14 
LAND & WATBR 
August lO, 1917 
The Prussian in Alsace 
By Henry D. Davray 
MANY people find it difficult to understand why 
a spirit of strife has perpetuated itself in Alsace 
between Alsatians and Germans. They thought 
that the antagonism that naturally followed 
annexation would subside with -the passing of years and that 
the new generations would accept an irremediable situation. 
But nothing of the sort happened. The unyielding pro- 
tests of the Alsatians in 1871, stubbornly repeated in the 
Reichstag in 1874, were never forgotten by the children and 
grandchildren of a population forcibly reft from France, 
the Alsatians relentlessly displayed their irreconcilable ani- 
mosity in such few ways as were left open to them by the 
pitiless tyranny of the Prvissian. Their dishke increased year 
after year, and the estrangement of Alsatians born since the 
annexation has to be admitted by Germans themselves as a 
matter of grave concern. 
The Pan-Germanic Press vituperated the obdurate Alsatians 
who refused to be enthralled by the obvious superiority of 
German domination and kultur, arid it demanded drastic 
measures in order to germanise them in spite of themselves. 
After 44 years of German domination, the Zabern incident 
revealed to an indifferent world the real feeling in Alsace. 
Yet, at the present time, after all that has happened, all 
that has been written and said on the Alsace-Lorraine question, 
many people do not realise why it is that the Alsatians are 
openly against Germany, they do not understand that, in 
spite of forty-four years of tyranny, the Alsatians have 
remained unconquerably French. There is no better ex- 
planation of that attitude than the one every reader may 
find for himself in a book* just published. 
Knatsclike is the typical Prussian, the pedantic, pompous, 
fatuous, blundering, dogmatic, fanatical German professor, 
with no sense of humour and possessed of an overwhelming 
faith in his own immense Prussian superiority and the un- 
quafified excellence of everything German. He is an un- 
forgettable figure, fiercely comical and perfectly odious. 
He is the embodiment of all the characteristics of the race, 
and the idea of a comparison with Don Quixote, Mr. Pickwick 
or Tartarin comes to one's mind. But these immortal 
creations offend against their very quahties, they sin, by an 
excess of what is best in their nature ; they remain good- 
natured, well-meaning, intensely human in all their 
extravagances, and we retain for them, in our inmost heart, 
an indulgent fraternal sympathy. 
But the great German scholar Knatschke, whom Hansi 
has drawn, is a pure product of Kultur in his mind and soul 
quite as much as in his outward appearance. The double 
portrait Hansi gives of him, by pencil and by pen, does not 
permit any doubt as to the likeness ; his short squat puggy 
nose supports golden spectacles ; the reddish face is half 
hidden under a long reddish beard — the blonde beast snout 
which Nietzsche execrated and loathed ; big thick square 
close-clipped skull is surmounted by a Tyrolese felt hat ; 
his fat, flabby, corpulent body is sheathed in a close-fitting 
green-twecd coat of military cut, buttoned up to the neck to 
hide the absence of linen collar ; huge hands with fat, 
plump fingers escape from sleeves without cuffs ; his long, 
goose-stepping legs arc swathed with baggy trousers and his 
big bulky, unwieldy feet are spaciously fitted out with strong ' 
hob-nailed boots. His whole being seems proudly to pro- 
claim Civis Gcrmanus Sum. 
This attractive person who is called Dr. Wilhelm Siegfried 
Knatschke, was born in Tilsit-on-thc-Hetnel, the son of Her- 
. ring-Export-Firm-Owner and Eminent-Tradesman Knatschke. 
He lives in Koenigsberg, from where he devotes all his learned 
attention to the development of Germanism in the reconquered 
land of Alsace. Once, on the occasion of a Philological Con- 
gress, he even came in person on a two days' tour to the 
Vosges, travelling through Alsace, where he learnt all about 
that country' and its people. 
' Hansi 's book was first published in German in igo7. Tt is 
written with a remarkable moderation and contains nothing 
abusive, outrageous or libellous. As he then lived in Mulhouse. 
where he was born in 1873, the. author was particularly care- 
ful not to kindle the vihdictiveness of the malevolent German 
authorities. Whether he uses pen or pencil, Hansi never goes 
to the lengths of German comic papers such as Simplici- 
ssimus or Lnstigc Blatter in either caricatures or lampoons. 
