| Here under
follows my translation of H. S. Chamberlain's war essay Das eine und das andere
Deutschland, written in 1917. This text is interesting
because
Chamberlain lays the foundation for what came to be known as the Dolchstoßlegende, the dagger-blow
legend, that
would play an important role in post-war Germany: the Reich didn't loose the war because
of the enemies abroad, but because of the enemy within. In contradistinction to
what left
wing historians
claim, this
point of view isn't
entirely unjustified: it was felt within anti-Imperial circles that if
Germany
would win, Kaiser Wilhelm's position would be stronger than ever, and
“life
would become impossible“: “Wenn Deutschland den Krieg gewinnt, dann
bleibt
das wilhelminische System und dann ist das Leben unmöglich.“ Please note that English isn't my native tongue; my translation will most probably contain irregularities. If you encounter an expression that needs improvement, please let me know.  email: hschamberlain@yahoo.co.uk
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The
one and the other Germany
1. Nowadays, where the light-art doesn't know any difficulties, an enterprising photographer would render a good service, the consequence of which — presupposed, he did the job skilfully — could attain historical meaning. It would concern two group portraits, put together on one sheet of paper, one above, the other below; just heads; composed of striking original photographs and in a size, that would show unmistakably clear the main features of the faces. In the upper picture about forty to fifty German men would be arranged, men who have done an excellent job during the last three years in front of the enemy: together with the highest leaders such as Hindenburg, Ludendorff, Zeppelin, von Stein, Tirpitz, Scheer etc. a selection of generals, who acquired imperishable fame like Kluck, Mackensen, Linsingen, Eichhorn, Below, Bothmer, Woyrsch, Lietzmann, Krafft-Delmensingen ¹), Boyadel ²), Falkenhayn, Emmich, Mudra, Gerok, Hutier — admirals such as Spee and Hipper, also men like Goltz, Bissing and Groener; accompanied by several U-boat commanders, like Weddigen, Arnauld de la Perière, Hans Rose, etc. Furthermore Count Dohna and the heroes of the "Möve"; a range of fighter pilots would follow, from Immelmann to von Richthofen; on the background I would like to see some men represented, who, in the struggle for energetic warfare, ————— ¹) Chamberlain wrote: Kraft-Delmensingen. ²) Probably General von Scheffer-Boyadel. 2. as well as in preserving the inherited German characteristics and convictions, have done a good service, for example the historians Dietrich Schäfer and Eduard Meyer, count Reventlow, prince zu Löwenstein, baron von Liebig, duke Johann Albrecht, Generallandschaftsdirektor Kapp, Fürst Salm-Horstmar, privy councillor Gruber, publisher J. F. Lehmann.....; if there were no spatial restrictions, I would add soldiers who were decorated with the iron cross, two from every German province. From this group one would get a very clear and — this I am certain of — a most impressive image of the physiognomy of the real battling and victory-pursuing Germany. Now the picture below. The centre would be occupied by the two Reichskanzlers ¹) and the three secretaries for foreign affairs; ²) next to them would stand Mr. Helfferich and a selection of the leading gentlemen from the Reichskanzleramt, from foreign affairs and from the ministry of interior. In addition the ambassadors Prince Lichnowsky, count Bernstorff, Mr. von Schoen, as well as some other gentlemen from the same school of diplomats; then groups of gentlemen of the so-called "Reichstag-majority" with Scheidemann, Payer, David and Erzberger at the front; a number of leading men from the various wholesale trades and finally — at the place, where on the upper picture the commanders of submarines and the fighter pilots stand — faithful portraits of the main editors of the "Berliner Tageblatt" ³), the "Frankfurter Zeitung", the "Vorwärts" 4) — not to forget Mr. ambassador in partibus infidelium Dr. Dernburg! At the first glance of these two pictures even the most inattentive eye would recognize ————— ¹) Chamberlain didn't mention them; they're Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg and Georg Michaelis. ²) Gottlieb von Jagow, Arthur Zimmermann and Richard von Kühlmann. ³) The Berliner Tageblatt was owned by Mr. Mosse, son of a Jewish Schnapps-manufacturer. He published some other periodicals as well. The editor of the Berliner Tageblatt, Theodor Wolff, was also Jewish. 4) The Vorwärts was the organ of the Socialist Party. Its editor was Rudolf Hilferding, son of a Jewish salesman. The influential Frankfurter Zeitung was also a "Jewish" newspaper, founded by Leopold Sonnemann. Interesting is that some of Chamberlain's own essays were published in Jewish periodicals, like Die Zukunft, founded by the anti-empirical Felix Ernst Witkowski, better known as Maximilian Harden, and Die Fackel, founded by Karl Kraus.
