Forest landscape by Adolf Hitler[/caption]"An experience, which initially seemed very trivial, still occupies me. Years ago I took a Sunday excursion with my boy. The short train ride made such a deep impression on the little fellow that he asked me in Tegel: “Are we still in Germany?” At first we laughed about it. But then it dawned on me that the child didn’t deserve to be laughed at on account of this question. Quite the contrary! He had started to form a concept of Germany. I have met folk comrades who have never in their life left their village. Many of our big city children are the same. Even many of us who have fought for Greater Germany have remained rather provincial.
It is hard to free oneself from the bonds of the provincial. Each initially sees the world from the perspective formed by origin, social circumstances, intellectual level and occupation. Newspapers and radio have certainly helped to create change, but our concepts of Germany are necessarily again and again distorted by local patriotism, if not by distrust and jealousy.
The positive results cannot yet be measured from the fact that now Germans are shown Germany, that German workers whose wages never before enabled travel can now see how Germans live in other provinces. It is not just the strength through joy, rather also their strength through knowledge that our village, our city alone is not Germany, that we have a fatherland, big and magnificently beautiful, and that we are sons and daughters of a single, robust, industrious and ambitious folk."
Alfred Kotz, Command and Obedience (trans. Gerhard Lauck)
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment