A Noble Farmer Of His Volk
Translated by Karl Jægerlund
Speech by the Reichsführer-SS in the Quedlinburg Cathedral on 2. Juli, 1936.
All too often in the life of peoples (Völker) it is said that one should honor the ancestors and great men and never forget their legacy, and only too seldom is this often-expressed wisdom heeded.
Today, on July 2, 1936, we are standing at the burial site of the German King Heinrich I, who died exactly a thousand years ago. In advance we may claim that he was one of the greatest creators (Schöpfer) of the German Reich and at the same time one of the most forgotten.
When in 919 the then 43-year-old Heinrich, Duke of Saxony, from the peasant aristocracy (Bauernadel) of the Ludolfinger, became German king, he took over an inheritance of the most terrible kind. He became king of a German Reich that barely existed by name. All of Eastern Germany had been lost to the Slavs over the previous three centuries, and especially the decades under the feeble successors of Charles the Franconian. The ancient Germanic settlement areas, in which the best Germanic tribes were for centuries, were completely owned by the Slavic peoples who fought the German Reich and did not recognize the German imperial power (Reichsgewalt) .
The North had been lost to the Danes. In the west, Alsace-Lorraine had broken away from the Reich and joined the West Frankish Reich. For a generation (Menschenalter) , the duchies of Swabia and Bavaria had fought against and not recognized the German shadow kings (Schattenkönige) – especially Ludwig the child and Conrad I of Franconia.
Everywhere the wounds of the radical and bloody introduction of Christianity were still open. The Reich was weakened internally by the eternal claims to power of the spiritual princes (Fürsten) and the interference of the church in worldly affairs.
The historical act of the creation of an imperial power (Reichsgewalt) over diverging Germanic tribes by Charles the Franconian was close to complete collapse out of deeply own fault, because the system of this central power, which was purely administratively built on an alien foundation, was innerly (innerlich) and blood-wise (blutsmäßig) rejected by the Germanic farmers of the Saxons, Bavaria, Swabians, Thuringians and also Franks. Such was the situation when Henry I took up his difficult office as king.
Heinrich was the real son of his Saxon rural home. Tenacious and purposeful, he went his way as a duke and especially as a king. When he was elected a king in Fritzlar in May 919, he rejected the anointing by the church – without being hurtful with a single word – and thus gave testimony to all the Teutons (Germanen) , that, given the prudent recognition of the existing conditions, he was unwilling to tolerate church power (Kircheliche Gewalt) having a say in political matters in Germany under his government.
In the year 919, the Swabian tribal duke Burkhart submitted to Heinrich as king, and he thus once again linked the Swabians to the Reich. In the year 921 Heinrich moves with an army to Bavaria and wins the Duke Heinrich of Bavaria, who voluntarily recognized him as King of the Germans, not with the force of arms, but with the convincing power (Kraft) of his personality in open German discussion. Bavaria and Swabia, which at that time threatened to be lost to the Reich, are thus through King Heinrich up to our days and as we are convinced, incorporated, and preserved for the entire German Reich for the eternal future.
The year 921 brings Heinrich, this Shrewd, cautious and tenacious politician, the recognition of the West Franconian Reich, which was still ruled by a Carolingian, today the French Reich. The years 923 and 925 adds the already completely lost Alsace-Lorraine to the Reich.
But do not imagine that this reorganization of Germany was carried out easily and without any hindrance from the outside. The until then powerless German nation had for a generation (Menschenalter) year by year in all its parts been the prey of constant, almost never to be captured and almost never to be conquered Hungarian trains (Ungarnzüge) .
The country and its people in all of Germany, I would like to say, in all of Europe, lay defenseless to the grip of these politically and strategically excellent rider hordes and armies.
The annals and chronicles of that time tell us about the assault of Venice and looting of Upper Italy, the attack on Cambrai, the burning of Bremen and the recurring destruction of the Bavarian, Frankish, Thuringian and also Saxon lands.
The sober soldier Heinrich realizes that the existing army of the German-Germanic tribes and duchies, as well as the tactics customary at the time, were not suitable for the defense or even for the annihilation of this enemy. Luck comes to his aid now.
In the year 924 he occasionally (Gelegentlich) succeeds in imprisoning an important Hungarian military leader (Heerführer) when the Hungarians invade the Saxon lands near Werla at Goslar. The Hungarians offer unheard of sums of gold and treasures to release their general (Heerführer) .
Despite the contrary voices of foolish and short-sighted contemporaries abundantly present at the time, the proud king exchanged the Hungarian military leader (Heerführer) for a nine-year armistice of the Hungarians, first for Saxony and then for the whole Reich, and undertook (Verpflichtete) to pay humble tributes to the Hungarians for nine years.
