Munich
mains indissolubly bound up with the development of my own life; but the happiness of true inner contentment which I then enjoyed could be ascribed only to the magic spell which the wonderful Residence of the Wittelsbachs casts upon every person blessed not merely with a calculating intelligence but with a sensitive spirit.
Aside from my ordinary work, what attracted me most, here again, was the study of the day’s political events, particularly matters of foreign policy. To the latter I was brought by way of the German alliance policy, which even in my Austrian days I had considered absolutely mistaken. But in Vienna I had not fully realized the whole extent of the German Empire’s self-deception. I had been inclined to assume—or possibly I offered it only as an excuse to myself—that people in Berlin perhaps knew how weak and unreliable their ally would actually be, but were withholding this knowledge for more or less mysterious reasons. They might be trying to support an alliance policy which Bismarck himself had originally inaugurated and which it was not desirable suddenly to break off, if only to avoid startling the foreign countries that lay in wait or making the stodgy citizen uneasy at home.
But I was soon horrified to discover from my contacts, particularly among the people, that my belief was wrong. To my astonishment I found everywhere that even otherwise well-informed circles had not the faintest conception of the Hapsburg Monarchy’s nature. The common people particularly were victims of the notion that their ally could be considered a serious power, which would be quick to take a man’s part in the hour of need. The masses still considered the Monarchy a “German” state, and thought hopes could be built on it. They were of opinion that strength could be measured by millions there as in Germany itself; they quite forgot that in the first place Austria had long since ceased to be a German state, and in the second place the inner conditions of this Empire were moving from hour to hour ever closer to dissolution.
I understood this state structure better then than did so-called
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