Summer with Tucholsky | Memorial at the Deutsches Eck

On the Moselle, things were still going well. We drank our way slowly down the river, taking the little train from Trier to Bulley, and at every third station we got off to see how the wine was. It was. Once we'd determined that, we got back on: the train had a carriage that looked like a saloon car inside, from which you could have easily waged war, with a telephone on the table, fat cigars, and: "His Majesty has just been notified of the assault." But we weren't waging war; we pressed the waitress, and then a bell button appeared, or vice versa, and then we could sit at the long table and drink a pure Mosel while playing dice. And during these hours on the railway, the games "Lottchen Fat," "Spix is Proud," "Georgine, the Orderly Flower," and "Karlchen and the Little Deer" were born—the latter game in memory of Karlchen's love adventures in the open, fresh, and pious forest, where the little deer had once watched him. I lost terribly and always had to pay. But that's how it is.

Bernkastel, Traben-Trarbach, Bulley... but then we boarded a respectable train and traveled to Kolbenz. (This pronunciation was adopted in case Jakopp had dentures: it's easier to pronounce.) In Kolbenz, we drank a Rhine wine for geography's sake, and he could say "Papa" and "Mama," but we couldn't anymore. The next morning—it was a bright and clear Sunday—we went for a walk.

I didn't know Kolbenz. The first thing that struck me was a large and noisy bourgeois crowd of travelers who behaved in a strangely agitated manner. Just as black-haired women, once in Paris, succumb to the spell of the word 'Paris' and behave in a way they would never at home, so here the blonde ladies were falling over in their slippers; the Rhine, Father Rhine, the German Rhine, clinked in the glasses, and it was quite hideous to behold. The second thing that struck me back then was the "Schmachch" (disgrace). We pronounced the word with two 'ch's, and we meant the French, whose "black disgrace" we had seen so much of in the mainstream cinemas. Here, there was only white disgrace, and we didn't like it. Not because we dislike the French, but because we dislike the military. We're just not as stupid as, for example, the Kolbenz "General-Anzeiger," which, after the disgraceful withdrawal, harried them about murder and death without even a moment's investigation: how the Germans behaved in Belgium and France, what the military actually is and for whom it works, and how Europe and its national disunity are to blame for this entire nameless misfortune, the war and its consequences. Instead, the newspaper, in true petty-bourgeois rage at these unconditionally condemnable abuses, now crowed after a few thousand soldiers whose youthful energy is being abused just as unproductively as soldiers in every country—including Germany.

So we strolled along the Rhine. I hadn't learned my geography yet again, so I let Jakopp explain the area to me. There was the Ehrenbreitstein; on it, to the delight of all the Rhine cadets, a French flag burned—really, the flag burned high on the flagpole, smoldered, and lit up again... I'm not interested in the military, and I don't know what they were smoldering about. It's irrelevant, anyway, as irrelevant as everything these uniformed brothers do. And there was the Rhine, roaring with kitsch, and, as Goethe says, there were large ships about to arrive on this river... and suddenly I had the biggest shock of this trip. I still remember it very clearly:

We walked along the wide, tree-lined avenue; up ahead, on the corner, was a photographer's booth. They had pictures on display, brown like old daguerreotypes. Then there were no more trees, an open space. I looked up... and almost fell over.

There stood—bang!—a gigantic monument to Kaiser Wilhelm I: a fist made of stone. At first, it took your breath away.

Upon closer inspection, one discovered that it was a magnificent, Wilhelminian, artistic work of art. The thing looked like a gigantic cake topper and represented the Germany that was responsible for the war—now we're going to beat them! In Holland.

At first glance, there's not a single blank spot to be found on this monster. It has the ornamental measles.

Up above, on a horse, what a horse! on a steed, what a steed! on a gigantic battle stallion like something out of a Wagner opera, hoihotoho! The old gentleman sits there doing something he's never done in his entire life: he threatens the land, the horse threatens too, and if I remember correctly, some woman is milling around him, offering him something. But my memory could be deceiving me... perhaps she's just giving the giant horse a piece of candy. And ornaments and rearing reptiles and strangled snakes and eagles and coats of arms and curlicues and vomited lilies and what not... it was quite magnificent. I remained silent, shocked, and looked at Jacob.

"Yes," said Jakopp, "that's the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial at the Deutsches Eck."

That's right: a second river flowed into the first, and apart from the factory chimneys, it was a pretty area, far too pretty for this stone lump, this lump, this truncated monument. "What... how..." I stammered, moved. Then I heard a quiet little voice to my left. A boy had unexpectedly approached me. He had probably noticed my perplexity, and he said: "Shall I explain the monument to you?" A quick grasp of the war situation is typical of the SA man, and I said: "Explain the monument to me."

The boy looked everywhere except at the cake topper. He was asleep standing up, his eyes had the expression of a peacefully grazing cow—I had never seen anything like it in a human being. He spoke in a modulationless, squeaky voice. And because this poor child wasn't doing this alone, but four or five of his colleagues, as I later saw, were doing the same thing professionally all Sunday morning long, in front of the monument and further down, in front of the hotel, and everywhere, I was able to hear what the boys had memorized several times. After several glasses of good wine to refresh their memories, it sounds something like this:

"This monument was established in 1897; it depicts the mounted Emperor Wilhelm I, as well as a goddess of victory and the defeated enemies. The goddess of victory is an angel of peace after lost wars and has wings five meters wide. The monument weighs five million kilograms and has a surface area of 1200 square meters, making it a great work of art. From the base stands the pedestal upon which the monument is built; on this pedestal stands the actual pedestal, and on this the sub-pedestal, upon which the monument pedestal stands. The artists responsible for the monument are Schmitz and Hundrieser. The inscription inscribed on the monument reads: 'The empire will never be destroyed if you are united and loyal.' The heads of the sea serpents represent Germany's enemies, and the granite of the pedestal comes from the Black Forest. The Moselle flows behind the monument; its current is particularly fast here because it has to pass by the monument. The monument was opened during the reign of Kaiser Wilhelm II and therefore cost two million marks. This is the monument at the Deutsches Eck." (Big pause for tips.)

As I read in the newspaper, the speeches they gave after the disgrace's departure were just like the memorial. But can you imagine that a government would ever be willing to cart away such frozen dung? On the contrary: they will soon erect a new one: the Reich Memorial. When it's built, snot-faced boys will go and explain it to us: the restaurants all around will be full, and in the mass graves of northern France, a murmur will rise:

"For what? For this."

The text appeared in the “Weltbühne” in January 1930.