The “German Workers’ Party”
bered the evening before, and then the booklet occurred to me which the workman had asked me to take along. So I began to read it. It was a little pamphlet in which the author, this very workman, described how he had escaped from the hurly-burly of Marxist and trades Union slogans back to thinking on national lines; hence the title, My Political Awakening. Once having begun, I read the pamphlet with interest all the way through; it described a process such as I myself had gone through twelve years before. My own development was conjured up before me again. I thought about the matter several times in the course of the day, and was ready to put it aside again, when, less than a week later, I received a post-card stating that I had been made a member of the German Workers’ Party; would I please say what I thought of this, and come for the purpose to a committee meeting of the party the following Wednesday.
I must say I was more than astonished at this way of “recruiting” members, and did not know whether to be annoyed or amused. I would not have dreamed of joining an existing party; I meant to found my own. The present request was really out of the question for me.
I was about to send my answer to the gentlemen in writing when curiosity overcame me, and I decided to appear on the appointed day, to explain my reasons in person.
Wednesday came. The public-house in which the meeting was to take place was the Aites Rosenbad in the Herrnstrasse, a very shabby place into which apparently somebody wandered by mistake once in a blue moon. That was no wonder in 1919, when the menus of even the larger restaurants offered only the humblest and scantiest attractions. But this particular pub I had never even heard of before.
I went through the ill-lit front room, discovered the door to the back room, and found myself in the presence of the “meeting.” In the faint glow of a half-demolished gas light four young men were sitting around a table. Among them was the author of the little pamphlet, who at once greeted me most joyfully, and welcomed me as a new member of the German Workers’ Party.
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