Political Considerations of Vienna Period
the German Empire itself. This held not only for general questions of politics, but equally for every manifestation of cultural life.
Even here, in the field of purely cultural or artistic affairs, the Austrian State showed every sign of enervation, or at any rate its meaninglessness for the German nation. This was most true in the field of architecture. If for no other reason, modern architecture in Austria could have no conspicuously great successes because (at least in Vienna) after the building of the Ringstrasse was completed, the jobs to be done were but insignificant compared to the plans being developed in Germany.
So I began more and more to lead a double life; reason and reality bade me go through a bitter and useful school in Austria, but my heart dwelt elsewhere.
An uneasy discontent possessed me as I came to realize the hollowness of this State and the impossibility of saving it, while I felt with certainty that it could not but be the misfortune of the German people in every respect. I was convinced that the State must confine and hamper any truly great German, whereas on the other hand it would foster everything non-German.
I found revolting the conglomeration of races which the Imperial capital presented, revolting the whole mixture of Czechs, Poles, Hungarians, Ruthenians, Serbs and Croatians, etc., and mingled with them all the eternal decomposing fungi of mankind—Jews and again Jews.
To me the gigantic city seemed the embodiment of incest.
The German of my youth was the dialect which is spoken also in Lower Bavaria; I could neither forget it nor learn the Viennese jargon. The longer I stayed in the city, the higher burned my hatred for the alien admixture of peoples which began to gnaw away at this ancient seat of German culture.
The idea that this State could be preserved much longer seemed to me absolutely ridiculous.
Austria was like an old mosaic, in which the cement holding together the separate bits of stone has become old and crumbly.
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