Englishman curses as he elbows his way
through the crowd, and,
resounding above the din, a frozen newspaper boy cries out the
evening papers just off the
press.
In the middle of this turmoil of the metropolis the
Gedächtniskirche stretches its narrow steeples
up into the grey evening. It is alien in this noisy life. Like an
anachronism left behind, it mourns
between the cafés and cabarets, condescends to the automobiles
humming around its stony
body, and calmly announces the hour to the sin of corruption.
Walking around it are many people who perhaps have never
gazed up at its towers. There is the
snobby flaneur in a fur coat and patent leather; the worldly
lady, garçon from head to toe with a
2

monocle and smoking cigarette, taps on high heels across its
walkways and disappears into one
of the thousands of abodes of delirium and drugs that cast their
screaming lights seductively
into the evening air.
That is Berlin West: The heart turned to stone of this city. Here
in the niches and corners of
cafés, in the cabarets and bars, in the Soviet theaters and
mezzanines, the spirit of the asphalt
democracy is piled high. Here the politics of sixty-million
diligent Germans is conducted. Here
one gives and receives the latest market and theater tips. Here
one trades in politics, pictures,
stocks, love, film, theater, government, and the general welfare.
The Gedächtniskirche is never
lonely. Day plunges suddenly into night and night becomes day
without there having been a
moment of silence around it.
The eternal repetition of corruption and decay, of failing
ingenuity and genuine creative power,
of inner emptiness and despair, with the patina of a Zeitgeist
sunk to the level of the most
repulsive pseudoculture: that is what parades its essence, what
does its mischief all around the
Gedächtniskirche. One would so gladly believe that it is the
national elite stealing day and night
from the dear Lord on Tauentzien Avenue. It is only the
Israelites.
The German people is alien and superfluous here. To speak in
the national language is to be
nearly conspicuous. Pan-Europe, the Internationale, jazz, France
and Piscator—those are the

watchwords.
“The Girlfriend, back issues only ten cents!” cries a resourceful
hawker. It does not occur to a
single passer-by that this is out of place. It is not out of place at
all. The man knows the milieu.
Berlin West is the abscess on this gigantic city of diligence and
industry. What they earn in the
North they squander in the West. Four million make their daily
bread in this stone desert, and
over them sit a hundred-thousand drones who squander their
diligence, turning it into sin, vice,
and corruption.
The Kurfürstendamm raises a howl if anyone ever steps on the
toes of these bloodsuckers; then
humanity is in danger. The only one not seen suffering there is
the professional. And a whole
people is borne to the grave with a smile.
This is not the true Berlin. It is elsewhere waiting, hoping,
struggling. It is beginning to recognize
the Judas who is selling our people for thirty pieces of silver.
The other Berlin is lurking, ready to pounce. A few thousand
are working days and nights on
end so that sometime the day will arrive. And this day will
demolish the abodes of corruption all
around the Gedächtniskirche; it will transform them and give
them over to a risen people.
The day of judgment! It will be the day of freedom!

3
Source of English translation: Joseph Goebbels, “Around the
Gedächtniskirche” (1928), in The
California Press.
Source of original German text: Joseph Goebbels, “Rund um die
Gedächtniskirche,” Der Angriff
(January 23, 1928).
1
Grete Lihotzky, ―Rationalization in the Household‖ (1926-27)
Rationalization in the Household

Every thinking woman must be aware of the backwardness of
current methods of household
management and see in them a severe impediment to her own
development and therefore to
the development of the family as a whole. Today’s hectic urban
life-style imposes demands on
women far exceeding those of the calmer conditions of eighty
years ago, yet today’s woman is
nevertheless condemned to manage her household (aside from
the relief offered by a few
exceptions) just like her grandmother did.
The problem of finding a more rational organization of the
housewife’s work is of nearly equal
significance for all levels of society. Both the middle-class
woman, who often has to run the
house without help of any kind, and the working-class woman,
who frequently has to pursue an
occupation outside the home, are so over-worked that over the
long run it cannot but have a
negative effect on the general health of the whole population.
For more than a decade women leaders have recognized the
importance of relieving the
housewife of unnecessary burdens and have spoken out for the
central management of
residential buildings, that is, for the establishment of
centralized cooking facilities. They said:
Why should twenty women have to shop for groceries when one
can do the same for all of
them? Why should twenty women make a fire in twenty stoves
when food could be prepared on
one for everyone? Why should twenty women cook for twenty
families when the proper
organization would allow four or five persons to do the same

work for twenty families? Such
considerations are illuminating for every reasonable person, and
they have had their effect.
Buildings with centralized kitchens were constructed.
Soon, however, it became apparent that it is not possible simply
to unite twenty families into one
household. Aside from personal quarrels and conflicts, sharp
variations in the material
conditions of the respective inhabitants are unavoidable, which
is why the merging of several
families necessarily leads to conflicts. For workers and private
employees, who are subject to
unemployment at relatively short notice, the centralized kitchen
arrangement is out of the
question from the start, because it prevents them from lowering
their standard of living to the
necessary extent once they become unemployed. The problem of
rationalizing the household,
2
therefore, cannot be solved in isolation, but must go hand-in-
hand with associated social
considerations.
We recognize from past experience that the single-family
dwelling is here to stay, but that it
must also be organized as rationally as possible. The question is
how to improve the traditional
methods of household management, which waste both energy
and time. What we can do is
transfer the principles of labor-saving management developed in

factories and offices, which
have led to unsuspected increases in productivity, to the
household. We must recognize that
there is a best and simplest way to approach every task, which
is therefore the least tiring as
well. The three main working groups involved—housewives,
manufacturers, and architects—
face the important and highly responsible job of working
together to discover and make feasible
the simplest way of executing every household chore.
Among housewives the woman with some intellectual training is
always going to work more
rationally. Supported by the appropriate devices and appliances,
and given that her dwelling is
correctly arranged, she will quickly find the most efficient way
to do her work.
Among manufacturers (with the exception of furniture builders)
there are already a considerable
number who have accepted the new requirements of our time
and are putting labor-saving
devices and appliances on the market. The greatest
backwardness, however, continues to be
represented in the way dwellings are furnished. Years of effort
on the part of the German
Werkbund and individual architects, countless articles and
lectures demanding clarity, simplicity,
and efficiency in furnishings, as well as a turn away from the
traditional kitsch of the last fifty
years, have had almost no effect whatever.
When we enter dwellings we still find the old knick-knacks and
the usual inappropriate ―decor.‖
That all the efforts to the contrary had so little practical success
is primarily the fault of women,

