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Erich Muhsam Biography & Facts

Erich Mühsam (6 April 1878 – 10 July 1934) was a German antimilitarist anarchist essayist, poet and playwright. He emerged at the end of World War I as one of the leading agitators for a federated Bavarian Soviet Republic, for which he served five years in prison. Also a cabaret performer, he achieved international prominence during the years of the Weimar Republic for works which, before Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, condemned Nazism and satirized the future dictator. Mühsam was tortured and murdered in the Oranienburg concentration camp in 1934. Biography Early life: 1878–1900 The third child born to Siegfried Seligmann Mühsam, a middle-class Jewish pharmacist, Erich Mühsam was born in Berlin on 6 April 1878. Soon after, the family moved to the city of Lübeck. Mühsam was educated at the Katharineum-Gymnasium in Lübeck, a school known for its authoritarian discipline and corporal punishment, which served as the model for several of the settings in Thomas Mann's novel Buddenbrooks (1901). The young student Erich, who was by nature rebellious and resisted the school's regimented programme, was often physically punished. It was in the spirit of this resistance that, in January 1896, Mühsam authored an anonymous submission to the Lübecker Volksboten, denouncing one of the school's more unpleasant teachers, which caused a scandal. When his identity became known, Mühsam was expelled from the Katharineum-Gymnasium for sympathising and participating in socialist activities. He completed his education in Parchim. From an early age, Mühsam displayed a talent for writing and desired to become a poet — a career aspiration his father sought to beat out of him.-- His juvenilia consisted of animal fables, and he was first published at the age of 16, earning small amounts of money for satirical poems based on local news and political happenings. However, at the insistence of his father, young Erich set out to study pharmacy, a profession which he quickly abandoned to return to his poetic and literary ambitions. Mühsam left Lübeck for Berlin to pursue a literary career, later writing of his youth that "My hatred grows when I look back on it and visualise the unspeakable flailings which were supposed to beat out of me all my innate feelings." Poet, writer and anarchist: 1900–1918 Mühsam moved to Berlin in 1900, where he soon became involved in a group called Neue Gemeinschaft (New Society) under the direction of Julius and Heinrich Hart which combined socialist philosophy with theology and communal living in the hopes of becoming "a forerunner of a socially united great working commune of humanity." Within this group, Mühsam became acquainted with Gustav Landauer who encouraged his artistic growth and compelled the young Mühsam to develop his own activism based on a combination of communist and anarchist political philosophy that Landauer introduced to him. Desiring more political involvement, in 1904, Mühsam withdrew from Neue Gemeinschaft and relocated temporarily to an artists commune in Ascona, Switzerland where vegetarianism was mixed with communism and socialism. It was here that he began writing plays, the first Die Hochstapler (The Con Men), juxtaposing new modern political theory within traditional dramatic forms, which became a typical trademark of his dramatic work. During these years, Mühsam began contributing to and editing several anarchist journals. These writings made Mühsam the target of constant police surveillance and arrests as he was considered among the most dangerous anarchist agitators in Germany. The press seized the opportunity to portray him as a villain accused of anarchist conspiracies and petty crimes. In 1908, Mühsam relocated to Munich, where he became heavily involved in cabaret. While Mühsam did not particularly care for his work in writing cabaret songs, it would become among his most famous creations. In 1911, Mühsam founded the newspaper, Kain (Cain), as a forum for anarcho-communist ideologies, stating that it would "be a personal organ for whatever the editor, as a poet, as a citizen of the world, and as a fellow man had on his mind." Mühsam used Kain to ridicule the German state and what he perceived as excesses and abuses of authority, standing out in favour of abolishing capital punishment, and opposing the government's attempt at censoring theatre, and offering prophetic and perceptive analysis of international affairs. For the duration of World War I, publication was suspended to avoid government-imposed censorship often enforced against private newspapers that disagreed with the imperial government and the war. Mühsam married Kreszentia Elfinger (nickname Zenzl), the widowed daughter of a Bavarian farmer, in 1915. World War I would see the international anarchist community starkly divided into pro-war and anti-war positions, some hyper-nationalistically supporting Germany, others desiring that Germany's enemies (the United Kingdom, France, and later the United States of America) would be victorious. Mühsam became extremely nationalistic and militant in his support of Germany in the war, writing in his diaries: "And I the anarchist, the anti-militarist, the enemy of national slogans, the anti-patriot and implacable critic of the armament furies, I discovered myself somehow possessed by the common intoxication, fired by an irate passion." His public support of the war was seized upon by the state-controlled press for the purposes of propaganda, and by fellow anarchists who felt betrayed. However, by the end of 1914, Mühsam, pressured by his anarchist acquaintances renounced his support of the war effort, stating that "I will probably have to bear the sin of betraying my ideals for the rest of my life" and appealing, "Those who comfortably acquiesce and say 'we cannot change things' shamefully desecrate human dignity and all the gifts of their own hearts and brain. For they renounce without a struggle every use of their ability to overthrow man-made institutions and governments and to replace them with new ones." For the rest of the war, Mühsam opposed the war through increased involvement in many direct action projects, including workers strikes, often collaborating with figures from other leftist political parties. As the strikes became increasingly successful and violent, the Bavarian state government began mass arrests of anti-war agitators. Mühsam was among those arrested and incarcerated in April 1918. He would be detained until just before the war's end in November 1918. Weimar years: 1918–1933 When Erich Mühsam was released on 3 November 1918, he returned to Munich. Within days, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany abdicated as did King Ludwig III who had semi-autonomous rule in Bavaria, and Munich was in the throes of revolt. Kurt Eisner of the Independent Socialist Party declared Bavaria a socialist republic during the Red Bavaria Revolution. Eisner, in a gesture designed to bring the anarchists int.... Discover the Erich Muhsam popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Erich Muhsam books.