Character is Destiny
The Autobiography of Alice Salomon
Publication Year: 2004
Published by: University of Michigan Press
Contents
Download PDF (30.2 KB)
pp. vii-viii
Preface and Acknowledgments
Download PDF (25.7 KB)
pp. ix-x
Having published more than two dozen books and well over four hundred articles between 1895 and 1937, Alice Salomon wrote just one more work of any length. After the Nazis forced her to leave her native Germany for the United States, she devoted much of her remaining energy to composing a book-length account of her life, which she titled ...
Introduction
Download PDF (41.5 KB)
pp. 1-7
Alice Salomon was born into a middle-class Jewish family in Berlin in 1872, a little over a year after the foundation of the German Empire at the end of the Franco-Prussian War, and she died in New York City in 1948, more than three years after the end of another con›ict that led to the destruction of much of her native country as well as much of what ...
Character Is Destiny
1. A Child with a Garden, 1872–1889
Download PDF (91.5 KB)
pp. 11-23
My childhood ended at the close of a chapter in German history. I was sixteen when a whole nation grieved over the death of a beloved sovereign and the fatal illness of his successor. Nobody who lived in Berlin in March 1888 could forget the tragic solemnity of the crowds arrayed to see the procession that carried Wilhelm I, aged ninety-one, to his grave. ...
2. Apprenticeship, 1893–1899
Download PDF (63.3 KB)
pp. 24-36
After the death of Wilhelm I, the general outlook was gloomy. My mother impressed upon us our poverty and our misfortunes, which I have since come to realize were relatively negligible and products of her own defeated spirit. My sister married a landowner in Silesia and began having a succession of children. I could easily have embarked on ...
3. Widening Horizon
Download PDF (59.3 KB)
pp. 37-47
After appearing as a substitute for Frau Schwerin at the biannual meeting of the National Council of Women in Hamburg in 1898, I was asked to lecture for women’s clubs and leagues all over Germany. Then, in 1900, the Council elected me a member of the board of officers. ...
4. London–Berlin
Download PDF (96.1 KB)
pp. 48-60
My nebulous childhood ambition to have the whole world for my country was never quite realized, but travel was at least relatively easy before the First World War. No passports were needed on the continent, with the exception of Russia, and there were no customs or currency restrictions. I never got all around the world, but I went as far ...
5. The Aberdeens, Scotland, Ireland, 1904–1908
Download PDF (44.5 KB)
pp. 61-67
The Earl and Countess of Aberdeen epitomized the modern ideal of a union of love in conjunction with a union of work and interests. Lord Aberdeen regarded women as partners and comrades of men, equally responsible for the life of the family and of the community.1 They consulted each other on all things. He adored her and made her, as she ...
6. Two Jobs for Life, I: The School for Social Work, 1907–1913
Download PDF (133.4 KB)
pp. 68-80
In 1900, when the new civil code had come into existence in Prussia, the subjection of women was still upheld in spite of progressive women’s passionate propaganda. As before, the husband alone was entitled to manage the common business affairs, to administer the capital or earnings of himself and his wife, to dispose of or speculate with ...
7. Two Jobs for Life, II: Officer of the International Council: Canada and First Glimpse of U.S.A.
Download PDF (47.1 KB)
pp. 81-88
For Americans, Europe is much nearer than America is for people on the European continent. Americans have to cover such enormous distances when traveling in their own country that a trip to Europe seems proportionately a small undertaking. There is besides an American tradition that considers a visit to ancient centers of Europe an educational ...
8. Brief Harvest before the Storm
Download PDF (59.4 KB)
pp. 89-100
In front of one of Berlin’s historical buildings there stands a work of art—two chariots of bronze drawn by two rearing horses which are reined and curbed by the driver with great strength and exertion. Popular wit had labeled this monument “Checked Progress and Advancing Reaction.” It would be a fitting description of Germany during the decade before the First World War. ...
9. “The Evidence of Things Not Seen”: 1914
Download PDF (35.9 KB)
pp. 101-104
Before plunging into the horrors of the war and the difficulties of my work during those years, I have to dwell on a personal problem that had always existed but was solved at the beginning of and through the spiritual upheaval caused by the war. For the life of the individual is not interrupted; it goes on with sorrow and grief but also with joy. ...
10. Patriotism Is Not Enough, 1914–1916
Download PDF (45.1 KB)
pp. 105-111
In view of the new cataclysm, the First World War has become remote. Yet no one is living today whose life has not been influenced by what it bred. Many of us had to reconstruct our political ideas. In my own case, there was less to be overcome, since I had learned to appreciate the culture of other countries and had spent the first six weeks of ...
11. In the War Office, 1917–1919
Download PDF (50.2 KB)
pp. 112-120
The first two years of the war, the German people were patient and docile. They believed, like the other belligerents, in the propaganda organized for their benefit. Even the Socialists, in spite of their “International” and the fraternity of the workers of the world, supported the government and, with the exception of the Independents,1 voted for the ...