who are remarkably uninterested in the new ideas. The furniture
dealers say that the customers
keep on wanting the old stuff. And women would prefer to take
on the extra work in order to
have a ―snug and cozy‖ home. The majority still takes simple
and efficient to mean the same
thing as dull.
The Frankfurt housing office attempted to convince people of
the contrary by displaying a
completely furnished model building as a part of the exhibition,
―The New Dwelling and Its
Interior Structure,‖ at the local trades fair. The point is to prove
that simplicity and efficiency are
not merely labor-saving but, executed with good materials and
the correct form and color,
represent clarity and beauty as well.
The Frankfurt Housewives’ Association had its own display at
the exhibition and it illustrated the
importance of household rationalization particularly well. This
part of the exhibition, called ―The
Modern Household,‖ was primarily concerned with the problem
of the labor-saving kitchen.
Displayed first of all was a completely furnished dining-car
kitchen and sideboard, which offered
a particularly instructive example of how steps and other
unnecessary movements can be
3
saved. Three more fully equipped kitchens with built-in
furniture (of which the first two have

been exhibited about three thousand times in Frankfurt) show
how effort can be saved by
proper layout and furniture arrangement. Here the three
different kinds of kitchen operations
were taken into account: (1) households without a maid (with
annual incomes up to about 5,000
marks); (2) households with one maid (with annual incomes of
up to 10,000 marks); and (3)
households with two maids (with annual incomes over 10,000
marks).
Aside from wooden kitchen furnishings, the display also
included a small cooking corner made
of metal for bachelor apartments and a kitchen made of
washable bricks; these last two kitchens
represent attempts to find appropriate new materials that are
less affected by external
influences than wood. All of the kitchens are small, to save
effort, and can be separated off
completely from the dwelling’s living area. The old style of
combining kitchen and living space
seems to have been superseded. Also exhibited were examples
of free-standing kitchen
furniture that is already on the market and contributes
considerably to easing household work.
Good and bad household and kitchen appliances—laborwasting
and labor-saving, hard and
easy to clean—were identified by signs of different colors.
Drying racks for bowls, plates, and
cups, which save the work of drying the chinaware, and flour
hoppers that dispense a specific,
measured amount of flour into the bowl, represent devices that
have been tried and approved
by women in other countries for some time.
The exhibition devoted particular attention to electrical devices

and appliances. Although not yet
practical for lower income levels, we know that the not-too-
distant future belongs to the electrical
kitchen. The centralized electrical laundry facilities that had to
be installed in the larger housing
blocks should provide women with an example of the labor that
can be saved, and encourage
them to have smaller laundry rooms, which are already a
reasonable investment for lower-
income families, in their own homes. In a central washing
facility in Frankfurt, the renters
requested that manually operated washing machines be installed
in addition to the electric ones.
Now, after a year, the manually operated machines go unused,
since all of the women want to
do their wash in the other ones.
―The smallest bath in the smallest space,‖ about five feet by
four, proves that the demand ―a
bath for every dwelling‖ no longer represents an unrealizable
ideal. A 1:10 model of a flat
demonstrates the possibility of saving room by slipping a
―wash and shower stall‖ between two
bedrooms as well as by installing a shower room requiring only
five and a half square feet. The
constant flow of water makes a more thorough cleansing
possible than can be had in a tub.
The extensive use of natural gas in the household is illustrated
by a model of a one-family
house fully supplied with gas. The exhibition took special pains
to investigate the important topic
of good lighting in the home. How much money can be saved
solely through the choice of a
wallpaper designed to enhance illumination! How important it is
for the health of the family that

women, who represent the majority of the buyers, be directed to
the correct and technically
satisfactory work lamps, so that they do not keep on
thoughtlessly buying the small, ornate floor
lamps with dust-gathering silk shades.
4
It is often for the silliest reasons that we are expected to
surround ourselves with badly designed
things. There is, for example, a large lamp factory whose stock
consists exclusively of tasteless
and impractical lamps. It produces inferior models because they
are needed for large-scale
export to India, while the small domestic turnover in new, good
models makes their production
unprofitable.
Are we supposed to spend our money on these bad lamps and
ruin our eyes so that local lamps
can be sent to the Indian colonies?
Here, as in all things, it must be a general principle, in
particular for women, not to accept
thoughtlessly whatever comes on the market, not to choose
things that seem pretty at the
moment, but to check for appropriateness and faultless technical
quality.
This exhibition should sharpen the eye for that task.

Source of English translation: Grete Lihotzky, ―Rationalization
in the Household‖ (1926-27), in
The Weimar Republic Sourcebook, edited by Anton Kaes,
Martin Jay, and Edward Dimendberg.
© 1994 Regents of the University of California. Published by
the University of California Press,
pp. 462-65. Reprinted with permission of the University of
California Press.
Source of original German text: Grete Lihotzky,
―Rationalisierung im Haushalt,‖ Das neue
Frankfurt, no. 5 (1926-27), pp. 120-23.
1
Ivan Goll, ―The Negroes Are Conquering Europe‖ (1926)
The Negroes Are Conquering Europe

The Negroes are conquering Paris. They are conquering Berlin.
They have already filled the
whole continent with their howls, with their laughter. And we
are not shocked, we are not
amazed: on the contrary, the old world calls on its failing
strength to applaud them.
Yesterday some of us were still saying, art is dead!—the terrible
confession of a lifeless,
enervated, hopeless age. Art dead? Then original art, superior
art, lives again! The last art was:
disintegration of the ego; disintegration of the world; despair
over the world in the ego; the
constant, mad revolution of the ego about itself. We experience
that in all the twenty-year-old
novelists finding fame in Paris just now—and there are dozens
of them. Benn wrests the one
bloody book in his life from his torment and calls it—still
young—Epilog. That is almost more
tragic than [Heinrich von] Kleist’s suicide. And what otherwise
is not the product of such pain
remains precious and fin-de-siècle, thin and frivolous.
And yet, why complain? The Negroes are here. All of Europe is
dancing to their banjo. It cannot
help itself. Some say it is the rhythm of Sodom and
Gomorrah.... Why should it not be from
paradise? In this case, rise and fall are one.
The Revue Nègre, which is rousing the tired public in the
Théâtre des Champs-Elysées to thrills
and madness as otherwise only a boxing match can do, is
symbolic.
Negroes dance with their senses. (While Europeans can only
dance with their minds.) They

