Political Considerations of Vienna Period
The bespectacled theorist would, it is true, rather die for his doctrines than for his people. Since men made laws for themselves, he believes that afterward men exist for the laws.
It was the merit of the Pan-German movement in Austria at that time that it swept away this nonsense, to the horror of all theoretical hobbyists and other state fetish-worshippers.
While the Hapsburgs were trying to get at Germanity by every means, this party ruthlessly attacked the “exalted” ruling House itself. The party was the first to probe the rotten state, and to open the eyes of hundreds of thousands. It deserved the credit for rescuing the magnificent idea of love of Fatherland from the embrace of this sorry dynasty.
When it first began, the party had an extraordinary following, and in fact threatened to become a regular landslide. But its success did not last. By the time I arrived in Vienna the movement had long since been overtaken by the Christian Socialist Party (which in the meantime had attained power), and in fact had sunk to complete insignificance.
The whole process of the Pan-German movement’s growth and decline on the one hand, and the Christian Socialist Party’s unheard-of rise on the other hand, was a classical example for study, and as such of great importance to me.
When I came to Vienna my sympathies were altogether on the side of the Pan-German movement. The fact that people had the courage to shout “Hoch Hohenzollern” in Parliament impressed and delighted me; I felt a happy confidence because they continued to regard themselves as an only temporarily separated integral part of the German Empire, and let no moment pass without announcing the fact. To speak out without hesitation on every question concerning Germanity, and never to compromise, seemed to me the only remaining road of salvation for our people; but why, after its first magnificent rise, the movement should fall so low, I could not understand. Still less could I understand how in the same period the Christian Socialist Party had arrived at such enormous power. It had just then reached the peak of its celebrity.
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