by A G Mogan
We must leave the hostel by day, however, and I tread the streets in search of food. The following months I eat at a nearby monastery, whose nuns offer free lunch to men like me. It consists of a hot bowl of watery, potato soup and a paper-thin slice of bread. I have become a full-fledged proletarian. A tramp of the flawed system.
Other residents look for my company, as it turns out that friendship takes one’s mind off the always rumbling, growling stomach. I keep them at a distance though, preferring the company of my own thoughts. However, a certain Fritz Walter, a spirited, witty lad, would simply not take no for an answer and becomes my new friend. We begin treading the streets together in search of food, but also of work.
Soon, we are earning money shoveling snow from the sidewalks in front of the houses of the rich, but without a winter coat, and having a severe, nagging cough take hold of me, I am forced to quit. If quitting shoveling snow restores me to a better health, there is always one thing that never quits me, and that is the hunger. It is always present, always nagging to be my constant companion.
I start my next stint of work at the Westbanhof Railway Station, where I carry the luggage of tourists and locals alike. At lunchtime, as I eat on one of the benches outside the station, biting greedily into a piece of bread I received from a tourist, I remember the first day I arrived here. I am no longer that person, no longer the carefree youth of beautiful dreams and high expectations. No. Now, I am a shadow of my former self, hunchbacked and unkempt, with long hair and beard, weighing a hundred-and-thirty pounds at the most.
With the few pennies left after buying my daily bread, I buy newspapers and pamphlets. I read them enthusiastically, sometimes in silence and other times loudly, fighting with invisible enemies over the finely written articles in them. The fresh ink smears my fingers and the bread I eat, but I don’t really care. These days, I’ve become accustomed to not giving a damn.
The most sought after restaurants these days, writes the satirical paper Kikeriki, are the public parks. At lunchtime, hundreds of people sit on the benches, the sunlight warming up their stomach. It looks like the rays of the sun will soon become the most popular food in Austria. Vienna municipality is not bothered in the least that in the month of March more than three thousand children (one hundred per day) had to look for shelter in an asylum. But it isn’t their children, as for the rest, they could as well go to Hell.
Another paper, Arbeiterzeitung, notes: There are 80,000 tenants for a single bed, among them more Czechs than Germans.
I am horrified that even as a beggar, I cannot go without having to share my bed with the immigrants and the park benches with foreigners, who could have just as well searched for park benches in their own countries. If my country could only be spared these intruders, the food, workplaces, and overall welfare of my people would improve considerably.
Thank goodness, I can read my newspapers and pamphlets alone. My very favorite one is Ostara, which came to print only a few months before I discovered it. I am missing a few editions, so I decide to go to the main office to buy them. Here, I meet Lanz von Liebenfels, founder and main editor. He greets me warmly and invites me in. I hesitate, not wanting to impose, yet his warm smile and the candid look behind his funny spectacles changes my mind. I introduce myself and enter the room that he calls his office, a tiny, cramped area that reminds me of my room at Mrs. Zakreys’. I quickly scan it, as I do most times when in a new place. Stacks of his printed magazine issues lay around on the floor and fill the two shabby bookcases on one of the walls, the only pieces of furniture adorning the room.
In the far corner of the room, a strange flag captures my attention and I go to it, lifting it into the air and spreading it out. Only God knows how long it’s been here, as a cloud of tiny dust particles is unleashed into the air, invading my nostrils and making me sneeze.
“Gesundheit!” I hear the man say.
“Thank you!”
“That’s my sign, the sign of my Order.” I can’t take my eyes off the symbol imprinted on the flag and strain to remember where else I’ve seen it.
“It is the symbol of the Sun, our powerful star, giver of life, and also the sign of the Son, the Son of God, Savior,” he says.
“The sign of Christ?” I demand, as I keep looking at it.
“That’s right. The hero who came to save the Aryan women from the original sinner, the Jew.”
As he speaks, I suddenly remember. It is the strange symbol I had seen on the Leonding’s church walls, two decades ago. The symbol representing a double “Z” intertwined in a sort of cross.
“What is it called?”
“Swastika.”
Its name, its shape, its very meaning exerts such a powerful hold over me that I simply cannot take my eyes off it. It is as if it’s charged with an invisible, magical power that numbs my senses.
“And our slogan,” he continues, painfully bringing me back to reality.
I look to the spot on the wall where he is pointing and on a black banner, I read: Race fight until the castration knife.
“I love it,” I say.
“Tell me, young man, what made you buy my magazine?” he asks.
“Well, I had several reasons. I have been doing some soul searching for a while now, and your magazine … let’s say that after so much introspection, it resonated with my own conclusions. I can almost say that the magazine chose me, rather than the other way around. I sort of … gravitated toward it.”
“That’s the magic in it, working its wonders.”
“I don’t know about its magic, but I can say this: for the second time in my life, I sensed meaning. The way you describe the history of mankind is simply … well, I many times thought I was indeed listening to the words of God, himself,” I blurt out, as a shudder runs through my entire body.
“Your words gladden me profoundly, young man.”
“I had been watching the debates at the Parliament for more than a year, and was fascinated by the Pan-German ideals. It was there that I first heard of your magazine.”
