German speech

Post photo: An appeal to reason

History certainly does not repeat itself, but since we humans have been the same for thousands of years, because evolution is slower than we can imagine, we humans act in similar situations as our ancestors did. For this reason alone, it is always worth looking back at our human history.

Not so long ago - there are still contemporary witnesses - elections took place in Germany, namely the Reichstag election on September 14, 1930. At that time the SPD was the strongest party with 24,5%, the center got in a union with the Bavarian People's Party 14,8% and the communists 13,1%. The Liberal parties languished between 3% and 5%, being overtaken by the right-wing corner at 7%. The shock at the time, however, was the gain of 15,5% of the votes, which catapulted the National Socialists to second place behind the SPD with a total of 18,3%.

Thomas Mann, a proven educated citizen who is still recognized today, took this shock as an opportunity to take a clear position on the outcome of the election during an author reading in Berlin, namely in the Beethoven Hall on October 17, 1930. His appeal to reason is still one of his most political works today, and I personally love his “German speech” Thomas Mann closer than his 1901 Buddenbrooks: The Decay of a Family ever could. Tragically, both works deal with social decline, which the 1929 Nobel Prize winner for literature had long foreseen.

Thomas Mann gave this speech often interrupted by concerned citizens and people in SA uniforms and had to flee from them at the end of his speech. In 1933 he went into exile and even after 1945 he was no longer able to make friends with his compatriots - he had probably recognized that the worried citizens were still up to mischief, they had only changed their shirts.

S. Fischer Verlag still published Mann's speech in 1930 in a small booklet, not even the size of DIN A 5. Takes on 31 pages Thomas Mann clear position and also praises the Social Democrats who took responsibility after the lost First World War and did not simply steal away like those actually responsible for this war. Also noteworthy is his analysis that the Paris Agreements make democracy in Germany almost impossible and that these must be adapted as quickly as possible and the Reich finances must be restructured.

As a German, even European stroke of fate, he sees the much too early death of the year before Gustav stresemann an SPD-backed liberal politician who almost achieved a peaceful revision of the Versailles Treaty. In any case, he brought Germany into the League of Nations as early as 1926—eight years after the end of the war. His death can be seen as the beginning of the end of the Weimar Republic.

Thomas Mann does not mince his words in his speech and declares that “the outcome of the Reichstag elections cannot be explained in purely economic terms“ (1930: 11). Like the federalists, he recognizes that nationalism is the greatest threat to any democracy. And this nationalism, paired with the loss of all bourgeois values, creates "a new state of mind of mankind that no longer has anything to do with the bourgeois and its principles: freedom, justice, education, optimism, belief in progress(1930: 15).

"Fed by such intellectual and pseudo-intellectual influxes, the movement that is currently summarized under the name of National Socialism and that has demonstrated such tremendous promotional power, I say, this movement is mingling with the giant wave of eccentric barbarism and primitive mass democracy Fairground brutality that goes about the world as a product of wild, confusing and at the same time nervously stimulating, intoxicating impressions that assail humanity.”

Thomas Mann (1930: 17)

At the end of his speech he prophesied, based on what is known today, that it would mean our misfortune if the bourgeois claims to happiness such as freedom, spirituality and culture no longer had a chance to live.

And what was true then is still true today!

We Democrats, from the educated citizen to the working class, all know what we have to do. We also know what will happen if we fail to do so. It is up to us what happens to our country, Europe and the world. It is time for us all to regroup, one by one, and return to the values ​​that move every country and society forward. This also includes diligence, honesty and decency.

And with that in mind, you should today Thomas Manns speech, held in the advent of the greatest misfortune in human history to date. All of us - whether German or not - cannot allow ourselves another such misfortune!

Here is an added value for my readers.

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