WHEN my mother died, Fate, at least in one respect, had madeits decisions.
In the last months of her sickness, I had gone to Vienna totake the entrance examination for the Academy. I had set out with a pileof drawings, convinced that it would be child's play to pass the examination.At the Realschule I had been by far the best in my class at drawing,and since then my ability had developed amazingly; my own satisfaction causedme to take a joyful pride in hoping for the best.
Yet sometimes a drop of bitterness put in its appearance: mytalent for painting seemed to be excelled by my talent for drawing, especiallyin almost all fields of architecture. At the same time my interest in architectureas such increased steadily, and this development was accelerated after atwo weeks' trip to Vienna which I took when not yet sixteen. The purposeof my trip was to study the picture gallery in the Court Museum, but I hadeyes for scarcely anything but the Museum itself. From morning until lateat night, I ran from one object of interest to another, but it was alwaysthe buildings which held my primary interest. For hours I could stand infront of the Opera, for hours I could gaze at the Parliament; the wholeRing Boulevard seemed to me like an enchantment out of -The Thousand-and-One-Nights.
Now I was in the fair city for the second time, waiting withburning impatience, but also with confident self-assurance, for the resultof my entrance examination. I was so convinced that I would be successfulthat when I received my rejection, it struck me as a bolt from the blue.Yet that is what happened. When I presented myself to the rector, requestingan explanation for my non-acceptance at the Academy's school of painting,that gentleman assured me that the drawings I had submitted incontrovertiblyshowed my unfitness for painting, and that my ability obviously lay in thefield of architecture; for me, he said, the Academy's school of paintingwas out of the question, the place for me was the School of Architecture.It was incomprehensible to him that I had never attended an architecturalschool or received any other training in architecture. Downcast, I leftvon Hansen's magnificent building on the Schillerplatz, for the first timein my young life at odds with myself. For what I had just heard about myabilities seemed like a lightning flash, suddenly revealing a conflict withwhich I had long been afflicted, although until then I had no clear conceptionof its why and wherefore.
In a few days I myself knew that I should some day become anarchitect.
To be sure, it was an incredibly hard road; for the studiesI had neglected out of spite at the Realschule were sorely needed.One could not attend the Academy's architectural school without having attendedthe building school at the Technic, and the latter required a high-schooldegree. I had none of all this. The fulfill- ment of my artistic dream seemedphysically impossible.
When after the death of my mother I went to Vienna for the thirdtime, to remain for many years, the time which had mean-while elapsed hadrestored my calm and determination. My old defiance had come back to meand my goal was now clear and definite before my eyes. I wanted to becomean architect, and obstacles do not exist to be surrendered to, but onlyto be broken. I was determined to overcome these obstacles, keeping beforemy eyes the image of my father, who had started out as the child of a villageshoemaker, and risen by his own efforts to be a government official. I hada better foundation to build on, and hence my possibilities in the strugglewere easier, and what then seemed to be the harshness of Fate, I praisetoday as wisdom and Providence. While the Goddess of Suffering took me inher arms, often threatening to crush me, my will to resistance grew, andin the end this will was victorious.
I owe it to that period that I grew hard and am still capableof being hard. And even more, I exalt it for tearing me away from the hollownessof comfortable life; for drawing the mother's darling out of his soft downybed and giving him 'Dame Care' for a new mother; for hurling me, despiteall resistance, into a world of misery and poverty, thus making me acquaintedwith those for whom I was later to fight.


In this period my eyes were opened to two menaces of whichI had previously scarcely known the names, and whose terrible importancefor the existence of the German people I certainly did not understand: Marxismand Jewry.
To me Vienna, the city which, to so many, is the epitome ofinnocent pleasure, a festive playground for merrymakers, represents, I amsorry to say, merely the living memory of the saddest period of my life.
Even today this city can arouse in me nothing but the most dismalthoughts. For me the name of this Phaeacian city I represents five yearsof hardship and misery. Five years in which I was forced to earn a living,first as a day laborer, then as a small painter; a truly meager living whichnever sufficed to appease even my daily hunger. Hunger was then my faithfulbodyguard; he never left me for a moment and partook of all I had, shareand share alike. Every book I acquired aroused his interest; a visit tothe Opera prompted his attentions for days at a time; my life was a continuousstruggle with this pitiless friend. And yet during this time I studied asnever before. Aside from my architecture and my rare visits to the Opera,paid-for in hunger, I had but one pleasure: my books.
At that time I read enormously and thoroughly. All the freetime my work left me was employed in my studies. In this way I forged ina few years' time the foundations of a knowledge from which I still drawnourishment today.
And even more than this:
In this period there took shape within me a world picture anda philosophy which became the granite foundation of all my acts. In additionto what I then created, I have had to learn little; and I have had to alternothing.
On the contrary.
Today I am firmly convinced that basically and on the wholeall creative ideas appear in our youth, in so far as any such are present.I distinguish between the wisdom of age, consisting solely in greater thoroughnessand caution due to the experience of a long life, and the genius of youth,which pours out thoughts and ideas with inexhaustible fertility, but cannotfor the moment develop them because of their very abundance. It is thisyouthful genius which provides the building materials and plans for thefuture, from which a wiser age takes the stones, carves them and completesthe edifice, in so far as the so-called wisdom of age has not stifled thegenius of youth.


The life which I had hitherto led at home differed littleor not at all from the life of other people. Carefree, I could await thenew day, and there was no social problem for me. The environment of my youthconsisted of petty-bourgeois circles, hence of a world having very littlerelation to the purely manual worker. For, strange as it may seem at firstglance, the cleft between this class, which in an economic sense is by nomeans so brilliantly situated, and the manual worker is often deeper thanwe imagine. The reason for this hostility, as we might almost call it, liesin the fear of a social group, which has but recently raised itself abovethe level of the manual worker, that it will sink back into the old despisedclass, or at least become identified with it. To this, in many cases, wemust add the repugnant memory of the cultural poverty of this lower class,the frequent vulgarity of its social intercourse; the petty bourgeois' ownposition in society, however insignificant it may be, makes any contactwith this outgrown stage of life and culture intolerable.

Consequently, the higher classes feel less constraint in theirdealings with the lowest of their fellow men than seems possible to the'upstart.'
For anyone is an upstart who rises by his own efforts from hisprevious position in life to a higher one.
Ultimately this struggle, which is often so hard, kills allpity. Our own painful struggle for existence destroys our feeling for themisery of those who have remained behind.
In this respect Fate was kind to me. By forcing me to returnto this world of poverty and insecurity, from which my father had risenin the course of his life, it removed the blinders of a narrow petty-bourgeoisupbringing from my eyes. Only now did I learn to know humanity, learningto distinguish between empty appearances or brutal externals and the innerbeing.


After the turn of the century, Vienna was, socially speaking,one of the most backward cities in Europe.
Dazzling riches and loathsome poverty alternated sharply. Inthe center and in the inner districts you could really feel the pulse ofthis realm of fifty-two millions, with all the dubious magic of the nationalmelting pot. The Court with its dazzling glamour attracted wealth and intelligencefrom the rest of the country like a magnet. Added to this was the strongcentralization of the Habsburg monarchy in itself.
It offered the sole possibility of holding this medley of nationstogether in any set form. But the consequence was an extraordinary concentrationof high authorities in the imperial capital
Yet not only in the political and intellectual sense was Viennathe center of the old Danube monarchy, but economically as well. The hostof high of officers, government officials, artists, and scholars was confrontedby an even greater army of workers, and side by side with aristocratic andcommercial wealth dwelt dire poverty. Outside the palaces on the Ring loiteredthousands of unemployed, and beneath this Via Triumphalis of old Austriadwelt the homeless in the gloom and mud of the canals.
In hardly any German city could the social question have beenstudied better than in Vienna. But make no mistake. This 'studying' cannotbe done from lofty heights. No one who has not been seized in the jaws ofthis murderous viper can know its poison fangs. Otherwise nothing resultsbut superficial chatter and false sentimentality. Both are harmful. Theformer because it can never penetrate to the core of the problem, the latterbecause it passes it by. I do not know which is more terrible: inattentionto social misery such as we see every day among the majority of those whohave been favored by fortune or who have risen by their own efforts, orelse the snobbish, or at times tactless and obtrusive, condescension ofcertain women of fashion in skirts or in trousers, who ' feel for the people.'In any event, these gentry sin far more than their minds, devoid of allinstinct, are capable of realizing. Consequently, and much to their ownamazement, the result of their social 'efforts' is always nil, frequently,in fact, an indignant rebuff, though this, of course, is passed off as aproof of the people's ingratitude.
Such minds are most reluctant to realize that social endeavorhas nothing in common with this sort of thing; that above all it can raiseno claim to gratitude, since its function is not to distribute favors butto restore rights.
I was preserved from studying the social question in such away. By drawing me within its sphere of suffering, it did not seem to inviteme to 'study,' but to experience it in my own skin. It was none of its doingthat the guinea pig came through the operation safe and sound.


An attempt to enumerate the sentiments I experienced in thatperiod could never be even approximately complete; I shall describe hereonly the most essential impressions, those which often moved me most deeply,and the few lessons which I derived from them at the time.


