Our Idealism Was Not Fantasy, The Time Was Too Cold And Too Rough For That

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The worst thing for us, we who waited yearning for a liberator from this distress, was, however, that the largest portion of our folk, indifferent and inactive, let things go on with the, for us incomprehensible, pitiful excuse: “But we can’t do anything against it.” In this hour our hatred grew, the hot, pure hatred against those people who were fearfully concerned for the well-being of their stomach, even if they lost honor and freedom in the process. They could simply crawl and close their eyes to the misery and distress. But we, we still had to live. And we wanted to live!

In this hour, we became idealists. Not dreamers and soft romantics. Our romanticism has been very bitter and hard. And our idealism was not fantasy for goals that lie in the stars. The time was too cold and too rough for that. No, a right real idealism entered into our hearts. An idealism of the deed…

And we began to search, to ponder with burning hearts. And began to doubt. But no, do not doubt! That could not be the truth. We had to push deeper. But the deeper we penetrated, the more our heart turned away from the faith that had been the faith of our fathers. There had been hot, bitter, often painful fighting. And when we reached the wellsprings, our soul was divided. Here, the German called; there the Christian! Here we spoke; there our fathers, our mothers. And we knew – for Germany’s sake – no other path than to push the Christian out of our heart so that the German took up all the space.

No! We did not want to live for the price of blessedness. We wanted to live in order to totally sacrifice ourselves for our folk. No! We did not want to ask whether we go to heaven. Our question was: How does it help the fatherland? No! We needed no middleman to God. For God stood directly above us. Yes, he was in us. We have felt it trembling in the struggle. No! We did not want to falsify our faith, the faith that allowed us to triumph.

Hence no reformation helps us. We build no house on soft ground. What we need is a new order in head and limbs. We want a faith that burns from German depth of essence, from German heart. A faith that fits the German like the Teutoburg Forest, like the North Sea and the quiet heath.

No! Only one thing can help us: That we take spade to hand and get to work. That we clear away all the soot and stones and dig until we strike solid ground, soil upon which we can build. That we place our hearts in the fire and let them burn until everything bad and foreign falls off as ash, until our hearts are free again and beat more pure. That we walk the path to seek ourselves. That we find ourselves again and become Germans.

And we say to those who do not want to understand us: It is not easy to separate oneself from the father’s world of faith, to turn one’s back on a thousand year old church and its doctrines and to speak of a new faith that must be lived. Difficult, honest fighting is necessary between old custom and new desire, between the struggling forces of the conscience. One should not portray this step as a youthful frivolity and not thought out action. No! Boundless courage and faith go with it, great and hot. This step is for us a must from piety. We are fed up with the faith of church and dogma, because we believe in life.

Wewelsburg Archives publication (2018).