Monday, March 16:
Foreword to German Art and German Politics
The author here offers, connected and complete for the more precise information of the public, a series of essays which appeared piecemeal and without a conclusion in a political paper towards the end of last year. Those who have hitherto directed a more intimate interest towards his artistic and his theoretical works, will, he hopes, from this find cause to give his unremitting struggle of long years to win supportive ground in reality for the ideas he has in mind, its due. Becoming imbued with great and elevating reassurance at recognizing this ground uniquely and unerringly in that of the German spirit, he now feels able to compress the more extravagant pre-conditions that had obtruded themselves upon him earlier, in the direction of the clearly recognizable goal that is the notion of the Germans’ noblest wishes and aspirations regarding the re-forming of their great, indeed boundless, fatherland. If, particularly in the state of modern public art which precisely through its decay, is exposed to the shallowest judgement, the exceptionally unwonted nature of the immediate juxtapositioning of the two aims has, above all and against an erroneously selected background, given rise to much misunderstanding and confusion, the author nevertheless believes himself permitted not to lose heart, and, on the contrary, to cherish the hope that for his ideas, too, it will be possible to find effective agreement amongst the German public.
Tribschen. R.W.