dance with their legs, breasts, and bellies. This was the dance of
the Egyptians, the whole of
antiquity, the Orient. This is the dance of the Negroes. One can
only envy them, for this is life,
sun, primeval forests, the singing of birds and the roar of a
leopard, earth. They never dance
naked: and yet, how naked is the dance! They have put on
clothes only to show that clothes do
not exist for them.
Their revue is an unmitigated challenge to moral Europe. There
are eight beautiful girls whose
figures conjure up a stylized purity, reminiscent of deer and
Greek youths. And at their head, the
2
star, Josephine Baker. They have all oiled their curly hair
smooth with a process just invented in
New York. And on these rounded heads they don hats of
manifold fashions, from 1830, 1900, or
by the designer Lewis. This mix exudes a glowing irony. A
belly dance is performed in a
brocade dress by Poiret. In front of a church that could have
been painted by Chagall, dressed
in bourgeois skirts like women going to market, they dance
around a white, bespectacled pastor
strumming a banjo (American Negroes are pious and faithful
Christians—you only have to listen
to their modern songs to know that!). They dance a dance one
might expect in a lunatic asylum.
It confronts us all, it confronts everything with the strange

impression of a snarling parody. And it
is a parody. They make fun of themselves when they perform
the ―Dance of the Savages‖ with
the same mockery, wearing only the usual loin cloth and—a silk
brassiere.
And here we see original art becoming one with the latest.
These Negroes come out of the
darkest parts of New York. There they were disdained,
outlawed; these beautiful women might
have been rescued from a miserable ghetto. These magnificent
limbs bathed in rinse water.
They do not come from the primeval forests at all. We do not
want to fool ourselves. But they
are a new, unspoiled race. They dance with their blood, with
their life, with all the memories in
their short history: memories of transport in stinking ships, of
early slave labor in America, of
much misfortune. Sentimentality breaks through. They become
sentimental when they sing.
―Swanee River‖ and ―Give Me Just a Little Bit‖— these
universal hits in provincial jazz apply the
rouge on civilization. Alas, these primeval people will be used
up fast! Will they have the time to
express what is in them in an art of their own making? It is
doubtful.
The leader, director, and principal dancer of the troupe is Louis
Douglas, the equal of the perfect
Baker. He is the only one who wears a dark black mask, while
all the others are nearly light
brown. He has a gigantic white mouth. But his feet! They are
what inspires the music. The
orchestra takes its lead from them, not the other way around. He
walks, he drags, he slips—and
the beat rises from the floor, not from the flutes, which merely

offer their accompaniment in
secret. One number is called ―My Feet Are Talking.‖ And with
his feet he tells us of his voyage
from New York to Europe: the first day on the boat, the third in
the storm, then the trip by
railroad and a race at Longchamp.
The musicians play with, they do not merely play along! They
are located left of the stage, then
soon enough they are following after a dancer or tossing off
their remarks in a song. They are
genuine actors. They also help to emphasize the parody. They
laugh continuously. Whom are
they making fun of? No—they aren’t making fun of anyone:
they are just enjoying, the playing,
the dancing, the beat. They enjoy themselves with their faces,
with their legs, with their
shoulders; everything shakes and plays its part. It often seems
as if they had the leading roles.
But the leading role belongs to Negro blood. Its drops are
slowly falling over Europe, a long-
since dried-up land that can scarcely breathe. Is that perhaps the
cloud that looks so black on
the horizon but whose fearsome downpours are capable of so
white a shine? [Claire Goll’s] The
Negro Jupiter Robs Europe [Der Neger Jupiter raubt Europa] is
the name of a modern German
3
novel just now coming out. The Negro question is pressing for
our entire civilization. It runs like

this: Do the Negroes need us? Or are we not sooner in need of
them?
Source of English translation: Ivan Goll, ―The Negroes Are
Conquering Europe,‖ in The Weimar
Republic Sourcebook, edited by Anton Kaes, Martin Jay, and
Edward Dimendberg. © 1994
Regents of the University of California. Published by the
University of California Press, pp. 559-
60. Reprinted with permission of the University of California
Press.
Source of original German text: Ivan Goll, ―Die Neger erobern
Europa,‖ Die literarische Welt, no.
2, January 15, 1926, pp. 3-4.
1
Ernst Lorsy, “The Hour of Chewing Gum” (1926)
After the German economy had stabilized, the Chicago chewing
gum manufacturer Wrigley tried
to establish a presence in the German market. To that end, he
spent around 2 million

Reichsmark to build a factory in Frankfurt. The factory was
completed in June 1925. In the
following text, Ernst Lorsy uses chewing gum consumption as
an occasion for ironic reflections
on the would-be Americanization of Germany. According to
Lorsy, the success of chewing gum
was based on the “power of advertising” to suggest needs. Like
several other German
commentators, Lorsy mixed superficial astonishment over
America’s incontestable industrial-
technical and economic achievements with a certain European
arrogance vis-à-vis American
“mass society.”
The Hour of Chewing Gum
When the great [William] Wrigley opened his chewing gum
factory in Frankfurt am Main in 1925,
some predicted failure. Granted there had always been chewing
gum in Germany, but it could
never become a proper item of mass consumption. And now,
after one year, it is apparent that
the battle will be won. Divided in the popular referenda, the
Germans appear to want to become
for Wrigley a united nation of gum chewers. Perhaps no other
item enjoyed such a rapid
increase in turnover during the stabilization crisis as chewing
gum. The Fordson tractor lags far
behind Wrigley’s Spearmint. Chewing gum is the cheapest way
to Americanize oneself, and that
is why the Germans of today, who harbor an intense yearning
for America, have chosen it. That
is, they have been selected and effectively dealt with by the lord

of chewing gum as a
predestined people. And today they are ripe for chewing gum.
That a shelf-warmer could become a fashion item, that a quiet
little sect sticking inconspicuously
to its old habits could grow into a mass movement convinced of
the novelty of its rite, testifies
more than anything else to the power of advertising. The history
of chewing gum is the history of
its publicity and presents the most compelling example of the
way needs are inspired by
advertising. For the moment it likely remains true that no one
who does not want to has to chew
gum. Nevertheless in America the number of people who can
help themselves from chewing
gum is already small. Just wait until the German chewing gum
advertisements, today still in the
infancy of half-finished texts from across the sea, reach the
level of the American ads, not in
their insane scale but quite likely in their sense of certainty and
their ability to enforce conformity:
then it will be hard not to chew gum.
2
The path by which chewing gum makes its inexorable advance
on the soul of the modern
masses took its cue from strategy in the World War: enormous,
purely quantitative accumulation.
Long before Joffre, the Broadway strategists of the illuminated
billboard knew of the irresistible

effect of a barrage from which there is no escape. The big city
becomes a battleground on
which the public, with its necessarily weakened nerves,
succumbs in accord with the proven
expectation of the billboard Hindenburgs. The big-city dweller
has had to become accustomed
to a few things, his temptation threshold continues to rise
visibly, but he will never become as
dulled as the little Wrigley man who has no nerves at all. The
little Wrigley man, whose sly,
gnomish gaze has confronted Americans for years now, is a
nocturnal acrobat on the lighted
roofs of their avenues. A stroller drops his eyes from one of
them, and his comrade springs into
view. The number of little Wrigley men amounts to a battalion
ready for war, and the master of
these troops, the man Wrigley, is a powerful commander.
It was not Wrigley who invented chewing gum. If he had, he
would perhaps be the genius the
humorists credit him with being. He did, however, invent the
gigantic chewing gum
advertisement, and ultimately what is most essential about
chewing gum is the advertisement,
with Wrigley now exercising an influence over the American
people through his ads as few since
Lincoln have. If the citizens of the States want to visit Capitol
Hill in their nation’s capital, then
they have first to pass by a little Wrigley man. At night the
Capitol is dark, and broad
Pennsylvania Avenue, which leads directly to it, is thoroughly
dominated by an oversized little
Wrigley man blinking away in a yellowish glow. The little
Wrigley man actually consists of those
thick arrows that are the Wrigley’s trademark. Chomping
excitedly, it persuades America that it

must chew Wrigley’s gum to calm itself. “Pleasant and
refreshing,” says the illuminated ad, “the
aroma lingers,” it proclaims, “perfumes your breath,” it
screams, “aids digestion,” it bellows,
“preserves your teeth,” it puffs, “chew it after every meal,” it
advises, admonishes, orders,
threatens, extorts. America cowers and chews.
In a sensational trial it recently was made known that Wrigley
invests fifty percent of his pure
profits year after year in advertising; it is worth it. Wrigley’s
fortune is estimated at 140,000,000
dollars. His business tower on Lake Michigan is a Chicago
landmark. He competed with the
powers of fate to help shape the face of America and the faces
of Americans. He boasts that he
brought the famous hardness to that face, which happily
occupies the midpoint between a
profile of Caesar and that of a ruminant, and the possession of
which is thought by the average
American to be an honor. [Leon] Trotsky credits Wrigley with
yet another world-historical service.
By teaching the workers of America to chew gum, he and his
competitors erected a barrier in
the path of proletarian revolution. Due to the continual
movement of the jaw, they never got to
thinking, to contemplating their class position, the regulation of
work, or the goal of life. Wrigley
must, when he reads these sentences, do something that all
American multimillionaires are
inclined to do: he must consider himself a benefactor to
mankind.
[ . . . ]

3
Source of English translation: Ernst Lorsy, “The Hour of
Chewing Gum” (1926), in The Weimar
Republic Sourcebook, edited by Anton Kaes, Martin Jay, and
Edward Dimendberg. © 1994
Regents of the University of California. Published by the
University of California Press, pp. 662-
63. Reprinted with permission of the University of California
Press.
Source of original German text: Ernst Lorsy, “Die Stunde des
Kaugummis,” Das Tagebuch, no.
26 (June 26, 1926), pp. 913-15.
1
Stefan Zweig, ―The Monotonization of the World‖ (1925)

The Monotonization of the World
Monotonization of the World. The most potent intellectual
impression, despite the particular
satisfactions enjoyed, of every journey in recent years is a
slight horror in the face of the
monotonization of the world. Everything is becoming more
uniform in its outward manifestations,
everything leveled into a uniform cultural schema. The
characteristic habits of individual peoples
are being worn away, native dress giving way to uniforms,
customs becoming international.
Countries seem increasingly to have slipped simultaneously into
each other; people’s activity
and vitality follows a single schema; cities grow increasingly
similar in appearance. Paris has
been three-quarters Americanized, Vienna Budapested: more
and more the fine aroma of the
particular in cultures is evaporating, their colorful foliage being
stripped with ever-increasing
speed, rendering the steel-grey pistons of mechanical operation,
of the modern world machine,
visible beneath the cracked veneer.
This process has been underway for a long time: before the war
[Walther] Rathenau
prophesized this mechanization of existence, the dominance of
technology, would be the most
important aspect of our epoch. But never have the outward
manifestations of our ways of life
plunged so precipitously, so moodily into uniformity as in the
last few years. Let us be clear
about it! It is probably the most urgent, the most critical

phenomenon of our time.
Symptoms. One could, to make the problem distinct, list
hundreds. I will quickly select just a few
of the most familiar, uncompromising examples, to show how
greatly customs and habits have
been monotonized and sterilized in the last decade.
The most conspicuous is dance. Two or three decades ago dance
was still specific to nations
and to the personal inclinations of the individual. One waltzed
in Vienna, danced the csardas in
Hungary, the bolero in Spain, all to the tune of countless
different rhythms and melodies in
which both the genius of an artist and the spirit of the nation
took obvious form. Today millions
of people, from Capetown to Stockholm, from Buenos Aires to
Calcutta, dance the same dance
to the same short-winded, impersonal melodies. They begin at
the same hour. Like the muezzin
in an oriental country call tens of thousands to a single prayer at
sundown—like those twenty
words, so now twenty beats at five in the afternoon call the
whole of occidental humanity to the
2
same ritual. Never, except in certain ecclesiastical formulas and
forms, have two hundred
million people hit upon such expressive simultaneity and
uniformity as in the style of dance
practiced by the modern white race of America, Europe, and the

