Joseph Goebbels (1897 – 1945)
Adolf Hitler's Propaganda Minister in Nazi Germany.
The end of the year! I draw the balance. Inquiry of conscience and request to the Spirit for progress and maturity.
I grew stronger inside of me and I strive for a clearer knowledge and stronger faith.
There remains the problem of Goebbels' reputation. He wore the title of Big Liar (bestowed by Anglo-Saxon propaganda) and yet he never stopped battling for propaganda to be as accurate as possible. He preferred being cynical and brutal to being caught in a lie. He used to say: "Everybody must know what the situation is." He was always the first to announce disastrous events or difficult situations, without hiding anything. The result was a general belief between 1939 and 1942 that German communiqués not only were more concise, clearer and less cluttered, but were more truthful than Allied communiqués (American and neutral opinion) -- and, furthermore, that the Germans published all the news two or three days before the Allies. All this is so true that pinning the title of Big Liar on Goebbels must be considered quite a propaganda success.
He who cannot hate the devil cannot love God.
The night is my best friend. It calms the storm in my soul and it lets the guiding stars rise.
Christ is the genius of love and as such the most diametric antipole to Jewry, which is the incarnation of hate. ... Christ was the first anti-Jewish opponent of stature. ... The Jew is the lie that became flesh. He nailed Christ to the cross, and thus for the first time in history nailed the eternal truth to the cross.
Today there seems to be only one absolute thing: relativism.
A nation without a religion - that is like a man without breath.
That's what the democratic parties personify: business groups! Nothing more. 'Weltanschauung? What kind of reactionary expression is that? Honor, loyalty, creed, convictions? Man, you are living in yesterday!'
You challenged your fate. To surmount or to die! It was not yet time. Therefore you became a victim.
Your answer was: Death!
We shall be quiet and wait till a star falls from heaven. Can you see, how above one light appears after the other and they together form a dome! We sit in silence and fold our hands in prayer. We shall be quiet and wait until a star falls from heaven.
That was my longing: for the mountains' divine solitude and peacefulness, for pure, white snow. I got tired of the big city.
I am at home again in the mountains. There I sit for many hours amid their white virginity and find myself again.
Hereafter we all have to be redeemed. The world is pulling with a thousand strings. We sin because of indifference and negligence and heap new guilt on the old original one. Our life is a chain of sin and expiation controlled by a destiny that can not be understood.
When I sit near the ocean in the morning and write my verses and breathe the salty wind which is coming from the water, I rejoice in God and I am blissful, as I was as a child.
How beautiful life is! Music and dancing! The violins are sobbing. The first stopper of a bottle of champagne bangs. And now there's a mad singing and shouting. Everybody joins in and sings and shouts! Embracing, friendship, eternal friendship! How beautiful the women are! Dressed in black and red. But you are the prettiest, Hertha! ... Hey, you grumblers, the devil shall get you! Music and dancing. The violins are sobbing. Women dressed in black and red. But you are the prettiest, Hertha!
Hypocrisy is the characteristic feature of the dying bourgeois epoch.
The fatherland shall one day be like this: We're not all equal, but we're all brothers.
Old Christmas Songs. I feel something like a longing for a lost homeland.
We are giving gifts to each other. A beautiful, old New Testament from Hertha Holk is my greatest joy. I thank her for being my solace and my strength.
The night folds her trembling hands over a weary world. Out of a pale blue rises the shining moon. My thoughts are flying to the stars like lonely swans.
I put down the oars and float endlessly as if to the eternal shore. Blue light of the moon shines on my sail. My boat is gliding to a secure haven. Only silent waves break against it. Deepest silence surrounds me and my soul builds a golden bridge to a star.
A mother who is not everything for her children: a friend, a teacher, a confidant, a source of joy and founded pride, inducement and soothing, reconciliator, judge and forgiver, that mother obviously chose the wrong job.