Political Considerations of Vienna Period
ough, school of my life. I had entered the city half a boy, and I left it as a quiet and serious man. There I laid the foundation for a world-concept in general and a way of political thinking in particular which I had later only to complete in detail, but which never afterward forsook me. Only now, in fact, can I fully appreciate the real value of those years of apprenticeship.
I have treated this period at some length because it gave me my first object-lessons in those questions which go to form the basis of the Party which, from tiny beginnings, in a scant five years[1] has begun to develop into a great mass movement. I do not know what my attitude would be today toward Jewry, toward Social Democracy, or rather toward Marxism as a whole, toward the social question etc., if a cornerstone of personal views had not thus early been laid by the pressure of Fate—and by my own self-education.
For even though the misfortunes of the Fatherland may stimulate thousands upon thousands to ponder the inner causes of the collapse, still this can never bring the thoroughness and the deeper insight which are revealed to the man who himself masters Fate after years of struggle.
- ↑ Written in 1924.
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