Learning and Suffering in Vienna
true. In every discussion his memory will betray him; he can find reason neither to enforce what he maintains nor to confute his opponent. When the result is merely a matter of personal ridiculousness, as with a speaker, this may not be fatal; but it becomes grave indeed if Fate places one of these incompetent know-alls at the head of a state.
From earliest youth I have taken pains to read rightly, and have been helped in the happiest fashion by memory and understanding. Considered in this light, the Viennese period in particular was fruitful and valuable. The experiences of daily life stimulated me to ever-renewed study of the most varied problems. Being thus at last in a position to support reality with theory, and to test theory by reality, I was saved from either stifling in theories or growing superficial amid reality.
My experience of daily life guided and stimulated me to make a thorough theoretical study of two vital questions, aside from the social question. Who knows when I would have become absorbed in the doctrines and character of Marxism if my life at that time had not simply rubbed my nose in it!
What I knew in my youth of Social Democracy was little indeed, and that most erroneous.
That the Social Democrats were fighting for universal secret suffrage I found pleasing. Even then my reason told me that this must weaken the hated Hapsburg regime. I was convinced that the Danubian state could never be maintained except by sacrificing the German element, but that even at the price of slowly slavicizing the German element there was no guarantee of an empire fitted for survival, since the preservative force of Slavism is highly doubtful. Therefore I greeted with joy any development which I thought would lead to the collapse of this impossible state that condemned to death the Germanity of ten million people. The more the language uproar gnawed at the parliament, the nearer must come the hour of collapse of this Babylonian Empire, and thus the nearer the freedom of my German Austrian people. This was the only way in which union to the old mother country could some day come about.
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