Rathenau, both diligent and prudent, seeks to free Germany from its isolated predicament and reintegrate it into the international community, to modify the Treaty of Versailles, and to negotiate fair terms for Germany’s reconstruction. Rathenau is considered a controversial figure. As an industrialist, journalist, and politician, he is in the public spotlight. Foreign voices are hostile toward him; to the national right, he is a thorn in the side. Some see him as torn between two worlds. In his novel *The Man Without Qualities*, Robert Musil introduces an industrialist named Dr. Paul Arnheim. In this Dr. Arnheim, Musil reflects the internally torn Walther Rathenau: “Arnheim fared no differently than his entire age. This age worships money, order, knowledge, calculation, measurement, and weighing—in short, the spirit of money and its kin—while at the same time lamenting it. While it hammers and calculates during its working hours and behaves outside of them like a horde of children, driven from one excess to the next by the compulsion of ‘So what do we do now?’, which at its core has a bitter, repulsive taste, it cannot shake off an inner call to repentance.” (Chapter 106, page 509).
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