He had the courage to create unpopular politics and had the wherewithal (Ansehen) and power (Macht) to see them through. Now his great creative activity begins, to raise an army and to put the country in a state fit for defense by building castles and towns, in which the final confrontation with the hitherto invincible opponent could be dared.
At that time there were two types of military associations (soldatischer Verbände) , on the one hand the Germanic peasant army of the tribal duchies, which was called to arms in times of need, and on the other hand the first German army associations consisting of professional warriors (Berufskriegern) , servants, ministerials, who had primarily introduced the Carolingians.
Heinrich I. welded the two types of army units (Heerverbänden) together to form a German army organization. He also determined from the servants of the royal and ducal courts that every ninth person should go to the castles as a garrison. For the first time in Germania, he had his servants’ units properly drilled and he got rid of rowdy fighters (Kämpfern) from rushing out as individuals. He arranges the cavalry according to tactical intent and troops guided by an order (Truppenkörper) .
In the course of just a few years, a myriad of small and large castles, which are surrounded by ramparts and moats, some with stone walls, some with palisades, are built on the former German eastern border, along the Elbe line, and especially in the entire Harz region. They contain arms workshops and supply houses, in which a third of the land’s harvest must be stored up according to royal orders.
From some of these castles from the time of Henry I, later well-known German cities such as Merseburg, Hersfeld, Braunschweig, Gandersheim, Halle, Nordhausen etc. emerged.
After these preparations, Henry I set about creating further conditions for the final battle with the Hungarians. In the years 928 to 929 he undertook the great campaigns (Kriegszüge) against the Slavs. On the one hand he wants to exercise his newly formed army and consolidate it for the great conflict, on the other hand he wants to take away the Hungarians’ allies and the bases (Stützpunkte) for their wars against Germany and destroy them forever.
In these two years of war (Kriegsjahren) , in which he subjected his young army to the toughest tests (Bewährungsproben) , he defeated the Hevellers, Rätarians, Obotrites, Dalaminzier, Milzener and Wilzen. In the dead of winter he conquered the seemingly impregnable Brennabor Castle, today’s Brandenburg, after a three-week winter siege (Winterbelagerung) he conquered the Gana fortress and in the same year built the Meißen Castle, which will be of great strategic importance for all the years to come.
In the year 932, when the king, who constantly pursued his goal, considered all requirements to be fulfilled, he called the spiritual princes (Fürsten) to a synod in Erfurt, the Volk to a Volk-assembly (Volksversammlung) , in which he enthused them in a rousing speech, to refuse the Hungarians the tribute and to accept the Volk’s war (Volkskrieg) for the final liberation from the Hungarian danger.
In 933 comes the invasion of the Hungarians, and they suffered a devastating defeat at Riade on the Unstrut as the final act of a strategically masterfully designed German campaign.
Heinrich found the year 934 on a campaign against Denmark in order to finally protect the Nordic border from the attacks of the Danes and Slavs and to reintegrate into the Reich the areas in the North that were lost in the unfortunate past of his predecessors. Haitabu, an important trading town for world politics at the time, old Schleswig, was won over to the Reich.
The years 935 to 936 see Heinrich I as the famous and most respected prince (Fürsten) of Europe mostly in his Saxon homeland, where he, true to his rural way (art) , since he feels the end of his life is approaching, regulates his inheritance and the dukes at the Reichstag in Erfurt and the greats of the Reich recommended his son Otto as his successor.
On July 2nd he died at the age of 60 in his royal palace Memleben in the Unstruttal. In Quedlinburg, in this crypt of today’s cathedral, he was buried.
So wide was the content of this deed filled (Tatenreich) life in sober information and figures. Many others have ruled for a longer time and cannot boast of having achieved a fraction of such a thousand-year success for their country as Henry I.
And now it interests us, the people (Menschen) of the 20th century, who after an epoch of terrible collapse in a time of renewed German construction of the greatest style under Adolf Hitler, from what powers (Kräften) the creation of Henry I was possible.
The question will be answered when we get to know Heinrich I as a Germanic personality.
As his contemporaries report, he was a leader (Führer) who towered above his followers in strength, greatness and wisdom. He led by the power (Kraft) of his strong and kind heart, and he was obeyed out of the love of hearts. The old and eternally new Germanic principle of the duke’s and his follower’s loyalty to one another was reintroduced by him in sharp contrast to the Carolingian ecclesiastical-Christian methods of government. As strict as he was towards his enemies, he was as loyal and grateful to his comrades and friends.
