Relatable, Political
Concerning the Jewish star: Who knows how many "Rust" it will last?
Rust (the Education Minister) a new unit of measurement, like "hertz" in physics.
The teachers say: 'One Rust is the interval between a decree and its cancellation.'
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Individual items: "On the instruction of the Chancellor of the Reich the
five men sentenced in the summer by a special court in Beuthen for the
killing of a Communist Polish insurgent have been released." (Sentenced
to death!)
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then more than forty minutes of Hitler. A mostly hoarse, strained, agitated voice,
long passages in the whining tone of the sectarian preacher. Content: I know no
intellectuals, bourgeois, proletarians— only the people. Why have millions of my oppo-
nents remained in the country? The emigres are "scoundrels" like the
Rasser brothers. And a couple of hundred thousand rootless internation-
alists — interruption: "Jews!" — want to set nations of millions at one an-
other's throats. I want only peace, I have risen from the common people, I
want nothing for myself, I have power for another three and a half years
and need no title. You should say yes for your own sake. Etc., in no proper
order, impassioned; every sentence mendacious, but I almost believe: un-
consciously mendacious. The man is a blinkered fanatic.
---
So I welcome the fact that the semester is al-
ready ending on the twenty-fourth of the month. Admittedly it is ending
because the students have to report for labor service, because, in fact, the
regime sees education, scholarship, enlightenment as its real enemies and
attacks them accordingly.
---
On Monday no one at the general lecture and the seminar. A crushing ex-
perience. With a pension of perhaps 300 or 400M, as things stand, I would
be facing disaster. In the evening I telephoned Beste, the section chairman,
to notify him officially. He consoled me: general state of affairs in the uni-
versity! He himself, a political economist, last semester still in front of
eighty students, usually in front of one hundred and fifty, had six. Rea-
sons: (a) The students were only just returning from Labor Service, not all
were present yet, (b) university study in general was being throttled. —
On Wednesday (French verse theory, one hour) I had two female students.
(Blumenfeld, usually overflowing with students, has four students for the
psychology lecture, one for the industrial psychology class.) Now I shall
wait and see whether my seminar will materialize tomorrow. After that
there will be another two weeks holiday. The Whitsun holidays have been
extended from one to two weeks. The students are no doubt required for
the new "Campaign against Fault Finders and Grumblers," and they do
not want anyone to study; intellect, scholarship are the enemies.
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He, Baum, did not believe so. He did not believe that the end
of the regime was close, it had too much power, the country was far too
enslaved and numbed by idealistic-nationalist lies — and if the end did
come one day, it would come with a lot of bloodshed.
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Today on Carnival Tuesday as part of the Berlin carnival celebrations
Hitler presented General Field Marshal Goering with his marshal's baton
in a great ceremony. They have no sense of the comic impression they
make. [ . . . ] Their conscious humor is spite against the defenseless: There
is a carnival parade here in Dresden today: "Exodus of the Children of Is-
rael." Presumably as a prelude to the propaganda week (meetings and
marches) that begins on March 4: "Peace between the nations or Jewish
dictatorship." — On Sunday, for the first time in months, we went for a
short drive, in the direction of the Versailles cross and out beyond Rade-
berg; those words were on a banner stretched across the road there. (Apart
from that it was still wintry, cold and bare.)
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Recently Heckmann, the gardener, and today Vogel, the grocer, in com-
plete unanimity: "I have no idea what's happening, I don't read a news-
paper." People are apathetic and indifferent. In addition Vogel said: It all
seems like cinema to me." People simply regard it all as a theatrical sham.
take nothing seriously and will be very surprised when the theater turns
into bloody reality one day.
AntiSemitism and Zionism
I cannot help myself, I sympathize with the Arabs who are in revolt
there, whose land is being "bought." A Red Indian fate, says Eva. — In re-
cent days once at the Blumenfelds and visited Gusti Wieghardt once. In re-
membrance of the Gerstle case, Gusti railed against the "dirty Jews" in
Palestine, capitalists falling upon the Arabs.
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With their nosing after blood, their ancient "cultural roots," their
partly canting, partly obtuse winding back of the world they are alto-
gether a match for the National Socialists. [ . . . ] That is the fantastic thing
about the National Socialists, that they simultaneously share in a commu-
nity of ideas with Soviet Russia and with Zion. — With her naive stories,
Frau Schaps, who has returned from visiting her Sebba children in Haifa,
confirms me in my hatred of these Zionist doings (whereas Blumenfeld
sympathizes with them).
