Mein Kampf
I understood soon and thoroughly something I had never even dreamed of:
The question of “nationalizing” a people is among other things primarily a question of creating healthy social conditions in order to make possible the education of the individual. Only when upbringing and school training have taught a man the cultural and economic, but, above all, the political greatness of his own fatherland can and will he acquire an inward pride in the privilege of belonging to such a people. And you can fight only for something you love, love only what you respect, and respect only what you at least know.
When my interest in the social question was awakened, I began to study it with great thoroughness. A world hitherto strange thus opened itself to me.
In 1909 and 1910 my own situation had changed in so far as I no longer needed to earn my daily bread as a laborer. I had begun to work independently as a draftsman and water-colorist in a small way. Hard as this was financially—in truth it hardly sufficed to keep body and soul together—, it was a splendid thing for my chosen profession. Now I was no longer dead tired when I came home from work in the evening, unable to look at a book without dozing off. My new work paralleled my future profession. And as master of my own time I could now plan it better than before. I painted to earn a living, and learned for pleasure.
I also found it possible to round out with the necessary theoretical equipment my object lessons on the social problem. I studied pretty much everything I could lay hold of in the way of books on the subject, and plunged myself in my own thoughts besides.
I think my acquaintances then must have thought me an eccentric.
It was natural that I should at the same time passionately pursue my love of architecture. Along with music, I thought architecture the queen of the arts; under such circumstances it was no “work” to spend time on it, but the height of happiness. I could read or
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