The actual business of finding work was, as a rule, not hardfor me, since I was not a skilled craftsman, but was obliged to seek mydaily bread as a so-called helper and sometimes as a casual laborer.
I adopted the attitude of all those who shake the dust of Europe from theirfeet with the irrevocable intention of founding a new existence in the NewWorld and conquering a new home. Released from all the old, paralyzing ideasof profession and position, environment and tradition, they snatch at everylivelihood that offers itself, grasp at every sort of work, progressingstep by step to the realization that honest labor, no matter of what sort,disgraces no one. I, too, was determined to leap into this new world, withboth feet, and fight my way through.
I soon learned that there was always some kind of work to be had, but equallysoon I found out how easy it was to lose it.
The uncertainty of earning my daily bread soon seemed to me one of the darkestsides of my new life.
The ' skilled' worker does not find himself out on the streetas frequently as the unskilled; but he is not entirely immune to this fateeither. And in his case the loss of livelihood owing to lack of work isreplaced by the lock-out, or by going on strike himself.
In this respect the entire economy suffers bitterly from the individual'sinsecurity in earning his daily bread.
The peasant boy who goes to the big city, attracted by the easiernature of the work (real or imaginary), by shorter hours, but most of allby the dazzling light emanating from the metropolis, is accustomed to acertain security in the matter of livelihood. He leaves his old job onlywhen there is at least some prospect of a new one. For there is a greatlack of agricultural workers, hence the probability of any long period ofunemployment is in itself small. It is a mistake to believe that the youngfellow who goes to the big city is made of poorer stuff than his brotherwho continues to make an honest living from the peasant sod. No, on thecontrary: experience shows that all those elements which emigrate consistof the healthiest and most energetic natures, rather than conversely. Yetamong these 'emigrants' we must count, not only those who go to America,but to an equal degree the young farmhand who resolves to leave his nativevillage for the strange city. He, too, is prepared to face an uncertainfate. As a rule he arrives in the big city with a certain amount of money;he has no need to lose heart on the very first day if he has the ill fortuneto find no work for any length of time. But it is worse if, after findinga job, he soon loses it. To find a new one, especially in winter, is oftendifficult if not impossible. Even so, the first weeks are tolerable. Hereceives an unemployment benefit from his union funds and manages as wellas possible. But when his last cent is gone and the union, due to the longduration of his unemployment, discontinues its payments, great hardships
begin. Now he walks the streets, hungry; often he pawns and sells his lastpossessions; his clothing becomes more and more wretched; and thus he sinksinto external surroundings which, on top of his physical misfortune, alsopoison his soul. If he is evicted and if (as is so often the case) thisoccurs in winter, his misery is very great. At length he finds some sortof job again. But the old story is repeated. The same thing happens a secondtime, the third time perhaps it is even worse, and little by little he learnsto bear the eternal insecurity with greater and greater indifference. Atlast the repetition becomes a habit.
And so this man, who was formerly so hard-working, grows laxin his whole view of life and gradually becomes the instrument of thosewho use him only for their own base advantage. He has so often been unemployedthrough no fault of his own that one time more or less ceases to matter,even when the aim is no longer to fight for economic rights, but to destroypolitical, social, or culturaL values in general. He may not be exactlyenthusiastic about strikes, but at any rate he has become indifferent.
With open eyes I was able to follow this process in a thousandexamples. The more I witnessed it, the greater grew my revulsion for thebig city which first avidly sucked men in and then so cruelly crushed them.
When they arrived, they belonged to their people; after remainingfor a few years, they were lost to it.
I, too, had been tossed around by life in the metropolis- inmy own skin I could feel the effects of this fate and taste them with mysoul. One more thing I saw: the rapid change from work to unemployment andvice versa, plus the resultant fluctuation of income, end by destroyingin many all feeling for thrift, or any understanding for a prudent orderingof their lives. It would seem that the body gradually becomes accustomedto living on the fat of the land in good times and going hungry in bad times.Indeed, hunger destroys any resolution for reasonable budgeting in bettertimes to come by holding up to the eyes of its tormented victim an eternalmirage of good living and raising this dream to such a pitch of longingthat a pathological desire puts an end to all restraint as soon as wagesand earnings make it at all possible. The consequence is that once the manobtains work he irresponsibly forgets all ideas of order and discipline,and begins to live luxuriously for the pleasures of the moment. This upsetseven the small weekly budget, as even here any intelligent apportionmentis lacking; in the beginning it suffices for five days instead of seven,later only for three, finally scarcely for one day, and in the end it isdrunk up in the very first night.
Often he has a wife and children at home. Sometimes they, too, are infectedby this life, especially when the man is good to them on the whole and actuallyloves them in his own way. Then the weekly wage is used up by the wholefamily in two or three days; they eat and drink as long as the money holdsout and the last days they go hungry. Then the wife drags herself out intothe neighborhood, borrows a little, runs up little debts at the food store,and in this way strives to get through the hard last days of the week. Atnoon they all sit together before their meager and sometimes empty bowls,waiting for the next payday, speaking of it, making plans, and, in theirhunger, dreaming of the happiness to come.
And so the little children, in their earliest beginnings, aremade familiar with this misery.
It ends badly if the man goes his own way from the very beginningand the woman, for the children's sake, opposes him. Then there is fightingand quarreling, and, as the man grows estranged from his wife, he becomesmore intimate with alcohol. He is drunk every Saturday, and, with her instinctof selfpreservation for herself and her children, the woman has to fightto get even a few pennies out of him; and, to make matters worse, this usuallyoccurs on his way from the factory to the barroom. When at length he comeshome on Sunday or even Monday night, drunk and brutal, but always partedfrom his last cent, such scenes often occur that God have mercy!
I have seen this in hundreds of instances. At first I was repelledor even outraged, but later I understood the whole tragedy of this miseryand its deeper causes. These people are the unfortunate victims of bad conditions!
Even more dismal in those days were the housing conditions. The misery inwhich the Viennese day laborer lived was frightful to behold. Even todayit fills me with horror when I think of these wretched caverns, the lodginghouses and tenements, sordid scenes of garbage, repulsive filth, and worse.
What was-and still is-bound to happen some day, when the streamof unleashed slaves pours forth from these miserable dens to avenge themselveson their thoughtless fellow men F
For thoughtless they are!
Thoughtlessly they let things slide along, and with their utterlack of intuition fail even to suspect that sooner or later Fate must bringretribution, unless men conciliate Fate while there is still time.
How thankful I am today to the Providence which sent me to that school!In it I could no longer sabotage the subjects I did not like. It educatedme quickly and thoroughly.
If I did not wish to despair of the men who constituted my environmentat that time, I had to learn to distinguish between their external charactersand lives and the foundations of their development. Only then could allthis be borne without losing heart. Then, from all the misery and despair,from all the filth and outward degeneration, it was no longer human beingsthat emerged, but the deplorable results of deplorable laws; and the hardshipof my own life, no easier than the others, preserved me from capitulatingin tearful sentimentality to the degenerate products of this process ofdevelopment.
No, this is not the way to understand all these things!
Even then I saw that only a twofold road could lead to the goalof improving these conditions:
The deepest sense of social responsibility for the creationof better foundations for our development, coupled with brutal determinationon breaking down incurable tenors.
Just as Nature does not concentrate her greatest attention inpreserving what exists, but in breeding offspring to carry on the species,likewise, in human life, it is less important artificially to alleviateexisting evil, which, in view of human nature, is ninety-nine per cent impossible,than to ensure
from the start healthier channels for a future development.
During my struggle for existence in Vienna, it had become clearto me that
Social activity must never and on no account be directed towardphilanthropic flim-flam, but rather toward the elimination of the basicdeficiencies in the organization of our economic and cultural life thatmust-or at all events can-lead to the degeneration of the individual .
The difficulty of applying the most extreme and brutal methodsagainst the criminals who endanger the state lies not least in the uncertaintyof our judgment of the inner motives or causes of such contemporary phenomena.
This uncertainty is only too well founded in our own sense ofguilt regarding such tragedies of degeneration; be that as it may, it paralyzesany serious and firm decision and is thus partly responsible for the weakand half-hearted, because hesitant, execution of even the most necessarymeasures of selfpreservation.
Only when an epoch ceases to be haunted by the shadow of itsown consciousness of guilt will it achieve the inner calm and outward strengthbrutally and ruthlessly to prune off the wild shoots and tear out the weeds.
Since the Austrian state had practically no social legislationor jurisprudence, its weakness in combating even malignant tumors was glaring.


I do not know what horrified me most at that time: the economic miseryof my companions, their moral and ethical coarseness, or the low level oftheir intellectual development.
How often does our bourgeoisie rise in high moral indignationwhen they hear some miserable tramp declare that it is all the same to himwhether he is a German or not, that he feels equally happy wherever he is,as long as he has enough to live on!
This lack of 'national pride' is most profoundly deplored, andhorror at such an attitude is expressed in no uncertain terms.
How many people have asked themselves what was the real reasonfor the superiority of their own sentiments?