3. that it is not one Germany that is at work today — continuing the past, building the present, preparing the future —, but that two Germany's partake in the action, of which the physiognomies alone are sufficient to proof that it concerns two so different kinds of people, as if they were born on two different planets. It's no use trying to describe this in words, — one should dispose of the quill of a Dante; and even then the effect of the word would still stay far behind that of witnessing the same thing with one's very eyes; therefore I wished pictures. Yet, if something should be said with words, we want to focus on one single point. The first thing that will be noticed with the upper picture, in contrast to the lower, is the uniformity: different as the shapes of the heads and the facial features may be, an unmistakable similarity joins all these men as members of one big family. Not so with the lower picture, there we find the most diverse types standing next to each other and one could at the most speak in a negative sense about a certain unity, namely that the absence of certain features of the upper group is common to all these still so different men. This is particularly the case with the eye — the "finestra dell' anima", the window of the soul, as Leonardo said: with all the men of the upper group — all without exception — the eye sees openly, clearly, freely and to that extent also innocently into the world outside; even the touching, sorrow-clouded look of a Hindenburg testifies to a childlike imperturbable confidence; this eye, this look, one probably won't find with no man of the lower group: 4. from the "window" another soul looks upon us on and thus is said at the same time that in these souls another image of the world is reflected. It is well known however that the expression of the eye is exactly determined by the bone and muscle formation of the face, and so this perception is sufficient, to define the profound difference both in the outer and in the inner world. We do not need more at the moment. Just as little as we need to busy ourselves with dogmatic suppositions over the racial issues: we thereby set foot upon an area where much is still unclear and words frequently take up the place of provable facts; but the difference between the two groups of German men, as mentioned above, remains an irrefutable fact, whatever explanation one supports. The creed of the world-experienced Jew Disraeli was: "race is everything"; on the other hand, one of the profoundest philosophers of the Teutons, Paul de Lagarde, spoke the much disputed and actually not entirely unsuspicious word: "being German is not in the blood but in the mind". ¹) Disraeli would say, the men from the upper group all belong to the North European-Germanic race, those from below are descended from other races, or are race-poor half-breeds; Lagarde would be content with the statement, the men of the upper group have a German mind, those of the lower do not. Without taking a decision here and now, I would suggest to remain faithful to the principle of eye-witnessing and to take a look at the portraits of the most important Germans of past centuries, monarchs, warriors, statesmen, scholars, heroes of faith, artists, inventors — without a doubt: all men, who have worked on Germany's greatness, ————— ¹) "Das Deutschtum liegt nicht im Geblüte, sondern im Gemüte." 5. belong to the upper group. And not they alone, but also the majority by far of the entire German people of today — namely, when we examine, to that extent, the primal source of this people, i.e. the peasantry — belongs to the family of the straight-looking, bold and bright-eyed men! Of course, the majority of the heads is not so clear cut, the majority of the eyes not so radiating superior, like those of the excellent men selected for our picture, but their kinship lies clearly before our eyes, and from this mass men stand up again and again, capable of the same deeds as their ancestors. In Upper Franconia, that took me in as a native, I only need to go for a walk for an hour, to meet at least half a dozen men who are definitely of the Moltke type; in many other provinces of Germany, both in the north and in the south, in the east as in the west, the same can be found; that's why recently one of the most important living sculptors in Germany, while pointing at Moltke's bust in his workroom, could say to me: "that is the typical German peasant head." Other splendidly cut heads too, which reminds one of Luther, of Albrecht Dürer, of Rembrandt, of Hindenburg and of other generals of the current war, can be found in abundance in any German province; these most distinguished heads are at the same time those of the moderate people. But also in the cities, among the labourers, far more men are belonging to the upper group, than was imagined before the war, and far less of those who should be added to the lower group; the alienation from its own kind, caused by planned political instigating, had also disfigured the features, 6. and I hardly recognized some of the men, who returned home on vacation after two or three years at the front: a thorough transformation, which is obviously nothing less than a reconverting into the inborn characteristics — as one can see with children playing in the street —, has taken place. I have an unconditional confidence in the German workers, just as in the farmers; the political parties, leading them