„South America is bent.“ Joh. Aug. Galletti (1750-1828)
Category Archives: Die Weltbühne
Eight o’clock in the morning (Morgens um acht)
I saw a dog recently. He was on his way to work. It was a sort of stuffed sofa cushion, decorated with long tassels of skin, wobbling down the Leipziger Strasse in Berlin. He was dead serious, he looked neither to the left nor to the right, he sniffed at nothing, and certainly did nothing else. He was definitely on his way to work. What else could he have been doing? Everybody around him was doing it.
The Monkey Cage (Affenkäfig)
The monkey (of the public): „It’s a good thing they’re all behind bars!“ The old Simplicissimus
A Boy in My Class (Ein Kind aus meiner Klasse)
For Hans M.
I recently ran into a boy from my school class, after so many years. It was just like in a storybook. The poor man was standing outside the fence, begging, and the rich man was inside, brushing the cake crumbs from his jacket. “Don’t you recognize me?“ asked the poor man, gently. And then the rich man recognized his former class-mate, and… I can’t remember how the story ends. Anyway, the boy from my school class, with whom I used to walk around the school playground in deep discussions, has become a government councillor. I probably won’t achieve anything respectable during my lifetime, either. And I have my doubts about afterwards as well.
The Great Families (Die großen Familien)
In the trial of our friends Küster[1] and Jacob before the Imperial Court, the State Prosecutor, Herr Jörns, rose, and spoke to Berthold Jacob[2], „Do you have a brother in Paris?” “Yes.“ „What is your brother doing there?“ „He is studying literature and history. He is about to publish a book.“ The prosecutor, „Does your brother have contacts to the French General Staff?” “No.” “To the scond level of the French General Staff?”
Effective Pacifism (Über wirkungsvollen Pazifismus)
Remuneration (Die Belohnung)
Potemkin Film and Pacifists (Potemkin-Film und Pazifisten)
by Franz Leschnitzer
I hope that all militarists who see the Potemkin film[1] are sick to the stomach. But hopefully also some pacifists as well. Some, not all, then it is obvious that there is not just one sort of pacifist in Germany. There are at least three: absolute pacifists, right-wing relativists and left-wing relativists.
The Patriotic Associations (Die Vaterländischen Verbände)
Notes on Gas Warfare (Bemerkungen: Der Gaskrieg)
By Lothar Engelbert Schücking
What the pacifists have found out about gas warfare have really shaken our military to the bones, in particular the general staff, who have just started to realize that in the next war it will no longer be possible to distinguish between the historical nobility in their high quarters behind the lines, and the common cannon fodder. Gas warfare makes the whole thing more democratic, and is just as dangerous to the civilians well behind the front as it is to the fighting soldiers. There is no front any more, no deployment, not even really a mobilization. Each country wipes out the life of the other, root and branch, from the air, in a few days.
Die Weltbühne in English Translation 