Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler

movement lost the mighty source of power which alone can fill a political party with inner
strength for any length of time.
Through this alone the Christian Social Party became a party like any other.
In those days I followed both movements most attentively One, by feeling the beat of its
innermost heart, the other, carried away by admiration for the unusual man who even then
seemed to me a bitter symbol of all Austrian Germanism.
When the mighty funeral procession bore the dead mayor from the City Hall toward the Ring,
I was among the many hundred thousands looking on at the tragic spectacle. I was
profoundly moved and my feelings told me that the work, even of this man, was bound to be
in vain, owing to the fatal destiny which would inevitably lead this state to destruction. If Dr.
Karl Lueger had lived in Germany, he would have been ranked among the great minds of our
people; that he lived and worked in this impossible state was the misfortune of his work and
of himself.
When he died, the little flames in the Balkans were beginning to leap up more greedily from
month to month, and it was a gracious fate which spared him from witnessing what he still
thought he could prevent.
Out of the failure of the one movement and the miscarriage of the other, I for my part sought
to find the causes, and came to the certain conviction that, quite aside from the impossibility
of bolstering up the state in old Austria, the errors of the two parties were as follows:
The Pan-German movement was right in its theoretical view about the aim of a German
renascence, but unfortunate in its choice of methods. It was nationalistic, but unhappily not
socialistic enough to win the masses. But its anti-Semitism was based on a correct
understanding of the importance of the racial problem, and not on religious ideas. Its
struggle against a definite denomination, however, was actually and tactically false.
The Christian Social movement had an unclear conception of the aim of a German
reawakening, but had intelligence and luck in seeking its methods as a party. It understood
the importance of the social question, erred in its struggle against the Jews, and had no
notion of the power of the national idea.
If, in addition to its enlightened knowledge of the broad masses, the Christian Social Party
had had a correct idea of the importance of the racial question, such as the Pan-German
movement had achieved; and if, finally, it had itself been nationalistic, or if the Pan-German
movement, in addition to its correct knowledge of the aim of the Jewish question, had
adopted the practical shrewdness of the Christian Social Party, especially in its attitude
toward socialism, there would have resulted a movement which even then in my opinion
might have successfully intervened in German destiny.
If this did not come about, it was overwhelmingly due to the nature of the Austrian state.
Since I saw my conviction realized in no other party, I could in the period that followed not
make up my mind to enter, let alone fight with, any of the existing organizations. Even then I
regarded all political movements as unsuccessful and unable to carry out a national
reawakening of the German people on a larger and not purely external scale.
But in this period my inner revulsion toward the Habsburg state steadily grew.
The more particularly I concerned myself with questions of foreign policy, the more my
conviction rose and took root that this political formation could result in nothing but the
misfortune of Germanism. More and more clearly I saw at last that the fate of the German
nation would no longer be decided here, but in the Reich itself. This was true, not only of
political questions, but no less for all manifestations of cultural life in general.
Also in the field of cultural or artistic affairs, the Austrian state showed all symptoms of
degeneration, or at least of unimportance for the German nation. This was most true in the
field of architecture. The new architecture could achieve no special successes in Austria, if
for no other reason because since the completion of the Ring its tasks, in Vienna at least,
had become insignificant in comparison with the plans arising in Germany.