“We hear a lot about Palestine now; it does not appeal to us. Anyone who goes there exchanges nationalism and narrowness for nationalism and narrowness. Also it is a country for capitalists. It is about the size of the province of East Prussia; inhabitants: 200,000 Jews and 800,000 Arabs. — Sebba spoke very pessimistically about Germany. He said the boycott against us was very tight. The regime will maintain itself for a while with tyranny and the most extreme coercive measures like bread rationing, wage reductions, inflation, perhaps last the winter, perhaps even longer — but then there will be an unimaginable and bloody chaos. Because after the fall of this government there would be no ‘fall-back position’ because it has destroyed every organization. (In the course of the last few weeks the one remaining party, the Zentrum, dissolved itself.) He makes the worst possible predictions for the Jews.
For my part it becomes ever more clear to me how completely useless a creature of over-refinement I am, incapable of surviving in more primitive surroundings. Sebba, Blumenfeld, Dember earn a living here and there, can somehow switch to practical things. I, on the other hand, I cannot even be a language teacher, only lecture on the history of ideas, and only in German and from a completely German perspective. I must live here and die here.”
— July 9, 1933
