Erich Muhsam

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Erich Mühsam (born in 1878) was a German-Jewish anarchist essayist, poet, and playwright.

He emerged as one of the leading agitators for a federated Bavarian Soviet Republic in which he served five years in jail at the end of World War II. He rose to international prominence during the Weimar Republic's years as a performer who denounced Nazism and mocked the future emperor.

In 1934, Mühsam was murdered in the Oranienburg concentration camp.

Early life: 1878–1900

Erich Mühsam, a middle-class Jewish pharmacist, was born in Berlin on April 6, 1878. The family migrated to Lübeck, Germany, shortly after.

Mühsam was educated at the Katharineum-Gymnasium in Lübeck, a school that was known for its authoritarian discipline and corporal punishment, and was used as the model for several of Thomas Mann's novels Buddenbrooks (1901). Erich, a young student who was by nature rebellious and refused to follow the school's structured curriculum, was often punished physically. Mühsam wrote an anonymous letter to the Lübecker Volksboten in January 1896, protesting one of the school's more adamant teachers, which prompted the scandal. Mühsam was barred from the Katharineum-Gymnasium for sympathising and participating in socialist activities as his identity became known. He completed his studies in Parchim.

Mühsam exhibited a talent for writing and aspired to be a poet from an early age, and his father set out to be a poet, and his first book, based on local news and political events, earned little money. However, young Erich set out to study pharmacy, a career that he quickly abandoned to return to his poetic and literary aspirations at the insistence of his father. Mühsam left Lübeck for Berlin to pursue a literary career later in life. "My fear increases as I reflect back on it and imagine the unspeakable flailings that were supposed to beat out of me all my deepest feelings."

Mühsam migrated to Berlin in 1900, where he soon became involved in Neue Gesellschaft (New Society), a group founded by Julius and Heinrich Hart, which combined socialist philosophy with theology and communal life in the hopes of becoming "a forerunner of a socially united great working commune of humanity." Mühsam became acquainted with Gustav Landauer, who aided his artistic growth and compelled the young Mühsam to develop his own activism based on a blend of communist and anarchist political philosophy that Landauer introduced to him. Mühsam departed from Neue Gemeinschaft in 1904 and moved to an artist commune in Ascona, Switzerland, where vegetarianism was mixed with communism and socialism. He began writing plays here, the first Die Hochstapler (The Con Men), contrasting new political philosophy with traditional dramatic styles, which became a common feature of his dramatic output. Mühsam began contributing to and editing numerous anarchist journals during these years. Mühsam was the object of persistent police surveillance and arrests as he was deemed one of Germany's most militant anarchist agitators. The media seized the opportunity to portray him as a jerk accused of anarchist conspiracies and petty offences.

Mühsam immigrated to Munich, where he became heavily involved in cabaret in 1908. Although Mühsam was unconcerned about his writing of cabaret songs, it would be one of his most popular creations.

Mühsam founded Kain (Cain) in 1911 as a forum for anarcho-communist beliefs, boasting that it would "be a personal organ for whatever the editor, as a global citizen and as a fellow man." Mühsam used Kain to mock the German state and what he saw as excesses and abuses of power, standing out in favour of abolishing capital punishment and opposing the government's attempt to censor theatre and giving a prophetic and perceptive view of international affairs. Publications were suspended for the duration of World War I to avoid government-imposed censorship, which was often enforced against private newspapers that disagreed with the imperial government and the conflict.

In 1915, Mühsam married Kreszentia Elfinger (nickname Zenzl), the widowed daughter of a Bavarian farmer.

World War II will see the international anarchist party splintering into pro-war and anti-war positions, with some of them supporting Germany while others hoping that Germany's enemies (the United Kingdom, France, and later the United States of America) would be victorious. Mühsam wrote in his diaries: "I am the anarchist, the anti-militarist, the enemy of national slogans, the anti-patriot, and the vocal critic of the armament wars found myself somehow intoxicated by an irrational passion." The state-controlled press confiscated his public support of the war for propaganda's sakes of propagation, as well as fellow anarchists who felt betrayed. Mühsam, who was befuddled by his anarchist colleagues' criticism, resigned his support for the war effort, saying that "I will certainly have to live with the guilt of betraying my ideals for the remainder of my life" and appealing: "Those who comfortably crowd shamefully desecrate human dignity and all the blessings of their own hearts and brain." For those who resign without a fight, every use of their ability to overthrow Man-made institutions and governments will be used to replace them with fresh ones." Mühsam opposed the war for the remainder of the war by increasing involvement in many direct action campaigns, including labour strikes, often collaborating with figures from other leftist political parties. The Bavarian state government began mass arrests of anti-war demonstrators as the attacks became more popular and violent. Mühsam was one of those arrested and imprisoned in April 1918. He will not be released until just before the war's conclusion in November 1918.

