Those things were lost that are at peace with themselves, hidden, the authoritative, collected, that serving happiness, the work in the artwork. And the elements were lost, the earthly, the aerial, the watery and the blessing of fire from the time of Prometheus, at the beginning of culture. Signs of the adventurous man, the meaning lost and, with it, the sense and the sensual experiences in the work of art. We lament the loss of poverty, this fountain of youth of art, but do we really lament it? To have lost the real, our being, the faces of the animals, of plants, of streets, the lived-in, of houses, the ones trusted for centuries, the face of the walls and the rooms that confined us, the provinces, the lost ones, and the history, like words and becoming old in time, the naïveté. And already, even the technological age of mechanical work has been lost, the co-ordinates that held us, and the war also lost. The great silence about which nothing may be spoken. No war, so that nobody may weep. All that silence for that, above humiliated fathers and disinherited and re-educated sons, violated daughters and wives and the loss of the pastoral culture in us. But even hyenas are allowed to cry, when they are beaten, and the bird flutters when its nest is destroyed, even if it be a bird of prey. The cat may bite when one tries to take its mouse from it, war as the essence of the tragic affirmation of life and of the cultural confrontations to the pure thought in experience of the self, won in a lost victory that was gambled away. In the peace without a heartbeat, of sated comfort, of fear and distress in face of the total loss of the world, even without a war. A victory without insight, seduced, enticed, intimidated, without a country and without knowledge of what it is about: Prussia obliterated, Europe without a backbone, if it be to be against it. Won the wealth of triviality and of the kitsch of feelings and praise of mediocrity in the victory of the middle without sides and height and depth, and without a center.
They speak of work for war, for the wrong side. Scientists, artists, and they protest against the money from companies that produce military objects. But the greatest danger for life comes from us all. That means all research stands today in the commission of the industry and governments of the peace that is destroying us, our nature, within and without.