Die Welt

Appears every Friday.

Editorial Office and Administration: Vienna, IX., Türkenstraße 9. Telephone No. 8805. — Communications are to be addressed not to individual persons, but to the Editorial Office or the Administration: Vienna, IX., Türkenstraße 9. Unstamped letters are not accepted, and manuscripts are not returned. — Prices of advertisements: the four-column petit line, 10 kr. Single numbers, 15 kr.

Subscription rates: Austria-Hungary: half-yearly 3 fl. — 6 Kr., yearly 6 fl. — 12 Kr.: For abroad: Germany yearly 13 Mk. 70 Pf., half-yearly 6 Mk. 85 Pf.; England yearly 14 Shg., half-yearly 7 Shg.; Russia yearly 7 R., half-yearly 3 R. 50 Kop.; Switzerland, France, Italy, Turkey, Roumania, Bulgaria, Servia, Greece, Egypt yearly 17 Frcs., half-yearly 8 Frcs. 50 Cts.; America yearly 3 Doll. 40.

No. 10.

Vienna, 11 March 1898.

2nd Year.

The German Emperor's Journey to Palestine.

By O. Erter.

It is now settled that the German Emperor will in the autumn undertake the journey to Jerusalem, in order there to be present at the consecration of the Protestant Church of the Redeemer. In his suite will be found Dr. Barkhausen, the President of the Evangelical Supreme Church Council, who in the year 1893 laid the foundation-stone of the Church of the Redeemer. The avowedly religious purpose cannot, however, impair the political significance of this remarkable imperial journey, which is to last three weeks, although only three days are appointed for the sojourn in Jerusalem. Even were a visit to the Sultan not in contemplation, the personality of Wilhelm II. would nevertheless exclude every supposition that a merely mystic-romantic longing had occasioned the journey into the Holy Land. Wilhelm II. takes very seriously the evangelical traditions of his House and the attributes of the Summus episcopus; he feels himself the protector of the Protestants in the Orient, as in France men feel themselves the protecting power of the Oriental Catholics, and in Russia the protecting power of the Greek Christians in the Orient. But he is in every sense a modern ruler, and his gaze is too wide to remain fixed upon a single point. When this energetic monarch, overflowing with independent ideas and with fresh initiative, undertakes a journey to Palestine, there assuredly hover before him all the connexions which link the Holy Land with the civilized world; and one of these connexions — not the least considerable — is rooted in the Oriental Question.

From the book of the Frenchman Ayme, who two-and-twenty years ago was Wilhelm II.'s teacher in French and who describes his intercourse of that time with the princely pupil of the Cassel Gymnasium, some very interesting particulars have lately become known. Among others, this too: that Wilhelm II., even as a youth, was free of every confessional prejudice. As Emperor he then, in particular by the famous telegram to Baron von Stumm, whereby Stöcker was struck down, gave luminous proof of his freedom from religious prejudice. "Christian-Social is nonsense," ran the first words of the telegram, whose publication the Emperor permitted. This monarch is assuredly led to Jerusalem by no romantic bias; it is a real, political sense of power, together with a never-resting need for self-won knowledge and a sense of responsibility developed to the smallest particular, that attend him whithersoever he goes. Wilhelm II. will come to his evangelical wards; at the consecration of the Church of the Redeemer he will show himself to them as the embodiment of the power upon which they can rely. But as a guest in the realm of the Sultan, whose personal friend he is, he will also draw upon himself the eyes and the wishes of all whom fate refers to the good-will of the Sultan and to the justice of Europe. And therein none of them will be deceived who hope in his magnanimity, and hope that confessional one-sidedness will not hinder him from perceiving how little, in our time, religious considerations are apt to divert political and human necessities from their course.

We do not deny that the tidings of the now finally determined journey to Palestine of Wilhelm II. are apt to fill Zionism too with joyful hopes. From the eye of this monarch no movement in the public life of the present escapes — assuredly not the Zionist movement either. For it stands in immediate connexion with a great problem of national psychology which presses for solution in Germany as well. If antisemitism, as can no longer be disputed, has become so universal that everywhere, with its shrill battle-cries, it shakes at the development of the State and at the social order, how much more universal is Zionism, which bears before it the banner of humanity and justice and strives to cleanse both the State and society of the dark stain that disfigures their civilization! From the illustrious gaze of Wilhelm II. it cannot be hidden of what nature is the right of existence which Zionism claims for itself; and although we are by no means caught in the illusion that during his sojourn in the city of Zion the regard for the Zionist movement will thrust itself upon him in the foremost rank, we nevertheless think that in him precisely, with his circumspection and his astonishing many-sidedness, the Roman maxim Minima non curat praetor will not cloud his understanding for a question which appears small only to those who do not comprehend its phenomenal significance.

From the narrow-minded conception of the Oriental Question, which until but a decade ago still thrust the religious element into the foreground, Wilhelm II. has