When I was dismissed by the publisher of Das Volk [The People] in the summer of 1896, I wrote a very distraught letter to Stöcker. He responded with his old warmth, explaining that although he had not agreed with some aspects of my editorial management, he was not to blame for my dismissal and regretted it profoundly.
A few months after my dismissal, one Mr. Ebert from the committee of the City Mission told me in all innocence that, as early as March, Stöcker had promised the committee that I would be removed from the editorial board and replaced by a conservative personality. When I followed up on the matter, various parties confirmed these facts. Stöcker had lied to me.
Had he written that he was compelled to part ways because of factual disagreements, I would have been saddened but would have resigned myself to the inevitable and warmly remembered countless hours of uplifting teamwork. This way, though, a shadow fell on his image. He had wanted to get rid of me as an editor but keep me as a follower. For this reason, he used the owner of Das Volk, who was blindly devoted to him, as a pretense, blaming him for the rift and discrediting the owner, my friend the government clerk Bresges, in my eyes. He himself [i.e., Stöcker] did not have the courage to answer for something that was solely his responsibility.
In January 1896, under the influence of us young fellows, he had carried out the official separation from the Conservatives. In the summer of 1896, he instructed my successor [Dietrich von] Oertzen on the editorial policy of Das Volk: “Be more conservative than conservative and righter than right.”
CHAPTER 16
BEGINNING OF THE TRANSFORMATION
In my mind’s eye, I have often compared Stöcker and [Friedrich] Naumann, both of whom had been equally close to me. Both were devout Christians. But Stöcker embodied all of the intolerance of the rigid Orthodox Christian, Naumann the all-embracing love of the Nazarene.
Both were driven by the strongest social impulses. For Stöcker, however, the masses were only the object; Naumann, on the other hand, wanted to make them the subject. Both were politicians through and through. But for Stöcker, politics was only the means to propel himself to power; for Naumann, it was the means to help democracy achieve power.
Both strove for lofty things. Yet while Naumann searched for truth his whole life, Stöcker believed he possessed it. Naumann continued to grow as a person until his death, whereas Stöcker felt himself to be fully complete even in his younger years.
Naumann struggled with doubts, Stöcker told a theologian tormented by a torn religious conscience: “Dear brother, doubt originates with the devil. One must be able to beat certain thoughts to death.”
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