The British Prime Minister of the Second World War is attributed to the phrase: "We are fighting not with Hitler, but with the German spirit, Schiller’s spirit, so that this spirit is not revived." We found out if such Churchill said.
The authors of most publications in which this quote is given usually do not specify in what source these words of Churchill were discovered. Moreover, it is not so important which author is talking about: this phrase is attributed to the British policy and Ordinary users of the Living Journaland professor MGIMO Elena Ponomareva, And Andrey Fursov, former head of the Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Most often, the phrase is dated in 1940, sometimes clarifying that it was contained in one of Churchill's letters.
In 2002, according to the results of a large television project on BBC Winston Churchill Recognized The greatest British of all times. It is not surprising that all his meetings and performances are documented in detail, and the texts written and uttered by him at different times are preserved and digitized. These materials are now available in electronic archivefrom which we started our test. Schiller is mentioned in just one text of Churchill - article 1935 In the magazine The Strand: “It is amazing that the Germans, educated, scientists, philosophizing, romantic ... Heirs of Goethe and Schiller, Bach and Beethoven, Heine, Leibniz, Kant and hundreds of other great people, not only were not indignant at this bloody bathhouse, but also approved and welcomed her author not even as a ruler, but as a ruler.”
In the Russian -speaking Internet, you can find only a few references to the phrase of interest to us until 2014. At least twice she was brought by the already mentioned Andrei Fursov. In 2011, he wrote article About the reform of education in Russia, and it has such a passage: “Once Churchill said about the war with Germany: we are not fighting with Hitler, but with Schiller’s spirit-so that he is never revived. The same “friends” of Russia could say the same - they do not fight with a specific regime, they are fighting with the spirit of Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin so that it is not revived. ” Two years later Fursov He made a report At the conference "New Paradigm", which took place in Frankfurt (which is ironic, at the Schiller Institute). The speaker himself noticed this coincidence, emphasizing that conducting such a meeting is an “asymmetric answer” of the British Empire and “Imperialist Churchill”.
Apparently, it is Fursov who can be called a popularizer of this quote, which he attributes to Churchill. However, for the first time in Russian her I used it In 2009, Grant Arakelyan, the author of the books "Empire went on the offensive" and "War in Syria (origins, background and reality)." Unlike his colleagues, Arakelyan gives a source in which he discovered this quote: Hughes Emrys. Winston Churchill: British Bulldog: His Career in War and Peace. Exposition Books, 1955, p. 145; quoted as per: Adrian Preissinger, Von sachsenhausen bis buchenwald, p. 23. The author supplies this note and a link to Online collection statements of famous people where the phrase is also attributed to Churchill. Although the creators of the resource warn that they did not check the reliability of quotes, the words about Schiller’s spirit have a link to the same books by Hughes and Prisinger.
To begin with, let's deal with the book of Priissinger. Its name can be approximately translated as "from Zakenhausen to Buchenwald. Communist death factories ", it really was Published in 1997. The publishing house was engaged in the release of the book VowinCkel Verlag, incoming To the group Verlagsgesellschaft Berg, which is called one of the main German book publishers of a law science. The author of the book headed the radical magazine, and in 2002 it sentenced By three years in prison for incitement to rebellion. Now Predissinger Heads His own publishing house, which describes as “a non -conformist microcompany consisting of one person, taking over increased political risk,” and publishes reprints of Hitler’s “my struggle” and other Nazi texts.
Although the activity and worldview of Prissinger raises questions, this is not enough to blame him for the invention of “Quote”. The German author refers to the book of Emris Hughes - contemporary of Churchill, Welsh journalist and politician. His book on the Prime Minister was first published in 1950, then five years later. Unfortunately, such old publications are not so easy to find in the public domain. And yet one Online bibliotek Allows you to check if there are certain words in certain pages in the text. Prisinger refers to the 145th page-Hitler is really mentioned on it and the word “German” is used, but there is no word “spirit”. Search for the word "Schiller" does not give results at all. Most likely, it was Praissinger who invented Churchill's words about the struggle against the German spirit, while the British Prime Minister himself did not say this.
Incorrect attribution of quote
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