‘What is romance in history? It is sterility. It is incapacity to imagine, still less to shape, the yet unknown.’
Germany during the 20th century was in a state of flux from perpetual class conflicts. The working class was revolutionary, the middle class was discontented, the bourgeoisie and the nobility were constantly fighting for power. Rathenau believed he had a solution through his vision of a new elitist order that was neither socialist nor capitalist. The vision outlined in this book has much value to all students of politics and Rathenau provided a masterful analysis of the political, economic, and social conditions of Europe in the 20th century.
Walther Rathenau was a German-Jewish industrialist, statesman, and philosopher who organized Germany’s war economy during World War I. He became Germany’s minister of reconstruction and foreign minister after the war and was assassinated in 1922 by right-wing extremists. His father was Emil Rathenau, the founder of the Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft. The character Paul Arnheim in Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities was based on Walther Rathenau.