thy mind can dwell only in a healthy body. Especially if we bear in mind the mass of the people, aside from a few exceptions, this statement becomes absolutely valid" (253). Barely two hundred pages later, Hitler returns to this proverb, but there he manipulates it in an even more obviously. Hitler speaks no longer of a balance between the mind and the body, but he clearly prefers the "krperliche Ertchtigung" (physical training) or "krperliche Gesundheit" (physical health) over the mind or intellect. The Greek ideal is lost, as the proverb is used to help justify Hitler's powerful racial politics; "And as in general the precondition for spiritual achievement lies in the racial quality of the human material at hand, education in particular must first of all consider and promote physical health; for taken in the mass, a healthy, forceful spirit will be found only in a healthy and forceful body. The fact that geniuses are sometimes physically not very fit, or actually sick, is no argument against this. Here we have to do with exceptions which - as everywhere - only confirm the rule" (407-408).Hitler's Mein Kampf is not so much an autobiography but in large parts rather "the typical life experience and the current ideological clichs of the collective social experience". These language clichs reach from stereotypes to crude expressions in the form of slogans and curses. Hitler's book was quoted plenty of times by teachers in schools which quickly became Nazified. Hitler's slogans from this book appeared on posters, in headlines, and on the radio, and they even wound up as sententious remarks in the "Bchmann" book of German quotations. There is no way to deny the effectiveness of this book. It found its readers one way or the other, just as Hitler lured people in droves to listen to his speeches. The printed book helped Hitler to gain ultimate power,(5) and his manipulative and shrewd misuse of folk speech with its proverbs and proverbial e...
