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

46 DER FUEHRERappeared; a kind of wheel with an axial cross in the middle, but thecircle is cut in four places so that four scythe blades seem to swing in acircle around the cross. Anyone who sees this strange shapeinvoluntarily recognizes the Swastika.This movement was closely related to a second one, the batde-cry ofwhich was 'Los von Rom!' (Away from Rome!) It was the same rhythmas 'Heim ins Reich' (Home to the Reich). And that was exactly what itmeant. It was a spiritual uprising against the Pope in Rome, but at thesame time a rebellion against the Catholic Emperor in Vienna, his'Apostolic Majesty,' the old man who, on Corpus Christi, walked in theprocession with a candle in his hand. These German intellectuals inAustria were rising against the Italian Vicar of God in the foreigncountry beyond the mountains and against the emperor of the Czechs,Poles, and Hungarians. Sunday after Sunday, German and Czechstudents fought in Prague, and in the German provincial cities of theempire bands of students, encouraged by a part of their professors,marched through the streets with black, red, and gold caps and insignia;in Linz, for example, they paraded across the Franz Josef's Platz and theLandstrasse. 'I, too, bore the black, red, and gold insignia and was oftenbeaten for it,' Hitler later related.Beaten by whom? By political adversaries? Only by them? It seemsthat he was beaten by his father, too. He himself hints that this occurredin the struggle over his future profession. But his father's image runslike a dark shadow through his whole self-portrait; an authority whichalways harshly intervened when contradicted. This father had beenproud to be an Austrian official and he wanted his son to be an Austrianofficial, too. But his son wanted to be a painter.Why a painter? Was Hitler a visual mind? At the end of thenineteenth century, the painter or the poet was a kind of king; theRenaissance figures of the poet-prince and the royal artist dominatedsociety. Makart in Vienna, and Lenbach in Munich — two painters littleknown abroad and by now half forgotten in their own country — werein their time more impressive rulers than the true princes, giving laws tosociety and form to human lives, and in return receiving fame andearthly goods in abundance. Young