How many are aware of the infinite number of separate memoriesof the greatness of our national fatherland in all the fields of culturaland artistic life, whose total result is to inspire them with just prideat being members of a nation so blessed?
How many suspect to how great an extent pride in the fatherlanddepends on knowledge of its greatness in all these fields?
Do our bourgeois circles ever stop to consider to what an absurdlysmall extent this prerequisite of pride in the fatherland is transmittedto the 'people'?
Let us not try to condone this by saying that ' it is no betterin other countries,' and that in those countries the worker avows his nationality'notwithstanding.' Even if this were so, it could serve as no excuse forour own omissions. But it is not so; for the thing that we constantly designateas 'chauvinistic' education; for example among the French people, is nothingother than extreme emphasis on the greatness of France in all the fieldsof culture, or, as the Frenchman puts it, of 'civilization The fact is thatthe young Frenchman is not brought up to be objective, but is instilledwith the most subjective conceivable view, in so far as the importance ofthe political or cultural greatness of his fatherland is concerned.
This education will always have to be limited to general andextremely broad values which, if necessary, must be engraved in the memoryand feeling of the people by eternal repetition.
But to the negative sin of omission is added in our countrythe positive destruction of the little which the individual has the goodfortune to learn in school. The rats that politically poison our nationgnaw even this little from the heart and memory of the broad masses, inso far as this has not been previously accomplished by poverty and suffering.
Imagine, for instance, the following scene:
In a basement apartment, consisting of two stuffy rooms, dwellsa worker's family of seven. Among the five children there is a boy of, letus assume, three years. This is the age in which the first impressions aremade on the consciousness of the child Talented persons retain traces ofmemory from this period down to advanced old age. The very narrowness andovercrowding of the room does not lead to favorable conditions. Quarrelingand wrangling will very frequently arise as a result. In these circumstances,people do not live with one another, they press against one another. Everyargument, even the most trifling, which in a spacious apartment can be reconciledby a mild segregation, thus solving itself, here leads to loathsome wranglingwithout end. Among the children, of course, this is still bearable; theyalways fight under such circumstances, and among themselves they quicklyand thoroughly forget about it. But if this battle is carried on betweenthe parents themselves, and almost every day in forms which for vulgarityoften leave nothing to be desired, then, if only very gradually, the resultsof such visual instruction must ultimately become apparent in the children.The character the) will inevitably assume if this mutual quarrel takes theform of brutal attacks of the father against the mother, of drunken beatings,is hard for anyone who does not know this milieu to imagine. At the ageof six the pitiable little boy suspects the existence of things which caninspire even an adult with nothing but horror. Morally poisoned, physicallyundernourished, his poor little head full of lice, the young 'citizen' goesoff to public school. After a great struggle he may learn to read and write,but that is about all. His doing any homework is out of the question. Onthe contrary, the very mother and father, even in the presence of the children,talk about his teacher and school in terms which are not fit to be repeated,and are more inclined to curse the latter to their face than to take theirlittle offspring across their knees and teach them some sense. All the otherthings that the little fellow hears at home do not tend to increase hisrespect for his dear fellow men. Nothing good remains of humanity, no institutionremains unassailed; beginning with his teacher and up to the head of thegovernment, whether it is a question of religion or of morality as such,of the state or society, it is all the same, everything is reviled in themost obscene terms and dragged into the filth of the basest possible outlook.When at the age of fourteen the young man is discharged from school, itis hard to decide what is stronger in him: his incredible stupidity as faras
any real knowledge and ability are concerned, or the corrosive insolenceof his behavior, combined with an immorality, even at this age, which wouldmake your hair stand on end
What position can this man-to whom even now hardly anythingis holy, who, just as he has encountered no greatness conversely suspectsand knows all the sordidness of life- occupy in the life into which he isnow preparing to emerge?
The three-year-old child has become a fifteen-year-old despiserof all authority. Thus far, aside from dirt and filth, this young man hasseen nothing which might inspire him to any higher enthusiasm.
But only now does he enter the real university of this existence.
Now he begins the same life which all along his childhood yearshe has seen his father living. He hangs around the street corners and bars,coming home God knows when; and for a change now and then he beats the broken-downbeing which was once his mother, curses God and the world, and at lengthis convicted of some particular offense and sent to a house of correction.
There he receives his last polish.
And his dear bourgeois fellow men are utterly amazed at thelack of 'national enthusiasm' in this young 'citizen.'
Day by day, in the theater and in the movies, in backstairsliterature and the yellow press, they see the poison poured into the peopleby bucketfuls, and then they are amazed at the low 'moral content,' the'national indifference,' of the masses of the people.
As though trashy films, yellow press, and such-like dung could.furnish the foundations of a knowledge of the greatness of our fatherland!-quiteaside from the early education of the individual.
What I had never suspected before, I quickly and thoroughlylearned in those years:
The question of the 'nationalization' of a people is, amongother things, primarily a question of creating healthy social conditionsas a foundation for the possibility of educating the individual. For onlythose who through school and upbringing learn to know the cultural, economic,but above all the political, greatness of their own fatherland can and unitachieve the inner pride in the privilege of being a member of such a people.And I can fight only for something that I love, love only what I respect,and respect only what I at least know.


Once my interest in the social question was aroused, I beganto study it with all thoroughness. It was a new and hitherto unknown worldwhich opened before me.
In the years 1909 and 1910, my own situation had changed somewhatin so far as I no longer had to earn my daily bread as a common laborer.By this time I was working independently as a small draftsman and painterof watercolors. Hard as this was with regard to earnings-it was barely enoughto live on- it was good for my chosen profession. Now I was no longer deadtired in the evening when I came home from work, unable to look at a bookwithout soon dozing off. My present work ran parallel to my future profession.Moreover, I was master of my own time and could apportion it better thanhad previously been possible.
I painted to make a living and studied for pleasure.
Thus I was able to supplement my visual instruction in the socialproblem by theoretical study. I studied more or less all of the books Iwas able to obtain regarding this whole field, and for the rest immersedmyself in my own thoughts.
I believe that those who knew me in those days took me for aneccentric.
Amid all this, as was only natural, I served my love of architecturewith ardent zeal. Along with music, it seemed to me the queen of the arts:under such circumstances my concern with it was not 'work.' but the greatestpleasure. I could read and draw until late into the night, and never growtired. Thus my faith grew that my beautiful dream for the future would becomereality after all, even though this might require long years. I was firmlyconvinced that I should some day make a name for myself as an architect.
In addition, I had the greatest interest in everything connectedwith politics, but this did not seem to me very significant. On the contrary:in my eyes this was the self-evident duty of every thinking man. Anyonewho failed to understand this lost the right to any criticism or complaint.
In this field, too, I read and studied much.
By 'reading,' to be sure, I mean perhaps something differentthan the average member of our so-called 'intelligentsia.'
I know people who 'read' enormously, book for book, letter forletter, yet whom I would not describe as 'well-read.' True they possessa mass of 'knowledge,' but their brain is unable to organize and registerthe material they have taken in. They lack the art of sifting what is valuablefor them in a book from that which is without value, of retaining the oneforever, and, if possible, not even seeing the rest, but in any case notdragging it around with them as useless ballast. For reading is no end initself, but a means to an end. It should primarily help to fill the frameworkconstituted by every man's talents and abilities; in addition, it shouldprovide the tools and building materials which the individual needs forhis life's work, regardless whether this consists in a primitive strugglefor sustenance or the satisfaction of a high calling; secondly, it shouldtransmit a general world view. In both cases, however, it is essential thatthe con tent of what one reads at any time should not be transmitted tothe memory in the sequence of the book or books, but like the stone of amosaic should fit into the general world picture in its proper place, andthus help to form this picture in the mind of the reader. Otherwise therearises a confused muddle of memorized facts which not only are worthless,but also make their unto fortunate possessor conceited. For such a readernow believes himself in all seriousness to be {educated,' to understandsomething of life, to have knowledge, while in reality, with every new acquisitionof this kind of 'education,' he is growing more and more removed from theworld until, not infrequently, he ends up in a sanitarium or in parliament.
Never will such a mind succeed in culling from the confusion of his ' knowledge' anything that suits the demands of the hour, for his intellectual ballastis not organized along the lines of life, but in the sequence of the booksas he read them and as their content has piled up in his brain If Fate,in the requirements of his daily life, desired to remind him to make a correctapplication of what he had read, it would have to indicate title and pagenumber, since the poor fool would otherwise never in all his life find thecorrect place. But since Fate does not do this, these bright boys in anycritical situation come into the most terrible embarrassment, cast aboutconvulsively for analogous cases, and with mortal certainty naturally findthe wrong formulas.
If this were not true, it would be impossible for us to understandthe political behavior of our learned and highly placed government heroes,unless we decided to assume outright villainy instead of pathological propensities.
On the other hand, a man who possesses the art of correct readingwill, in studying any book, magazine, or pamphlet, instinctively and immediatelyperceive everything which in his opinion is worth permanently remembering,either because it is suited to his purpose or generally worth knowing. Oncethe knowledge he has achieved in this fashion is correctly coordinated withinthe somehow existing picture of this or that subject created by the imaginationsit will function either as a corrective or a complement, thus enhancingeither the correctness or the clarity of the picture. Then, if life suddenlysets some question before us for examination or answer, the memory, if thismethod of reading is observed, will immediately take the existing pictureas a norm, and from it will derive all the individual items regarding thesequestions, assembled in the course of decades, submit them to the mind forexamination and reconsideration, until the question is clarified or answered.
