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Show 163 improving the situation as vpreparation for treason! and makes it subject to terrible penalties, that. government breaks an unwritten law which lives and will ever remain alive in sound ethnic sensibilities. "I have achieved the one goal of bringing this warning and admonition before the highest re5pon- sible judicial authority and not simply before a private discussion club.18 I stake my life on this invocation for an about-face. I demand the return of liberty to our German pe0ple. We do not want to pass our short lives in the chains of slavery even though they be the golden chains of material super» abundancea "You have taken from me the rank and privileges of a professorship and a doctorate earned with the distinction 'summa cum laude' and you have reduced me to the level of a common criminalo No prosecua tion for treason can rob the inner dignity of an educator, an Open and fearless adherent to his views of the world and of governmentu I am supremely confident that my motives and.my actions will be Justified by the inescapable course of historyo I hOpe to God that the Spiritual powers which merit it may emerge from my people in timeo I have acted as I was prompted by an inner voice° I accept the consequences in the Spirit of this verse of Johann Gottlieb Fichte: annd Als Das ~ Und handeln sollst du so, hinge von dir und deinem Tun allein Schicksal ab der deutschen Dinge, die Verantwortung war dein.vn ‘(And in your conduct you should be As though from you and yours alone, All things German depended for their destiny; And you would answer for it,) These proud words could have been Spoken before the courts of the tyrant by all the men and women who at the time Opposed the evil in Germany. They were not empty phrases. They were thoughts which were marked with the blood of many peeple. And what about us? What meaning do the events of those days have for us? They should not merely inSpire feelings of resPect and honor in us for these peOple but 18A possible reference to the Kreisau Circle? |
