I attended the elementary school at Schweinfurt and the secondary school.

Although as a sailor I despised politics - for I loved my sailor's life and still love it today - conditions forced me to take up a definite attitude towards political problems.

What would you do if your country's welfare depended on labor? When a ship is in a storm it requires one captain.

I did that all the more, if I may say so, because I was aware of the fact that there is an inclination to go to extremes in German people, and in the German character generally.

I had repeatedly made written requests to the Fuehrer that I might be allowed to join the Wehrmacht as an ordinary soldier. He refused to give me this permission.

I was member of the Diet as long as it existed, until May 1933.

Many years before, I had left a beautiful country and a rich nation and I returned to that country six years later to find it fundamentally changed and in a state of upheaval, and in great spiritual and material need.