German history

“ The world-empire of which I have dreamed shall consist in this, that the newly created German Empire shall first of all enjoy on all sides the most absolute confidence as a quiet, honorable, and peaceful neighbor; and that, if in the future they shall read in history of a German world-empire or of a Hohenzollern world-ruler, it shall not be founded upon acquisitions won with the sword but upon the mutual trust of the nations who are striving for the same goals. ”

“ They are no less proud of having expounded to modern Europe for the first time through the immortal Copernicus a correct notion of the world we live in and the worlds around us. The Germans as pioneers of modern civilization.The contributions of the German race to modern civilization and modern thought are thus of a very high order,—and if we can believe patriotic German historians, modern civilization and modern history are German civilization and German history! ”

“ Of the separate and special means of once more raising the German spirit a very powerful one would be in our hands if we had a soul-stirring history of the Germans in that period—one that would become a book for the nation and for the people, just as the Bible and the hymn-book are now, until the time came when we ourselves had again achieved something worthy of record. ”

“ And still there are men in America who despair of the vitality of the Germans, of their indomitable power to resist oppression, of their love of freedom, and of their devotion to it, proved by a glorious history of two thousand years. The German race is a power, the vitality and influence of which you can trace through the world's history for two thousand years; you can trace it through the history of science and heroism, of industry, and of bold enterprizing spirit. ”

“ No vigorous demand from the people themselves marks their progress. You can read all there is of German history in the biographies of the Great Elector, of Frederick William the First, of Frederick the Great, of York, of von Stein, Hardenberg, Sharnhorst, and Blücher, of Bismarck, William I, and the present Emperor.
What the Kaiser believes of history is true of German history. If he asserts himself as he does in Germany, it is because two hundred and fifty years of German history put him wholly and entirely in the right. ”

“ Whatever capacity Germany had for being, was in those neglected fragments. If she ever developed into greatness it must be along the line of their elemental tendencies, and by being German, not French.
So a nation, helpless, broken, disorganized, out of harmony with itself and with others, could not act, but it could think. And in this time of chaos and confusion there commenced mighty stirrings in the thought of Germany. Slumbering in that chaos were the germs of wonderful music and a wondrous literature. ”

“ The great power and vigour of the German peoples, shown by their early history in Europe, had been broken up by the religious and other dissensions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It fell to Prussia to become the centre of organization for a new Germany. The rich human and social material of the German States—their literary, artistic, and scientific culture, their philosophy, their learning—clustered curiously enough round the hard and military nucleus of the North. ”

“ Thousands of Englishmen make their homes in German cities; find German ways of living, if anything, suit them better. Suddenly there arises the question, shall English ways of life or German ways of life prevail: English or German culture—which shall it be? And the English who have lived contentedly in Germany for years hasten back to fight for England, and the desire of every German in England is to break up his pleasant home among us and fight to bring all Europe into German ways of thinking. ”

“ Would we comprehend the Germany of to-day, we must hold firmly in our minds an epitome of what it has been, and see vividly the devious path of its development through the ages.
The German nation is of ancient lineage, and indeed belongs to the royal line of human descent, the Aryan; its ancestral roots running back until lost in the heart of Asia, in the mists of antiquity.
The home of the Aryan race is shrouded in mystery, as are the impelling causes which sent those successive tides of humanity into Europe. ”

“ To you also these records of the olden times, in which the private life and feelings of the writers are portrayed, are especially valuable, for by them a clear light is thrown on events in our political history which till now have been only occasionally noticed, and we may discover from them how the German people have felt, suffered, and lived. ”

“ German history holds no record of the integrity or independence of her neighbours being either of German interest or concern, and her attitude is in accord with her principle of concealing her real intention by adopting a spirit of deprecation. ”

“ The changes of history which have swept over the German Fatherland have called forth and laid tasks upon many a dynasty, and finally it was the dynasty of my ancestors who first succeeded after many difficulties in laying the corner-stone for the great work and at last in building up the work itself—the establishment of German unity on a Brandenburger basis and under the leadership of Prussia. ”

“ The observant student who follows with care the history of the expansion of Germany and the strange process by which the German kingdoms were established within the Empire in western Europe, is struck at every step by the profound respect which the barbarians evinced for the Empire and the Roman name throughout all their hostilities and injuries. ”

“ No doubt, after all due allowance has been made for the different epochs of history during which the two sovereigns lived, the German was a man of more refined and cultivated intellect than the Scotchman, and of a far purer moral life ”

“ England blocked the way to the growth of Germany from a European into a World-power; Germany, to preserve intact for German culture the surplus of the growing population, must be a World-power or perish. ”

“ Out of the faith of the National Socialistic movement in the future of the German nation has arisen a new understanding of the German past. History instruction must be based on this living faith, it must fill our youth with the realization that it belongs to a nation which of all European nations has suffered longest and most severely before it was unified, but which today can face the future with confidence. ”

“ The German Empire had in its best time existed by grace of God and force of circumstances, more than by reason of a sound and perfect organism. It always struggled with fatal inherent defects. Its life currents never flowed freely and had been growing more and more sluggish for centuries. ”

“ It was such a legacy that the present Emperor inherited when, after the few months’ reign of his father, he succeeded to the imperial office; and it is this legacy and this tradition which, in fairness to the Emperor, we must remember in reading such seemingly strange pronouncements as his own address at Königsberg in 1910.
The later events in German history and the subsequent policies of the empire are touched upon in such detail that further preamble is hardly necessary. That the Emperor has everywhere energetically taken the lead is undoubted. ”

