English Translation

32 copy. Erich G i e r a c h was born on 23 November 1881 in Bromberg, but Reichenberg became his hometown in the Sudetengau; for here, where his father worked as a printer, he spent the years of his childhood and youth, here he worked as man. In the early years of childhood and youth, the impressions of the national struggle, especially in the nineties, had an impact; they became decisive for his whole view of the domestic question and for his later attitude in life. For just as in the German Reichenberg, where the German-Völkish movement emerged from the liberal "progressive" direction that had been prevailing until then, he also grew up in the home of his parents (in the company that headed Gierach's father, the "Deutsche Volkszeitung" was printed) in the ideas and principles of the decisive national movement. With such solid national conviction, Gierach from Reichenberg, where he had attended and graduated from high school, came to Prague University. His young heart belonged to his people, his head solite belonged to science and that - almost one would be tempted to say: self-indulgent - to German studies. However, he subsequently did not devote himself to the subject of the new German language and literature, although in those years he had a brilliant representation in Prague in August Sauer. As conscientiously as Gie- rach was in charge of his professional training, he became a Dr. phil at the Prague German University. he also passed the former teacher's examination for the subjects German and French; he also did not forget what was to be done and what had to be achieved in the national context of the Prague students. It could not be different from the fact that he had worked in the associations that had broken away from the liberal organizations on student ground as well as in the protective association work and, on the Aryan basis, served the national high thought and its realization: that is, that Gierach joined the Reading and Speech Association of the German-Völkish high school students of Prague, the "Germania", which had been created in conscious contrast to the liberal, under Jewish influence and often under Jewish leadership, the old central association of the reading and speech hall. With such an attitude it was also possible that he was active in the great Völkisches Bunde of the Germans in Bohemia. As a high school student, he also took the call - he entered the subject after completing his university years in Reichenberg - seriously and conscientiously fulfilled it and never stopped working in a folkic way outside the school; early on he took account of his realization that the people's, national and cultural work needed to have its full impact on the connection with politics, that, conversely, it had to be underpinned by a dignified true popular formation. The first period of Gierach's public activity took place in these tracks. The outbreak of World War I called him as an officer to the flags of the old Austrian army. He had the misfortune of getting into Russian captivity without fault, he was fortunate enough to be allowed to return from her home home physically and mentally without break after three years. It was the old home in the new state, under Czech rule. In an atmosphere of never-fallenness (in the true sense of the word), the desperation of his people's and homeland's fellows, he held within himself and in others the view of the German people' s re-emergence, the belief in his inner strength, if only he did not give up and let it be unsustained by his inner disintegration and the disincarnation of the party. That's why he joined the Socialist Party politically.