In the dirty line

- Yg. 1922, No. 5 -

Nowhere is biting enmity found among relatives. Mother-in-law and young couple, father and son, two hostile brothers - are there relationships that are more frequently and more violently poisoned by hatred?

It is the same in political life. With democratic irony, the Democratic papers admonish the German nationals, and with secret envy they honor the "Asfalt democrats" with retour aisles: two circles that barely touch each other. But even when the Social Democrats with the center or the Democrats with the German People's Party fights around, you can feel the bitterness, born of the fear of competition. However, the most beautiful flowers drives the competitive envy in the struggle between Social Democrats and Communists.

The term "fat cat" looks like being stroked by soft hands, and "hypocrite" is almost a caress, "chatter of the SPD" is used as a scientific-factual statement, and "demagoguery" is worn out and outdated. In the war of the two "fraternal parties" one needs completely different projectiles: "worker lieutenants", "real street boy manner", "dirt", "Gimpelfang", "Clowns", "Taschenser", "close Doktorhirne", "Arbeiterhenker" (instead of the faded Expression "traitor") - bombarded with such grenades, if one is a communist newspaper clerk, his comrades.

And the machine-guns of the social-democratic editors counter with wits that are supposed to be superior and ironic and yet hardly hide the anxious mood. An event of the KPD is a "gala performance", the "big hall yawns of barren emptiness" (what else has a hall to do?), Only here and there rush through it "important functionaries". The leaders of the assembly squander the "worker goblins" in long protest telegrams. According to the reports of Social Democratic newspapers, an assembly of the "Red Front Fighters' League" looks like the war council of an Indian tribe. The "Commander-in-Chief in Warlike Jewelery" appears, his "Jeweled Leather Riding Boots" cover "almost his entire thighs". It frightens you before the Communists, if you imagine that! And even the communist wind instruments are no use. They do not make good bourgeois sounds, as they really are, no: their tone is "completely in line with that of an accordion". The speakers "scrounge tirades", move like "puppets", and if a Kasper is called, then he is not just so: "his name is a symbol". It is sometimes thought that these article writers confused the ink with the Güllenfaß.

Enough? Oh, please, it shall be an honor for me to continue to attend.

Even worse than in newspaper articles it is in meetings. "Wedge, the Cracked Slider" is a popular piece of inventory of communist speakers, the "Reichsbanner" has become a "Reichsjammer" (if it's not called "Jammerblase" or - very tastefully! - "Black Red Hengstenberg"). But the honor of the "Reichsbanner" is restored by calling the "Red Front Fighter League", with the greatest effort of Geist imaginable, a "leaf collector's league". Incidentally, it is not at all worthwhile to go further with the KPD: it is and will remain the "party of moral loss."

Thus, the two parties whose relatives have the same lot, the same need to bear. So the leaders educate the state that is said to be called to lead a better time, the state that is hoped to create a more just order of society.

How will that look? Objectivity, order, propriety, respect for the enemy will probably be the main virtues of public life. Because even an old proverb says: How to sow, so you will reap.

1927, 16 Hermann List

They beat each other's skulls; Finally, I heard her sing the International.

1922, 5 Mauthe