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The majority of the people is content, a small
group accepts Hitler as the lesser evil, no one really wants to be rid of him,
all see in him the liberator in foreign affairs, fear Russian conditions, as a
child fears the bogeyman, believe, insofar as they are not honestly carried
away, that it is inopportune, in terms of Realpolitik, to be outraged at such
details as the suppression of civil liberties, the persecution of the Jews, the
falsification of all scholarly truths, the systematic destruction of all moral-
ity. And all are afraid for their livelihood, their life, all are such terrible
cowards. (Can I reproach them with it? During my last year in my post I
swore an oath to Hitler, I have remained in the country — I am no better
than my Aryan fellow creatures.)
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Then also of great and melancholy interest
to me, to discover that Toni Gerstle, whom I had always believed to have
a cool head, is a firm believer in astrology. She believes in star positions,
"it" has always proved right so far. She was half offended and half con-
temptuous that my shallow rationalism should doubt these things. Rea-
son was impotent after all, the influence of the constellations, perhaps on
the hour of our conception, was absolutely certain. Should I be surprised
if Hitler assails "intellectualism" and swears by blood? What else is the
daughter of a Jewish Supreme Court judge doing? And in what way are
the Zionists different from the Nazis? People treat reason as if it were the
most minor and harmful aspect of a whole human being. It is as if a soldier
standing guard were to say to himself: What good would my rifle be, if I
were now to be attacked by a dozen enemies? I shall therefore lay it aside
and smoke opium cigarettes until I doze off.
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Yesterday the announcement of the death of Felician Gess at the age of 78.
His life's work appears to have consisted of a publication on the Saxon
duke Ludwig the Bearded and his relations with Luther. But he was al-
ways an upright Teuton and in 1920 objected to my appointment. Now my
most intimate enemies at the university, the two Forsters with their three
eyes and Don Quixote Gess, are in Valhalla, and I hope I shall never see
them again. But on the one hand: How petty and comical my battles and
troubles of those days seem to me now; and on the other: How deeply
Hitler s attitudes are rooted in the German people, how good the prepa-
rations were for his Aryan doctrine, how unbelievably I have deceived
myself my whole life long, when I imagined myself to belong to Germany,
and how completely homeless I am.
---
Whatever may happen politically, inwardly I am definitively changed.
No one can take my Germanness away from me, but my nationalism and
patriotism are gone forever. My thinking is now completely a Voltairean
cosmopolitanism. Every national circumscription appears barbarous to
me. A united states of the world, a united world economy. This has
nothing to do with cultural uniformity and certainly nothing at all to do
with Communism. Voltaire and Montesquieu are more than ever my es-
sential guides.
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And another oddity: The National Socialists have always talked about World Jewry;
it was an idee fixe and a phantom. They have gone on talking about this
phantom for so long until it has become reality.
---
A little while ago Constable Radke
was here from the local council, I should come up to the council office be-
cause of the identity card. We had a friendly conversation, the man shook
my hand, told me to keep my spirits up. We know from before that he is
certainly no Nazi, that his sister is in difficulties, because her husband, a
gardener, has a grandmother who is not Aryan. But then the next day,
when I was up there, he happened to come through the room; he stared
ahead as he went past, as much a stranger as possible. In his behavior the
man probably represents 79 million Germans, perhaps half a million more
than that rather than less.
Work and Culture
Today it occurred to me: Never has the tension between human power
and powerlessness, human knowledge and human stupidity been so
overwhelmingly great as now. Radio, airplane — and the Fiihrer and Reich
Chancellor, the racial laws, Der Sturmer, etc. Also our powerlessness to
help our little black Nickelchen, who is slowly dying, an apathetic, thin lit-
tle stick.
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The work on Rousseau makes very slow progress: The man literally
sends me to sleep.
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And with every day that passes I am again and ever more strongly dis-
turbed by the trite antithesis: such tremendous things are being created,
radio, airplane, sound film, and the most insane stupidity, primitiveness
and bestiality cannot be eradicated — all invention results in murder and
war. Terrible shortage of money, literally ragged (my jacket is coming
apart), my gloves are nothing but holes barely hanging together, my socks
likewise), on the first of the month more than half the money I get imme-
diately goes on current bills. Despite that, we were at the cinema twice in
recent days after a long gap.
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I once wrote in my
review of Jolles [ . . . ] that one should not separate intellectuals from the
general population, but the popular stratum in the soul of each person,
what is instinctive and in thrall to suggestion, from the thinking stratum.