colonies.
A second example is fashion. Never before has such a striking
uniformity developed in all
countries as during our age. Once it took years for a fashion
from Paris to reach other big cities,
or to penetrate the countryside. A certain boundary protected
people and their customs from its
tyrannical demands. Today its dictatorship becomes universal in
a heartbeat. New York decrees
short hair for women: within a month, as if cut by the same
scythe, 50 or 100 million female
manes fall to the floor. No emperor, no khan in the history of
the world ever experienced a
similar power, no spiritual commandment a similar speed.
Christianity and socialism required
centuries and decades to win their followings, to enforce their
commandments on as many
people as a modern Parisian tailor enslaves in eight days.
A third example: cinema. Once again utter simultaneity in all
countries and languages, the
cultivation of the same performance, the same taste (or lack of
it) in masses by the hundreds of
millions. The complete cancellation of any individuality, though
the manufacturers gloriously
extol their films as national: the Nibelungen triumphs in Italy
and Max Linder from Paris in the
most German, most nationalistic constituencies. Here, too, the
mass instinct is stronger and
more authoritarian than the thought. Jackie Coogan’s triumphal
appearance was a more
powerful experience for our day than was Tolstoy’s death
twenty years ago.
A fourth example is radio. All of these inventions have a single

meaning: simultaneity.
Londoners, Parisians, and Viennese listen at the same second to
the same thing, and the
supernatural proportions of this simultaneity, of this uniformity,
are intoxicating. There is an
intoxication, a stimulus for the masses, in all of these new
technological miracles, and
simultaneously an enormous sobriety of the soul, a dangerous
seduction of the individual into
passivity. Here too, as in dance, fashion, and the cinema, the
individual acquiesces to a herdlike
taste that is everywhere the same, no longer making choices that
accord with internal being but
ones that conform to the opinion of a world.
One could infinitely multiply these symptoms, and they
multiply themselves from day to day on
their own. The sense of autonomy in matters of pleasure is
flooding the times. It will soon be
harder to list the particularities of nations and cultures than the
features they share in common.
Consequences. The complete end of individuality. It is not with
impunity that everyone can
dress the same, that all women can go out in the same clothes,
the same makeup: monotony
necessarily penetrates beneath the surface. Faces become
increasingly similar through the
influence of the same passions, bodies more similar to each
other through the practice of the
same sports, minds more similar for sharing the same interests.
An equivalence of souls
unconsciously arises, a mass soul created by the growing drive
toward uniformity, an atrophy of
nerves in favor of muscles, the extinction of the individual in
favor of the type. Conversation, the

art of speaking, is danced and sported away, theater brutalized
into cinema; literature becomes
3
the practice of momentary fashions, the ―success of the
season.‖ Already, as in England, books
are no longer produced for people, but increasingly as the
―book of the season‖; as in radio an
instantaneous form of success is spreading which is announced
simultaneously from all
European stations, and annulled a second later. And since
everything is geared to the shortest
units of time, consumption increases: thus does genuine
education—the patient accumulation of
meaning over the course of a lifetime—become a quite rare
phenomenon in our time, just like
everything else that can be achieved only by individual
exertion.
Origin. What is the source of this terrible wave threatening to
wash all the color, everything
particular out of life? Everyone who has ever been there knows:
America. The historians of the
future will one day mark the page following the great European
war as the beginning of the
conquest of Europe by America. Or, more accurately, the
conquest is already rippingly
underway, and we simply fail to notice it (conquered peoples
are always too-slow thinkers). The
European countries still find the receipt of a credit in dollars a
cause for celebration. We

continue to flatter ourselves with illusions of America’s
philanthropic and economic goals. In
reality we are becoming colonies of its life, its way of life,
slaves to an idea profoundly foreign to
Europe: the mechanical idea.
But our economic obedience seems to me minor compared to the
spiritual danger. The
colonization of Europe would not be so terrible politically; to
servile souls all slavery is mild and
the free always know how to preserve their freedom. The
genuine danger to Europe seems to
me to be a matter of the spirit, of the importation of American
boredom, of that dreadful, quite
specific boredom that rises over there from every stone and
every house on all the numbered
streets. The boredom that does not, like the earlier European
variety, come from calmness, from
sitting on the park bench playing dominoes and smoking a
pipe—a lazy waste of time indeed,
but not dangerous. American boredom is restless, nervous, and
aggressive; it outruns itself in
its frantic haste, seeks numbness in sports and sensations. It has
lost its playfulness, scurries
along instead in the rabid frenzy of an eternal flight from time.
It is always inventing new artifices
for itself, like cinema and radio, to feed its hungry senses with
nourishment for the masses, and
it transforms this common interest in enjoyment into concerns
as massive as its banks and
trusts.
America is the source of that terrible wave of uniformity that
gives everyone the same: the same
overalls on the skin, the same book in the hand, the same pen
between the fingers, the same

conversation on the lips, and the same automobile instead of
feet. From the other side of our
world, from Russia, the same will to monotony presses
ominously in a different form: the will to
the compartmentalization of the individual, to uniformity in
world views, the same dreadful will to
monotony. Europe remains the last bulwark of individualism
and, perhaps, of the overly taut
cramp of peoples—our vigorous nationalism, despite all its
senselessness, represents to some
extent a fevered, unconscious rebellion, a last, desperate effort
to defend ourselves against
leveling. But precisely that cramped form of resistance betrays
our weakness. Rome, the genius
of sobriety, is already underway to wipe Europe, the last Greece
in history, from the table of
time.
4
Defense. What to do now? Storm the capitol, summon the
people: ―To the trenches, the
barbarians are coming to destroy our world!‖ Cry out once more
in Caesar’s words, this time
more earnestly: ―People of Europe, preserve your most sacred
possessions!‖ No, we are no
longer gullible enough to believe that with associations, with
books and proclamations, we can
rise up against a world-encompassing movement of such a
monstrous sort and defeat the drive

to monotonization. Whatever one might write, it remains a piece
of paper cast against a gale.
Whatever we might write, it does not reach the soccer players
and the shimmy dancers, and if it
did, they would no longer understand it. In all of these things,
of which I am mentioning only a
few, in the cinema, in radio, in dance, in all of these new means
for mechanizing humanity there
is an enormous power that is not to be overcome. For they all
fulfill the highest ideal of the
average: to offer amusement without demanding exertion. And
their insurmountable strength
lies in the fact that they are unprecedentedly comfortable. The
new dance can be learned by the
dumbest servant girl in three hours; the cinema delights the
illiterate and demands of them not a
grain of education; to enjoy radio one need only take the
earpiece from the table and hang it on
one’s head, and already there is a waltz ringing in the ear—
against such comfort even the gods
would fight in vain. Whoever demands only a minimum of
intellectual, physical, and moral
exertion is bound to triumph among the masses, for the majority
is passionately in favor of such;
whoever continues to demand autonomy, independence of
judgment, personality—even in
entertainment—would appear ridiculous against such an
enormously superior power. If
humanity is now letting itself be increasingly bored and
monotonized, then that is really nothing
other than its deepest desire. Autonomy in the conduct of one’s
life and even in the enjoyment
of life has by now become a goal for so few people that most no
longer feel how they are
becoming particles, atoms in the wash of a gigantic power. So
they bathe in the warm stream