12. Fourteen Years of Democracy, I: Years of Chaos, 1919–1924
Download PDF (58.3 KB)
pp. 121-132
The fourteen years of German democracy were fertile in a new conception of the social state, with emphasis on the rights of the individual. But below the surface, constantly threatening, was a volcano. During the period from 1919 to 1923, the young republic was in danger of being smothered both by the Allies and from within. It was weeks ...
13. Fourteen Years of Democracy, II: My Foreign Affairs, 1920–1933
Download PDF (117.2 KB)
pp. 133-149
In the midst of Germany’s deepest despair, we received an expression of international solidarity, of caritas inter arma. Members of the Society of Friends, who had helped the French rebuild their homes in devastated areas while the war still raged, were again aroused by their Christian and humanitarian conscience. Immediately after the armistice, they ...
14. Fourteen Years of Democracy, III: Social Reconstruction, 1924–1929
Download PDF (77.7 KB)
pp. 150-158
When inflation was over, hope was reborn, and a propitious period began in economic and social spheres. Everyone with hands or a mind and the will to do it could find work and earn a living. There were, of course, many people who could not find their way back to an orderly life, and the war had made some newly rich and many newly poor. ...
15. Fourteen Years of Democracy, IV: Then Came the Collapse
Download PDF (41.7 KB)
pp. 159-164
All of us who believed in a German democracy and approved of the republic are guilty for our blindness. Men and women alike, we lived our narrow lives fulfilling the obligations of our particular field of work. We did not see the traitors in our midst. None of my friends and fellow workers, nobody among the ruling parties, thought the Nazis anything ...
16. The Golden Ring of Friendship
Download PDF (46.5 KB)
pp. 165-172
... When my thoughts wander back to my life in Germany across the distance of time and space, I do not see it in pictures of committees, councils, institutions, and activities that filled my days. Rather, I visualize it as a stream of people, of individuals, broadening and swelling with the years, and many of these individuals as part of the golden ring. ...
17. The Stream of Lava
Download PDF (46.6 KB)
pp. 173-180
It was one of the last days of March 1933, and I was on a train between Bolzano and Merano, in the beautiful, fertile Tyrol, that had been given by the Big Four in Paris to the Italians in payment for breaking the three-power pact with Germany and Austria. Like many people from Berlin, I meant to spend my Easter vacation there and ...
18. The Mystery of Individual Adjustments
Download PDF (44.3 KB)
pp. 181-187
Much has been written about the tragedies of those victim of the Nazis who were starved, deported, tortured, and killed, and I cannot relieve the suffering of those who may still be alive by telling their stories. I can only add to the picture of Nazi Germany by describing the attitudes of individuals and groups within my range of contact. ...
19. A Spy Stands behind You
Download PDF (31.3 KB)
pp. 188-190
In a country dominated by a tyrant, virtually everyone is spied upon from morning till night and from night till morning. What is worse— almost everyone is liable to become a spy. ...
20. Exit Modern Woman
Download PDF (53.3 KB)
pp. 191-200
Adrastic method was employed to erase the status and the rights of women, won during a hard and persistent struggle of fifty years or more. Probably at the request of his female followers, Hitler appointed a young woman outside of public life as leader-organizer for all affairs of women, with the duty of coordinating women with the party.1 ...
21. The Strong and the Weak
Download PDF (47.2 KB)
pp. 201-221
Everything I had done during my life had one object: to help bring about a social order with more justice, more equality of opportunity, and a deeper sense of solidarity and brotherhood. Hitler, whose henchmen have rewritten the Sermon on the Mount, has not only renounced this goal but has put another in its place. ...
22. God and Caesar
Download PDF (37.1 KB)
pp. 209-213
Bismarck, who united the German states into an empire after three victorious wars of aggression, suffered one irreparable defeat—his battle with the Catholic Church. Intending to suppress its educational influence, he had banned from German soil the Jesuit order, founded to counteract the spreading Reformation. But in the worldwide organization of the Church ...
23. The Pastors . . . Martin Niem�ller
Download PDF (42.2 KB)
pp. 214-219
President Hindenburg had at least attempted to check the “Pagan Church,” but soon after his death, Primate Mueller ordered that every pastor was to commit himself under oath to the spiritual as well as the political leadership of Hitler. The Confessional clergy then did what Martin Luther had done in his time. At the end of the service, in ...
24. New Lease on Life
Download PDF (75.8 KB)
pp. 220-229
The secret police summoned me in May 1937 to appear the following morning for a “report on my trips abroad.” After four hours of questioning, I was ordered to leave Germany within three weeks. ...
Appendix A. The Significance of the Women’s Movement for Social Life
Download PDF (42.4 KB)
pp. 231-238
Appendix B. The Revolution of the Mother
Download PDF (41.3 KB)
pp. 239-245
Appendix C. Preface to an Early Version of Salomon’s Autobiography
Download PDF (25.0 KB)
pp. 247-248
Notes
Download PDF (74.3 KB)
pp. 249-264
E-ISBN-13: 9780472025107
E-ISBN-10: 0472025104
Print-ISBN-13: 9780472113675
Print-ISBN-10: 0472113674
Page Count: 280
Illustrations: 8 half tones in text
Publication Year: 2004
Series Title: Social History, Popular Culture, and Pol
