Vossische Zeitung
- Government Statement on the Unemployment Conflict
- The Kaiser's New Book
- School Autonomy in Czechoslovakia
The Vossische Zeitung of 10 November 1926 reported that the Reich government would hold to its own unemployment-benefit bill, already before the Reichsrat, even though the Reichstag plenary had voted for increases of 30 and 20 per cent; the paper argued that the vote had been partly tactical and that the majority did not really want the increase. Emil Ludwig reviewed the former Kaiser's second book of memoirs as a cosier, more modest collection of childhood, court and military stories than the combative first volume, and predicted it would lie on every aristocratic Christmas table. From Prague the paper reported Education Minister Hodža's declaration that forcing German parents to send their children to Czech schools, or the reverse, was punishable, and that minority schools would be built only where needed.
Translation
Government Statement on the Unemployment Conflict
Yesterday the plenary session of the Reichstag, by a majority, declared itself in favour of raising the benefit rates for principal benefit recipients by 30 per cent and for recipients of supplements by 20 per cent. The vote, however, and the party statements made on it showed quite clearly that this was in part a tactical vote, and that the majority of the Reichstag, contrary to the formal vote, did not in fact want such an increase. On the basis of these circumstances, the Reich government decided yesterday to hold to the bill already submitted to the Reichsrat, which was in accordance with the motions of the government parties and the resolutions of the Reichstag committees mentioned.
The Kaiser's New Book
More comfortable and more modest than the first is the Kaiser's second book, with which he seems to be beginning a longer account of his life: the whole is a tema con variazioni, and the variations are the best thing in it, although some are repeated word for word from the first book. Back then he sought excitedly to prove that he had done everything well and the others everything badly; now an old gentleman tells amusing and other stories from his childhood and youth, and in place of the dashing tone offers a cosy collection of court and military stories, which is why this book will be missing from no aristocratic Christmas table.
School Autonomy in Czechoslovakia
Education Minister Dr. Hodža made a sensational speech in the Budget Committee today. Hodža declared that he considered any compulsion exerted on German parents to send German children to Czech schools, and vice versa, to be punishable. "We will not take each other's children," he said. Minority schools would be built only where they are necessary.
Context
Milan Hodža, the minister behind the pledge
The minister whose speech the Vossische Zeitung called sensational was Milan Hodža, a Slovak politician who after the First World War became leader of the Czechoslovak Agrarian Party in Slovakia. He served as minister of agriculture from 1922 to 1926 and then as minister of education from 1926 to 1929, so the Budget Committee speech came early in his tenure at the education ministry. In the 1920s Hodža was a Czechoslovakist, regarding Czechs and Slovaks as one nation, a position that helped him reach high office in Prague. The pledge reported from Prague therefore came from a figure at the centre of the governing establishment, and it took the form of a guarantee against compulsion in schooling rather than a change to the structure of the state. Hodža's later career put the minority question in a far graver setting: as prime minister, his government had to accept the Munich Agreement in 1938, and he was forced to resign under pressure.
What Hodža's school autonomy actually contained
The stenographic record of the Czechoslovak Chamber of Deputies for 25 November 1926 shows a deputy speaking for the German side quoting Hodža's statements in detail. According to this deputy, Hodža had declared very emphatically that minority schools would in future be set up only where they were necessary, which matches the Berlin paper's report. Hodža had also said that school self-administration was urgent and would be introduced before the new regions were activated, by 1 July 1927, partly in the districts and partly in the lands, and that all strata of the population, regardless of nationality, would receive it. The same deputy pointed out that, according to Hodža, the centralisation of school administration would not be removed but carried further. Read against this record, the 'autonomy' in the Vossische Zeitung's headline referred to self-administration of schooling within the existing administrative units, not to a separate national school authority for the German minority.
Why German deputies in Prague doubted the promise
The German-side deputy in the Prague chamber called Hodža's declaration extremely cautious and reserved, and he criticised German newspapers that had announced the event in large type and, in his view, misled the German public. To show what the promise would have to change, he cited figures of his own: in the school year 1925/26, he said, 7,795 German children attended Czech primary and civic schools, and in the same year the German side lost another 49 schools with 911 classes. These are numbers from a partisan speech in a budget debate, not an official tally, but they show the grievances behind the Vossische Zeitung's short report: the charge that Czech minority schools drew in German children and that German classes were being closed. The Berlin paper presented the pledge as school autonomy under its headline, while the deputy in Prague treated the same words as a statement still to be tested in practice.
What British readers recalled when the ex-Kaiser's memoirs appeared
Emil Ludwig's review contrasts the excited self-justification of Wilhelm II's first book with the comfortable court and military anecdotes of the second. In Britain the ex-Emperor's autobiography was also being discussed in the autumn of 1926. The Spectator printed a leading article on 18 September, and on 25 September it published a reader's letter under the heading 'The Ex-Emperor's Autobiography'. The letter recalled a conversation from before 1890, related by Rear-Admiral Tracey, in which the Kaiser told him that Germans, with Russia on the east and France on the west, must be a nation of soldiers, and that such a nation must be governed autocratically. The letter does not show which volume the leading article discussed. It does show that a British reader responded to the memoirs by turning back to Wilhelm's political convictions, while Ludwig in Berlin described the new volume as an old gentleman's stories of childhood and youth.
Original
Regierungserklärung zum Erwerbslosen-Konflikt
Das Plenum des Reichstages hat gestern in seiner Mehrheit sich für eine Erhöhung der Unterstützungssätze der Hauptunterstützungsempfänger um 30 v. H. und der Zuschlagsempfänger um 20 v. H. ausgesprochen. Die Abstimmung aber und die Parteierklärungen dazu zeigten ganz klar, daß es sich zum Teil um eine taktische Abstimmung gehandelt hat, und daß die Mehrheit des Reichstags im Gegensatz zu der formalen Abstimmung tatsächlich eine solche Erhöhung nicht wollte. Auf Grund dieser Zusammenhänge hat sich die Reichsregierung gestern entschlossen, an der dem Reichsrat bereits unterbreiteten Vorlage, die im Einklang sich befand mit den Anträgen der Regierungsparteien und den Beschlüssen der genannten Reichstagsausschüsse festzuhalten.
Das neue Buch des Kaisers
Behaglicher und bescheidener als das erste ist das zweite Buch des Kaisers, mit dem er eine längere Darstellung seines Lebens zu beginnen scheint: tema con variazioni ist das Ganze, und die Variationen sind das Beste darin, obwohl einige aus dem ersten Buch wörtlich wiederholt sind. Damals suchte er aufgeregt zu beweisen, daß er alles gut, die anderen alles schlecht gemacht hätten; jetzt erzählt ein alter Herr lustige und andere Geschichten aus Kindheit und Jugend und setzt an Stelle des schneidigen Tones eine gemütliche Sammlung von Hof - und Militär-Geschichten, weshalb denn dieses Buch auf keinem adligen Weihnachtstische fehlen wird.
Schulautonomie in der Tschechoslowakei
Eine aufsehenerregende Rede hielt heute der Unterrichtsminister Dr. Hodza im Budgetausschuß. Hodza erklärte, er halte jeden Zwang, der auf deutsche Eltern ausgeübt werde, deutsche Kinder in tschechische Schulen zu schicken, und umgekehrt, für strafbar. Wir werden uns, sagte er, gegenseitig keine Kinder nehmen. Minderheitsschulen würden nur dort gebaut, wo sie notwendig sind.