that is carrying them off to the trivial. As Caesar said: ruere in
servitium, to rush into servitude—
this passion for self-dissolution has destroyed every nation.
Now it is Europe’s turn: the world
war was the first phase, Americanization is the second.
Source of English translation: Stefan Zweig, ―The
Monotonization of the World‖ (1925), in The
California Press.
Source of original German text: Stefan Zweig, ―Die
Monotonisierung der Welt,‖ Berliner Börsen-
Courier, February 1, 1925.
1
Betty Scholem on the Inflation (October 1923)

Berlin, October 15, 1923
Dear child,
We have not yet received your second letter. Hopefully, it’ll
arrive this week. Conditions have
taken a catastrophic turn here. Notice that this letter cost 15
million cash; it will be 30 million
beginning the day after tomorrow—and this price will most
likely last a mere two days at most.
Now you can get things done only with billions. To ensure that
next week’s payroll will keep its
value, the boys bought dollars on Friday at the (ridiculous!!)
exchange rate of 1.5 billion to 1,
and they’ll re-sell them on Thursday in order to pay people. For
the time being, this week’s pay
will be 8 billion, though we’ve had negotiations today because
the workers are demanding twice
that much. The bread ration card has been done away with, and
a normal loaf of bread now
costs 540 million; tomorrow, surely twice as much. The
streetcar fare is 20 million (tomorrow it’ll
be 50!). My God, you probably don’t have faintest notion of this
million-fold witches’ Sabbath.
You must know that we send women’s magazines to Frau
Jacques Meyer. A few days ago her
husband sent us a bank check for over 5 million. When we went
to the bank here in Berlin to
pick it up, it cost 40 million in transfer fees! I ask myself if the
neighboring Swiss are indeed so
ignorant of our circumstances, or if they just act that way! This
small anecdote can illuminate
everything. If throughout the world there is such little

understanding of our plight, how can we
expect that anyone will come to our aid? It seems inevitable that
we will lose the Rhine and the
Ruhr, that Bavaria will break away, and that Germany will once
again fall apart into minuscule
petty states. [ . . . ]
The Communists made their weekly visit to Erich’s. Little Edith
was delightful and charming.44
She explained to everyone how she went to the hairdresser on
Monday to have her hair washed
and her bobbed hair set. Werner said that she would take dance
lessons and attend a charm
school and that he would look for a better apartment, but that he
first wanted to wait for the
revolution (planned for November 10!). They and his friends
had to go to lunch. They ate a
rabbit for 1.75 billion. Erich mentioned to me how extremely
amusing, but also quite pathetic, it
was to hear those politicians speak.
Kisses, Mum
2
Berlin, October 23, 1923
My dear child,
Your letter from the ninth brought enormous joy. We no longer
have to worry, now that you’ve

set yourself up by obtaining a position and a certain degree of
satisfaction. It’s an incomparable
stroke of luck to earn a living by doing what is also the
substance and aim of your life. Thus, our
warmest congratulations! Anyway, dealing with books is far
preferable to dealing with other
people: books—unlike humans—mostly give reasonable answers
when queried. [ . . . ]
It’s lucky we’re in the business of printing money. Once again,
we have 130 workers. With the
exception of the money presses, the few customers able to pay
such fantastic prices do not
require much effort. By contrast, the boys are busy day and
night with the money transactions.
They are now more bankers than book publishers. They have to
watch like a hawk in order to
plan properly and to prevent the billions of paper marks, which
are now their business, from
disappearing into thin air. You can’t imagine how things have
become! In three days the dollar
has gone from 10 billion, to 18.5 billion, to 40. Bread: 900
million, 2.5 billion, 5.5 billion. The
collapse has been total. Here and there plundering has flared up,
but not much. The despairing
women are far too weary; they put up with everything. Until
now there has been no unrest,
though for weeks we’ve expected it to break out at any time. [ .
. . ]
Kisses, Mum
Source of English translation: Gershom Scholem, A Life in

Letters, 1914-1982. Ed. and trans.
Anthony David Skinner. Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
2002, pp. 125-27.
Source of original German text: Betty Scholem and Gershom
Scholem, Mutter und Sohn im
Briefwechsel 1917-1946. Edited by Itta Shedletzky with Thomas
Sparr. Munich: Verlag C.H.
Beck, 1989, pp. 84-89.
1
Volume 6. Weimar Germany, 1918/19 –1933
Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, ―The Third Empire‖ (1923)
Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, one of the most important
authors of the Conservative
Revolution, originally wanted to name his best-known work
―The Third Party‖ (―The Third
Standpoint‖ was another suggestion). The title that he ultimately
chose, ―The Third Empire‖
(also translated as ―The Third Reich‖) made reference to the
chiliastic view of history put forth
by medieval theologian Joachim von Fiore. By linking this
vision to a specific nation, Moeller
arrived at the idea of a ―Third Rome,‖ a concept that he had
encountered in the works of