Only this kind of reading has meaning and purpose.
An orator, for example, who does not thus provide his intelligencewith the necessary foundation will never be in a position cogently to defendhis view in the face of opposition, though it may be a thousand times trueor real. In every discussion his memory will treacherously leave him inthe lurch; he will find neither grounds for reinforcing his own contentionsnor any for confuting those of his adversary. If, as in the case of a speaker,it is only a question of making a fool of himself personally, it may notbe so bad, but not so when Fate predestines such a know-it-all incompetentto be the leader of a state.
Since my earliest youth I have endeavored to read in the correctway, and in this endeavor I have been most happily supported by my memoryand intelligence. Viewed in this light, my Vienna period was especiallyfertile and valuable. The experiences of daily life provided stimulationfor a constantly renewed study of the most varied problems. Thus at lastI was in a position to bolster up reality by theory and test theory by reality,and was preserved from being stifled by theory or growing banal throughreality.
In this period the experience of daily life directed and stimulatedme to the most thorough theoretical study of two questions in addition tothe social question.
Who knows when I would have immersed myself in the doctrinesand essence of Marxism if that period had not literally thrust my nose intothe problem!


What I knew of Social Democracy in my youth was exceedinglylittle and very inaccurate.
I was profoundly pleased that it should carry on the strugglefor universal suffrage and the secret ballot. For even then my intelligencetold me that this must help to weaken the Habsburg regime which I so hated.In the conviction that the Austrian Empire could never be preserved exceptby victimizing its Germans, but that even the price of a gradual Slavizationof the German element by no means provided a guaranty of an empire reallycapable of survival, since the power of the Slavs to uphold the state mustbe estimated as exceedingly dubious, I welcomed every development whichin my opinion would inevitably lead to the collapse of this impossible statewhich condemned ten million Germans to death. The more the linguistic Babelcorroded and disorganized parliament, the closer drew the inevitable hourof the disintegration of this Babylonian Empire, and with it the hour offreedom for my German-Austrian people. Only in this way could the Anschlusswith the old mother country be restored.
Consequently, this activity of the Social Democracy was notdispleasing to me. And the fact that it strove to improve the living conditionsof the worker, as, in my innocence, I was still stupid enough to believe,likewise seemed to speak rather for it than against it. What most repelledme was its hostile attitude toward the struggle for the preservation ofGermanism, its disgraceful courting of the Slavic 'comrade,' who acceptedthis declaration of love in so far as it was bound up with practical concessions,but otherwise maintained a lofty and arrogant reserve, thus giving the obtrusivebeggars their deserved reward.
Thus, at the age of seventeen the word 'Marxism' was as yetlittle known to me, while ' Social Democracy ' and socialism seemed to meidentical concepts. Here again it required the fist of Fate to open my eyesto this unprecedented betrayal of the peoples.
Up to that time I had known the Social Democratic Party onlyas an onlooker at a few mass demonstrations, without possessing even theslightest insight into the mentality of its adherents or the nature of itsdoctrine; but now, at one stroke, I came into contact with the productsof its education and 'philosophy.' And in a few months I obtained what mightotherwise have required decades: an understanding of a pestilential whore,lcloaking herself as social virtue and brotherly love, from which I hopehumanity will rid this earth with the greatest dispatch, since otherwisethe earth might well become rid of humanity.
My first encounter with the Social Democrats occurred duringmy employment as a building worker.
From the very beginning it was none too pleasant. ;My clothingwas still more or less in order, my speech cultivated, and my manner reserved.I was still so busy with my own destiny that I could not concern myselfmuch with the people around me. I looked for work only to avoid starvation,only to obtain an opportunity of continuing my education, though ever soslowly. Perhaps I would not have concerned myself at all with my new environmentif on the third or fourth day an event had not taken place which forcedme at once to take a position. I was asked to join the organization.
My knowledge of trade-union organization was at that time practicallynon-existent. I could not have proved that its existence was either beneficialor harmful. When I was told that I had to join, I refused. The reason Igave was that I did not understand the matter, but that I would not letmyself be forced into anything. Perhaps my first reason accounts for mynot being thrown out at once. They may perhaps have hoped to convert meor break down my resistance in a few days. In any event, they had made abig mistake. At the end of two weeks I could no longer have joined, evenif I had wanted to. In these two weeks I came to know the men around memore closely, and no power in the world could have moved me to join an organizationwhose members had meanwhile come to appear to me in so unfavorable a light.
During the first days I was irritable.
At noon some of the workers went to the near-by taverns whileothers remained at the building site and ate a lunch which, as a rule wasquite wretched. These were the married men whose wives brought them theirnoonday soup in pathetic bowls. Toward the end of the week their numberalways increased, why I did not understand until later. On these occasionspolitics was discussed.
I drank my bottle of milk and ate my piece of bread somewhereoff to one side, and cautiously studied my new associates or reflected onmy miserable lot. Nevertheless, I heard more than enough; and often it seemedto me that they purposely moved closer to me, perhaps in order to make metake a position. In any case, what I heard was of such a nature as to infuriateme in the extreme. These men rejected everything: the nation as an inventionof the ' capitalistic ' (how often was I forced to hear this single word!)classes; the fatherland as an instrument of the bourgeoisie for the exploitationof the working class; the authority of law as a means for oppressing theproletariat; the school as an institution for breeding slaves and slaveholders;religion as a means for stultifying the people and making them easier toexploit; morality as a symptom of stupid, sheeplike patience, etc. Therewas absolutely nothing which was not drawn through the mud of a terrifyingdepths
At first I tried to keep silent. But at length it became impossible.I began to take a position and to oppose them. But I was forced to recognizethat this was utterly hopeless until I possessed certain definite knowledgeof the controversial points. And so I began to examine the sources fromwhich they drew this supposed wisdom. I studied book after book, pamphletafter pamphlet.
From then on our discussions at work were often very heated.I argued back, from day to day better informed than my antagonists concerningtheir own knowledge, until one day they made use of the weapon which mostreadily conquers reason: terror and violence. A few of the spokesmen onthe opposing side forced me either to leave the building at once or be thrownoff the scaffolding. Since I was alone and resistance seemed hopeless, Ipreferred, richer by one experience, to follow the former counsel.
I went away filled with disgust, but at the same time so agitatedthat it would have been utterly impossible for me to turn my back on thewhole business. No, after the first surge of indignation, my stubbornnessregained the upper hand. I was determined to go to work on another buildingin spite of my experience. In this decision I was reinforced by Povertywhich, a few weeks later, after I had spent what little I had saved frommy wages. enfolded me in her heartless arms. I had to go back whether Iwanted to or not. The same old story began anew and ended very much thesame as the first time.
I wrestled with my innermost soul: are these people human, worthyto belong to a great nation?
A painful question; for if it is answered in the affirmative,the struggle for my nationality really ceases to be worth the hardshipsand sacrifices which the best of us have to make for the sake of such scum;and if it is answered in the negative, our nation is pitifully poor in humanbeings.
On such days of reflection and cogitation, I pondered with anxiousconcern on the masses of those no longer belonging to their people and sawthem swelling to the proportions of a menacing army.
With what changed feeling I now gazed at the endless columnsof a mass demonstration of Viennese workers that took place one day as theymarched past four abreast! For neatly two hours I stood there watching withbated breath the gigantic human dragon slowly winding by. In oppressed anxiety,I finally left the place and sauntered homeward. In a tobacco shop on theway I saw the Arbeiter-Zeitung, the central organ of the old Austrian SocialDemocracy. It was available in a cheap people's cafe, to which I often wentto read newspapers; but up to that time I had not been able to bring myselfto spend more than two minutes on the miserable sheet, whose whole toneaffected me like moral vitriol. Depressed by the demonstration, I was drivenon by an inner voice to buy the sheet and read it carefully. That eveningI did so, fighting down the fury that rose up in me from time to time atthis concentrated solution of lies.
More than any theoretical literature, my daily reading of theSocial Democratic press enabled me to study the inner nature of these thought-processes.
For what a difference between the glittering phrases about freedom,beauty, and dignity in the theoretical literature, the delusive welter ofwords seemingly expressing the most profound and laborious wisdom, the loathsomehumanitarian morality- all this written with the incredible gall that comeswith prophetic certainty-and the brutal daily press, shunning no villainy,employing every means of slander, lying with a virtuosity that would bendiron beams, all in the name of this gospel of a new humanity. The one isaddressed to the simpletons of the middle, not to mention the upper, educated,'classes,' the other to the masses.
For me immersion in the literature and press of this doctrineand organization meant finding my way back to my own people.
What had seemed to me an unbridgable gulf became the source of a greaterlove than ever before.
