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diplomas; when they are no longer
merely
Mrs. Müller but the counselor’s wife. And in their offices they engage not Miss So-and-So but her first-class diploma. This addiction to titles and diplomas is of course endemic throughout Europe, but there is no doubt that in Germany, and to an even greater extent in Austria, it has developed a monstrous, grotesque, and quite staggering virulence.Only recently I told Gambetti that Austrians and Germans had no respect for human beings but respected only titles and diplomas, believing that a human being began to exist only when he had obtained a diploma or received a title and that until that point he was not a human being at all. Gambetti thought this a gross exaggeration, but in the course of our future lessons I shall prove to him that it is not, that these conditions prevail not only in German-speaking Europe but seemingly throughout Europe, and that in a frighteningly short time they will prevail throughout the world. But of course this addiction to diplomas and titles is not just a twentieth-century phenomenon: mankind has always suffered from it. Centuries ago human beings, having insufficient respect for themselves, decided to boost their self-esteem by presenting themselves in the form of diplomas and titles. Uncle Georg used to say, Whenever I go to Austria and sit in a train, I have the impression that the compartment is occupied solely by professorships and doctorates, not by human beings, that the streets are teeming not with young people or old people but with counselors. My father, having qualified at the forestry school, had his diploma framed and hung it over his desk like an altarpiece. My brother, Johannes, did the same after qualifying at the forestry school in Gmunden. They felt that their graduation from these undoubtedly necessary but quite ludicrous academies was the high point of their lives. And my sisters were always squawking about their high school without even being asked about it. The whole world suffers from this addiction to diplomas and titles, which makes it impossible to lead a natural life. But the extreme state of affairs that so depresses you in Austria and Germany has certainly not been reached in the Latin countries, said Uncle Georg. And I don’t think this Austro-German condition will ever prevail there. The Latin peoples are not so narrow-minded and never have been. Natural life still flourishes there, but here it has almost died out. In Germany and Austria natural life has not been possible for centuries, having been extinguished by the craving for diplomas and titles. In early childhood I had a good relationship with my brother, Johannes. He is—or rather was—only a year older than I. Until we started school and our sisters were born we were good friends. But while we were at school our ways diverged. At the age of six, I think, each of us set off in the direction that was to determine his whole life, and we went in preciselyopposite directions. While Johannes took more and more to the fields and the woods, I moved with equal determination away from the fields and the woods, with the result that he became more and more bound up with Wolfsegg as I grew farther and farther away from it. In the end he was not just pervaded but dominated by Wolfsegg and, I believe, sucked in and devoured by it, as I was ultimately by the world outside it. Very soon my brother’s favorite words were
grain, pigs, pines
, and
firs
, while mine were
Paris, London, Caucasus, Tolstoy
, and
Ibsen
, and his repeated attempts to fire me with enthusiasm for his favorite words, like my attempts to inspire him with an interest in mine, soon became pointless. Emulating Uncle Georg, I spent most of my time in our libraries, while Johannes was usually to be found in the stables. He would wait in the cowshed for a cow to calve, while I was busy in the library decoding a sentence by Novalis; as he waited impatiently for the calf to be born in the cowshed, I waited with