“Surely you must have heard Theodor Fritsch speaking. He is one of the leaders in the Pan-German movement. And also one of our founding brothers.”
“Of course! Enlightenment to the Germanic peoples! Eliminate all Jewish participation from the German cultural life! I can still trace his words with my mind’s eye.”
“From the Hammer?” he asks, referring to Fritsch’s anti-Semitic scandal sheet.
“That’s right. Herr Liebenfels … I feel that your way is the way. I have studied the history of our people and, somehow, I reached at the same conclusions as—”
“The man who thinks for himself will always arrive at the truth, dear fellow,” he interrupts.
“Indeed. And what I wanted to say is that nowhere else have I come across such inspiring ideology as yours. Maybe only Gobineau could match you. The ideals you hold about our race are simply astounding.”
“They ring as truth within your Aryan soul.”
“Is this why they resonate with me? You think I have a pure Aryan soul?” I ask, as if it would soothe my never-receding fears, instilled in me by my sister’s stupid story.
“No other soul would resonate with these ideals. A mongrel, Slavic or Jewish soul would condemn them as they reveal the ape within himself, the creature of the devil.”
“Of course.”
“But now, it is time. It is time for us to fight, to carry on the struggle to the death against these sub-humans. For struggle is the Father of all things.”
“Yes!” I shout, and begin marching his cramped room, slaloming through the stacks of magazine issues. “You know, after I read the first issue of Ostara, I ran down to the library and asked for more of your writings. The librarian gave me The Science of the Sodomite Apelings and the Divine Electron.”
“Yes. I published it five years ago. Many men have awakened, thanks to that work,” he confides in a most unassuming voice.
“I included. When I reached the last page
, tears were gliding down my cheeks. For the first time, I had a meaning—for the first time, I had a plan.”
“Stick to that plan, my fellow. You owe it to our ancestors, to your Fatherland.”
Tears fall down my cheeks again and I make no effort to restrain them. Here, I am understood. Here, I do not fear coming across as weak in this man’s eyes, for he is one of mine, and I am one of his. We are brothers in hearts, the kind that can communicate intuitively. I feel this affinity and know he feels it, too.
“If only I had met you before … ” I whisper, blotting my tears away with my sleeve.
“Before what, my son? There is no before, only after. We must look ahead, toward the future. We are responsible for creating the future ourselves.”
“We must fight to create our own future!” I echo. “The future we deserve. We must restore the pure Aryan on his rightful place!”
“Yes, my son, the Germanic man is the Son of Heaven. He is the white stone, the White Rider, who conquers the colored people, he is the Logos. He is the true image of God. He has once been conquered by the inferior people, the Apelings, the Man-Beasts, who, through fornication, lowered the level of their race. God wants us to restore his Man. He wants us to revenge him against the harm done to him by the races of the Devil.”
More bitter tears stream from my eyes.
“But, how can we do this?”
“Have faith, my son. Believe in your pure spirit. And come join The Order of the New Templars.”
I do not join his Order for fear I might not pass the requirement of proving beyond any doubt that not a drop of Jewish or Negro blood flows through me. Yet I ask for permission to visit him whenever I can, and he agrees wholeheartedly.
For the next two years, the man I would come to admire and love like a father and mentor, teaches me everything I need to know: Mankind is unequal and a deep moat that cannot be overwhelmed surrounds Valhalla—a moat that no inferior race must be allowed to jump over. In the struggle against the apes, each one must begin with himself, especially in the choice of his wife, then he can fight against the apes that surround him. Victory will be ours, ancient divine oracles speak in our behalf. The original homeland for the white man is Germania. Kings and heroes have been coming from there since pre-history. Up to a certain time, only ape and beast-men lived outside Germany.
For this reason, the Germanic peoples eagerly took up an exalting doctrine, such as the teaching of Jesus, who said: Love thy neighbor as thyself – if he is a member of your own race. But the Sodomite spirit of Rome and Byzantium could not let the Gothic folk live. The glorious folk of God were ripped apart by the ancient inferior races, the sons of the Devil. To the rest of the Germanic people, a counterfeit Christianity was preached, and their powerful arm of the gods was bound by the cord of the “commandment of brotherly love”. Rome and Byzantium destroyed the ancient scriptures, for they would have documented our divine origins and their simian descent.
For over a thousand years, the Romanized French and the Slavs, along with the rest of the mob of ape-men, have been a constant danger to our culture. They are our bitter enemies for whom no act of malice or violence is too terrible to use in order to destroy us! Woe to the brood of Sodom when we settle our accounts with them!
We must start to breed humans! What a race we could breed from our Aryans! The strictest pure-breeding standards are necessary. We may not cast pearls before swine, we have to keep the salt for ourselves. Obviously, the Kingdom of Heaven will be reached through intervention in the sexual life of man. Those of lesser value must be exterminated in a gentle way—by castration and sterilization.
