Before we talk about the teaching of German, let us note that the Führer and Reich Chancellor, the master and educator of the German people, is hardly a master of the language. There is not a page of Mein Kampf whose errors do not hit you in the eye. Every speech of Hitler’s is crowded with grammatical mistakes; it is beyond his power to speak a few consecutive German sentences correctly.
The answer might be that he is no scholar, but a “man of the people,” as he has reiterated. But he is the people’s ruler. And his speeches are not faulty because of extreme simplicity, but because of their ambitious rhetoric, his attempts at a literary German. The Führer’s language is an indictment of his intelligence, and one to which the attention of foreigners must be called before they can fully appreciate it. Actions may be judged according to time and place, and their values may change; but style, language (apart from content) are crystallized at the moment. Hitler’s use of language is the worst imaginable, and it will remain at that level. Its danger is that, spoken by him, these utterances are for the German people — his wish is theirs, his opinion theirs, and his use of language must be their language. Those who care for the German language may be anxious for its future when they see its deterioration during the five years of Hitler’s rule; newspapers, magazines, schoolbooks — the entire official literature — have fallen into the florid yet brutal, military and vulgar forms of expression that are typical of the Führer himself.
The teaching of German, like all lessons, is not an end in itself, but teaches children how to express the thoughts of the Führer in his own language — and nothing else. A small grammar by Richard Alschner, published recently in Leipzig under the sonorous title of Sprachkundliche Kleinarbeit im Neuen Geiste (which means something like A Study of Language in the New Spirit ), says in the preface:
“Whatever moves the soul of a people, in joy and sorrow, in meditation and battle, in creation and festivity, vibrates in unison with the entire curriculum, and by no means least in the teaching of language. Here, too, it is a matter of coinciding with life itself! Proximity to the present! Relation to the people! For that reason let us also give utterance to the mighty events of the time in our lessons in German! That which fills the heart of the people is spilled by the tongue of youth! The stream of strong blood-folk thought, feeling, and will must be permitted to flow, warm with life, into the form of the word. The result will be a teaching of folk-culture in the mother tongue, and to make this live and be watchful in the growing generation, so that this may, with its own treasure of words belonging to our day and age, express the new treasure of thought, gather it into itself, and let it root ever deeper in the German essence ( Wesensart ), growing ever more deeply rooted, growing ever more into the German mode of thought, the German mode of living, and the German view of the world ( Weltschau ).”
The preface to a grammar! Doesn’t it sound more like one of Hitler’s “cultural speeches”? And the examples in the book carry it farther:
“Example 52. Horror tales from foreign countries affirm that after the National Socialist revolution Jews were assassinated in Germany; that their property was taken from them, that they were spat upon, shot down, thrown into prison, their garments torn from their bodies, and left to starve in concentration camps.
“Example 53. (On the prefix ‘un-,’ corresponding to the English ‘in-’.) If the German people remain unified they will be invincible, incomparable, inimitable, indomitable….”
If the manner in which the German people sing their own praise seems more innocuous than invincible, that must be due to the fact that it is the only way in which the “mother tongue” can be rooted deeply in the German view of the world.
In the old days, the grammars used absurd sentences to teach the rules. You might get: “The penknife of my grandfather is nice,” and be asked to write the plural of subject and predicate, being careful not to pluralize the grandfather too. But when you have: “The bombing plane of my fatherland brings destruction,” you have only to think of the content. You’ll get the idea! “The bombing planes of my fatherland bring destruction!”
The Readers deal almost exclusively with race, ancestors, roots in a common soil, heroism, the mystery of the German mission, and the German soul. The German Romanticists, properly expurgated, are in, but there is a general feeling of apology for them. The Nazi conscience is not quite clear here. The N. S. Bildungswesen (Nazi Educational World) says, on the occasion of a new edition of Herder, Grimm, Claudius, etc.: “There were no National Socialists before Adolf Hitler. But before him there were human beings, poets, scientists, and prophets among our people, who became the guardians and awakeners of German essence, and so helped to prepare the raw material out of which Adolf Hitler was able to make his movement and a new Reich.”
The German poets of the past are misused as awakeners of Nazi material. Herder, Grimm, and Claudius are innocent; aside from that, they are thrown in with writers whose names will be forgotten in Germany before they are known outside it, names like H. Fr. Blunck, Maria Kahle, H. Hanselmann (who, according to the N.S. Educator, has written, in Jakobli, a “Novel about Jacob” in two volumes, “the best novel of development” of the present age). Maria Kahle has a lot to say, particularly in the Readers of western Germany, probably because she has a fortunate way of expressing the Nazi demand for “broadening the territory of German life.” She writes:
Unser Haus ist zerstört, unsre Scholle entweiht,
Dock im Heimwehnot und in Knechtschaftsleid,
Seit tausend Jahren singt Ostseewind,
Sudetenwind, Kar pathenwind,
Von Ostlands deutscher Herrlichkeit.
Our house is destroyed and our hearth brought low,
But, homesick or enslaved, we know
How for a thousand years the Baltic wind,
The Sudeten wind, the Carpathian wind
Sang German glory as eastward they blow.
She is even clearer in prose. She writes in an essay on “Germans Outside the Boundaries”:
“Before the War we believed that the boundaries of the German people began and ended where they were mapped out as the German State. Today we are aware that the unity and growth of a people is not dependent on its geographical borders. A German can be the citizen of a foreign state and yet, through his blood and his race and his essential manner and speech, he belongs to us.”
Maria Kahle’s opinions, however, are relatively harmless, as is all the material presented directly to the children, in comparison with that contained in the directions for the teachers.
In a work called Wege zum Deutschen Lesebuch, V. und VI. Schuljahr, Messrs. Rössing, Zaum, Irle, Herfurth, and Schäfer (Bochum, Verlags- und Lehrmittel-Anstalt Kamp ) issue their exactly formulated directions. In the thesis called Germany Ought to Be Whole, the teacher asks his class, “Is the South Tyrol really German?” upon which a bright pupil answers, “It is pure German, and the population suffers because of it.” The teacher asks, “And Switzerland?” The answer, “Most Swiss are German, but Switzerland has been a separate State for three hundred years.” The teacher does not contradict this, but asks, “Do you know of another State lost to the Reich then?” “Certainly — the Netherlands.”
And now there is great mourning in the class for so many “true Germans” and areas that have been lost. This is the moment to show the way to unite them again with Germany. “Which part of the German people can one recognize in spite of oppression as being true to the German people and the German language?” And the pupil answers, with pride and defiance in his voice, “Germans across the frontier.” “Which Bund is trying to keep connections with Germans both within the borders and abroad?” asks the teacher, meaning the V.D.A. ( Verein für das Deutschtum im Ausland ), the organization which has committed itself to “peaceful penetration” of all German-speaking areas outside Germany, until at last the South Tyrolese, the German Swiss, and the Sudeten German can call Hitler’s troops to their help and realize a “bloodless annexation.”
“Because we know,” the teacher says confidently, “how important it is to remain in contact with those Germans, we wish to open up a correspondence with a German school abroad. You must tell them about things at home, and send them postcards and newspapers.”
The correspondence between Nazi children and children abroad plays an important part within the Third Reich’s propaganda. The small German boys and girls are made to write to those pathetic objects, German children who are not yet allowed to live under the rule of Hitler. In the children’s newspaper Hilf Mit, under the title “Germany Works,” there appeared such a correspondence. The first of the two letters, dated June 20, 1937, comes from a small French boy named Jean-Baptiste, who lives in Marly-near-Paris.
“Dear Kurt
“In our garden all the flowers are blooming. Father is better, only he has an awful lot to do, he is now a judge in the civil court, and everybody complains that they can’t keep their contracts because the franc has fallen so low. The landlords want more money from their tenants, handworkers want higher prices for their work, and there is always much irritation and excitement for father. If we didn’t still have a little money, it would be very bad for us also, for Father says we can’t get along on his salary on account of inflation. After all, judges can’t go out in the street and demonstrate. They can’t have a sit-down strike in court. They have to be glad to get the criminals sent to prison….”
And Jean-Baptiste, a curiously un-childlike creature, who seems to have a lot of trouble in his beautiful country, goes on to tell about the Russian and German Pavilions at the Paris Exposition.
“…I will tell you my opinion without flattery. There are figures on the Bolshevik House that look as if they want to jump at the German House, to pull it down. There isn’t much inside, however — boring statistics and tables. Then I went to your house; that’s a different picture! I was most interested in light metals — and how your agriculture has come along. I really must come to Germany and look at all that when I am older. I stayed with Uncle Baptiste in Gascony last spring. That’s a beautiful place, but, in spite of that, people aren’t happy there at all…. Your House at the Exposition interested me. Of course, I didn’t believe everything about you, because we French are suspicious by nature. But I can’t get out of my head what I did see of your work. Many good wishes — I am
“Your true friend, “Jean-Baptiste.”
His German friend writes, after only a short introduction,
“…Look here, we in Germany aren’t rich. Our soil is poorer than the French, we have no empire, and we were dragged down and impoverished by the War and the bad crops after the War. When the Führer came to power the Jews all over the world were trying to overthrow us by cutting us off from raw materials…. We are working with all our strength now to promote new inventions, so that our people can have bread and profits….”
