German After-war Problems

GERMAN AFTER-WAR PROBLEMS BY KUNO FRANCKE CAMBRIDGE HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1927 COPYRIGHT, 19 7 BY THE PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE FOREWORD THE papers here collected reflect observations made during various visits to my native country in the years following the Treaty of Ver sailles in 1920, when the effects of war and star vation were still visible everywhere in 1923, when the Ruhr invasion and the inflation disas ter seemed to be heading the country into chaos in 1926, the year of Germanys entry into the League of Nations. These dates in themselves speak of the extraordinary recuperative power shown by the German people during these six years of poverty and distress. What some of the intellectual and moral forces were which made this remarkable advance toward national re covery and international cooperation possible, I have tried briefly to set forth in this little book. The first three essays are here reprinted from he Atlantic Monthly. K. F. Jtmmhr, 1926 CONTENTS I INTELLECTUAL CURRENTS IN CONTEMPORARY GERMANY 1924 3 II A GERMAN VOICE OF HOPE 1925 35 III GERMAN CHARACTER AND THE GERMAN AMERICAN 1926 68 IV GERMAN AFTER-WAR IMAGINATION 1926 . 95 INDEX 129 GERMAN AFTER-WAR PROBLEMS INTELLECTUAL CURRENTS IN CONTEMPORARY GERMANY 1924 THE intellectual life of the Germany of to day may be summed up by a word of Niet zsches The Germans have as yet no to-day they are of the day before yesterday and of the day after to-morrow. For perhaps never has the tragic truth of this word been more impressively revealed than now. It is indeed hard to see how the German of to day can obtain a view of the present in any way satisfying or acceptable. Wherever he looks, he sees popularmisery, foreign oppression, national disintegration and decay. How, then, could it be otherwise but that the whole trend of contempo rary German thought should turn either toward the shades of the past or the yet unborn forms of the future GERMAN AFTER-WAR PROBLEMS Memories of the past are naturally uppermost in the minds of the older generation, especially that part of it which preeminently shared in the splendor of the Wilhelminian age the bureau cracy, the army and navy, the university profes sors, the landed and industrial aristocracy. How everything seemed to flourish and progress in the powerful Empire founded by the Iron Chancel lor German industry and commerce encircled the globe. German city administration was recog nized all over the world as an unequaled model of civic efficiency and integrity. The social legisla tion of the Empire assured to the German work ing class a material basis of living such as no other country offered. The universal military service guaranteed a bodily vigor of the broad masses and a widely diffused sense of public duty, perhaps more sharply pronounced than anywhere else. The German universities and polytechnics were unquestionably the most productive institutions of research in the world and attracted a body of students who in methodical training and thor oughness of scholarship surpassed the youth of most other countries. The cultivation of art, par