I shall start my examination with the two men who may be regarded as the founders and leaders of the two movements : George von Schoenerer and Dr. Karl Lueger.
Considered as men they tower, both of them, far above the average political “parliamentary” personal¬ ities. In that slough of universal political corruption their whole lives remained clean and incorruptible. And yet my personal sympathies lay at first on the side of the Pan-German Schoenerer, but they gradually attached themselves to the Christian-Socialist leader as well.
When I compared their capabilities, Schoenerer appeared to me the better and more solid thinker on the basic problems. He visualized the enforced end of the Austrian State more clearly and correctly than anyone else. If his warnings regarding the Habsburg Monarchy had been listened to particularly in the Empire, the disaster of Germany’s World War against the whole of Europe would never have happened. But though Schoenerer realized the inwardness of the problems he was mistaken as regards the human element.
This was Lueger’s strong point. He had a rare knowledge of men, and he especially avoided the error of visualizing men as better than they were. Thus he took better account of the real possibilities of life, whereas Schoenerer had but little understanding of them. All the Pan-German’s ideas were right in theory, but he lacked the strength and understanding to communicate his theoretic knowledge to the public, and to present it in such a form as to fit in with the capability of the mass of the people for absorbing it, for that is, and always will be, limited. Therefore all his knowledge was but the wisdom of a seer, with never a possibility of becoming a practical reality.