CHAPTER NINE The German Workers’ Party
One day, I received an order from my superior to investigate the workings of an ostensibly political organization that, under the name of the “German Workers’ Party,” was planning to hold a meeting in the immediate future, at which Gottfried Feder was to speak. I was told that I was to be there and then report on the organization.
The curiosity felt in the army at the time about everything related to political parties was understandable. The revolution had granted soldiers the right to participate in politics, a right that was most widely used by those with less experience.
As soon as the Centre Party and the Social Democrats realized, to their deep regret, that the soldiers’ sympathies were shifting away from the revolutionary parties and toward the national restoration movement, they felt it expedient to abrogate this right and prohibit the troops from all political activity.
The bourgeoisie, truly afflicted with senile weakness, seriously believed that the army would return to what it had been, that is, a bulwark of German defensive capability, while the Center Party and Marxism believed it was necessary to break the army’s dangerous “national poison” sting. However, an army lacking in national spirit is eternally reduced to the condition of a police force that does not represent troops capable of confronting the enemy.
I therefore decided to visit the aforementioned meeting of the “German Workers’ Party,” which until then had been completely unknown to me.
When Feder concluded his lecture at the assembly, I had already observed enough and was preparing to leave, but I was induced to stay by the announcement that there would be an open platform. At first, the discussion seemed unimportant, until suddenly a “professor” took the floor to criticize the foundations of Feder’s thesis, ending—after
a strong reply from Feder – for placing himself in the “ground of reality” and strongly recommending to the new party, as a key point of its program, the struggle of Bavaria for its “separation” from Prussia.
With shameless aplomb, the man asserted that under such circumstances the German part of Austria would immediately join Bavaria; that the peace conditions imposed by the Allies would be better, and other such absurdities. I could not help but also take the floor to let the “wise” professor hear my opinion on this point, with the result that before I had finished speaking, my interlocutor left the room like a scalded dog fleeing cold water. Not even a week had passed when, to my great surprise, I received a card announcing that I had been admitted to the German Workers’ Party and that, in order to give my reply, I was urged to attend the
next Wednesday to a meeting of the party committee.
I was certainly quite astonished by this method of “winning” proselytes, and I didn’t know whether it should make me angry or laugh. It had never occurred to me to join an existing party, since I myself longed to found my own.
I was about to inform them in writing of my refusal, but curiosity won out, and so I decided to show up on the appointed day to personally explain my reasons.
And Wednesday arrived. The venue for the announced meeting was the shabby restaurant “Das Alte Rosenbad” on Herrnstrasse. Under the dim light cast by an old gas lamp, four young men were sitting around a table. I was surprised when I was informed that the “Reich Party Chairman” would be arriving shortly, and that for this reason I was being suggested to postpone my presentation. Finally, the long-awaited chairman arrived; it was the same one who had presided over the meeting at Feder’s conference.
Meanwhile, my curiosity had been piqued once again, and I eagerly awaited the meeting’s progress. Beforehand, I was informed of the names of those attending; the president of the “Reich organization” was a Mr. Harrer, and the president of the local organization in Munich was Anton Drexler. The minutes of the last meeting were then read, and the secretary was given the nod of confidence. Afterward, the discussion shifted to the acceptance of new members, that is, the matter of my “fishing” was to be deliberated upon. I began by orienting myself about
The details of the party’s organization were not available, but beyond a few postulates, there was nothing: no program, not a single propaganda leaflet, nothing printed; there were no identification cards for party members, and finally, not even a meager stamp. In reality, all that was left was faith and goodwill. From that moment on, all cause for hilarity disappeared, and I took the matter seriously.
What those men felt, I felt too: a yearning for a new movement that would be something more than a party, as the word then represented, in the current sense. I was surely faced with the most serious question of my life: whether to declare my allegiance or refuse.
That laughable institution, with its few members, seemed to me to have at least the advantage of not being petrified like any other “organization” and of offering the individual the opportunity to develop effective personal activity. Here, work could be done, and I realized that the smaller the movement, the easier it was to direct it properly. Furthermore, within this circle, the character, purpose, and method could be defined, something that was, in principle, impractical for large parties.
Along with my reflections, the conviction grew within me that it was precisely from a small movement like that that the work of national restoration could one day emerge—but never from the parliamentary parties, clinging to old concepts, or from the others who shared in the gains of the new government regime. Because what needed to be proclaimed here was a new ideology, not a new electoral slogan.
I therefore became a member of the German Workers’ Party and obtained a provisional membership card marked with the number 7.