He chaffs, and makes fun of individuals who are their own 
people's laughing stock. But what is lawful on the right 
*Professot^ Knatschke : Selected Works of the great German scholar 
and of hix daughter Elsa. collect ;d and illustrated by Hansi, and 
faithfully translated into English by Prof. R.L. Crewe, Ph.D.; with an 
introduction by Abbe E. Wettcrle, late deputy of Alsace in the 
Reichstag. (Hoddcr and Stoughton). 3s. fed. 
bank of the Rhine becomes an unwarrantable crime on the 
left, and the Boches were infuriated at the audacity of their 
witty and clever " reconquered brother." 
To Alsatians and Lorraincrs, old or young, to those who 
remained in Alsace-Lorraine after the annexation, or to those 
who, hke Hansi, were born since i87iand had to submit to 
German education and rule, Knatschke embodies the domina- 
tion of the conqueror. The ' 'great German scholar ' ' represents 
the spirit which animates his compatriots who swarm in 
as gendarmes, commissaries of police, schoolmasters, petty 
officials or officers in the army. They come arrogant and proud, 
calhng themselves " champions of German Kultur " against 
the " French schovinistic-cultural swindlers." They tact- 
lessly remind the Alsatians of their so-called Germanic 
descent, they extol the greatly superior strength of the German 
Empire to which the " reconquered brothers 'j ought to feel 
grateful to be re-united. They do not understand why the 
Alsatians remain stiff-necked, and keep their hands in their 
.pockets ; they fail to see why the Alsatians resent to be over 
and over again called "re-conquered brothers" ; they wonder 
why the Alsatians submit outwardly to German domination, 
to the harsh, spiteful and oppressive rule of the " conquerors," 
which they inwardly loathe ; they become incensed when the 
Alsatians refuse to speak the German tongue they are taught 
at school and obstinately contrive to learn and to talk French 
between themselves at home, and, as French is forbidden 
in public places, they use their Alsatian dialect that the 
Prussian is at a loss to understand. Finally, being obliged 
to admit that after half-a-century, the population of Alsace 
has not yielded to German persuasion and seductiveness, 
the " conquering brothers " fume, rage, and threaten ; and 
fines and innumerable years of imprisonment have been rained 
on the population. 
From Hansi's book it is easy to realise the unbridgeable 
differences which scjj.irate Alsatians and Germans. On the 
one hand we see a passionate attachment to individual liberty, 
an unquenchable yearning for independence, for the un- 
constrained enjoyment of freedom. It is of their own free 
will and choice that the free towns and counties of Alsace were 
united to France ; they were among the first to adopt the 
ideas of the Revolution ; the Marseillaise was composed and 
sung for the first time in Strasburg ; the Alsatians voluntarily 
enlisted to defend the Rhine against the German invader ; 
Alsace gave to France an inordinate number of famous men ; 
never were Alsatians compelled to abandon their own language 
or dialect ; they were French citizens in the same way as any 
other Frenchmen ; they enjoyed the same franchise, had the 
sam:; legal standing, and the various governments that suc- 
ceeded one another in France during the nineteenth century 
carefully showed all due consideration to the particularities 
of the border province, ai\d the irrepressible spirit of its in- 
habitants, always intolerant of anything that reeked of 
constraint or fetters. 
On the otlier hand, when they became incorporated into 
the German Empire, they were deprived of all freedom. 
The Alsatians have never for one moment a.ssented to their 
forcible annexation. They had refused to France the right 
to give them up to the conqueror and they refused to subscribe 
to the pact in bending to the yoke. Prussianism and its 
spirit of domination failed utterly to make them relent. 
It must be painfully humiliating to the Germans to recognise 
that after all their efforts to germanise a country and a peopi'; 
whom they claim as brothers, as Gfermans by birth and 
language, they have by no means succeeded. Far from it. 
There are not twenty officers of real Alsatian birth in the Ger- 
man army, while Alsatians camd by thousands to fight 
in the ranks of the French army which counts among its 
glorious chiefs a remark able number of Alsatians. 
Hansi himself , who managed to give the sUp to his perse- 
cutors on the very eve of the war, is doing his duty valiantly 
in the ranks of the armies of the French Republic. He was 
for fifteen months at the front, and now as sub -lieutenant 
Jean Jacques Walz, the creator of the " Great German scholar 
Knatschke," is attached to an important service in the rear, 
where he fills a position fitted to his talent. 
In the words of Mr. Balfour, " Alsace and Lorraine were 
reft from France by force. At no moment since 1871 has the 
passionate desire of those taken from France for reunion 
diminished." Hansi has been a living proof of it and now, 
with his undelivered brothers, he awaits the moment when 
France will " restore herself to what she was before thg attack 
engineered against her by Bismarck in 1870," for the moment 
when the last German gendarme will have crossed the Rhine 
on the heels of all the tribe of Knatschkes. 