He was one of the great leader personalities (Führerpersönlichkeiten) in German history, who, with full awareness of his own strength and the sharpness of his own sword, knew exactly that it would be a greater and more durable victory, to win another basically decent Teuton (Germanen) in open manly discussion for the big picture, than to pettily bump into prejudices and destroying a person who is valuable for the whole of Germanness.
Sacred to him was the given word and the handshake. He faithfully kept concluded contracts and in return experienced the respectful loyalty of his grateful followers over the long years of his life. He had respect for all the things that are somehow sacred to other people (Menschen) , and as much as he knew the ways of politicizing church princes (Kirchenfürsten) , who even did not shy away from assassination, and therefore, with unapproachable nature he of course rejected any interference by the church in the affairs of the Reich, so little did he intervene in religious matters or hinder the pious disposition of his wife, whom he loved and cared for all her life, Queen Mathilde, the old Widukind’s great-granddaughter.
He never forgot for a moment in his life that the strength of the German Volk rests in the purity of their blood and the Odal peasant (odalsbäuerlichen) roots in the open ground. He had the knowledge that the German Volk, if they wanted to live, had to look beyond their own clan and their own space so as to align themselves with greater things.
He knows however the laws of life and knew that, on the one hand, one could not expect that the duke of a tribal duchy should be able as a personality to repel attacks on the marrow of the Reich if, on the other hand, one pettily deprived him of all rights and sovereignty in the manner of the Carolingian administration. He saw the whole and built the Reich and never forgot the power of the millennia-old tradition slumbering in the great Germanic tribes.
He led so wisely that the primitive forces of the tribes and landscapes became willing and loyal helpers in shaping the unity of the Reich (Reichseinheit) . He created a strong imperial power (Reichsgewalt) and understandingly preserved the life of the provinces.
We have to thank him deeply for never making the mistake that German and, on the other hand, European statesmen have made through the centuries: to see his goal outside the living space (Lebensraumes) – we say today geopolitical space – of his Volk.
He has never succumbed to the temptation to cross the divide established by fate between the area of life and expansion of the Baltic Sea and the East, the Mediterranean and the South, the Alps. As we can probably assume, on the basis of this knowledge, he deliberately renounced the sonorous title of the “Roman Emperor of the German Nation”.
He was a noble farmer of his Volk, who always had free access to him and who was undeterred by the organizational measures required by the state personally related to him.
He was the first among equals, and he was shown a greater and true human reverence, than was later bestowed on emperors, kings and princes (Fürsten), who demanded them in Byzantine ceremonies that were alien to the people (Volksfremdem). He was called Duke and King and was a Führer a thousand years ago.
And finally I must lay bare a truth that is heart-wrenching and shameful for our Volk – the bones of the great German Führer no longer rest in their burial place. Where they are, we do not know. We can only ponder over it. It could be that his loyal troop of followers took his holy body (Leichnam) to a dignified but unknown place—or it could also be that the sinister, unquenchable hatred of political dignitaries scattered his ashes to all the winds as they did the stunted bones of tortured and tormented people (Menschen), whose bones we consider an honorable legacy to be duly buried, buried in the ground in front of the exit of this crypt, which the excavations in front of the cathedral prove.
Today we stand in front of the empty tomb as representatives of the entire German Volk, the movement and the state, on behalf of our Führer Adolf Hitler and have brought wreaths of reverence and remembrance.
We also lay a wreath on the stone coffin of Queen Mathilde, the great king’s great companion (Lebensgefährtin) , who was buried next to her husband more than nine and a half centuries ago.
We believe we are honoring the great king when we have thought of Queen Mathilde, this example (Vorbild) of the highest German womanhood, in his mind. This former grave, on the castle hill, which has been inhabited by people (Menschen) of our blood for thousands of years, with the wonderful hall of God (Gotteshalle) created out of a secure Germanic feeling, should be a place of consecration, to which we Germans pilgrimage (Wallfahrten) to commemorate King Henry, to honor his memory and, in this holy place, in silent remembrance, undertake to live out the human (Menschlichen) and leadership (Führertugenden) virtues with which he made our Volk happy (Glüchlich) a millennium ago, and to resolve again that we should honor him best by serving the man who, after a thousand years, resumed King Heinrich’s human (Menschliches) and political legacy, our Führer Adolf Hitler for Germany, for Germania, with thoughts, words and deeds in old faithfulness.
–The Original title and the transcripts publisher: Rede des Reichsführers-SS im Dom Quedlinburg (Berlin: Nordland Verlag, 1936).