astray under high pressure, alienated itself perfectly; a major event suffices — as we experienced in August 1914 — and the international spook disappears. If a man from our upper group would have steered the ship of state at that time, the international orientation would have met its end for ever. These days I spoke a young man, a metal-worker, staying here on vacation, who had immediately volunteered, barely seventeen years old, at the outbreak of the war and since then had all the opportunity to distinguish himself at all fronts. When I asked him, what he thought of Scheidemann and his Verzichtfrieden, ¹) the young man became glowing red, clenched his fist and shouted: "him, if we come home, we will whack him to bits". And as I sought to provoke his opinion on the political situation in Germany, he circumscribed it in the lapidary words: "Well, you know, Mr. Tschampala, the situation with us at the moment is as follows — the clever ones may not talk, and the stupid ones won't listen." It's not that simple, of course, but with his words I thought of my two pictures, and said to myself: if I could show them to this young man, he, instead of using the rather mismatching words "clever" and "stupid", would simply have pointed to the upper and the lower picture. ————— ¹) Verzichtfrieden: giving in to the enemy in exchange for peace, as opposed to Gewaltfrieden or Siegfrieden: forced peace. 7. Naive as the words of the brave field-grey may be, they nevertheless serve to wake a wondering question in us: How to explain that the men of the upper group have virtually no part in the government of the country? It's among them where the epitome of Germandom is to be found, here only does one experience, what German character, German nature, German history is, they conquered, expanded and founded the homeland, they have fought all battles from ages ago up to the present day, they made the country arable and built the cities, they boldly have sailed across the oceans as Hansa and it's their grandchildren, who made Lübeck, Hamburg, Bremen, Antwerp first rank commercial ports by their spirit of enterprise, they alone thought the great German thoughts and created the great German art; in addition, they are the creators of world-conquering German trade, they are the much despised magnates of heavy industries, they are at the same time the large and small farmers, to which we owe the incomparable development of the German agriculture within the last forty years; the German Reich's forced struggle for existence would long have succumbed if it wasn't for the increase of crop yields ..... How did they succeed in excluding these men — born Herrenmenschen — completely from the government of their German fatherland, so that we look amazed at our lower group, rub our eyes and ask ourselves: What? Those are the men who decide on Germany's present and future? They alone rule the interior and determine towards the outside? They alone represent Germany 8. with the confederates and face the hostile nations for Germany's honour and inviolability? How on earth is that possible? How did that happen? The truth behind this strange and uncanny event — the subjugation of the majority of a noble people under the will of a minority — will probably be uncovered only in the future. Today we can say only this: with the dismissal of Bismarck began the reaction, which has gained today almost unlimited power. Under William the faithful and Bismarck the great, in union with never-erring Moltke and Roon, always thinking ahead — four wonderful Germanic types — the Germany of the upper group had reached a peak point, and therefore woke hate and envy, not only abroad, but also in the inland in the men of opposite nature; as the faithful one had closed his eyes and the great one was banished, the other "Germans" raised their heads again and in the meantime they luckily brought it so far that today they actually possess all power: the upper group must do the fighting, the lower switches after its free will and in accordance with its special interests. That they are "stupid", as the good field-grey meant, is surely incorrect; also incorrect it would be to suspect them of moral evilness — they see the world, like one sees it from such eyes, that's just the way it is —; they mean well, but differently than the men from the upper group. Nevertheless it's strange that the crushing majority of the German people can be controlled by this minority; strange and fatal. Germany can defy any danger that comes from the outside, because the men of the upper group keep watch; 9. but how are we to avoid the death-threatening internal danger, if we do not recognize the connection? When will we hear the voice, already called for by Luther, of the "man with the lion's heart"? ¹) B a y r e u t h, beginning of October 1917. ¹) See Luther: Über den Nutzen der Historien. H. S. Chamberlain referred more than once to this future saviour of the German Reich, for instance in Deutschlands Kriegsziel, 1916, in Der Wille zum Sieg, 1916 ("The Germans are ready for it; all that is missing is a God-sent Führer"), and in Demokratie und Freiheit, 1917. Stolzing-Cerny, Chamberlain's disciple, and editor of the Völkischer Beobachter, party organ of the NSDAP, used the same phrase “man with the lion heart“, but not — as far as I know — in connection with Hitler. |
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Last update: March 9th, 2006 |