''Every war is accompanied by a kind of mental mobilization: war fever.
Even smart people are not immune to controlled bouts of this fever.
“This war in all its atrociousness is still a great and wonderful thing.
It is an experience worth having“ rejoiced Max Weber in 1914 when the
lights went out in Europe. Thomas Mann felt a “cleansing, liberation,
and a tremendous amount of hope“.
Even when thousands already lay
dead on the Belgian battle fields, the war fever did not subside.
Exactly 100 years ago, 93 painters, writers, and scientists composed the
“Call to the world of culture.“ Max Liebermann, Gerhart Hauptmann, Max
Planck, Wilhelm Röntgen, and others encouraged their countrymen to
engage in cruelty towards their neighbor: “Without German militarism,
German culture would have been swept from the face of the earth a long
time ago. The German armed forces and the German people are one. This
awareness makes 70 million Germans brothers without prejudice to
education, status, or party.“
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