The Soldier at the Western Front – Propaganda War
Source 3: Declaration of the German academic teachers
The declaration of the German academic teachers, written by the philologist and President of the Academy Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (1848-1931) from the 16th October 1914 was signed by almost all lecturers of the 53 German universities and Technischen Hochschulen. Even sharper in its tone than the “Manifesto of the 93” it claimed to justify the war as a cultural defensive struggle.
”[...] There is no other spirit in the German Army than it is in the German population, because the both are one and we belong to them as well. Our army also fosters science and owes it not least of her successes. The Service in the army makes our youth fit even for all tasks of peace, also science. Because it teaches self-forgetting dutifulness and gives the confidence and honor of the real free man who willingly subordinates under the whole. This spirit lives not only in Prussia but can be found in all lands of Germany. It is the same in war and peace. Now our army fights for the freedom of Germany and for all our goods of peace and the moral civilization not only in Germany. It is our believe that the whole culture of Europe and its good depends on victory that will be achieved by the German ‘militarism’, the discipline, the loyalty, the self-sacrifice of the united free German people.” Declaration of the German academic teachers of the German Empire, 16th October 1914
