After reading Erika Mann's analysis I sought among my pamphlets
for a copy of her father's open letter to the Dean of the Philosophical Faculty at Bonn. I find that many people have never come across that magnificent indictment. I may mention for their benefit that it has been reprinted in a little book published last year by Martin Secker under the title The Coming Victory of Democracy. Thomas Mann —unquestionably among the greatest of living European writers—was deprived by the Nazi Government of his rights of citizenship. One day he received from the Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy at Bonn a letter informing him that his name had been struck off the roll of Honorary Doctors of the University. He sat down and wrote a reply. This reply is among the great letters of history; the thunder of its dignity and sorrow echoes across the world. It is its last paragraph to which I so frequently refer. It runs as follows : " I had forgotten, Herr Dean, that I was still addressing you. Certainly, I may console myself with the reflection that you long since ceased to read this letter, aghast at language which in Germany has long been unspoken, terrified because somebody dares to use the German tongue with the ancient freedom.
I have not spoken out of arrogant presumption, but out of a concern and a distress from which your usurpers did not release me when they decreed that I was no longer a German. . . . As a man who, out of diffidence in religious matters, will seldom or never either by tongue or pen allow the name of the Deity to escape him, yet in moments of deep emotion cannot refrain, let me—since after all one cannot say everything—close this letter with a brief and fervent prayer : "God help our darkened and desecrated country and teach it to make its peace with the world and with itself."
* * * *
Previous page