Russian writers Fyodor Dostoevsky and Dmitri Merezhkovsky.
Moelller considered the Holy
Roman Empire the first empire; the second was the Kaiserreich
founded in 1871 (on account of
the exclusion of Austria, however, he only regarded this as a
―transitional empire‖). The greater
German ―Third Empire‖ – the ―final empire‖ – was supposed
to represent the fulfillment of
German history and the harmonious incorporation of all
oppositional social and political
tendencies, which would thereupon cease to exist. Furthermore,
Moeller argued against
Marxism as well as distorted liberalism, which he especially
hated; and set himself apart from
reactionary liberalism while at the same time advocating a
synthesis of ―German‖ socialism and
revolutionary conservatism.
[ . . . ]
The attempt this book makes was not possible from any party
standpoint; it ranges over all our
political problems, from the extreme Left to the extreme Right.
It is written from the standpoint of
a third party, which is already in being. Only such an attempt
could address itself to the nation
while attacking all the parties; could reveal the disorder and
discord into which the parties have
long since fatefully fallen and which has spread from them
through our whole political life; could
reach that lofty spiritual plane of political philosophy that the
parties have forsaken, but which
must for the nation’s sake be maintained, which the
conservative must preserve and which the

revolutionary must take by storm.
Instead of government by party we offer the ideal of the third
empire. It is an old German
conception and a great one. It arose when our first empire fell;
it was early quickened by the
thought of a millennium; but its underlying thought has always
been a future that should be not
the end of all things but the dawn of a German age in which the
German people would for the
first time fulfill their destiny on earth.
In the years that followed the collapse of our second empire we
have had experience of
Germans; we have seen that the nation’s worst enemy is herself:
her trustfulness, her
casualness, her credulity, her inborn, fate-fraught, apparently
unshakable optimism. The
2
German people were scarcely defeated—as never a people was
defeated before in history—
when the mood asserted itself: ―We shall arise again all right!‖
We heard German fools saying:
―We have no fears for Germany!‖ We saw German dreamers
nod their heads in assent:
―Nothing can happen to me!‖
We must be careful to remember that the thought of the third
empire is a philosophical idea; that
the conceptions which the words third empire arouse—and the

book that bears the title—are
misty, indeterminate, charged with feeling; not of this world but
of the next. Germans are only
too prone to abandon themselves to self-deception. The thought
of a third empire might well be
the most fatal of all the illusions to which they have ever
yielded; it would be thoroughly German
if they contented themselves with daydreaming about it.
Germany might perish from her third-
empire dream.
Let us be perfectly explicit: the thought of the third empire—to
which we must cling as our last
and highest philosophy—can only bear fruit if it is translated
into concrete reality. It must quit the
world of dreams and step into the political world. It must be as
realist as the problems of our
constitutional and national life; it must be as skeptical and
pessimistic as befits the times.
There are Germans who assure us that the empire that rose out
of the ruins on the ninth of
November is already the third empire: democratic, republican,
logically complete. These are our
opportunists and eudaemonists. There are other Germans who
confess their disappointment but
trust to the ―reasonableness‖ of history. These are our
rationalists and pacifists. They all draw
their conclusions from the premises of their party–political or
utopian wishes, but not from the
premises of the reality that surrounds us. They will not realize
that we are a fettered and
maltreated nation, perhaps on the very verge of dissolution. Our
reality connotes the triumph of
all the nations of the earth over the German nation; the primacy
in our country of

parliamentarism after the Western model—and party rule. If the
third empire is ever to come it
will not beneficently fall from heaven. If the third empire is to
put an end to strife it will not be
born in a peace of philosophic dreaming. The third empire will
be an empire of organization in
the midst of European chaos. The occupation of the Ruhr and its
consequences worked a
change in the minds of people. It was the first thing that made
the nation think. It opened up the
possibility of liberation for a betrayed people. It seemed about
to put an end to the ―policy of
fulfillment‖ that had been merely party politics disguised as
foreign policy. It threw us back on
our own power of decision. It restored our will. Parliamentarism
has become an institution of our
public life, whose chief function would appear to be—in the
name of the people—to enfeeble all
political demands and all national passions.
When the revolution overwhelmed the war, burying all
prospects and all hopes, we asked
ourselves the inner meaning of these events. Amidst all the
insanity we found a meaning in the
thought that the German nation would be driven into becoming
politically minded: now, at last,
belatedly.
[ . . . ]
3

Today we call this resolution not conservative but nationalist.
This nationalist will desires to conserve all that in Germany is
worth conserving. It wills to
preserve Germany for Germany’s sake, and it knows what it
wills.
The nationalist does not say, as the patriot does, that Germany
is worth preserving because she
is German. For him the nation is not an end in itself.
The nationalist’s dreams are of the future. He is a conservative
because he knows that there
can be no future that does not have its roots in the past. He is
also a politician because he
knows that past and future can only be secure if the nation is
secure in the present.
But his thoughts range beyond the present. If we concentrate
exclusively on the past, we might
easily imagine that German history is closed. It is nowhere
written that a people has a right to
life eternal. For every people the hour at length strikes when
they perish either by murder or by
suicide. No more glorious end could be conceived for a great
people than to perish in a world
war where a world in arms overcame one single country.
German nationalism is in its way an expression of German
universalism, and turns its thought to
Europe as a whole, not in order—as Goethe in his middle period
expressed it—to ―lose itself in
generalities‖ but to maintain the nation as a thing apart. The
German instinct of self-preservation
is penetrated by the experience to which Goethe in his age

confessed that art and science
alone are ―poor comfort‖ and no substitute for the ―proud
consciousness‖ of ―belonging to a
strong people, respected at once and feared.‖ Roman nationalism
thinks only of itself. German
nationalism thinks of itself in relation to other things. The
German nationalist wants to preserve
Germany not merely because she is Germany, which might
easily mean simply to preserve the
past. He wants to preserve Germany as a country arising out of
the revolutionary upheavals and
changes of a new age. He wants to preserve Germany because
she holds a central position
from which alone the equilibrium of Europe can be maintained.
The center, not the west as
[Rudolf] Pannwitz thought and not the east as Spengler too
rashly anticipated, is the creative
focus of our hemisphere. The German nationalist wants to
preserve German nationhood, not to
exchange it for the ―supernational culture‖ of a [Friedrich
Wilhelm] Foerster—in whom the
bastardization of German idealism reached its zenith—but to
preserve Germany in the
consciousness that the Germans have a task in the world which
no other people can take from
them.
[ . . . ]
Nationalism seeks to secure for the nation a democratic
participation in which the proletariat
shall also have a share.

