Aufruf an die Kulturwelt

Aufruf an die Kulturwelt! (Appeal to the Cultural World, also known as the Manifesto of the 93), was the title of a declaration undersigned by ninety-three German writers, artists,  poets, and  scholars  published on 4 October 1914,  two months after the outbreak of World War I. The appeal was printed in many German  and foreign newspapers

Throwing the weight of their considerable  international  reputations behind  full-hearted propaganda  for the German cause, the distinguished signatories staked "our names and our honor"  to  the claim that anti-German propaganda during the first two months of  the war was entirely false. The 93 attacked any  attempt to separate a positive view on the German culture  from a negative view on Germany's  militarism,  declaring that militarism  was needed for the protection of the German culture, which would long since have been erased from the face of the earth  without the army's  protection. As argued in reference this insistence on an absolute unity between German militarism and German culture ultimately backfired on Germany's reputation abroad.

The manifest denied explicitly the following accusations:
 * That Germany caused this war
 * That Germany trespassed in neutral Belgium
 * That life and property of a Belgian citizens were injured by German soldiers
 * That German troops treated Louvain brutally
 * That the German army does not respect international laws.

The text of the Aufruf was originally written by the playwright Ludwig Fulda, was reworked by his colleague Hermann Sudermann, and finalized by Fulda, Sudermann, and the Berlin politician Georg Reicke. One of the prime instigators of the document was the navy captain Heinrich Lohlein, head of the intelligence office of the German navy. What was perceived abroad as a spontaneous outburst of outraged  German  intellectuals, had in fact  been the brainchild of a government propaganda office.

In 1921 the New York Times published an article quoting the German writer M. H. Wehberg who claimed that only sixteen of the signatories still stood behind their signature, and that some sixty regretted signing it. At the time of signing they believed that the text of the appeal was true, but in the meantime they had discovered that the German army had committed several of the atrocities that were denied so fiercely in 1914. In addition, some of the signatories declared that they had not seen the text before signing it.

for the names of the 93 signatories