Erich Mühsam | |
|---|---|
 Mühsam in 1928 | |
| Born | 6 April 1878 |
| Died | 10 July 1934(1934-07-10) (aged 56) |
| Occupation(s) | Poet, writer, playwright, andcabaret performer |
| Movement | Anarchism,Anti-militarism |
Erich Mühsam (6 April 1878 – 10 July 1934) was a Germanantimilitaristanarchistessayist,poet andplaywright. He emerged at the end ofWorld War I as one of the leading agitators for afederatedBavarian Soviet Republic, for which he served five years in prison.
Also acabaret performer, he achieved international prominence during the years of theWeimar Republic for works which, beforeAdolf Hitler came to power in 1933, condemnedNazism andsatirized the futuredictator. Mühsam was tortured and murdered in theOranienburg concentration camp in 1934.
The third child born to Siegfried Seligmann Mühsam, amiddle-classJewishpharmacist, and his wife Rosalie (née Cohn), Erich Mühsam was born inBerlin on 6 April 1878. He had two siblings Hans andCharlotte. Soon after, the family moved to the city ofLübeck.
Mühsam was educated at theKatharineum-Gymnasium in Lübeck, a school known for itsauthoritarian discipline andcorporal punishment, which served as the model for several of the settings inThomas Mann's novelBuddenbrooks (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 theLübecker 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 insocialist activities. He completed his education inParchim.
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.-- Hisjuvenilia 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 studypharmacy, 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."[1]
Mühsam moved to Berlin in 1900, where he soon became involved in a group calledNeue Gemeinschaft (New Society) under the direction ofJulius andHeinrich 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 withGustav Landauer who encouraged his artistic growth and compelled the young Mühsam to develop his own activism based on a combination ofcommunist andanarchist political philosophy that Landauer introduced to him. Desiring more political involvement, in 1904, Mühsam withdrew fromNeue Gemeinschaft and relocated temporarily to an artists commune inAscona,Switzerland wherevegetarianism was mixed withcommunism andsocialism. It was here that he began writing plays, the firstDie Hochstapler (The Con Men), juxtaposing newmodern 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 toMunich, where he became heavily involved incabaret. 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 foranarcho-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 usedKain to ridicule the German state and what he perceived as excesses andabuses of authority, standing out in favour of abolishingcapital punishment, and opposing the government's attempt at censoring theatre, and offering prophetic and perceptive analysis of international affairs. For the duration ofWorld 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 (theUnited Kingdom,France, and later theUnited 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."[1] 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"[1] 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."[1] 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, theBavarian 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.
When Erich Mühsam was released on 3 November 1918, he returned toMunich. Within days,Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany abdicated as didKing Ludwig III who had semi-autonomous rule inBavaria, and Munich was in the throes of revolt.Kurt Eisner of theIndependent Socialist Party declared Bavaria a socialist republic during the Red Bavaria Revolution. Eisner, in a gesture designed to bring the anarchists into the new government, offered a ministry position to Mühsam, who refused, preferring to fight along withGustav Landauer,Ernst Toller,Ret Marut and other anarchists for the development of Worker's Councils (Soviets) and communes.
However, after Eisner'sassassination in 1919, theBayerische Räterepublik (Bavarian Soviet Republic) was proclaimed, ruled by independent socialistErnst Toller and anarchistsGustav Landauer and Erich Mühsam. This government was short-lived, lasting six days, being overthrown by communists led byEugen Levine. However, during this time, the Bavarian Soviet Republic declared war onSwitzerland. When theWeimar Republic'sFreikorps crushed the rebellion and took possession of Munich,Gustav Landauer was killed and Mühsam arrested and sentenced to fifteen years in fortress confinement (Festungshaft).
While in jail, Mühsam was very prolific with his writing, completing the playJudas (1920), and a large number of poems. In 1924, he was released from jail as the Weimar Republic granted a general amnesty for political prisoners. Also released in this amnesty wasAdolf Hitler, who had served eight months of a five-year sentence for leading theBeer Hall Putsch in 1923.
The Munich to which Mühsam returned was very different from the one he left after his arrest. The people were largely apathetic, in part because of the economic collapse of Germany under the pressure of reparations for World War I andhyperinflation. He had attempted to restart the journalKain which failed after a few issues. In 1926, Mühsam founded a new journal which he calledFanal (The Torch), in which he openly and precariously criticized the communists and the farRight-wingconservative elements within the Weimar Republic. During these years, his writings and speeches took on a violent, revolutionary tone, and his active attempts to organize a united front to oppose the radical Right provoked intense hatred from conservatives andnationalists within the Republic.