Only a fool can behold the work of this villainous poisonerand still condemn the victim. The more independent I made myself in thenext few years the clearer grew my perspective, hence my insight into theinner causes of the Social Democratic successes. I now understood the significanceof the brutal demand that I read only Red papers, attend only Red meetings,read only Red books, etc. With plastic clarity I saw before my eyes theinevitable result of this doctrine of intolerance.
The psyche of the great masses is not receptive to anythingthat is half-hearted and weak.
Like the woman, whose psychic state is determined less by groundsof abstract reason than by an indefinable emotional longing for a forcewhich will complement her nature, and who, consequently, would rather bowto a strong man than dominate a weakling, likewise the masses love a commandermore than a petitioner and feel inwardly more satisfied by a doctrine, toleratingno other beside itself, than by the granting of liberalistic freedom withwhich, as a rule, they can do little, and are prone to feel that they havebeen abandoned. They are equally unaware of their shameless spiritual terrorizationand the hideous abuse of their human freedom, for they absolutely fail tosuspect the inner insanity of the whole doctrine. All they see is the ruthlessforce and brutality of its calculated manifestations, to which they alwayssubmit in the end.
If Social Democracy is opposed by a doctrine of greater truth,but equal brutality of methods, the latter will conquer, though this mayrequire the bitterest struggle.
Before two years had passed, the theory as well as the technicalmethods of Social Democracy were clear to me.
I understood the infamous spiritual terror which this movementexerts, particularly on the bourgeoisie, which is neither morally nor mentallyequal to such attacks; at a given sign it unleashes a veritable barrageof lies and slanders against whatever adversary seems most dangerous, untilthe nerves of the attacked persons break down and, just to have peace again,they sacrifice the hated individual.
However, the fools obtain no peace.
The game begins again and is repeated over and over until fearof the mad dog results in suggestive paralysis.
Since the Social Democrats best know the value of force fromtheir own experience, they most violently attack those in whose nature theydetect any of this substance which is so rare. Conversely, they praise everyweakling on the opposing side, sometimes cautiously, sometimes loudly, dependingon the real or supposed quality of his intelligence.
They fear an irnpotent, spineless genius less than a forcefulnature of moderate intelligence.
But with the greatest enthusiasm they commend weaklings in bothmind and force.
They know how to create the illusion that this is the only wayof preserving the peace, and at the same time, stealthily but steadily,they conquer one position after another, sometimes by silent blackmail,sometimes by actual theft, at moments when the general attention is directedtoward other matters, and either does not want to be disturbed or considersthe matter too small to raise a stir about, thus again irritating the viciousantagonist.
This is a tactic based on precise calculation of all human weaknesses,and its result will lead to success with almost mathematical certainty unlessthe opposing side learns to combat poison gas with poison gas.
It is our duty to inform all weaklings that this is a questionof to be or not to be.
I achieved an equal understanding of the importance of physical terror towardthe individual and the masses.
Here, too, the psychological effect can be calculated with precision.
Terror at the place of employment, in the factory, in the meetinghall, and on the occasion of mass demonstrations will always be successfulunless opposed by equal terror.
In this case, to be sure, the party will cry bloody murder;though it has long despised all state authority, it will set up a howlingcry for that same authority and in most cases will actually attain its goalamid the general confusion: it will find some idiot of a higher officialwho, in the imbecilic hope of propitiating the feared adversary for latereventualities, will help this world plague to break its opponent.
The impression made by such a success on the minds of the greatmasses of supporters as well as opponents can only be measured by thosewho know the soul of a people, not from books, but from life. For whilein the ranks of their supporters the victory achieved seems a triumph ofthe justice of their own cause, the defeated adversary in most cases despairsof the success of any further resistance.
The more familiar I became, principally with the methods ofphysical terror, the more indulgent I grew toward all the hundreds of thousandswho succumbed to it.
What makes me most indebted to that period of suffering is thatit alone gave back to me my people, taught me to distinguish the victimsfrom their seducers.
The results of this seduction can be designated only as victims.For if I attempted to draw a few pictures from life, depicting the essenceof these 'lowest' classes, my picture would not be complete without theassurance that in these depths I also found bright spots in the form ofa rare willingness to make sacrifices, of loyal comradeship, astonishingfrugality, and modest reserve, especially among the older workers. Eventhough these virtues were steadily vanishing in the younger generation,if only through the general effects of the big city, there were many, evenamong the young men, whose healthy blood managed to dominate the foul tricksof life. If in their political activity, these good, often kind-heartedpeople nevertheless joined the mortal enemies of our nationality, thus helpingto cement their ranks, the reason was that they neither understood nor couldunderstand the baseness of the new doctrine, and that no one else took thetrouble to bother about them, and finally that the social conditions werestronger than any will to the contrary that may have been present. The povertyto which they sooner or later succumbed drove them into the camp of theSocial Democracy.
Since on innumerable occasions the bourgeoisie has in the clumsiestand most immoral way opposed demands which were justified from the universalhuman point of view, often without obtaining or even justifiably expectingany profit from such an attitude, even the most self-respecting worker wasdriven out of the trade-union organization into political activity.
Millions of workers, I am sure, started out as enemies of theSocial Democratic Party in their innermost soul, but their resistance wasovercome in a way which was sometimes utterly insane; that is, when thebourgeois parties adopted a hostile attitude toward every demand of a socialcharacter. Their simple, narrow-minded rejection of all attempts to betterworking conditions, to introduce safety devices on machines, to prohibitchild labor and protect the woman, at least in the months when she was bearingthe future national comrade under her heart, contributed to drive the massesinto the net of Social Democracy which gratefully snatched at every caseof such a disgraceful attitude. Never can our political bourgeoisie makegood its sins in this direction, for by resisting all attempts to do awaywith social abuses, they sowed hatred and seemed to justify even the assertionsof the mortal enemies of the entire nation, to the effect that only theSocial Democratic Party represented the interests of the working people
Thus, to begin with, they created the moral basis for the actualexistence of the trade unions, the organization which has always been themost effective pander to the political party.
In my Viennese years I was forced, whether I liked it or not,to take a position on the trade unions.
Since I regarded them as an inseparable ingredient of the SocialDemocratic Party as such, my decision was instantaneous and-mistaken.
I flatly rejected them without thinking.
And in this infinite]y important question, as in so many others,Fate itself became my instructor.
The result was a reversal of my first judgment.
By my twentieth year I had learned to distinguish between aunion as a means of defending the general social rights of the wage-earner,and obtaining better living conditions for him as an individual, and thetrade union as an instrument of the party in the political class struggle.
The fact that Social Democracy understood the enormous importanceof the trade-union movement assured it of this instrument and hence of success;the fact that the bourgeoisie were not aware of this cost them their politicalposition. They thought they could stop a logical development by means ofan impertinent 'rejection,' but in reality they only forced it into illogicalchannels. For to call the trade-union movement in itself unpatriotic isnonsense and untrue to boot. Rather the contrary is true. If trade-unionactivity strives and succeeds in bettering the lot of a class which is oneof the basic supports of the nation, its work is not only not anti-patrioticor seditious, but 'national' in the truest sense of the word. For in thisway it helps to create the social premises without which a general nationaleducation is unthinkable. It wins the highest merit by eliminating socialcankers, attacking intellectual as well as physical infections, and thushelping to contribute to the general health of the body politic.
Consequently, the question of their necessity is really superfluous.
As long as there are employers with little social understandingor a deficient sense of justice and propriety, it is not only the rightbut the duty of their employees, who certainly constitute a part of ournationality, to protect the interests of the general public against thegreed and unreason of the individual; for the preservation of loyalty andfaith in z social group is just as much to the interest of a nation as thepreservation of the people's health.
Both of these are seriously menaced by unworthy employers whodo not feel themselves to be members of the national community as a whole.From the disastrous effects of their greed or ruthlessness grow profoundevils for the future.
To eliminate the causes of such a development is to do a serviceto the nation and in no sense the opposite.
Let no one say that every individual is free to draw the consequencesfrom an actual or supposed injustice; in other words, to leave his job.No ! This is shadow-boxing and must be regarded as an attempt to divertattention. Either the elimination of bad, unsocial conditions serves theinterest of the nation or it does not. If it does, the struggle againstthen must be carried on with weapons which offer the hope of success. Theindividual worker, however, is never in a position to defend himself againstthe power of the great industrialist, for in such matters it cannot be superiorjustice that conquers (if that were recognized, the whole struggle wouldstop from lack of cause)-no, what matters here is superior power. Otherwisethe sense of justice alone would bring the struggle to a fair conclusion,or, more accurately speaking, the struggle could never arise.
No, if the unsocial or unworthy treatment of men calls for resistance,this struggle, as long as no legal judicial authorities have been createdfor the elimination of these evils, can only be decided by superior power.And this makes it obvious that the power of the employer concentrated ina single person can only be countered by the mass of employees banded intoa single person, if the possibility of a victory is not to be renouncedin advance.
Thus, trade-union organization can lead to a strengthening ofthe social idea in its practical effects on daily life, and thereby to anelimination of irritants which are constantly giving cause for dissatisfactionand complaints.
If this is not the case, it is to a great extent the fault ofthose who have been able to place obstacles in the path of any legal regulationof social evils or thwart them by means of their political influence.
