Short Speech by a Rootless Cosmopolitan

Shortly before Christmas, on my way to Lauubeck from Gauottingen, I was changing trains in Hamburg when a young man approached me, practically cornered me, and called me a traitor to the fatherland. He left me standing there with the phrase echoing in my ears. Then, after I had more or less calmly bought myself a newspaper, he approached me again, now with no mild threat but the statement that it was time to do away with my kind.

My initial anger I managed to shake off while still ...