Politics & Power Quote by Gustav Stresemann

Greatness, Stresemann insists, is not a louder flag but a wider horizon. The line is engineered to puncture the familiar bargain of nationalist politics: that a leader proves devotion by drawing sharper borders, naming enemies, and turning foreign policy into a morality play. Instead, he argues that the most “national” figures are those who can speak beyond the nation without dissolving it - a paradox designed to sound both lofty and practical. “Unifying, not divisive” is less sentimental than strategic: internal cohesion is portrayed as inseparable from external restraint, a rebuke to the domestic politics of grievance that feed on diplomatic confrontation.

The context matters. Stresemann governed in the ruins of World War I, when Germany’s legitimacy was contested abroad and its democracy was brittle at home. His real project - what later gets labeled the “spirit of Locarno” - was to re-enter Europe through compromise: treaty-making, disarmament gestures, economic stabilization, diplomatic normalization. In that setting, “internationally conciliating and still great nationally” reads as an argument against the charge of betrayal. He’s giving a moral alibi to realpolitik: conciliation is not surrender; it is a form of power that trades short-term catharsis for long-term room to maneuver.

Subtext: the leaders who “reach out to all mankind” aren’t saints. They’re people who understand that a nation’s dignity is often rebuilt not by revenge but by credibility - and credibility is an international currency. Stresemann is trying to make moderation sound heroic before extremism can make it sound weak.