The Germans: Double History Of A Nation

THE GERMANS Double History of a Nation BY EMIL LUDWIG Translated from the German by HEINZ and RUTH NORDEN Germany is nothing, but every individual German is much, and yet the Germans imagine the reverse to be true. Foreword HIS BOOK offers a history, not of Germany, but of the Germans. Here as in all his writings, the authors scope is psy chological. Even so, a complete story cannot be encompassed within the range of a single volume here too the artists skill lies in his selection. There are indifferent German emperors, whose names will not be found in the pages that follow for the purpose is not to tire the readers mind with as many names as possible, but to stimulate it with a smaller number of fully rounded characters. Battles and other external events resemble the zenith of a trajectory, whereas the real points of interest are where the projectile is fired and where it strikes cause and effect. On every one of the four hundred ninety-five pages that follow, it is the authors purpose to explain causes and effects of deeds and events explain them through the German character. The German way of feeling, the cruel schism within the German soul which has remained unchanged throughout the ages these are here to be developed, through two thousand years. There is no objective writing of history outside the encyclopedia. The present version, too, is conditioned by personal factors. Only the admission of this fact distinguishes it from others. In all lands certain professors strike rigid poses like the Supreme Judge on a Byzantine mosaic, and they often deceive their readers and them selves about the extent to which their own subjective destinies, fortunes and reverses influence theirwritings. An author who con ceals his own situation and that of the age in which he lives leads the reader astray and grows tedious in the bargain. This is true espe cially in times such as our own when violent partisanship sets men against each other. No historian, not even the great Plutarch, would have written exactly as he did, had he written a century vii Foreword darlierbf later Carlyle was deeply influenced by the French Revo lutioij, Jtkhardt by the age of Bismarck both were similarly in fluenced fc by deep-felt personal experiences, even when they wrote of distant times. The way in which one epoch mirrors itself in another is precisely what lends wings to author and reader. Since my twentieth year I have depicted the German character in a dozen dramas and biographies, from Ulrich von Hutten and Griinewald to Goethe, Beethoven, Weber and Wagner and from Emperor Frederic II and King Frederic the Great to Bismarck, William and Hindenburg always with reverence for the German spirit, but with censure for the German State. - This discrepancy be tween State and spirit distinguishes German history from that of all other nations. It always obscures the spirit precisely when the State flourishes and vice versgjThat is the subject of this new book, which seeks to go beyond the destiny of individual Germans to ex plain the character of the nation. It is a tragic and ironic spectacle, repeated throughout the centuries from Arminius to Hitler...