4
The ideals of a nationalist movement differ as greatly from the
ideals of a merely formal
democracy as from the ideals of a class-conscious proletariat—
above all in this: that it is a
movement from above and not from below. Participation implies
consciousness of the values
that are to be shared. This consciousness can never be imparted
unless a movement of ready
acceptance comes from below; it must, however, be imparted
from above.
The democrat, who always leans towards cosmopolitan points of
view, and still more the
proletarian who hankers after international trains of thought,
both like to toy with the thought that
there exists a neutral sphere in which the differences between
the values of one people and of
another vanish. The nationalist instead holds that its own
peculiar values are the most
characteristic and precious possession of a nation, the very
breath of its being. These give a
nation form and personality; they cannot be transferred or
interchanged. [ . . . ]
Source of English translation: Arthur Moeller van der Bruck,
―The Third Empire‖ (1923), in The

California Press.
Source of original German text: Arthur Moeller van der Bruck,
Das Dritte Reich. Berlin: Ring
Verlag, 1923, pp. ii-iv.
1
Arnold Brecht on the Kapp Putsch in 1920 (Retrospective
Account, 1966)
As part of the demobilization of the army stipulated by the
Treaty of Versailles, the Allies
pressed Germany to disband the Free Corps [Freikorps]. General
Walther von Lüttwitz – head
of Reichswehr Group Command I in Berlin, which oversaw two
Reichswehr divisions as well as
several Free Corps units – seized the opportunity and staged a
putsch that had been planned
long in advance with Wolfgang Kapp, general director of the
East Prussian agricultural credit

banks. On Lüttwitz’s orders, the Erhardt Naval Brigade marched
on Berlin, where, on March 13,
1920, Kapp proclaimed himself both Reich Chancellor and
Prussian Minister-President and
appointed Lüttwitz minister and commander-in-chief of the
Reichswehr. But after a general
strike broke out on March 15, 1920 and the ministerial
bureaucracy refused to obey the
putschists’ orders, Lüttwitz and Kapp were forced to abandon
their undertaking on March 17,
1920. In major industrial areas, strikes continued and were only
suppressed through the
deployment of troops. In order to assert their political demands,
the trade unions and the
Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany also
maintained the strike until March 22,
1920, ultimately weakening the democratic government. On the
whole, the Kapp Putsch
revealed the dubious loyalties of the Reichswehr.
During the night of March 12/13 I was phoned in Steglitz at 3
a.m. from the Chancellery with the
instruction that I should come to an impromptu Cabinet
Meeting. When I arrived, the meeting
had just ended. Ebert and the ministers were coming down the
stairs from the first floor. They
had received news during the night that Ehrhardt’s brigade was
marching on Berlin. Two
generals, sent by Noske to meet them, had brought back an
ultimatum. When Noske asked the
generals assembled around him to take military action, they
had—with the single exception of
General Reinhardt—advised against it, the reason being given

by General von Seeckt: “The
German army does not shoot at the German army” (Reichswehr
schiesst nicht auf Reichswehr).
At 7 a.m., if the ultimatum was not accepted, the rebels had said
they would march in. Noske
was willing to lie in waiting in the Tiergarten Park with a
company and machine guns and start
shooting when the rebels advanced, convinced that the whole
nuisance would then be over. But
the Cabinet had decided to withdraw to Dresden, so that they
would not be taken prisoners and
thus put out of action.
I was at first to remain behind with State Secretary Albert.
Ulrich Rauscher, the government’s
press chief, in leaving the building with Ebert and the ministers,
handed me a call for a general
strike, at the bottom of which were, in his handwriting, the
names of the Social Democrat
members of the government, and asked me to pass it on to the
press. I did so, and went to my
office room.
2
Meantime the day began to dawn. It was a strangely ghostlike
situation. I considered what I
might do. I remembered how bare the first decrees of the
People’s Commissaries after the
Revolution had looked without an authoritative official stamp. I
therefore had all the metal

stamps of the Chancellery brought to me and put them in my
overcoat, in order to send them
later to my brother Gustav’s apartment. At 6:30 am I phoned
him. “Good morning, Gustav. I am
at the Chancellery. In half an hour a putsch is going to take
place. The ministers have left Berlin
to organize resistance from outside. A call for a general strike
has gone out. What would you do
in my place during the next half hour?” He answered: “I don’t
know what you can do. But I do
know what I’ll do. I shall fill our bathtub with water.” He knew
from previous experience that the
most unpleasant aspect of a strike was the breakdown of the
water supply. [ . . . ]
Another series of operetta-like situations followed. At seven
three men entered the entrance
hall. State Secretary Albert went to them. They asked him: “Are
you the former State Secretary
to the Chancellery?” He answered: “I am indeed the State
Secretary to the Chancellery, not the
former one, but the present one.” He recommended that they
take off their hats. One of them
said apologetically they had thought this was only an anteroom.
Albert still advised them to take
off their hats, and they did. He recognized one of them, Herr
von Falkenhausen. “We know each
other,” he said. There was a moment of silent consideration as
to whether they ought under
such circumstances to shake hands. They did not. Herr von
Falkenhausen introduced the other
two: Herr Kapp and Herr von Jagow, last imperial police-
president of Berlin. Albert turned his
back on them and went out through the garden to his residence,
where we had agreed to meet
later.

After a time another man with two soldiers carrying hand
grenades came into my room. He
asked: “Are you willing to work for the Chancellor?” I said, “I
already do that.” He looked at me,
frowning: “I don’t mean for the former Chancellor, but for
Chancellor Kapp.” I replied, “I know
only Chancellor Bauer.” He: “He has been deposed.” I:
“According to the Constitution he is the
Chancellor. I have sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution,
and I do not carry my oath in my
hand as your men their hand grenades.” He: “You also swore an
oath to the Kaiser, yet worked
for Ebert. So now you can work for us.” I: “This error will be
fatal for you. At that time the
constitutional Chancellor, Prince Max, told us to work for Ebert
just as we had worked for him.
Ebert and Bauer have not asked me to work for you—quite the
contrary.” I put on my coat with
the stamps in the pocket and left the building.
On the way to Potsdam Square I met the usual morning stream
of men and women hurrying to
work, still ignorant of what had happened. After discussing
matters with Albert and other
colleagues, I went home, packed a few things in a bag, and
drove to the Anhalt station, the only
one, strangely enough, which had not yet been taken over by the
rebels, and got onto a train to
Dresden. There I found Ebert, Noske, and other ministers in
conference with General Märcker,
regional commander. Although Märcker was not willing to work
with Kapp, he was not prepared
to back Ebert unconditionally. He offered his services to
negotiate with Kapp, but Ebert refused
to give him official authority to do this.

1 Volume 6. Weimar Germany, 191819–1933 Hambur.docx

1 Volume 6. Weimar Germany, 191819–1933 Hambur.docx

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1 Volume 6. Weimar Germany, 191819–1933 Hambur.docx