Section 8
Immediately after the seizure of power, in Jena, as in other cities in the Reich, the influx of social democrats and communists to the NSDAP, especially the SA, began. We lived above a small valley in which there was a pleasant settlement of the Zeissians, as the workers of the famous Jena Zeiss works were called. This settlement was uniformly and clearly visible with red flags
whenever possible. Many Zeissians belonged to the Reichsbanner. You could see well-built bigwigs proudly wearing the arrows of the Reichsbanner on their collars, presumably non-commissioned officers and sergeants of this large-member "combat group" of socialism. Soon after the seizure of power, I was astonished when I discovered the swastika in the flags in the settlement, which was again flying red flags, and was even more astonished when I saw the well-built bigwigs as SA men again. The Anschluss was thus accomplished mobile volgus - through the impressive election victory of the NSDAP and through the Enabling Act.
It was only through this union, which took place surprisingly quickly in the cities, that the NSDAP became a real workers' party. Goebbels, who unwisely lost his wit for a moment, spoke of the "March casualties". The month of March 1933 seems to have seen the largest influx of former Social Democrats and Communists - some of them from the left were sent to the NSDAP? I later recommended to senior National Socialists whom I could trust that they should compile statistics on NSDAP membership based on the lists, which should show the representation of the various social classes for the period before 1933. Based on my impressions since 1930, I suggested that the youth of the educated middle class were relatively the most strongly represented. Such statistics have not yet been compiled, probably for different reasons than today.
In Jena in 1933 I also experienced the foolish and crude means by which local bigwigs, and some of them students, tried to bring professors into line who had not joined the party and were therefore considered "brain beasts". Some of these professors could have been won over little by little through the foreign and domestic political successes of Hitler and his party. However, more or less mild attempts at coercion generally achieve nothing against professors. They least of all, and with them many solid artists, will allow themselves to be nationalized or "organized". Among scholars and artists there will always be some who, like the poet in the "Prelude to the Theater" (Goethe, Faust I), turn away from any publicity:
“Oh, do not speak to me
of that motley crowd, at the sight of which our spirits flee!”
Many a respectable scholar and artist will be reminded of the multitude of words in Goethe’s “Dedication” to “Faust”:
“Their applause itself makes my heart afraid.”
A liberal state will allow respectable scholars and artists to think like Horatius:
Odi profanum volgus et arceo
(I hate and hold back the uninitiated crowd)
A free state will even protect scholars and artists against young freedom-despisers who want to force them into some kind of "collective" where they would have to be "committed". Women's freedom in particular should be protected from any kind of "collectivism". There will always be
women who will feel the same way about current politics as my late wife, whose favorite verses from Faust II included these:
“Only where you can see clearly into the lovely clarity,
where you belong to yourself and trust in yourself alone,
where only good and beautiful things please,
where solitude! - There create your world!”
After the disappointments of 1933 and especially later in Berlin, I told my wife little or nothing about the grievances around us. In her quiet way, she would have just turned away in silence. I could not have endured marriage to a woman who was interested in politics.
Too many men are already dehumanized by today's urban "business," especially the political one. The inclusion of women in this "business," which is demanded today for "equality for women," will harm the female sex, which is more humane than the male, psychologically more than the male. But there will always be minorities of women whose souls, like those of the Danzig deputies, have a tougher quality that protects them from such harm.
I have been told that Hitler avoided women who were involved in politics wherever possible. I was also pleased that the NSDAP - at least initially - wanted to relegate women to the domestic sphere. Most women have an attractive quality that is today criticized as "disillusionment with the state." But Hitler and the NSDAP should have taken into account that not all men, especially not scholars and artists, are suited to "collectivization." Even in politically agitated times, a well-advised state and a large nation must be able to afford to leave people whose fate it is to be "individuals" to themselves, especially since the state and the nation will ultimately only benefit from their self-reliance. Such a conviction should be even more important for a free state, which was not possible during Hitler's time.
The title of a novel by Thomas Hardy is Far from the Madding Crowd (1874). Before 1914, many people, especially the English, thought this way. Today, and even under Hitler, those who cannot live and feel "committed" were and are insulted. Around the middle of the 19th century, the writers of the "Young Germany" wrote eagerly "committedly". Who still reads them today? - even though these "committed" people still spoke German. Recognition as poets and thinkers, but also as statesmen, is only deserved by those who do not get lost in the thicket of the temporal as "committed" people, but who, by looking up to the timeless values (ideas) of the true, the good and the beautiful, gain the spiritual strength to wrest something lasting from what is becoming and what is passing away.
