the children are the children of the state and it acts accordingly and has, over the centuries, produced its devastating effect. The state in fact gives birth to the children, only state children are being born, that is the truth. There is no free child, there is only the state child, with whom the state can do what it pleases, it is the state that brings the children into this world, their mothers are merely made to believe that they bring their children into the world, but it is the state's belly from which the children come, that is the truth. Hundreds of thousands come out of that state belly each year, as state children, that is the truth. The state children come into the world from the state belly and they go to the state school, where they are worked on by the state teachers. The state gives birth to its children into the state, that is the truth, and it retains its hold over them. Wherever we look we see only state children, state pupils, state workers, state officials, state pensioners, state dead, that is the truth. The state produces and permits only state people, that is the truth. Natural man no longer exists, there is only state man, and where natural man still exists he is persecuted and chased to death and/or turned into state man. My childhood was to the same extent a beautiful as it was a cruel and horrid childhood, I now reflect, when, being with my grandparents, I was allowed to be a natural person, whereas at school I had to be a state person, at home with my grandparents I was a natural person, at school I was a state person, half a day I was the natural person and half a day the state person, half a day, in the afternoon, I was a natural and hence a happy person, and half a day, in the morning, I was a state person and hence unhappy. In the afternoon I was the happiest, and in the morning the unhappiest person imaginable. For many years, in the afternoons, I was the happiest person that can be, and in the mornings the unhappiest, I now reflect. With my grandparents at home I was a natural happy person, down there at school, in the provincial town, I was an unnatural unhappy person. Walking down into the provincial town I was walking into (the state's!) unhappiness, walking home towards the mountain, home to my grandparents, I was walking into happiness. Walking up the mountain to my grandparents I was walking into nature and into happiness, walking downhill into the provincial town and to school I was walking into un-nature and unhappiness. In the morning I went straight into unhappiness and at noon or in the early afternoon I returned to happiness. School is the state school, where young people are turned into state persons and thus into nothing other than henchmen of the state. Walking to school I was walking into the state and, since the state destroys people, into the institution for the destruction of people. For many years I walked from happiness (of grandparents) into unhappiness (of the state) and back again, from nature into un-nature and back again, my whole childhood was nothing but this toing and froing. Amidst this childhood toing and froing I grew up. But the victor in this diabolical game was not nature but un-nature, the school and the state, not my grandparents' home. The state forced me, like everyone else, into itself and made me compliant towards it, the state, and turned me into a state person, regulated and registered and trained and finished and perverted and dejected, like everyone else. When we see people we only see state people, the state servants, as we quite rightly say, who serve the state all their lives and thus serve un-nature all their lives. When we see people we only see state people as unnatural people succumbed to state dull-wittedness. When we see people we only see people surrendered to the state and serving the state, people who have fallen victim to the state. The people we see are state victims and the humanity we see is nothing other than state fodder with which the ever more gluttonous state is being fed. Humanity is now only state humanity and has lost its identity for centuries, in fact ever since there has been a state, I reflect. Humanity today is only an inhumanity which is the state, I reflect. Man today is only a state man, and in consequence he is today only a destroyed man and a state man as the only humanly possible man, it seems to me. Natural man is no longer even possible, it seems to me. When we see the crowded millions of state people in the big cities we feel sick, because we also feel sick when we see the state. Every morning, as we wake up, we feel sick at this state of ours, and when we step out into the street we feel sick at the state people who populate this state. Humanity is a gigantic state which, if we are honest, makes us sick each time we wake up. Like everybody, I live in a state which makes me sick when I wake up. The teachers we have teach the state to young people, teaching them all the dreadfulness and horrors of the state, all the mendacity of the state, but they do not teach them that the state is all this dreadfulness and these horrors and this mendacity. For centuries the teachers have taken their pupils into the state's pincers, torturing them for years and for decades and crushing them. And here these teachers walk through the museum with their pupils, on the instruction of the state, and by their dull-wittedness ruin their taste for art. But what else is this art hanging on these walls but state art, it seems to me. Reger talks only of state art when he talks about art, and when he talks about the so-called old masters he always only talks about the state old masters. Because the art hanging on these walls is nothing but state art, at least that hanging here in the picture gallery of the Kunsthistorisches Museum. All the paintings hanging on these walls are nothing but paintings by state artists. Pleasing Catholic state art, nothing else. Always only a visage, as Reger says, never a face. Always only lineaments, never features. All in all always only the aspect without the reverse, always only lies and mendacity without reality or truth. All these painters were nothing but utterly mendacious state artists pampering to the vanity of their clients, not even Rembrandt is an exception, Reger says. Just look at Velazquez, nothing but state art, or Lotto, or Giotto, always only state art, just as that dreadful proto-Nazi and pre-Nazi Dürer, who put nature on his canvas and killed it, this horrible Dürer, as Reger very often says because he really hates Durer from the depth of his soul, this Nuremberg engraver. State-commissioned art is what Reger calls the paintings hanging on these walls, including even the White-Bearded Man. The so-called old masters only ever served the state or the Church, which comes to the same thing, as Reger says time and again, they served an emperor or a Pope, a duke or an archbishop. Just as so-called free man is a utopia, so the so-called free artist has always been a utopia, Reger often says. Artists, the so-called great artists, I believe, are moreover, says Reger, the most unscrupulous of all people, they are a lot more unscrupulous even than politicians. Artists are the worst liars, even worse than the politicians, which means that the art artists are even worse liars than the state artists, I can hear Reger say again. This art invariably turns towards the allpowerful and the powerful, and away from the world, Reger often says, therein lies its baseness. This art is pitiful, no less, I can now hear Reger saying yesterday, while watching him from the Sebastiano Room today. Why do painters paint at all, when there is such a thing as nature? Reger asked himself yesterday, not for the first time. Even the most extraordinary work of art is only a pitiful, totally senseless and pointless effort to imitate nature, indeed to ape it, he said. What is Rembrandt's painted face of his mother compared with the actual face of mine? he asked again. What are the Danube meadows through which I can