Abstract

Stresemann

"Whoever would play real-politik must also have daring dreams." This statement of German Foreign Affair Minister Gustav Stresemann is more characteristic of his education than of his way of life. It is a rare thing in post-war Germany for one of a literary turn of mind to take up politics. Before the war it was forbidden, one quickly became ridiculous in the Reichstag, and closed the doors of a Cabinet career upon oneself if one were accused of having written a book which was not merely political, a tragedy or even verse. Even the descendants of noble families, who occasionally displayed their decadence in verse, were very careful not to let their literary efforts go beyond the inner circle of their friends, much less to print them. One did not dream in Prussia, that was permitted only in Austria, where rigid discipline was much too wanting, as Viennese music indirectly proves.