Mühsam specifically targeted his writings to satirize the growing phenomenon ofNazism, which later raised the ire ofAdolf Hitler andJoseph Goebbels.Die Affenschande (1923), a short story, ridiculed the racial doctrines of the Nazi party, while the poemRepublikanische Nationalhymne (1924) attacked the German judiciary for its disproportionate punishment of leftists while barely punishing the right wing participants in the Putsch.
In 1928,Erwin Piscator produced Mühsam's third play,Staatsräson (For reasons of State), based upon the controversial conviction andexecution ofNicola Sacco andBartolomeo Vanzetti in theUnited States.
In 1930, Mühsam completed his last playAlle Wetter (All Hang), which sought mass revolution as the only way to prevent a radical Right-wing seizure of power. This play, never performed in public, was directed exclusively at criticizing the Nazis who were on the rise politically in Germany.
Mühsam was arrested on charges unknown in the early morning hours of 28 February 1933, within a few hours after theReichstag fire in Berlin.Joseph Goebbels, the Nazipropaganda minister, labelled him as one of "those Jewish subversives." It is alleged that Mühsam was planning to flee toSwitzerland within the next day. Over the next seventeen months, he would be imprisoned in the concentration camps atSonnenburg,Brandenburg and finally,Oranienburg.
Marinus van der Lubbe, an alleged Communist agitator, was arrested and blamed for the fire, and his association with Communist organizations ledAdolf Hitler to declare a state of emergency, encouraging aging presidentPaul von Hindenburg to sign theReichstag Fire Decree, abolishing most of thehuman rights provisions of theWeimar Republic'sconstitution (1919).Hitler used the state of emergency to justify the arrests of large numbers of German intellectuals labelled ascommunists,socialists, andanarchists in both retaliation for the attack and to silence opposition for his increasing suppression of civil liberties.
A contemporary English-language Anarchist publication,Man!: a journal of the anarchist ideal and movement, claimed that:
After breaking his teeth with musket blows; stamping a swastika on his scalp with a red-hot brand; subjecting him to tortures which caused him to be taken into a hospital, even now the fascist hyenas of the Sonninburg concentration camp continue their beastly attacks upon this defenseless man. The last news are really atrocious: the Nazi forced our comrade to dig his own grave and then with a simulated execution made him go through the agony of a doomed man. Although his body has been reduced to a mass of bleeding and tumefied flesh, his spirit is still very high: when his traducers tried to force him to sing the Horst-Wessel-Lied (the Nazi's anthem) he defied their anger by singing the Internationale.[2]
On 2 February 1934, Mühsam was transferred. The beatings and torture continued, until finally on the night of 9 July 1934, Mühsam was tortured and murdered by the guards, his battered corpse found hanging in a latrine the next morning.[3]
An official Nazi report dated 11 July stated that Erich Mühsam committed suicide, hanging himself while in "protective custody" at Oranienburg. However, a report fromPrague on 20 July 1934 inThe New York Times stated otherwise
His widow declared this evening that, when she was first allowed to visit her husband after his arrest, his face was so swollen by beating that she could not recognise him. He was assigned to the task of cleaning toilets and staircases and Storm Troopers amused themselves by spitting in his face, she added. On 8 July she saw him for the last time alive. Despite the tortures he had undergone for fifteen months, she declared, he was cheerful, and she knew at once when his "suicide" was reported to her three days later that it was untrue. When she told the police that they had "murdered" him, she asserted they shrugged their shoulders and laughed. A post mortem examination was refused, according to Frau Mühsam, but Storm Troopers, incensed with their new commanders, showed her the body which bore unmistakable signs of strangulation, with the back of the skull shattered as if Herr Mühsam had been dragged across the parade ground.[4]
After the death, publications would accuseTheodor Eicke, the former commander of theconcentration camp at Dachau, as the murderer, aided by two Sturmabteilung (Storm Troopers) officers identified as Ehrath and Konstantin Werner. It was alleged that he was tortured and beaten until he lost consciousness, followed by an injection that killed him, and that Mühsam's body was taken to a latrine in the rear of the building and hung on a rafter so as to create the impression that Mühsam had committed suicide.[5]
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