- Yg. 1921, No. 1 -

Christmas and New Year are among the dates on which also the press, above all, of course, the provincial press, which is fed by the editorial office of the correspondent's office, occasionally talks in the pulpit. Some advertising plantation even commits itself to an incarnate pastor who likes to use the opportunity to run some "sayings" through the rotary press. The custom has always been disgusting to me because of its tastelessness and inner untruthfulness; and the spiritual products that pass the inking roller on that occasion are seldom gratifying.

Do you still not know that the moral preaching, even if it was done with the tongue of Abraham a Santa Clara, has never done any good? Has not Christian morality been preached for 2000 years without humanity being disturbed by its natural and sometimes even unnatural egoism in the least?

Since then, six months ago, I have formed a "covenant of renewal of economic custom and responsibility" in Berlin. But I do not get the impression that so far a single cigarette has smoked less, a bottle of perfume spattered less, a pint of champagne less consumed, or any unnecessary and, in view of our situation, criminal expenses omitted.

One would have thought that the revolution would also bring about a "social" upheaval. If citizens and workers become ministers, then perhaps the simple citizenship and the simple sense of the worker will replace the "good sound" of feudal origin. But just as well as any parvenu of the Vornovemberzeit have - with a few glorious exceptions, z. B. the Reich Minister of Economics a. D. Wissell - the new men endeavored to relearn as quickly as possible, to dress up fashionably, to perform "befittingly" and to participate in the "better" way of life. The President of the Reich, Ebert, is a frequent guest on press balls, cinema premieres and races, and the illustrated pages show him as a highly elegant figure in the circle of the entourage. I certainly do not ask him to wear harmonica pants and rubber underwear and to work in workers' pubs; but that he visits balls and the latest fashion, I do not want to like. The new upper class did not understand - despite the fact that our poverty would have given it a brilliant chance - to renew the social customs, to introduce a new, contemporary and better "good sound".

1921, 1 Sch.