National Socialism has to be excused again and again because without its "collectivization" Bolshevism would have triumphed in Europe, and for this Bolshevism there would be no freedom for the individual. I would also assume that Hitler did not know much about the follies and nonsense of the many "little Hitlers". Moreover, many members of all parties - at least of their own party - always found the phrase "Where there's a planing, there's a shaving."
The NSDAP and its leader, like the opposing parties, cannot, however, be spared the accusation that they did nothing to educate their party to a somewhat decent attitude - I am not talking about a dignified attitude.
So my alienation from the NSDAP began soon after the "seizure of power", which often embarrassed me when acquaintances spoke in a praising or glorious way about Hitler and his subordinates: were these acquaintances right and I wrong? At the same time, I asked myself again and again whether such a "development" of the NSDAP into a noisy and violent mass party was in Hitler's interest, whether he had instructed his party to do so or whether he was simply forced to give in to the pressure of the urban masses he had recruited since 1933.
During the years 1933 and 1934 I noticed that ethnically minded men of older generations had not joined National Socialism - apart from the fact that some of them had been taken to an internment camp. The Silesian poet Eberhard König was only freed from such a camp by the Russians. In the autumn of 1933 I visited Professor Schemann, who I knew, "old Schemann", as he was called, in Freiburg im Breisgau. Thanks to him, the life and work of Count Gobineau have been rescued from oblivion. At the beginning of our conversation I asked him: "Well, what do you say about the National Socialists? They made sure that you were made an honorary citizen of the city of Freiburg." Schemann groaned quietly, raised his arm wearily and waved his hand dismissively. Our conversation moved on to other things. But I said to myself that no party could wish or demand that people who had grown old and held different views should join it.
In 1945, Schemann's name was removed from the list of honorary citizens. A portrait of Schemann, which had been included in a series of portraits of honorary citizens, has since disappeared. It could not be handed over to the Gobineau Fund in Strasbourg, which had wanted to acquire it for itself a few years ago.
My wife, who was completely apolitical, but had a Norwegian-ethnic and then also German-ethnic outlook, and was more individualistic than I was, never averse to Hitler the man, indifferent to Hitler the statesman, and embarrassed by all party politics, joined the NSDAP in about 1931, encouraged to do so by the wives of enthusiastic colleagues and also because she felt that we should show our gratitude for the call to Jena. She was most attracted to the Luisenbund, which was dissolved after 1933, but which she did not join.
Because of my aversion to all party politics, even group politics, and my general aversion to politics in general, which I had found degrading since 1919, I had hesitated to join the NSDAP, which still seemed to me to be semi-nationalistic, but I had registered as a member on the day that Brüning banned the SA and SS (April 13, 1932).
I felt no antipathy towards Brüning, who, although I was suspicious of his intentions, seemed to me to be one of the last noble figures among the statesmen of Europe and North America. I have always looked at pictures of him with a reserved benevolence. Has another statesman as appealing as him ever appeared in Europe and North America? I was moved with compassion when I saw him in his hopeless situation, and with indignant compassion when I heard how the
raging deputies had insulted and mocked him in the sessions of the Reichstag. But I had to say to myself that if a Bismarck had not succeeded in stopping social democracy by banning it, then a Brüning would be even less likely to succeed in stopping National Socialism. So I joined the NSDAP at that time, although I had to fear that this party too would restrict the threatened freedom of the individual in Germany in favor of an increasing nationalization of people, a compulsion to mass existence, which is and will be one of the goals of every socialist system, indeed of every welfare state.
After 1933, a lack of freedom spread in Germany that I had already felt oppressively in the years after 1919 and before my departure for Norway. It was only later that I understood that every "social" state had to increase the number of offices "looking after" citizens in order to distribute "welfare" and to distribute it "fairly", but that with such bureaucratization under growing "armies of civil servants" the freedom of the individual who wants to lead himself would ultimately be increasingly stifled. In all of these states, I fear, the result will be that citizens will become subjects who fill out forms and are unwillingly shuffled back and forth between a hundred offices and "organizations". Herbert Spencer, the English philosopher, predicted this demise of the freedom of the individual 100 years ago. Nietzsche, whom Hitler admired, also seems to have learned from him.
After 1933, the increasing lack of freedom became more oppressive than was necessary to prevent the communist revolution. It was soon felt bitterly by the population, including by party members. Schiller's "Don Carlos" and his "William Tell" were no longer allowed to be performed. In performances of "Don Carlos", there had been applause when Marquis Posa shouted to the king: "Give freedom of thought!", and in performances of "William Tell" there had been storms of applause when the words of the Rütli Oath were heard:
“We want to be free, like our fathers were!”
It was precisely that part of the population that was still a people, not yet a mass, that, like Schiller, still understood freedom to mean the freedom of the individual, the truly “national” freedom with its Germanic roots.
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