Proportionately as the political bourgeoisie did not understand,or rather did not want to understand, the importance of trade-union organization,and resisted it, the Social Democrats took possession of the contested movement.Thus, far-sightedly it created a firm foundation which on several criticaloccasions has stood up when all other supports failed. In this way the intrinsicpurpose was gradually submerged, making place for new aims.
It never occurred to the Social Democrats to limit the movementthey had thus captured to its original task.
No, that was far from their intention.
In a few decades the weapon for defending the social rightsof man had, in their experienced hands? become an instrument for the destructionof the national economy. And they did not let themselves be hindered inthe least by the interests of the workers. For in politics, as in otherfields, the use of economic pressure always permits blackmail, as long asthe necessary unscrupulousness is present on the one side, and sufficientsheeplike patience on the other.
Something which in this case was true of both sides


By the turn of the century, the trade-union movement hadceased to serve its former function. From year to year it had entered moreand more into the sphere of Social Democratic politics and finally had nouse except as a battering-ram in the class struggle. Its purpose was tocause the collapse of the whole arduously constructed economic edifice bypersistent blows, thus, the more easily, after removing its economic foundations,to prepare the same lot for the edifice of state. Less and less attentionwas paid to defending the real needs of the working class, and finally politicalexpediency made it seem undesirable to relieve the social or cultural miseriesof the broad masses at all, for otherwise there was a risk that these masses,satisfied in their desires could no longer be used forever as docile shocktroops.
The leaders of the class struggle looked on this developmentwith such dark foreboding and dread that in the end they rejected any reallybeneficial social betterment out of hand, and actually attacked it withthe greatest determination.
And they were never at a loss for an explanation of a line ofbehavior which seemed so inexplicable.
By screwing the demands higher and higher, they made their possiblefulfillment seem so trivial and unimportant that they were able at all timesto tell the masses that they were dealing with nothing but a diabolicalattempt to weaken, if possible in fact to paralyze, the offensive powerof the working class in the cheapest way, by such a ridiculous satisfactionof the most elementary rights. In view of the great masses' small capacityfor thought, we need not be surprised at the success of these methods.
The bourgeois camp was indignant at this obvious insincerityof Social Democratic tactics, but did not draw from it the slightest inferencewith regard to their own conduct. The Social Democrats' fear of really raisingthe working class out of the depths of their cultural and social miseryshould have inspired the greatest exertions in this very direction, thusgradually wrestling the weapon from the hands of the advocates of the classstruggle.
This, however, was not done.
Instead of attacking and seizing the enemy's position, the bourgeoisiepreferred to let themselves
be pressed to the wall and finally had recourse to utterly inadequate makeshifts,which remained ineffectual because they came too late, and, moreover, wereeasy to reject because they were too insignificant. Thus. in reality, everythingremained as before, except that the discontent was greater.
Like a menacing storm-cloud, the ' free trade union ' hung,even then, over the political horizon and the existence of the individual.
It was one of the most frightful instruments of terror againstthe security and independence of the national economy, the solidity of thestate, and personal freedom.
And chiefly this was what made the concept of democracy a sordidand ridiculous phrase, and held up brotherhood to everlasting scorn in thewords: 'And if our comrade you won't be, we'll bash your head in-one, two,three ! '
And that was how I became acquainted with this friend of humanity.In the course of the years my view was broadened and deepened, but I havehad no need to change it.

The greater insight I gathered into the external character of Social Democracy,the greater became my longing to comprehend the inner core of this doctrine.
The official party literature was not much use for this purpose. In so faras it deals with economic questions, its assertions and proofs are false;in so far as it treats of political aims, it lies. Moreover, I was inwardlyrepelled by the newfangled pettifogging phraseology and the style in whichit was written. With an enormous expenditure of words, unclear in contentor incomprehensible as to meaning, they stammer an endless hodgepodge ofphrases purportedly as witty as in reality they are meaningless. Only ourdecadent metropolitan bohemians can feel at home in this maze of reasoningand cull an 'inner experience' from this dung-heap of literary dadaism,supported by the proverbial modesty of a section of our people who alwaysdetect profound wisdom in what is most incomprehensible to them personally.However, by balancing the theoretical untruth and nonsense of this doctrinewith the reality of the phenomenon, I gradually obtained a clear pictureof its intrinsic will.
At such times I was overcome by gloomy foreboding and malignantfear. Then I saw before me a doctrine, comprised of egotism and hate, whichcan lead to victory pursuant to mathematical laws, but in so doing mustput an end to humanity.
Meanwhile, I had learned to understand the connection betweenthis doctrine of destruction and the nature of a people of which, up tothat time, I had known next to nothing.
Only a knowledge of the Jews provides the key with which tocomprehend the inner, and consequently real, aims of Social Democracy.
The erroneous conceptions of the aim and meaning of this partyfall from our eyes like veils, once we come to know this people, and fromthe fog and mist of social phrases rises the leering grimace of Marxism.


Today it is difficult, if not impossible, for me to say whenthe word 'Jew ' first gave me ground for special thoughts. At home I donot remember having heard the word during my father's lifetime. I believethat the old gentleman would have regarded any special emphasis on thisterm as cultural backwardness. In the course of his life he had arrivedat more or less cosmopolitan views which, despite his pronounced nationalsentiments, not only remained intact, but also affected me to some extent.
Likewise at school I found no occasion which could have ledme to change this inherited picture.
At the Realschule, to be sure, I did meet one Jewish boy whowas treated by all of us with caution, but only because various experienceshad led us to doubt his discretion and we did not particularly trust him;but neither I nor the others had any thoughts on the matter.
Not until my fourteenth or fifteenth year did I begin to comeacross the word 'Jew,' with any frequency, partly in connection with politicaldiscussions. This filled me with a mild distaste, and I could not rid myselfof an unpleasant feeling that always came over me whenever religious quarrelsoccurred in my presence.
At that time I did not think anything else of the question.
There were few Jews in Linz. In the course of the centuriestheir outward appearance had become Europeanized and had taken on a humanlook; in fact, I even took them for Germans. The absurdity of this ideadid not dawn on me because I saw no distinguishing feature but the strangereligion. The fact that they had, as I believed, been persecuted on thisaccount sometimes almost turned my distaste at unfavorable remarks aboutthem into horror.
Thus far I did not so much as suspect the existence of an organizedopposition to the Jews.
Then I came to Vienna.
Preoccupied by the abundance of my impressions in the architecturalfield, oppressed by the hardship of my own lot, I gained at first no insightinto the inner stratification of the people in this gigantic city. Notwithstandingthat Vienna in those days counted nearly two hundred thousand Jews amongits two million inhabitants, I did not see them. In the first few weeksmy eyes and my senses were not equal to the flood of values and ideas. Notuntil calm gradually returned and the agitated picture began to clear didI look around me more carefully in my new world, and then among other thingsI encountered the Jewish question.
I cannot maintain that the way in which I became acquaintedwith them struck me as particularly pleasant. For the Jew was still characterizedfor me by nothing but his religion, and therefore, on grounds of human tolerance,I maintained my rejection of religious attacks in this case as in others.Consequently, the tone, particularly that of the Viennese antiSemitic press,seemed to me unworthy of the cultural tradition of a great nation. I wasoppressed by the memory of certain occurrences in the Middle Ages, whichI should not have liked to see repeated. Since the newspapers in questiondid not enjoy an outstanding reputation (the reason for this, at that time,I myself did not precisely know), I regarded them more as the products ofanger and envy than the results of 4 principled though perhaps mistaken,point of view.
I was reinforced in this opinion by what seemed to me the farmore dignified form in which the really big papers answered all these attacks,or, what seemed to me even more praiseworthy, failed to mention them; inother words, simply killed them with silence.
I zealously read the so-called world press (Neue Freie Presse,Wiener Tageblatt, etc.) and was amazed at the scope of what they offeredtheir readers and the objectivity of individual articles. I respected theexalted tone, though the flamboyance of the style sometimes caused me innerdissatisfaction, or even struck me unpleasantly. Yet this may have beendue to the rhythm of life in the whole metropolis.
Since in those days I saw Vienna in that light, I thought myselfjustified in accepting this explanation of mine as a valid excuse.
But what sometimes repelled me was the undignified fashion inwhich this press curried favor with the Court. There was scarcely an eventin the Hofburg which was not imparted to the readers either with rapturesof enthusiasm or plaintive emotion, and all this to-do, particularly whenit dealt with the 'wisest monarch' of all time, almost reminded me of themating cry of a mountain cock.
To me the whole thing seemed artificial.
In my eyes it was a blemish upon liberal democracy.
To curry favor with this Court and in such indecent forms wasto sacrifice the dignity of the nation.
This was the first shadow to darken my intellectual relationshipwith the ' big ' Viennese press.
