Mein Kampf
this home-made explanation might be a sufficient excuse. But the way in which these newspapers laid siege to the Court’s favor did repel me more than once. There was scarcely an event at the Hofburg which they did not communicate to the reader in tones of rapt ecstasy or grief-stricken mournfulness. Especially when this to-do dealt with the “wisest Monarch” of all times, it was almost like the coupling of woodcock.
The whole thing seemed to me artificial. To my eye this revealed flaws in liberal democracy. To crawl for the Court’s favor, and in such indecent ways, was to betray the dignity of the nation. This was the first shadow that darkened my intellectual relation to the “great” Viennese press.
As always before, so now in Vienna I followed every event in Germany with burning concentration, whether political or cultural matters were in question. In proud admiration I compared the rise of the Reich with the sickness and decline of the Austrian state. But if happenings outside Austria were mostly a source of unalloyed pleasure, the less agreeable events at home often brought worry and gloom. The struggle then being carried on against William II did not have my approval. I saw him not only as the German Emperor, but chiefly as the creator of a German fleet. I was extraordinarily annoyed when the Reichstag forbade the Emperor to speak; the prohibition came, after all, from a place which had no call to object, considering the fact that these parliamentary ganders chattered more nonsense in a single session than a whole dynasty of emperors, including its very weakest members, could produce in centuries.
I was indignant that the heir of the Imperial crown could receive “reprimands” from the shallowest chattering-institution, of any age, in a state where every half-wit not only claimed the right to criticize, but might even be turned loose on the nation as a “lawgiver.” But I was yet more indignant when the very Viennese press which bowed and scraped to the last court charger, and was beside itself at a chance switch of the tail, now expressed misgivings about the German Emperor in an apparently solicitous fashion, but, I thought, with ill-concealed malice. Far be
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