“ Wear it honorably. Think of the famous history of your Fatherland; remember that the German army must be armed against the internal as well as the external foe. More and more unbelief and discontent raise their heads in the Fatherland, and it may come to pass that you will have to shoot down or stab your own relatives and brothers. Then seal your loyalty with your heart’s blood! And now go to your homes and fulfil your duties.
— (According to the Breslauer Lokalanzeiger of December 8.)
According to the Neisser Zeitung, the second paragraph ran as follows:
Recruits! ”

“ For the history of German thought it was of the greatest importance that a Liberal from the Rhine, by a systematic history of the Revolution, attempted to overthrow the influence which the revolutionary legend, as expounded by French writers, had acquired over the German mind ”

“ Is it any wonder that one of the most popular songs in Germany during this period declared that wherever the German tongue was spoken, there was the German Fatherland?
Even to-day men are still reluctant to recognize that areas of government are not matters for the bargaining and interplay of tsars and kings and foreign offices. There is a natural and necessary political map of the world which transcends these things. ”

“ Many men for years went over the history of German literature, from the Eddas and Nibelungenlied down, including a few living writers, carefully selecting saga, legends, Märchen, fables, proverbs, hymns, a few prayers, Bible tales, conundrums, jests, and humorous tales, with many digests, epitomes and condensation of great standards, quotations, epic, lyric, dramatic poetry, adventure, exploration, biography, with sketches of the life of each writer quoted, with a large final volume on the history of German literature. ”

“ In another chapter I have told you how in the year 800 a German chieftain had become a Roman Emperor. Now in the year 1066 the grandson of a Norse pirate was recognised as King of England.
Why should we ever read fairy stories, when the truth of history is so much more interesting and entertaining? ”

“ What an extraordinary mixture the Germans are, brave, conceited, sentimental, prosaic, patriotic, and yet no people so soon lose their national characteristics, and become citizens of another country as Germans. ”

“ In Germany, notwithstanding the greatest division, the most peculiar separation of religion and even of races, yet nevertheless that great German empire is coming forward as a monument of the civilization of the future world, and as the centre of all Europe against any form of Oriental barbarism. ”

“ From 1871 onwards Prussianized Germany, by far the best-educated, and industrially and commercially the most progressive, country in Europe, with the enormous advantage of her central position, was, consciously and unconsciously, making ready for her next advance. ”

“ Had not the uprising of the peasants been shamefully betrayed by the leaders of German culture and civilization, the development of the nation would, at that time, have already assumed a normal form, and not only would Germany be the equal of the other civilized nations, but as the first-born modern nation, would have held the roost prominent place among them. ”

“ To the four quarters of the globe the wild alarm Germania est delenda is trumpeted as a so-called duty of human civilization; isolated Germany can respond only with her resolute Victory or Death. What shall be the end? ”

“ During the Napoleonic wars Germany, as every one knows, was, generally speaking, in the grip of the French Imperial power. To follow the vicissitudes and fluctuations of fortune throughout Central Europe during these years lies outside our present purpose. ”

“ If, on the other hand, you bestir yourselves and play the man, you will continue in a tolerable and honourable existence, and you will see growing up among and around you a generation that will be the promise for you and for the Germans of most illustrious renown. You will see in spirit the German name rising by means of this generation to be the most glorious among all peoples; you will see this nation the regenerator and re-creator of the world. ”

“ With the definite establishment of the Reformation and of the new political and economic conditions that came with it in many of the rising States of Germany, the Middle Ages may be considered as definitely coming to an end, notwithstanding that, of course, a considerable body of mediæval conditions of social, political, and economic life continued to survive all over Europe, and certainly not least in Germany. ”

“ The German Empire is the clearinghouse, the adjutant, the executive officer, the official clerk, the representative in many social, financial, military, and diplomatic capacities of Germany; but it is not, and never for a moment should be confused with, what all Germans love, and what it has cost them blood and tears and great sacrifices to bring into the circle of the nations, the German Fatherland! ”

“ But we should at the same time be mindful, and it is the object of these pages to remind us, that the citizen-class of Germany has striven, for more than two centuries since the Thirty Years' War, to become again as powerful and manly in this respect as their ancestors were. ”

“ The intellectual sceptre of Germany was wielded by a new nobility,—a nobility that had risen from the ranks, like the priests and the knights, but which, for a time at least, kept itself from becoming a caste, and from cutting away those roots through which it imbibed its vigor and sustained its strength. It had its castles in the universities, its tournaments in the diets of Worms and Augsburg, and it counted among its members, dukes and peasants, divines and soldiers, lawyers and artists. ”

“ We Germans,--one empire and one church! Let the schism betwixt spiritual and secular be annihilated! Faith, learning, and action, shall unite themselves into one, and bloom anew in the Christian enthusiasm of free German citizens. ”

“ In this nineteenth century, when Germany has become the first Power in the world, are we incapable of doing what our ancestors did? Germany must lay her mighty grasp upon Asia Minor.—Amicus Patriæ, A.U.K., p. ”

“ Germany is become united and powerful, and the longing of our youth to see the German name again respected by land and sea has been fulfilled. Who would find fault with such an achievement? But go back in thought to the divided, powerless, provincial Germany of our youthful days—passing as it were from the cold splendor of the imperial city into the narrow streets of some old town in Middle Germany, with their overhanging gables, and the house-fronts hung with grape-vine and ivy—is there not something lacking in the noisy Present, with all its glittering and dazing magnificence? ”