As I had always done before, I continued in Vienna to followevents in Germany with ardent zeal, quite regardless whether they were politicalor cultural. With pride and admiration, I compared the rise of the Reichwith the wasting away of the Austrian state. If events in the field of foreignpolitics filled me, by and large, with undivided joy, the less gratifyingaspects of internal life often aroused anxiety and gloom. a he strugglewhich at that time was being carried on against William II did not meetwith my approval. I regarded him not only as the German Emperor, but firstand foremost as the creator of a German fleet. The restrictions of speechimposed on the Kaiser by the Reichstag angered me greatly because they emanatedfrom a source which in my opinion really hadn't a leg to stand on, sincein a single session these parliamentarian imbeciles gabbled more nonsensethan a whole dynasty of emperors, including its very weakest numbers, couldever have done in centuries.
I was outraged that in a state where every idiot not only claimedthe right to criticize, but was given a seat in the Reichstag and let looseupon the nation as a 'lawgiver,' the man who bore the imperial crown hadto take 'reprimands' from the greatest babblers' club of all time.
But I was even more indignant that the same Viennese press whichmade the most obsequious bows to every rickety horse in the Court, and flewinto convulsions of joy if he accidentally swished his tail, should, withsupposed concern, yet, as it seemed to me, ill-concealed malice, expressits criticisms of the German Kaiser. Of course it had no intention of interferingwith conditions within the German Reich-oh, no, God forbid-but by placingits finger on these wounds in the friendliest way, it was fulfilling theduty imposed by the spirit of the mutual alliance, and, conversely, fulfillingthe requirements of journalistic truth, etc. And now it was poking thisfinger around in the wound to its heart's content.
In such cases the blood rose to my head.
It was this which caused me little by little to view the bigpapers with greater caution.
And on one such occasion I was forced to recognize that oneof the anti-Semitic papers, the Deutsches Volksblatt, behaved more decently.
Another thing that got on my nerves was the loathsome cult forFrance which the big press, even then, carried on. A man couldn't help feelingashamed to be a German when he saw these saccharine hymns of praise to the'great cultural nation.' This wretched licking of France's boots more thanonce made me throw down one of these 'world newspapers.' And on such occasionsI sometimes picked up the Volksblatt, which, to be sure, seemed to me muchsmaller, but in these matters somewhat more appetizing. I was not in agreementwith the sharp antiSemitic tone, but from time to time I read argumentswhich gave me some food for thought.
At all events, these occasions slowly made me acquainted withthe man and the movement, which in those days guided Vienna's destinies:Dr. Karl Lueger I and the Christian Social Party.
When I arrived in Vienna, I was hostile to both of them.
The man and the movement seemed 'reactionary' in my eyes.
My common sense of justice, however, forced me to change thisjudgment in proportion as I had occasion to become acquainted with the manand his work; and slowly my fair judgment turned to unconcealed admiration.Today, more than ever, I regard this man as the greatest German mayor ofall times.
How many of my basic principles were upset by this change inmy attitude toward the Christian Social movement!
My views with regard to anti-Semitism thus succumbed to thepassage of time, and this was my greatest transformation of all.
It cost me the greatest inner soul struggles, and only aftermonths of battle between my reason and my sentiments did my reason beginto emerge victorious. Two years later, my sentiment had followed my reason,and from then on became its most loyal guardian and sentinel.
At the time of this bitter struggle between spiritual educationand cold reason, the visual instruction of the Vienna streets had performedinvaluable services. There came a time when I no longer, as in the firstdays, wandered blindly through the mighty city; now with open eyes I sawnot only the buildings but also the people.
Once, as I was strolling through the Inner City, I suddenlyencountered an apparition in a black caftan and black hair locks. Is thisa Jew? was my first thought.
For, to be sure, they had not looked like that in Linz. I observedthe man furtively and cautiously, but the longer I stared at this foreignface, scrutinizing feature for feature, the more my first question assumeda new form:
Is this a German?
As always in such cases, I now began to try to relieve my doubtsby books. For a few hellers I bought the first antiSemitic pamphlets ofmy life. Unfortunately, they all proceeded from the supposition that inprinciple the reader knew or even understood the Jewish question to a certaindegree. Besides, the tone for the most part was such that doubts again arosein me, due in part to the dull and amazingly unscientific arguments favoringthe thesis.
I relapsed for weeks at a time, once even for months.
The whole thing seemed to me so monstrous, the accusations soboundless, that, tormented by the fear of doing injustice, I again becameanxious and uncertain.
Yet I could no longer very well doubt that the objects of mystudy were not Germans of a special religion, but a people in themselves;for since I had begun to concern myself with this question and to take cognizanceof the Jews, Vienna appeared to me in a different light than before. WhereverI went, I began to see Jews, and the more I saw, the more sharply they becamedistinguished in my eyes from the rest of humanity. Particularly the InnerCity and the districts north of the Danube Canal swarmed with a people whicheven outwardly had lost all resemblance to Germans.
And whatever doubts I may still have nourished were finallydispelled by the attitude of a portion of the Jews themselves.
Among them there was a great movement, quite extensive in Vienna,which came out sharply in confirmation of the national character of theJews: this was the Zionists.
It looked to be sure, as though only a part of the Jews approvedthis viewpoint, while the great majority condemned and inwardly rejectedsuch a formulation. But when examined more closely, this appearance dissolveditself into an unsavory vapor of pretexts advanced for mere reasons of expedience,not to say lies. For the so-called liberal Jews did not reject the Zionistsas non-Jews, but only as Jews with an impractical, perhaps even dangerous,way of publicly avowing their Jewishness.
Intrinsically they remained unalterably of one piece.
In a short time this apparent struggle between Zionistic andliberal Jews disgusted me; for it was false through and through, foundedon lies and scarcely in keeping with the moral elevation and purity alwaysclaimed by this people.
The cleanliness of this people, moral and otherwise, I mustsay, is a point in itself. By their very exterior you could tell that thesewere no lovers of water, and, to your distress, you often knew it with youreyes closed. Later I often grew sick to my stomach from the smell of thesecaftan-wearers. Added to this, there was their unclean dress and their generallyunheroic appearance.
All this could scarcely be called very attractive; but it becamepositively repulsive when, in addition to their physical uncleanliness,you discovered the moral stains on this 'chosen people.'
In a short time I was made more thoughtful than ever by my slowlyrising insight into the type of activity carried on by the Jews in certainfields.
Was there any form of filth or profligacy, particularly in cultural life,without at least one Jew involved in it?
If you cut even cautiously into such an abscess, you found,like a maggot in a rotting body, often dazzled by the sudden light-a kike!
What had to be reckoned heavily against the Jews in my eyeswas when I became acquainted with their activity in the press, art, literature,and the theater. All the unctuous reassurances helped little or nothingIt sufficed to look at a billboard, to study the names of the men behindthe horrible trash they advertised, to make you hard for a long time tocome. This was pestilence, spiritual pestilence, worse than the Black Deathof olden times, and the people was being infected with it! It goes withoutsaying that the lower the intellectual level of one of these art manufacturers,the more unlimited his fertility will be, and the scoundrel ends up likea garbage separator, splashing his filth in the face of humanity. And bearin mind that there is no limit to their number; bear in mind that for oneGoethe Nature easily can foist on the world ten thousand of these scribblerswho poison men's souls like germ-carriers of the worse sort, on their fellowmen.
It was terrible, but not to be overlooked, that precisely theJew, in tremendous numbers, seemed chosen by Nature for this shameful calling.
Is this why the Jews are called the 'chosen people'?
I now began to examine carefully the names of all the creatorsof unclean products in public artistic life. The result was less and lessfavorable for my previous attitude toward the Jews. Regardless how my sentimentmight resists my reason was forced to draw its conclusions.
The fact that nine tenths of all literary filth, artistic trash,and theatrical idiocy can be set to the account of a people, constitutinghardly one hundredth of all the country's inhabitants, could simply notbe tanked away; it was the plain truth.
And I now began to examine my beloved 'world press' from thispoint of view.
And the deeper I probed, the more the object of my former admirationshriveled. The style became more and more unbearable; I could not help rejectingthe content as inwardly shallow and banal; the objectivity of expositionnow seemed to me more akin to lies than honest truth; and the writers were-Jews.
A thousand things which I had hardly seen before now struckmy notice, and others, which had previously given me food for thought, Inow learned to grasp and understand.
I now saw the liberal attitude of this press in a differentlight; the lofty tone in which it answered attacks and its method of I killingthem with silence now revealed itself to me as a trick as clever as it wastreacherous; the transfigured raptures of their theatrical critics werealways directed at Jewish writers, and their disapproval never struck anyonebut Germans. The gentle pinpricks against William II revealed its methodsby their persistency, and so did its commendation of French culture andcivilization. The trashy content of the short story now appeared to me |as outright indecency, and in the language I detected the accents 0 of aforeign people; the sense of the whole thing was so obviously hostile toGermanism that this could only have been intentional.
But who had an interest in this?
Was all this a mere accident?
Gradually I became uncertain.
The development was accelerated by insights which I gained intoa number of other matters. I am referring to the general view of 1. ethicsand morals which was quite openly exhibited by a large part of the Jews,and the practical application of which could be seen.
Here again the streets provided an object lesson of a sort whichwas sometimes positively evil.
