Mein Kampf
through momentary prosperity, whispering of a new future by recalling the past.
True, the teaching of world history in the so-called intermediate schools even today is in a sad state. Few teachers realize that the special object of historical teaching is never to memorize and rattle off historical dates and events; that it is not important for a boy to know exactly when some battle was fought, some general born, or when some (usually insignificant) monarch was crowned with the diadem of his ancestors. No, God knows, that is hardly what counts.
To “learn” history means to seek and discover the forces which cause the effects we observe as historical events.
The art of reading and of learning, here as always, consists of remembering essentials, forgetting non-essentials.
Quite likely my whole later life was decided by my good fortune in having a teacher in history, of all subjects, who was almost unique in his ability to teach and give examinations on that principle. My professor, Dr. Leopold Pötsch of the Linz realschule, was the very embodiment of this idea. He was an old gentleman, kindly but decided in manner, whose brilliant eloquence not merely fascinated us, but absolutely carried us away. I am still touched when I think of this grey-haired man, whose fiery descriptions often made us forget the present, conjuring us back into vanished days, and taking dry historical memories from the mists of centuries to make living reality. In his class we were often red-hot with enthusiasm, sometimes even moved to tears.
My luck was the greater in that this teacher was able not only to illuminate the past by the light of the present, but to draw conclusions for the present from the past. More than anyone else, he gave us an understanding of the current problems which absorbed us at the time. Our little national fanaticism served him as a means to educate us; an appeal to our sense of national honor would bring us hobbledehoys to order more quickly than anything else ever could.
This teacher made history my favorite subject. I became even then, no doubt without his wishing it, a young revolutionary.
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