"We, who have lived and sometimes suffered through big parts of the passing century, are still under the spell of its errors and criminal arrogance, its disappointments and terror. And so we tend to assume that our memory will be the one of future generations, too.
But on our own we merely remember the famines of the early industrialization from the 19th century, the bloody wars and civil wars. The 19th century rather means for us the grandious start of modern age in music, painting and literature; the overwhelming development in science and technology; and finally the progress of a social democracy. The dreadful clash of Gettysburg has turned to a great speach of Lincoln; Napoleon lies honored in the Invalide. For us the 19th century looks certainly very different than for most of its witnesses at that time.

How will it be for the 20th century? Two World Wars, millions of deads and the holocaust will certainly be remembered for longt. But even those events will no longer characterize the image the 20th century in due time. We shall not forget: as an emotional memory not the inquisition but Galilei´s [word] „And it still moves“ has remained.
The 20th century was full of such courage against totalitarian opression, too. Their memory will not fade away. The most important thing may be that the 20th century has created confusing certainties out of mankinds presentiments: Our scientific-technical potential has revealed itself as nearly unlimited, but the deeper we infiltrated nature the more  we have also experienced in an unfalsifiable way that we are not the creation of a merciful hand but rather a fortunately escaped brother of the chimpanzees. And, that we may enlighten our world as if we had taken the stars from the sky, but [we] always experienced at the same time, how small we remain in the great picture: The earth a planet, not to be seen different for other planets, than we regard them.
What is the lecture for 21st century from this? One thing is certain: We don´t know anything about the future. Maybe this one: The single human learns in his life, humanity however has so far shown to be only slowly able to learn. This is why hope is still our most certain reason. Our work alone may stabilise it."