Proclamation of the 93

The Proclamation of the 93 (also entitled " Call of the German Intellectuals with the Nations civilisées" ) is a document which was published, in Germany, in the Scientific magazine on October 4th, 1914 in reaction to the German fold at the time of the First battle of the Marne.

It was signed by 93 German intellectuals of the moment (from where its name). One finds mainly in this list of the Nobel Prize, of the Philosophe S, the Artiste S, the Médecin S, and the teachers of international repute.

Contents

What was going to be the First World War had just started. The first shock was the German offensive at the time of the First battle of the Marne in September 1914, it wanted to be short, conquering and victorious but showed a defeat. This proclamation was intended to show with the whole world the unambiguous support German intellectuals for the Kaiser Guillaume II and for the German army.

Text of Proclamation of the 93

Call to the civilized world.

In the capacity as representatives of science and German art, us, undersigned, let us protest solemnly in front of the civilized world against the lies and calumnies whose our enemies try to dirty the Juste and noble cause of Germany in the terrible fight which was imposed to us and which does not threaten anything less than our existence. The walk of the events was given the responsability to refute this untrue propaganda which announced only German defeats. But one works about it only with more heat to denature the truth and to return to us odious. It is against these machinations that we protest aloud: and this voice is the voice of the truth.

It is not true that Germany caused this war. Neither the people, neither the Government, nor the German emperor wanted it. Until the last moment, until the limits of possible, Germany fought for the maintenance of peace. The whole world has only to judge according to the evidence that provide him the authentic documents. Many times during his reign of twenty-six years, Guillaume II safeguarded peace, makes that many times our same enemies recognized. They forget that this Emperor that they dare to compare with Attila, was during long years the object of their mocking remarks caused by his love inébranlable of peace. It is only at the time when he was threatened initially and attacked then by-three great powers in ambush, which our people rose like only one man.

It is not true that we violated the neutrality of Belgium criminally. We have the irrecusable proof that France and England, sure in the complicity of Belgium, were determined to violate themselves this neutrality. On behalf of our fatherland, it had been to make a suicide not to take the initiative.

It is not true that our soldiers undermined the life or to the goods of only one Belgian citizen without to be forced there by the hard need for a legitimate defense. Because, in spite of our warnings, the population did not cease drawing treacherously on our troops, mutilated casualties and cut the throat of doctors in the exercise of their charitable profession. One could make more large infamy only to overlook the atrocities of these assassins and to charge to crime with the Germans the right punishment which they saw forced to inflict with gangsters.

It is not true that our troops brutally destroyed Leuwen. Treacherously attacked in their quarterings by a population in fury, they had, well unwillingly, to use of reprisals and to cannonade part of the city. Most of Leuwen remained intact. The famous Town hall is entirely preserved: with the danger of their life, our soldiers protected it from the flames. So in this terrible war, of the works of art were destroyed or were to it one day, here what any German will deplore sincerely. While disputing to be lower than any other nation in our love of art, we vigorously refuse to buy the conservation of a work of art at the price of a defeat of our weapons.

It is not true that we make the war with the contempt of the law of nations. Our soldiers make neither acts of indiscipline nor cruelties. On the other hand, in the East of our fatherland the ground drinks the blood of the women and the children massacred by the Russian hordes, and on the battle fields of the West the dum-dum projectiles of our adversaries tear the chests of our brave men soldiers. Those which are combined to the Russians and with the Serb ones, and who do not fear to excite Mongolian and negros against the white race, thus offering to the world civilized the most ashamed spectacle that one can imagine, are certainly the last which have the right to claim with the role of defenders of European civilization.

It is not true only the fight against what one calls our militarism is not directed against our culture, as our enemy hypocrites claim it. Without our militarism, our civilization would be destroyed for a long time. It is to protect it that this militarism was born in our country, exposed as no one other to invasions which were renewed of century in century. The German army and the German people do only one. It is in this feeling of union that 70 million Germans without reference to culture fraternizes today, of class nor of party.

the lie is the poisoned weapon which we cannot tear off with the hands of our enemies. We can only declare aloud in front of the whole world which they return false witness against us. With you who know us and, were, like us, the guards of the most invaluable goods of humanity, we shout:

Believe us! Believe that in this fight we will go until the end as civilized people, as people to which the heritage of Goethe, Beethoven and Kant is as crowned as its ground and its hearth. We answer you about it on our name and our honor.

93 signatories on October 4th, 1914