1. Childhood Home
Today I regard it as a happy change that Fate chose Braunau on the Inn as my birthplace. For this little town is on the frontier of the two German states whose reunion, at least for us younger men, is a life work to be accomplished by every means.
German Austria must come back to the great German mother country, and this not because of any economic considerations. No, no: even if economically the union were a matter of indifference, nay even if it were harmful, it must still take place. Like blood belongs in one common realm.
The German people has no moral right to take part in colonial politics so long as it cannot even unite its own songs in a common state. Only when the boundaries of the Reich include the last German, without affording assurance of supporting him, does the need of the people give a moral right to acquire foreign soil. The plough will be the sword, and the bread of posterity will be watered by the tears of war.
Thus this little frontier city seems to me the symbol of a great task. But in another connection also it rises to warn the present age. More than a hundred years ago this humble place had the privilege of being immortalized in the annals at least of German history as the scene of a tragic catastrophe which shook the whole German nation. It was the day of our Fatherland’s deepest degradation; and here the bookseller Johannes Palm, a citizen of Nuernberg, obdurate “Nationalist” and Francophone, fell for the Germany which he loved passionately even in her misfortune. He had stubbornly refused to name his fellow—or rather chief criminals. Like Leo Schlageter. And, like Schlageter, he was denounced to France by a government representative. An Augs-
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