Gems (?) of German Thought Part 3

(AFTER JULY, 1914.)

61. It has been said that it is un-German to wish to be only German.

That again is a consequence of our spiritual wealth. We understand all foreign nations; none of them understands us, and none of them can understand us.--PROF. W. SOMBART, H.U.H., p. 135.

62. The historian and economist Sombart has said: "We understand all foreign nations, no foreign nation understands or can understand us."

In these words he rejects all community of Kultur with other peoples, and especially the so-called "Western European Ideas."--O.A.H.

SCHMITZ, D.W.D., p. 124.

63. In the world of the spirit, the victory of German thought seemed already almost decided. For it was able to comprehend the others, but they could not comprehend it.--G. MISCH, V.G.D.K., p. 19.

64. We are still the most wide-hearted and receptive of people, a people that cannot live if it does not make its own the spiritual values of the other peoples. We can already say that we know the outer world better than they know us.--PROF. F. MEINECKE, D.D.E., p. 35.

65. Whole-hearted understanding for another people can be fully attained only by treason to one's own nature, to one's own national personality. That is what makes the renegade so hateful, and those unpatriotic half-men, the intellectuals and aesthetes.--PROF. M. V.

GRUBER, D.R.S.Z., No. 30, p. 14.

66. The German is docile and eager to learn. His interest embraces everything, and most of all what is foreign. He is disposed to admire everything foreign and to underrate what is his own. With foreigners it is just the other way. We Germans know about them, but they know absolutely nothing about us.--PROF. A. La.s.sON, D.R.S.Z., No. 4, p. 34.

67. Apart from what Professor La.r.s.en has said in Denmark, and Dr. Gino Bertolini in Italy, about German militarism ... we may designate as nonsense everything that foreigners, in low or in high estate, have recently said on this subject. This is a new proof of the fact that foreigners cannot understand us, apart from a few outstanding personalities whom a kind fate has borne aloft to the heights of the German spirit.--PROF. W. SOMBART, H.U.H., p. 82.

_See also Nos. 136-145._

=Kultur.=

(BEFORE THE WAR.)

68. The _Kultur_ of the Germans [_Germanen_] is actually the stimulus to our present European _Civilization_ with which we are conquering the world.--J.L. REIMER, E.P.D., p. 31.

69. Germanism, when it rightly understands itself, and remains true to its nature, is childlike and manlike, at once tender and strong, full of genuinely human simplicity, and therefore of irreplaceable value to Kultur.--F. LANGE, R.D., p. 27 (1890).

70. The champions of the so-called race-idea are clear as to the importance of the Germanic race for our civilization and Kultur....

Their meritorious work has converted the dim divinings of instinct into the certainty of knowledge; and yet a sense of oppression steals upon us when we think of what still remains to be done (as they all agree) against a hostile world in arms, both of the flesh and of the spirit--a world of treachery and hypocrisy, of error and of fanaticism, of stupidity and of craft.--J.L. REIMER, E.P.D., p. 50.

70a. Kultur is best promoted when the strongest individual Kultur, that of a given nation, enlarges its field of activity at the expense of the other national Kulturs. If we one day come into conflict with the Martians, then humanity--all the peoples of the earth--will have common interests: but not until then.--K. WAGNER, K., p. 46.

71. I cannot accept the definition of Kultur which identifies it with "form," with the harmonious "rhythm" which, in the English, for example, permeates and unifies everything, from the highest spiritual life to clothes, footwear and table manners.... I am of opinion that we shall apply to this care for "form," for "rhythm," and whatever results from it, the name of "civilization," reserving the n.o.bler word "Kultur" for higher values, and that we should look to our army and the corps of officers to endow us with, and educate us in, these higher values.--F. LANGE, R.D., p. 217 (1901).

(AFTER JULY, 1914.)

72. Our belief is that the salvation of the whole Kultur of Europe depends upon the victory which German "militarism" is about to achieve.--Manifesto signed by 3,500 "Hochschullehreren" (professors and lecturers), quoted by PROF. U. v. WILAMOWITZ-MoLLENDORF, R., pt.

ii, p. 33.

