AUTORIDADES FACULTADAS PARA CELEBRAR LOS DISTINTOS

Who can

Guess the love of The German?

He climbs down

To the very old mothers Of the earth

And asks them About the Why Of their kindness!

Who may

Recognize the yearning of The German?

He gazes down

Into the pulsating ancient basin Of the well-springs

Which nourish, preserver

And escalate eternal life on earth!

Who may

Fathom the essence of The German?

He scoops out the sea And measures the sky's Mighty bend!

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"The soldier alone is the free man"

The free decision of the will to deed and duty overcomes life's fears

It was in the last days of August in the year 1939... These days were hot enough that they were able to still provide warmth to the nights. And we soldiers, who laid in the broad forests on the Reich's border and waited for the redeeming hour of action, were thankful to be allowed to experience the star clear nights like a very rare gift of fate.

The few of us who at the last moment had left the desks and factories and gone into the field, gained in these nights access to the narrow and closely guarded district of the comradeship of the young.

In the low four-man tents, which we erected in the thicket – carefully camouflaged with moss and twigs – a candle stump burned, in whose yellow light the one and the other comrade still wrote a letter to the dearest one, to the mother, to the friend, simply to the human being who for him was the embodiment of the homeland, with whom he wanted to hold a dialog one more time before the decision.

But mostly, we sat in front of the tents, the back leaning against the tree trunk and the gaze raised to the stars, in order to send our thoughts to the stars of the homeland and to the tomorrow of the combat. We were men of the severest reality, the reality of war, men who disdained revealing their feelings in conversation and preferred to expel with a dry joke any emotion, but above all, sentimentality.

Only when we, accompanied by the sounds of harmonica, softly sang our songs, the simple, unpatriotic, phrase-lacking songs of soldiers, did a quiet yearning or a soft melancholy probably slip into our heart. The yearning for combat and the test and the melancholy of separation or even of premonition. And then the one or the other found words, to which we listened or which we took up in order to make them more important and binding through our own thoughts.

In one of these hours, it now happened that the harmonica player – after he had already accompanied in many a song – began the melody of Schiller's immortal song: "Cheer up, comrades, get on the horse, get on the horse."

We sang the stanzas of this song and were then silent in order to pursue our thoughts.

A soft laugh suddenly sounded in the silence, which peevishly startled us.

A young comrade, who had previously stood leaning against a tree, straightened himself with a jolt and walked around a few steps. Then he laughed once more

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and shook his head: "The soldier alone is a free man? I can still remember a time when it went: to the wall, march, march! And that on command we laid down, crawled and carried out all kinds of curious orders. What does drill have to do with freedom?"

For a moment, we all laughed, for there is no soldier for whom drill had never been an aggravation. But then we got serious again.

Had Schiller not suffered under a totally spiritless compulsion, which to him – one of the most revolutionary German poets – seemed unworthy and unbearable, so that he viewed it as no longer compatible with his soldierly honor? Had Schiller not even fled from the suffocating dilemma, from the embrace of stubbornness?

And precisely this revolutionary Schiller wanted to see solely in the soldier the free man? Was this not a screaming contradiction, an unbridgeable chasm between idea and reality? The answer to our questions, we found with Schiller himself.

"Who can look death in the face, the soldier alone is the free man."

The soldier's freedom hence begins only then to become reality, if he is able to elevate himself in the experience of combat to that greatness of the will, when the thorn of horror is taken from death through the courage of the heart.

The freedom of the soldier accordingly has its realm in the sublimity in the soul not to be darkened by any terror.

Where it is able to vault over the abyss of horror, where it decides for deed and duty over all petty reservations of cowardly life preservation, the soldier dissolves himself from the lowlands of the daily, advantage-bound, bourgeois thinking of supply and enters into the realm of freedom from fear, where alone the great and liberating deeds are born. So did Schiller feel, and so did we feel as well!

"Life's fear, he throws them away!"

And with the fears, the soldier also throws away what the bourgeois human being, the secure person, has set aside in terms of reservations in heaven and on earth, and what he calls his private sphere!

The unreserved doer, the man of the final decision, elevates himself where the burgher collapses before the horror-filled reality of death. Over the ruins of that bourgeois world, however, the soldier strides as victory over the fears.

Our heart became wide and thankful at this thought.

We had assembled for the final decision.

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We felt ourselves as the executors of the warlike will of our nation, which once, in the years of disgrace, had been brought to the brink of desperation by the cowardly and bribable creatures of the fears of this life.

We knew that we were the Führer's followers, who himself thought and acted as a German soldier.

We were National Socialists, whose worldview had been born on the battlefields of the great war, when horror forced people to the decision whether they wanted to be slaves of fear and hence of decline, or freemen, who recognized duty as the greatest relic of this world.

The Reich of the Führer had been created from that so often summoned and so often wrongly understood front spirit, which, however, is nothing else than the ultimate realization that in the hearts of the brave glowing, passionate will to the liberating deed is able to become political reality through the sacrifice-ready fulfillment of duty.

Beyond dream and mood, this reality had become our German worldview.

Now we laid in the forests and waited for the command in order to prove that our idea, the idea of alert and knowing soldiery, had to be stronger than that empty drivel of the tired and old Europe.

"And if you do not risk life, Never will life be won for you."

We wanted to gain a new life, a life in a greater, in a soldierly Germany, in a Germany that was worthy of the highest sacrifice.

We did not know what the next day would bring us. We only surmised that difficult tests and hard challenges awaited us.

And we hoped to be strong enough at the moment of decision to be able to pass the incorruptible court of history.

For a long time, we sat silently after this conversation and our thoughts rose up to the starts, which we had already shined in sublime inaccessibility over the yearnings and deeds of our fathers and forefathers.

When then finally the harmonica player took up the song again, we sang it full of reverence:

"Cheer up comrades..."

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Comrade!

Comrade!

Now we have again become A gray Front!

You in the south, I in the north!

And the old, wild songs.

Which the fathers sang in battle, Who walked in the path of death, Are also our heart's language.

Comrade!

The great cause Is the shining beacon:

Germany! Freedom! Eternity!

And the Reich of this world!

Comrade!

Who of us falls

In the great, horrible murdering.

You in the south, I in the north, Becomes a part of eternity,

Which shines, demands, compels there, So that the grandchildren one day sing, Just like we who went out

And weighed their heart in combat.

Germany! Freedom! Eternity!

And the Reich of this world!

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