I now add to that: The aim of education in the Third Reich and of the lan-
guage of the Third Reich, is to expand the popular stratum in everyone to
such an extent that the thinking stratum is suffocated. (Festivals, meet-
ings, press, national emotions, Sturmer, etc., etc.) [ . • • ]
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so this little part is finished, and now I see that
I have ended up repeatedly and flagrantly contradicting the first volume.
I have simply been working on the whole thing for too many years now,
have learned more and have forgotten much that I wrote more carelessly
and mechanically at first. If I really do ever finish the whole thing one day,
I think it will need weeks, months of touching up and harmonization. In
the first volume I still find grand words to acknowledge that tragedy dies
with Voltaire; in the second volume my scholarship solemnly demon-
strates the opposite!
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I sometimes think my heart is in such a poor state that it makes no dif-
ference at all how I spend the rest of my time. Sometimes: perhaps it's just
neuralgia. Sometimes: the book is just thrown together and crap, some-
times: my best work, my God-given task. On I go.
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But the man has his faith; he thanks me for my criticism
of his text; it helped him to remove a final logical mistake! If he now sends
me the "corrected" version, I shall probably agree with it, I shall have this
lie on my scholarly conscience. — Every person's thinking faculty be-
comes detached on some point or other: Marta, otherwise quite discerning
in literary matters, thinks her youngest son's travel letter is accomplished;
Sussmann, with his education in philosophy, thinks his study of religion is
good and convincing. When shall I reach that point of self-delusion, or in
which respect am I already at that point? (How at ease I would be, if I were
at that point with respect to my Dix-huitieme!)
The Automobile
Two serious depressions, which have lasted for several weeks now on
top of my uninterrupted heart problems: (a) the Diderot chapter is unex-
pectedly presenting me with excruciating problems. I have again and
again made alterations to the first section (Paradox and Hardouin), now,
as I am typing, I am still perfecting it and am still dissatisfied. I cannot
"put across" the Petrarch-Goncourt comparison, which seemed and still
seems so important to me. I should really like to complete the volume by
Christmas, (b) The torments of driving a car, senseless in every respect
and contrary to nature.
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The car eats me up, heart, nerves, time, money. It is not so much my
wretched driving and the occasional agitation it gives rise to, not even the
effort of driving in and out of our property; but the car never works prop-
erly, something is always failing, I have lost all confidence in it, in the me-
chanics, in Michael, my chief nurse and adviser.
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Now the romance and the strain of bends and forest driving with headlights. In
Konigsbruck and after, the continual problem of approaching lights and of
constantly having to dip my lights. Naturally I had to reduce speed, but I
made good and safe progress. (The only thing that is dangerous is always
the second after passing a car with powerful lights; at the next moment it
is impossible to see whether one has a pedestrian or a cyclist in front of
one on the right.)
Humor
Their satire is reviving too. Conversations in heaven are popular. The best one: Hitler to
Moses: But you can tell me in confidence, Herr Moses. Is it not true that
you set the bush on fire yourself?" It was for such remarks that Dr.
Bergstrasser, an assistant in the mechanical engineering department — an
Aryan by the way — was sentenced to ten months in prison by the special
court.
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Yesterday we had 74M net winnings in the first class of the lottery. We
immediately laid plans to blow the money on alcohol and gasoline.
Relatable, Personal
We are to a tragicomically great degree dependent on our cats. When-
ever Nickelchen is unwell, Eva lapses into downright depression. The
veterinary surgeon helped for a while; now both beast and Eva are
poorly again. Sometimes I think: Drastic measures with poison would be
best for all concerned, sometimes I chide myself as heartless, feel sorry
for the little animals and ourselves. The terrible untidiness of the house,
the constant loss of time through the removal of the excrement are un-
pleasant additions to the principal evil. Meanwhile a stray little tomcat
has turned up in the garden; Eva has been feeding it for days now and
keeps it in the builders' hut. Should no owner be found for the
"Bartholo-Maus" (and none will be found), then the cat nuisance will be
even greater.
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As to my own memories: I see myself as a sixth former mounting the
stairs to the classroom with Grimm, my fellow pupil. I want to affirm
something, I no longer know what, and as I am saying that it is truly a
matter of the heart for me, I strike my chest with my fist. Yet I have such a
lively sense of shame, this gesture does not suit me at all and is false, that
I still feel it today. It is the feeling of shame that holds me back from every
theatrical expression, every rhetorical gesture on my own behalf. Which
also makes weeping impossible for me. It is always embarrassing for me
in the highest degree, if in the cinema or while lecturing or struck by some
thought I feel tears rising. Which lately, given my shattered nerves, is all
too often the case.