73. If Fate has selected us to a.s.sume the leaders.h.i.+p in the Kultur-life of the peoples, we will not shrink from this great and lofty mission.--G.E. PAZAUREK, P.K.U.K., p. 23.

74. At bottom we Germans are fighting for the same thing which the Greeks defended against the Persians, the Romans against the Carthaginians and Egyptians, the Franks against Islam: namely, the chivalrous European way of thinking, which is ever being threatened by brutal force and puling baseness. We stand once more at a watershed of Kultur.--O.A.H. SCHMITZ, D.W.D., p. 119.

75. If we are beaten--which G.o.d and our strong arm forbid--all the higher Kultur of our hemisphere, which it was our mission to guard, sinks with us into the grave.--PROF. A. v. HARNACK, I.M., 1st October, 1914, p. 26.

76. That it will be German Kultur that will send forth its rays from the centre of our continent, there can be no possible doubt.--PROF. O.

v. GIERKE, D.R.S.Z., No. 2, p. 19.

77. We are indeed entrusted here on earth with a doubly sacred mission: not only to protect Kultur ... against the narrow-hearted huckster-spirit of a thoroughly corrupted and inwardly rotten commercialism (_Jobbertum_), but also to impart Kultur in its most august purity, n.o.bility and glory to the whole of humanity, and thereby contribute not a little to its salvation.--EIN DEUTSCHER, W.K.B.M., p. 40.

78. [Germany has neglected] the highest duty of every Kultur-State--to carry its Kultur into foreign parts, and to win the confidence and affection of other peoples.--F. v. LISZT, E.M.S., p. 12.

79. The idea of the exclusive justification of one's own Kultur which is innate in the French and English, is foreign to us. But we are conscious of the incomparable value of German Kultur, and will for the future guard it against being adulterated by less valuable imports.

We do not force it upon any one, but we believe that its own inner greatness will everywhere procure it the recognition which is its due.--PROF. O. v. GIERKE, D.R.S.Z., No. 2, p. 25.

80. The more German Kultur remains faithful to itself, the better will it be able to enlighten the understanding of the foreign races absorbed, incorporated into the Empire, and to make them see that only from German Kultur can they derive those treasures which they need for the fertilizing of their own particular life.--PROF. O. V. GIERKE, D.R.S.Z., No. 2, p. 19.

81. We will not in the future let foreign idols be forced upon us, but will serve our own G.o.ds.--PROF. RUDOLF EUCKEN, I.M., 1st October, 1914, p. 74.

82. Germanism was for several decades, in spite of the mighty and over-towering height of its Kultur, hindered in the imparting of this Kultur to other nations. In the first years after the war [of 1870]

this was not painfully felt, as a powerful _exchange of Kultur_ was still in progress between different parts of the German Empire.... But when this exchange of Kultur between the German stocks had run its course, and the Germanization of the frontier districts [Poland, Alsace] had reached its limit, then the spiritual need of the German victor and conqueror began to make itself felt. He became a teacher without scholars, he had no longer an audience.--K.A. KUHN, W.U.W., p.

11.

_See also No. 235a._

83. Our German Kultur has, in its unique depth, something shrinking and severe (_Sprodes und Herbes_), it does not obtrude itself, or readily yield itself up; it must be earnestly sought after and lovingly a.s.similated from within. This love[11] was lacking in our neighbours; wherefore they easily came to look upon us with the eyes of hatred.--PROF. R. EUCKEN, I.M., 1st October, 1914, p. 74.

84. And the graves which border the path to glory of the Romans, the Germans, the British and the French, the stench of robbery, plunder and theft which hangs around these millions of graves? Must Kultur rear its domes over mountains of corpses, oceans of tears, and the death-rattle of the conquered? YES, IT MUST! [There follows an image too grotesquely indecent to be quoted.] Either one denies altogether the beneficent effect of Kultur upon humanity, and confesses oneself an Arcadian dreamer, or one allows to one's people the right of domination--in which case the might of the conqueror is the highest law of morality, before which the conquered must bow. _Vae victis!_--K.A. KUHN, W.U.W., p. 10.

85. The whole of European Kultur ... is brought to a focus on this German soil and in the hearts of the German people. It would be foolish to express oneself on this point with modesty and reserve. We Germans represent the latest and the highest achievement of European Kultur.--PROF. A. La.s.sON, D.R.S.Z., No. 4, p. 13.

86. The Kultur-mission of a people is fulfilled when there are no longer any people of the same race and kindred to which their Kultur has still to be imparted.... Our Kultur-mission has in view some hundred millions of Slavs, and draws its geographical frontier-line at the Ural Mountains.--K.A. KUHN, W.U.W., p. 13.

87. The attempt of Napoleon to graft the Kultur of Western Europe upon the empire of the Muscovite ended in failure. To-day history has made us Germans the inheritors of the Napoleonic idea.--K.A. KUHN, W.U.W., p. 17.

87a. It is perhaps the stupidest of the suspicions under which we labour that we aim at a world-empire after the Roman fas.h.i.+on, and wish to thrust our Kultur on the conquered peoples.--PROF. F. MEINECKE, D.R.S.Z., No. 29, p. 26.

88. We, however, will not let ourselves be diverted by all this hatred and envy from our striving towards a world-Kultur. We will busily and cheerfully work on at the elevation of the whole human race.--PROF.

R. EUCKEN, I.M., 1st October, 1914, p. 74.

89. More than a hundred years ago (1808) Johan Gottlieb Fichte, in his ever-memorable _Speeches to the German Nation_, proclaimed the German people to be the only people in Europe which had preserved its primitive genuineness (_ursprungliche Echtheit_), and therefore its spiritual creative faculty, and found the transition from his previous cosmopolitan way of thinking to flaming national enthusiasm, in the idea that this people was called to be the upholder of world-Kultur, and that it was therefore its duty to humanity to look to its own preservation.--PROF O. v. GIERKE, D.R.S.Z., No. 2, p. 23.

90. We claim only the free development of our individuality, and are only fighting against the attempt to throttle it, while contrariwise our enemies are conducting an aggressive war, which they have to disguise as a Kultur-war in order to make it appear defensive.--PASTOR E. TROELTSCH, D.R.S.Z., No. 27, p. 27.

91. The highest steps of Kultur have not been mounted by peaceable nations in long periods of peace, but by warlike peoples in the time of their greatest combativeness.--R. THEUDEN, W.M.K.B., p. 4.

92. German Kultur is moral Kultur. Its superiority is rooted in the unfathomable depth of its moral const.i.tution. Should it forfeit its moral purity, it would cease to be German.--PROF. O. V. GIERKE, D.R.S.Z., No. 2, p. 23.

92a. The further we can carry our Kultur into the East, the more, and the more profitable, outlets shall we find for our wares. Economic profit is of course not the main motive of our Kultur-activity, but it is no unwelcome by-product.--C.L. POEHLMANN, G.D.W., p. 35.

93. The individual Frenchman may fight as heroically as he pleases, his cause is nevertheless lost, because he does not believe that where the German element has never penetrated, or has penetrated only to disappear again, no development of Kultur, in the true sense of the word, is possible.--K.A. KUHN, W.U.W., p. 26.

94. But what about Louvain and Rheims? Has not war, the rude and ruthless destroyer, trodden down glorious cities and priceless buildings that might claim to rank among the greatest Kultur-treasures of humanity? Exactly the opposite may be said: war has in these cases led the way to a really clear recognition of the value to humanity of these Kultur-treasures! The cry of indignation which went up against us had long before made itself heard in our own b.r.e.a.s.t.s in view of the thoughtlessness and indifference, nay, the frivolity with which these immeasurable values had been ruthlessly exposed to destruction by nations which have always plumed themselves excessively on their western Kultur.--K. ENGELBRECHT, D.D.D.K., p. 14.