Kurt and Jean-Baptiste have the same interests; but Kurt gets to the bottom of things, and knows where misery comes from; the little French boy has to be taught by his Nazi friend.
“…I am so sorry,” Kurt writes generously, “that you, or rather your father, is having trouble because the franc is falling…. Jews always make inflations…. On the one side, they stir up the workers to demand always higher wages, while they hinder the increase of work…. The Jew persuades the people to such madness. All those who must live on their savings are forced to spend and lose them, the Jew buys up all the beautiful possessions of impoverished families, and one fine day there isn’t a cent left. Then the Jew either lends them money at Shylock rates, or, if he thinks he has got far enough, he raises his horrible bloody Bolshevism above the mass of the despairing people. That is exactly what he is trying to do now in your France.”
Kurt paints a terrible picture, but it is clear that the catastrophe could be averted, if Jean’s fatherland, threatened France, would give itself at the last moment to Hitler. “I know,” Kurt writes, “how hardworking and modest your peasants are…. I can’t understand how they allow themselves to be hounded from one devaluation of the franc to another, losing everything while the Jew laughs up his sleeve. See here, we didn’t stick any of those mad figures on our building in the Paris Exposition. We showed only what a poor people can achieve when it is well led and hard-working, as soon as it has got rid of the Jews…. I’d be awfully glad if you’d come here; you must see how we work and produce here, and what we make out of the soil…. Until then, a hearty handshake from
“Kurt.”
* * *
One of the first Nazis in Germany was a man called Dietrich Eckart, a personal friend and admirer of Hitler’s, and at one time a considerable influence on him. He was Hitler’s prototype in anti-Semitism, above all. Since he died as early as 1923, he could be converted easily into a myth. He became “faithful Eckart,” “one of our greatest dead,” “the singer of the Party,” He has played a dominating part in German Readers, although only one poem of his is known. It begins:
Deutschland erwache!
Sturm, Sturm, Sturm!
Läutet die Glocken von Turm zu Turm!
Läutet, dass die Funken zu sprühen beginnen,
Judas erscheint, das Reich zu gewinnen,
Läutet, dass blutig die Seile sich röten,
Rings lauter Brennen und Martern und Töten.
Läutet Sturm, dass die Erde sich bäumt,
Unter dem Donner der rettenden Rache.
Wehe dem Volk, das heute noch träumt.
Deutschland erwache!
Germany awake!
Storm, storm, storm!
Let the bells ring from tower to tower,
Ring till the sparks begin to shower,
Judas appears, to win the Reich’s power.
Ring till the bell-ropes redden with blood.
Ring for the burning, the martyred, the dead.
Ring out storm, and let the whole earth shake,
Revenge to the rescue, and thunder overhead!
Woe unto those who dream today!
Germany, awake!
In commentary on the poem and what the author represents, a collection called Die Fahne Hoch (Up with the Flag) (No, 36, Neues Verlagshaus für Volksliteratur ) carried a short biography of the poet, “His father wished him to study medicine…. Suddenly, in the midst of his studies, he became very ill. He took morphia, became an addict, and remained one after his recovery. His condition was so serious, and his irritability so great, that he himself saw he could not continue that way…. He decided to find a sanatorium for nervous disorders. During his stay at the sanatorium, his first great poetical plans matured….” And the report continues, full of revolutionary pride. “Young Eckart did not allow himself to be caught up in a bourgeois profession; his father gradually realized this and stopped arguing with his son.” After that, it is naturally “comprehensible that the Jewish press rejected this booklet and suppressed it…. His father died in 1895, and left him a considerable fortune… and Dietrich Eckart made such generous use of it that within a few years there was not one cent left.” But when the frivolous young man met Adolf Hitler, “the corporal from the world which was as yet utterly unknown to him… he realized with astonishing clairvoyance the great qualities of a leader in this man, and submitted himself to Hitler unconditionally…. Thus Dietrich Eckart stands before us… the German poet whom his people will never forget, because they cannot forget him.”
They will not forget him and cannot, because the propaganda ministry will not hear of it, because he is part of the myth. This is a German poet in Hitler’s good grace: Dietrich Eckart, called, not by his enemies, but by his Nazi worshipers, a spendthrift, a morphia addict, who would not allow himself to be caught up in a bourgeois profession. He wrote miserable, bloody cant; and he did not become Hitler’s friend in spite of his weaknesses, any more than he wrote his verses in spite of them. Because of his qualities, because he was a useless, refractory wreck, he has been taken into the Nazi Valhalla, to a place beside Horst Wessel, the pimp, and Leo Schlageter, the railway wrecker. What happens inside the heads of school-children who are given such heroes?