Konrad Haenisch (13 March1876 - 28 April1925) was a GermanSocial Democratic Party politician and part of "the radical Marxist Left" of German politics.1 Friend and follower (Parvulus in his own words) of Alexander Parvus. Haenisch was initially against World War I in 1914, but subsequently supported it. In a speech given to the 1916 SDP conference, he remembered the 'August enthusiasm':
The conflict of two souls in one breast was probably easy for none of us. [It lasted] until suddenly—I shall never forget the day and hour—the terrible tension was resolved; until one dared to be what one was; until—despite all principles and wooden theories—one could, for the first time in almost a quarter century, join with a full heart, a clean conscience and without a sense of treason in the sweeping, stormy song: "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles".2
Notes
^ Nicholas Stargardt, The German Idea of Militarism. Radical and Socialist Critics 1866-1914 (Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 138.
^ Carl Schorske, German Social Democracy 1905-1917. The Development of the Great Schism (Cambridge University Press, 1955), p. 290.