Childhood Home
authority. So I kept silence in the future, but I carried out my threat. I thought, when once my father saw my lack of progress in the realschule, that he would have willy-nilly to let me pursue the happiness I dreamed of.
I do not know whether my calculation would have proved correct. The only thing sure for the moment was my obvious failure in school. Whatever I enjoyed, I learned—principally things I thought I should need later as a painter. Whatever I thought unimportant in that connection, or whatever failed to attract me, I sabotaged altogether. My report cards at that time were always in extremes. Beside “Good” and “Excellent” were “Passing,” and even “Below passing.” By far my best performances were in geography, and particularly in world history—the two favorite subjects in which I excelled.
When I examine the results of that time now, so many years later, I see two outstanding facts as particularly significant:
First, I became a nationalist. Second, I learned to understand the meaning of history.
Old Austria was a “State of nationalities.”
A subject of the German Reich could not—at least then—really grasp the meaning of this fact in terms of individual daily life. After the wonderful triumphal march of the army of heroes in the Franco-Prussian War, the Reich Germans had gradually become estranged from Germanity elsewhere, and, in fact, sometimes proved unable to value it properly, or were no longer acquainted with it. In reference to the German Austrians, particularly, they all too easily confused the decayed Imperial dynasty with the basically sound and healthy people.
They did not understand that if the German in Austria had not been really of the best blood he would never have had the force to put his stamp on a state of 52 millions in such a manner that the mistaken notion could take root (especially in Germany) that Austria was a German state. This was nonsense with the gravest consequences, but still a brilliant tribute to the ten million Germans in Ostmark (Austria). Very few in the Reich had any idea of the constant implacable struggle for German language,
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