Also, the restriction of sexual indulgence is advantageous for spiritual men. To one is given the ability to generate beautiful and good children, to the other to create immortal spiritual works. Abstain from lascivious beings! Bastards are usually physically and culturally poor. We must invent a functional sterilization device or agent. We must protect the institution of marriage, for it is the secure refuge of the race, the warm nest of the young phoenix and the future God-Man.
This modest prophet proves to be the only ray of light in the darkness that represents Vienna, the most important encounter in my five-year stay in this Babylon of races, nay, in my entire life.
Lanz also gives me a thin book, The Invincible by Guido von List, one of his friends and blood brothers, and urges me to flick through it. I do so the following day, while lunching on the usual bench in front of the train station. As I flip through the pages, biting greedily at my bread, I notice a strange individual sitting on a nearby bench and almost choke up. He is wearing a black caftan and displays the same curly side-locks as the brute from my nightmare. Is this an apeling? I ask myself, sickened. I watch the man stealthily and cautiously, but the longer I gaze at the strange countenance and examine it feature by feature, the more the question shapes itself differently in my brain: Is this a German?
How can the Germans not understand that their Social Democracy is in the hands of Jews, who are trying to thrust them aside from their nation, resorting to their internationalist slogans?
I gather all the social-democratic brochures I can lay my hands on and look at their journalists’ names. All Jews! I note down the names of all their leaders and most of them, I find, are representatives of the so-called chosen people! Whether they be Members of Parliament or union secretaries, presidents of associations or street agitators, the same scary picture emerges. I will never be quite able to forget names like Austerlitz, David Adler, Ellenbogen. But I’ve learned, once and for all, that the Jew is not German and the Social Democracy is nothing more than a detachment of colonial troops of the Jewish capital. And if there is a press working with dung and mud, this is the Jewish press and the social-democratic press, printed almost exclusively by Jewish scribblers, and these reptiles don’t stop at nothing, not even when the total destruction of an entire existence is at stake.
I find it very regretful that there are still people who buy and read these journalistic vermin, people lacking a healthy mental faculty of discernment.
And why the hell the leaders of our German workers belong, almost without exception, to a race that you’ve never seen working? And what is the percentage of this race among our population? I tell you: Scarcely one percent! On the other hand, what is their percentage among the manual workers, locksmiths, blacksmiths, miners, scavengers, and shoemakers? Zero percent! And what, in turn, is the percentage of the Jewish leaders of the working class? I think any idiot could answer that question now. Yet it seems this isn’t enough to eliminate, once and for all, the thick dark veil covering the faces of German men and women.
In early May 1910, I find a more decent shelter and Fritz follows me there. I am allowed, for a higher fare, to occupy a room all by myself. The room is quite small, having an even smaller bed as the one in Meidling, and a tiny table crammed in a corner. The nights are very cold and my hands and feet often look frostbitten. I am, once again, forced to put an end to working in the Westbanhof Railway Station.
I become ill, possessed by an unknown affliction. My throat is sore, and because I can barely swallow, I drink only milk for the next two weeks. I take to my bed with terrible headaches. My high temperature and general malaise leads me to the brink of delirium.
But, that’s not all. A pink rash appears on my leg, and although I experience neither pain nor itching, I am horrified by its grotesque appearance. I must have caught mange from the parks or the train station, where all the dirty homeless live. After two agonizing weeks, I recover suddenly, except for the leg eczema, which stubbornly persists. I cover it with a bandage torn from my bed sheet, but I am still not well enough to resume my work.
Seeing me in such deplorable state, my friend comes up with an interesting idea. I am to paint illustrated postcards and he is to sell them in the city’s beer halls, then split the profits. It sounds like a marvelous idea and I do my best to keep my own side of agreement.
Sometimes, however, severe
gastrointestinal troubles keep me from doing so. I wonder at the cause of it. Could it be my spartan diet or yet another symptom of my mysterious affliction? Even so, I am happy to be free of the humiliating physical work and to earn the food money from my longstanding passion. My sublime, artistic passion.
I spend the following months mostly indoors, and when unable to paint, I read the newspapers. Beside selling the postcards I paint, my friend has another responsibility, that of keeping me informed of whatever goes on outside the asylum.
“You know, Adolf,” he says on one of the gloomy, overcast days that keeps him indoors also, “we should pray for our Jewish benefactors. If it wasn’t for them, we would have been long dead.”
I look at him intently, furrowing my eyebrows. “What in the world possessed you?”
“Have you no gratitude? They feed us! They sponsor our shelter. They donate to children’s homes and orphanages, heating places, and pay for the thousands of portions of food every day. Even more than that, they finance poor students’ scholarships, regardless of their nationality, sex, or age. Didn’t you ever read it in your newspapers, or do you look at the pictures only?”
I feel my anger pulsating at the back of my head and hit the table with my fist. “You’re so dumb, you know? How can you be so stupid as to believe everything you hear?”
He leans over and touches my forehead with the back of his hand. “High temperature again?”
I push his hand violently and jump to my feet. “Let me tell you about the Jews! These filthy Pharisees cannot sponsor the poor students, since they are the first to reject them entrance at the Academies! They are the ones who ruin the future of those their putrid minds consider unworthy! And don’t get me started on their motives or you will either end up with a sore head or I will be one friend poorer!”
