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

588 DER FUEHRERence of the Left parties; and in order to show that these Jews were partyfavorites of Marxism, bacilli of Jewish world revolution, and hence theborn enemies of the ruling intellectual, the first anti-Semitic law issuedby the Hitler government, through Frick on April 7, 1933, was calledthe 'Law for the restoration of the professional civil service.' Its keysentence was: 'Officials of non-Aryan origin are to be retired.'Similar laws followed in quick succession. Jews were no longerallowed to teach at universities; were not admitted to the judiciary; werenot allowed to practice law or serve as physicians for insurancecompanies; their attendance at schools of all types was limited to 1.5 percent. At Hindenburg's insistence, those who had served as soldiersduring the war or had fought in the Free Corps of the counter-revolution— for there were some — were exempted from these harsh measures. Inlater years even these Jews had no Hin-denburg to protect them.Some time later, other special laws drove the Jews out of journalism,literature, and theater; they were forbidden to write for newspapers,books written by them might not be published; Jewish painters wereforbidden to paint. In short, the Jews were rapidly excluded from allspheres of intellectual and artistic life; for these, after all, were the keypositions of the 'educational state.' Wilhelm Furtwangler, the non-Jewish conductor, opposed Goeb-bels in an open letter, demanding 'thatmen like Bruno Walter, Otto Klemperer, Max Reinhardt, etc., mustcontinue in the future to express themselves in Germany'; for 'in the lastanalysis I recognize but one dividing line: that between good and badart.' Goebbels replied that Furtwangler was very much mistaken, 'Art inthe absolute sense, as known under liberal democracy, must not be'; artand intellect — and this is his meaning — are only instruments ofdomination; he, Goebbels, for example, was also an artist, whose task itwas 'to mold the firm and well-shapen image of the nation from the rawmaterial of the mass.'This molding proceeded with great thoroughness, and the slightestand subtlest traces of the combated influences were burned out of themasses. For the first time the German public was made aware that onecould be a Jew without wanting to be or perhaps