Indeed, my father was one of those who did not, or did not wish to, understand the times, just as he had already refused to understand the war. He entrenched himself behind the maxim: ‘A Prussian official does not speculate’, and bought no shares. At the time I regarded that as extraordinarily narrow-minded and out of character, for he was one of the cleverest men I have known. Today I understand him better. In retrospect, I can sympathise with the disgust with which he rejected the ‘monstrous scandal’ and with the impatient contempt that lay behind the attitude that ‘what ought not to be,
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