The relation of the Jews to prostitution and, even more, tothe white-slave traffic, could be studied in Vienna as perhaps in no othercity of Western Europe, with the possible exception of the southern Frenchports. If you walked at night through the streets and alleys of Leopoldstadtat every step you witnessed proceedings which remained concealed from themajority of the German people until the War gave the soldiers on the easternfront occasion to see similar things, or, better expressed, forced themto see them.
When thus for the first time I recognized the Jew as the cold-hearted,shameless, and calculating director of this revolting vice traffic in thescum of the big city, a cold shudder ran down my back.
But then a flame flared up within me. I no longer avoided discussionof the Jewish question; no, now I sought it. And when I learned to lookfor the Jew in all branches of cultural and artistic life and its variousmanifestations, I suddenly encountered him in a place where I would leasthave expected to find him.
When I recognized the Jew as the leader of the Social Democracy,the scales dropped from my eyes. A long soul struggle had reached its conclusion.
Even in my daily relations with my fellow workers, I observedthe amazing adaptability with which they adopted different positions onthe same question, sometimes within an interval of a few days, sometimesin only a few hours. It was hard for me to understand how people who, whenspoken to alone, possessed some sensible opinions, suddenly lost them assoon as they came under the influence of the masses. It was often enoughto make one despair. When, after hours of argument, I was convinced thatnow at last I had broken the ice or cleared up some absurdity, and was beginningto rejoice at my success, on the next day to my disgust I had to begin allover again; it had all been in vain. Like an eternal pendulum their opinionsseemed to swing back again and again to the old madness.
All this I could understand: that they were dissatisfied withtheir lot and cursed the Fate which often struck them so harshly; that theyhated the employers who seemed to them the heartless bailiffs of Fate; thatthey cursed the authorities who in their eyes were without feeling for theirsituation; that they demonstrated against food prices and carried theirdemands into the streets: this much could be understood without recourseto reason. But what inevitably remained incomprehensible was the boundlesshatred they heaped upon their own nationality, despising its greatness,besmirching its history, and dragging its great men into the gutter.
This struggle against their own species, their own clan, theirown homeland, was as senseless as it was incomprehensible. It was unnatural.
It was possible to cure them temporarily of this vice, but onlyfor days or at most weeks. If later you met the man you thought you hadconverted, he was just the same as before.
His old unnatural state had regained full possession of him.


I gradually became aware that the Social Democratic presswas directed predominantly by Jews; yet I did not attribute any specialsignificance to this circumstance, since conditions were exactly the samein the other papers. Yet one fact seemed conspicuous: there was not onepaper with Jews working on it which could have been regarded as truly nationalaccording to my education and way of thinking.
I swallowed my disgust and tried to read this type of Marxistpress production, but my revulsion became so unlimited in so doing thatI endeavored to become more closely acquainted with the men who manufacturedthese compendiums of knavery.
From the publisher down, they were all Jews.
I took all the Social Democratic pamphlets I could lay handson and sought the names of their authors: Jews. I noted the names of theleaders; by far the greatest part were likewise members of the 'chosen people,'whether they were representatives in the Reichsrat or trade-union secretaries,the heads of organizations or street agitators. It was always the same gruesomepicture. The names of the Austerlitzes, Davids, Adlers, Ellenbogens, etc.,will remain forever graven in my memory. One thing had grown dear to me:the party with whose petty representatives I had been carrying on the mostviolent struggle for months was, as to leadership, almost exclusively inthe hands of a foreign people; for, to my deep and joyful satisfaction,I had at last come to the conclusion that the Jew was no German.
Only now did I become thoroughly acquainted with the seducerof our people.
A single year of my sojourn in Vienna had sufficed to imbueme with the conviction that no worker could be so stubborn that he wouldnot in the end succumb to better knowledge and better explanations. SlowlyI had become an expert in their own doctrine and used it as a weapon inthe struggle for my own profound conviction.
Success almost always favored my side.
The great masses could be saved, if only with the gravest sacrificein time and patience.
But a Jew could never be parted from his opinions.
At that time I was still childish enough to try to make themadness of their doctrine clear to them; in my little circle I talked mytongue sore and my throat hoarse, thinking I would inevitably succeed inconvincing them how ruinous their Marxist madness was; but what I accomplishedwas often the opposite. It seemed as though their increased understandingof the destructive effects of Social Democratic theories and their resultsonly reinforced their determination.
The more I argued with them, the better I came to know theirdialectic. First they counted on the stupidity of their adversary, and then,when there was no other way out, they themselves simply played stupid. Ifall this didn't help, they pretended not to understand, or, if challenged,they changed the subject in a hurry, quoted platitudes which, if you acceptedthem, they immediately related to entirely different matters, and then,if again attacked, gave ground and pretended not to know exactly what youwere talking about. Whenever you tried to attack one of these apostles,your hand closed on a jelly-like slime which divided up and poured throughyour fingers, but in the next moment collected again. But if you reallystruck one of these fellows so telling a blow that, observed by the audience,he couldn't help but agree, and if you believed that this had taken youat least one step forward, your amazement was great the next day. The Jewhad not the slightest recollection of the day before, he rattled off hissame old nonsense as though nothing at all had happened, and, if indignantlychallenged, affected amazement; he couldn't remember a thing, except thathe had proved the correctness of his assertions the previous day.
Sometimes I stood there thunderstruck.
I didn't know what to be more amazed at: the agility of theirtongues or their virtuosity at lying.
Gradually I began to hate them.
All this had but one good side: that in proportion as the realleaders or at least the disseminators of Social Democracy came within myvision, my love for my people inevitably grew. For who, in view of the diabolicalcraftiness of these seducers, could damn the luckless victims? How hardit was, even for me, to get the better of thus race of dialectical liars! And how futile was such success in dealing with people who twist the truthin your mouth who without so much as a blush disavow the word they havejust spoken, and in the very next minute take credit for it after all.
No. The better acquainted I became with the Jew, the more forgivingI inevitably became toward the worker. In my eyes the gravest fault wasno longer with him, but with all those who did not regard it as worth thetrouble to have mercy on him, with iron righteousness giving the son ofthe people his just deserts, and standing the seducer and corrupter up againstthe wall.
Inspired by the experience of daily life, I now began to trackdown the sources of the Marxist doctrine. Its effects had become clear tome in individual cases; each day its success was apparent to my attentiveeyes, and, with some exercise of my imagination, I was able to picture theconsequences. The only remaining question was whether the result of theiraction in its ultimate form had existed in the mind's eye of the creators,or whether they themselves were the victims of an error.
I felt that both were possible.
In the one case it was the duty of every thinking man to forcehimself to the forefront of the ilI-starred movement, thus perhaps avertingcatastrophe; in the other, however, the original founders of this plagueof the nations must have been veritable devils- for only in the brain ofa monster-not that of a man-could the plan of an organization assume formand meaning, whose activity must ultimately result in the collapse of humancivilization and the consequent devastation of the world.
In this case the only remaining hope was struggle, strugglewith all the weapons which the human spirit, reason, and will can devise,regardless on which side of the scale Fate should lay its blessing.
Thus I began to make myself familiar with the founders of thisdoctrine, in order to study the foundations of the movement. If I reachedmy goal more quickly than at first I had perhaps ventured to believe, itwas thanks to my newly acquired, though at that time not very profound,knowledge of the Jewish question. This alone enabled me to draw a practicalcomparison between the reality and the theoretical flim-flam of the foundingfathers of Social Democracy, since it taught me to understand the languageof the Jewish people, who speak in order to conceal or at least to veiltheir thoughts; their real aim is not therefore to be found in the linesthemselves, but slumbers well concealed between them.
For or me this was the time of the greatest spiritual upheavalI have ever had to go through.
I had ceased to be a weak-kneed cosmopolitan and become an anti-Semite.
Just once more-and this was the last time-fearful, oppressivethoughts came to me in profound anguish.
When over long periods of human history I scrutinized the activityof the Jewish people, suddenly there rose up in me the fearful questionwhether inscrutable Destiny, perhaps Or reasons unknown to us poor mortals,did not with eternal and immutable resolve, desire the final victory ofthis little nation.
Was it possible that the earth had been promised as a rewardto this people which lives only for this earth?
Have we an objective right to struggle for our self-preservation,or is this justified only subjectively within ourselves?
As I delved more deeply into the teachings of Marxism and thusin tranquil clarity submitted the deeds of the Jewish people to contemplation,Fate itself gave me its answer.
The Jewish doctrine of Marxism rejects the aristocratic principleof Nature and replaces the eternal privilege of power and strength by themass of numbers and their dead weight. Thus it denies the value of personalityin man, contests the significance of nationality and race, and thereby withdrawsfrom humanity the premise of its existence and its culture. As a foundationof the universe, this doctrine would bring about the end of any order intellectuallyconceivable to man. And as, in this greatest of ail recognizable organisms,the result of an application of such a law could only be chaos, on earthit could only be destruction for the inhabitants of this planet.
If, with the help of his Marxist creed, the Jew is victoriousover the other peoples of the world, his crown will be the funeral wreathof humanity and this planet will, as it did thousands l of years ago, movethrough the ether devoid of men.
Eternal Nature inexorably avenges the infringement of her commands.
Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with thewill of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I amfighting for the work of the Lord.