Gustav Landauer

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Gustav Landauer : biography

7 April 1870 – 2 May 1919

In 1899 Landauer met the poet and language teacher Hedwig Lachmann, who would later become his second wife. In September of that year they decided to stay together for a longer period in England, where Landauer became close friends with the Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin. During this time Lachmann’s and Landauer’s daughter Gudula was born. In 1902 they returned to Berlin.

In 1903 Landauer divorced his first wife and married Hedwig Lachmann the same year. In 1906 their second daughter Brigitte was born.

From 1909 to 1915 Landauer published the magazine "The Socialist" (Der Sozialist) in Berlin, which was considered to be the mouthpiece of the "Socialist Federation" (Sozialistischer Bund) founded by Landauer in 1908. Among the first members were Erich Mühsam and Martin Buber. As a political organisation the federation remained unimportant.

In these years Landauer himself wrote 115 contributions for the magazine concerning art, literature and philosophy but also contemporary politics. In this magazine he also published to a greater extent own translations of the French philosopher and theorist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Because of the tightening of censorship the magazine had to be closed down.

In 1914 Landauer would not let himself be carried away by the general enthusiasm for the German war effort. Instead, he fought against it from the very beginning from his anarchist and pacifist standpoint.

Because of the increasing difficulties and poverty during the war, Landauer and his family moved from Berlin to Krumbach, near Ulm, in southwestern Germany. Here his wife died on 21 February 1918 of pneumonia.

Right after the war and the start of the November Revolution (German Revolution) Kurt Eisner sent a letter to Landauer on 14 November 1918 inviting him to participate in the Revolution and the establishment of a soviet republic in Bavaria: "What I would like you to do is to contribute in the reconstruction of the souls by speech".

After the assassination of Eisner by the right-wing extremist student Anton Graf von Arco auf Valley on 21 February 1919 the debates on the question of a council (soviet) system or a parliamentary system in the new Bavarian republic grew in intensity. When the soviet republic was proclaimed on 7 April 1919 against the elected government of Johannes Hoffmann, Landauer became Commissioner of Enlightenment and Public Instruction. The government of the first Soviet Republic of Bavaria (Erste Räterepublik des Freistaates Bayern) was initially dominated by independent socialists and pacifists like Ernst Toller (author and poet) or Silvio Gesell and anarchists like Erich Mühsam or Landauer. Landauer’s first and only decree was to ban history lessons in Bavarian schools.

Three days after the soviet government had been taken over by functionaries of the KPD (Communist Party of Germany) around Eugen Leviné and Max Levien, Gustav Landauer became disappointed with their policies and resigned from all his political posts on 16 April 1919.

After the City of Munich was reconquered by the German army and Freikorps units, Gustav Landauer was arrested on 1 May 1919 and stoned to death by troopers one day later in Munich’s Stadelheim Prison.

After the Nazis were elected in Germany in 1933 they destroyed Landauer’s grave, which had been erected in 1925, sent his remains to the Jewish congregation of Munich, charging them for the costs. Landauer was later put to rest at the Munich Waldfriedhof (Forest Cemetery)

Works

  • Skepsis und Mystik (1903)
  • Die Revolution (trans. Revolution) (1907)
  • Aufruf zum Sozialismus (1911) (trans. by David J. Parent as For Socialism. Telos Press, 1978. ISBN 0-914386-11-5)
  • Editor of the journal Der Sozialist (trans. The Socialist) from 1893–1899
  • "Anarchism in Germany" (1895), "Weak Statesmen, Weaker People" (1910) and "Stand Up Socialist" (1915) are excerpted in Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas – Volume One: From Anarchy to Anarchism (300CE-1939), ed. Robert Graham. Black Rose Books, 2005. ISBN 1-55164-250-6
  • Gustav Landauer. Gesammelte Schriften Essays Und Reden Zu Literatur, Philosophie, Judentum. (translated title: Collected Writings Essays and Speeches of Literature, Philosophy and Judaica). (Wiley-VCH, 1996) ISBN 3-05-002993-5
  • Gustav Landauer. Anarchism in Germany and Other Essays. eds. Stephen Bender and Gabriel Kuhn. Barbary Coast Collective.
  • Gustav Landauer. Revolution and Other Writings: A Political Reader, ed. & trans. Gabriel Kuhn; PM Press, 2010. ISBN 978-1-60486-054-2