Der Fuehrer - Hitler's Rise to Power (1944) - Heiden

THE UNHAPPIEST OF ALL MEN 361are our national wealth. The national wealth of a people is its greatmen.' He wants to become the Napoleon of this era; in other words, thisera is his era, it belongs to him, he can do with it what he likes,'... andfor this there is only one justification: genius, and nothing else.'Flight into the great image has from early youth been this man'sanswer to all life's enmity; that was why he wanted to become an artistwhen his father tried to break him into a normal respectable man; hewanted to shine and be admired — 'as two lovers, far removed from oneanother, look up to the stars with the feeling: in this moment ourthoughts meet — the great spirits of a people are the uniting stars whichhold men together.' That was he, a prince and star in the realm of art; orrather, that was what he would have become, if, as we know, he had notlacked both talent and energy. But, as he will always feel, that was whathe would have become if his alleged poverty, the social arrogance of theage, the resistance of a world hostile to him and all its sentiments, hadnot kept him down. Art is the struggle of the great man against theresistance of the dull world, the ultimate subjection of the ordinary tothe creative spirit . . . 'until the artistic genius reveals itself so brilliantlythat all of them fall, overpowered, to their knees.' In such phrases, hebetrays what he expects from art: triumph. Art — that is the career ofRichard Wagner, from the defeat of the Paris performance ofTannhauser to the erection of the spiritual empire in Bayreuth; art is thelast word in the Meistersingers, when the man of the world and thepatron falls to his knees before the master.On trips and walks he would suddenly run ahead, dragging hiscompanions to some church or cloister, where he would surprise themwith a lecture: gaze and see how the old master builders made a roomout of walls. There he stood, his whole form an abrupt line, his glovesclasped in his uplifted hand. Can't you see, he cried, that the oldwindow-makers knew that a window determined not only the facade butalso the space within? Can't you see how that accounts for themagnificent stained-glass windows? It was not to be denied: when heasked if they did not see, nearly everyone saw; at times he could reallymake people see what he