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Dear Otto:
On my return from spending Christmas holidays in Elsted I had the happy surprise of your letter announcing a clearer self-insight and the consequent desire to re-establish friendship. That friendship, my dear Otto, has never been broken on my side and you will find no difficulty whatever from me in resuming it. I greet unhesitatingly, therefore, your advances with full cordiality and shall be only too happy if we make uninterrupted progress towards re-establishing the former relationship.
As it is a long time since I have been able to write you with the hope of securing an objective understanding of what I want to say, I will at once seize this opportunity of adding a few remarks of my own situation. To do so, I must divide it into what may be called the general and the personal. Of the former there is little of special importance that I can say, for the situation there is fairly clear. I shall probably be united with our other friends in welcoming the change you describe and in looking forward to the necessary ways in which this will be registered externally. In these respects it is of course plain to you that the past cannot, unfortunately, be wiped out by a mere word or even the best intentions alone: Am Ende ist die Tat, to vary a favourite quotation. But I am perfectly sure that you will meet with nothing but willing help from us all, and in this respect you are in an exceptionally favourable position.
On the personal side there is a little more to say. In the past few years you have met with some opposition from me, and occasionally also with criticism. This you have always tended to ascribe to affective and personal resistance on my part against you and you have not even yet freed yourself from this illusion (»noch bestehende Widerstände gegen mich«). The phenomena you thus interpret had, however, another source, in no way a personal one, and they would have been present whoever had behaved towards me as you did. It suits my nature to work together wi