Tag: 4. November 2013

Shit the past says

Die Rückbetrachtung von Zeit bringt ja immer interessante Sichtweisen zu Tage. Man hat da ein gewisses Bild. Umso interessanter ist, dass Willi Zwo gar nicht so böse war, wie er gelegentlich heute gesehen wird. Zumindest fanden das einige Zeitgenossen so:

“In 1911 the president of the University California at Berkely, Germanist Benjamin Ide Wheeler, had nominated Kaiser Wilhelm II for the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1913, a spate of articles in Germany and abroad labelled him the Friedenskaiser, ‘Emperor of peace’. In June that year, the New York Times published a long article by Alfred Fried, founder of the German peace movement, who wrote:

His glory as a man of peace, great enough now, will become greater, and his wish to figure in history as a hero of peace will be fulfilled. And historians of the future, in a position to appreciate fully this great and restless epoch through which we are passing … such historians will speak of Wilhelm II as the compelling force in that process of change and will bestow upon him the title of ‘The Great Conciliator’.”

EMERSON, Charles: 1913: The World before the Great War, London 2013, S. 77.

Und nun lehne ich mich zurück und warte auf das Eintreffen von Godwin’s Law.