IT HAS turned out fortunate for me to-day that destiny appointed Braunau-on-the-Inn
to be my birthplace. For that little town is situated just on the frontier between those
two States the reunion of which seems, at least to us of the younger generation, a task to
which we should devote our lives and in the pursuit of which every possible means
should be employed.
German-Austria must be restored to the great German Motherland. And not indeed on
any grounds of economic calculation whatsoever. No, no. Even if the union were a
matter of economic indifference, and even if it were to be disadvantageous from the
economic standpoint, still it ought to take place. People of the same blood should be in
the same REICH. The German people will have no right to engage in a colonial policy
until they shall have brought all their children together in the one State. When the
territory of the REICH embraces all the Germans and finds itself unable to assure them
a livelihood, only then can the moral right arise, from the need of the people to acquire
foreign territory. The plough is then the sword; and the tears of war will produce the
daily bread for the generations to come.
And so this little frontier town appeared to me as the symbol of a great task. But in
another regard also it points to a lesson that is applicable to our day. Over a hundred
years ago this sequestered spot was the scene of a tragic calamity which affected the
whole German nation and will be remembered for ever, at least in the annals of German
history. At the time of our Fatherland's deepest humiliation a bookseller, Johannes
Palm, uncompromising nationalist and enemy of the French, was put to death here
because he had the misfortune to have loved Germany well. He obstinately refused to
disclose the names of his associates, or rather the principals who were chiefly
responsible for the affair. Just as it happened with Leo Schlageter. The former, like the
latter, was denounced to the French by a Government agent. It was a director of police
from Augsburg who won an ignoble renown on that occasion and set the example
which was to be copied at a later date by the neo-German officials of the REICH under
Herr Severing's regime (Note 1).
In this little town on the Inn, haloed by the memory of a German martyr, a town that
was Bavarian by blood but under the rule of the Austrian State, my parents were
domiciled towards the end of the last century. My father was a civil servant who
fulfilled his duties very conscientiously. My mother looked after the household and
lovingly devoted herself to the care of her children. From that period I have not retained
very much in my memory; because after a few years my father had to leave that frontier
town which I had come to love so much and take up a new post farther down the Inn
valley, at Passau, therefore actually in Germany itself.
In those days it was the usual lot of an Austrian civil servant to be transferred
periodically from one post to another. Not long after coming to Passau my father was
transferred to Linz, and while there he retired finally to live on his pension. But this did
not mean that the old gentleman would now rest from his labours.
He was the son of a poor cottager, and while still a boy he grew restless and left home.
When he was barely thirteen years old he buckled on his satchel and set forth from his
native woodland parish. Despite the dissuasion of villagers who could speak from
'experience,' he went to Vienna to learn a trade there. This was in the fiftieth year of the
last century.'