WEST GERMANY Centenary of the German Reich Aswini K Ray GERMAN politics has always managed to combine the sublime with an element of the ridiculous. No straight line could be drawn, as is often attempted, through German history from Bismarck to Hitler through Hegel, Fichte, Trietscke, and Nietzsche. Humanism is as much a part of German historical tradition; for, otherwise one cannot explain Bach, Beethoven and Brecht, or Marx, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknicht, or rebels of the Bauhaus school of artistes, painters and architechts, and in more recent times the anti-authoritarian school of Adorno, Horkhymer, Habaamas and Mereuse, A CUMULATIVE PRODUCT What is peddled about as the 'German tradition' is the cumulative product of Anglo-Saxon prejudice, French convenience and, for the Russians, the exigencies of the Cold War. Why else did so many eyes on both sides of whatever exists of the ideological barrier look askance when