Erich Mühsam was released on November 3rd 1918, he returned to Munich. Within days, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany disdidered, as did King Ludwig III, who had semi-autonomous reign in Bavaria, and Munich was in the throes of the revolt. During the Red Bavarian Revolution, Kurt Eisner of the Independent Socialist Party declared Bavaria to be a socialist republic. Eisner, in a gesture designed to bring the anarchists into the new government, gave Mühsam a ministership but the anarchists, Gustav Landauer, Ernst Toller, Ret Marut, and other anarchists support for the establishment of Worker's Councils (Soviets) and communes.

However, the Bayerische Räterepublik (Bavarian Soviet Republic) was declared after Eisner's assassination in 1919, led by independent socialist Ernst Toller and anarchists Gustav Landauer and Erich Mühsam. This government was short-lived, lasting six days, but communists led by Eugen Levine overthrew it. Despite this, the Bavarian Communist Republic declared war on Switzerland, resulting from the inexplicable behavior of a mentally ill Foreign Affairs deputy who became angry about Switzerland's refusal to lend the new Republic's 60 locomotives. Gustav Landauer was killed and Mühsam was sentenced to fifteen years in prison after the Weimar Republic's Freikorps, a right-wing army led by Gustav Noske, crushed the resistance and took over Munich.

Mühsam was prolific in his writing, finishing the play Judas (1920) and a large number of poems while in jail. He was released from prison in 1924 as the Weimar Republic granted a general amnesty for political prisoners. Adolf Hitler, who had been serving eight months of a five-year term for leading the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923, was also released in this amnesty.

Mühsam's return to Munich was quite different from the one he left after his detention. The population was largely apathetic, partly because of Germany's economic downturn after the pressures of reparations for World War I and hyperinflation. He had attempted to revive Kain's journal, but it was unsuccessful due to a few issues. Mühsam founded Fanal (The Torch), a newspaper that openly and vociferously attacked the communists and the far Right-wing conservatives within the Weimar Republic in 1926. His writings and speeches during his time as a radical reformer, as well as his active attempts to mobilize a united front against the radical Right inflamed ferocious suspicions among conservatives and nationalists alike.

Mühsam aimed specifically at his writings to ridicule Nazism's burgeoning popularity, which later drew Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels' ire. Die Affenschande (1923), a short story that mocked Nazi party's racial values, while Republikanische Nationalhymne (1924) criticizes the German judiciary for overeaching leftists in the Putsch while barely punishing right-wing opponents.

Erwin Piscator produced Staatsräson (For reasons of State), Mühsam's third play, based on the controversial conviction and execution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti in the United States.

Mühsam's last play Alle Wetter (All Hang), which wanted to prevent a radical Right-wing seizure of power in 1930, was completed in 1930. This play, although not performed in public, was directed solely at the Nazis who were on the rise politically in Germany.

Mühsam was arrested in the early morning hours of 28 February 1933, just a few hours after the Reichstag fire in Berlin. Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, dubbed him one of "those Jewish subversives." Mühsam is said to have been planning to escape to Switzerland within the next day. He will be detained in concentration camps at Sonnenburg, Brandenburg, and finally Oranienburg over the next seventeen months.

Marinus van der Lubbe, a suspected Communist activist, was arrested and charged with the fire, and Adolf Hitler's stay in Germany encouraged him to declare a state of emergency, prompting aging president Paul von Hindenburg to sign the Reichstag Fire Decree, which removed major sections of the Weimar Republic's constitution (1919). In both retaliation and suppression of civil rights, Hitler used the state of emergency to justify the detention of a large number of German intellectuals branded as communists, socialists, and anarchists.

Mühsam was relocated to Mühsam on February 2, 1934. The beatings and torture continued, until, on the night of 9 July 1934, Mühsam was tortured and murdered by the guards, his battered body was discovered hanging in a latrine the next morning.

According to an official Nazi report from Oranienburg, Erich Mühsam committed suicide while in "secure detention" at Oranienburg. However, a study published in The New York Times on July 20, 1934 said otherwise.

Theodor Eicke, the former commander of Dachau's concentration camp, was the perpetrator of the assassination by two Sturmabteilung (Storm Troopers) officers named as Ehrath and Konstantin Werner after the death. He was suspected of torture and beaten before he lost consciousness, followed by an injection that killed him, and Mühsam's body was taken to a latrine in the back of the building and hung on a rafter so as to give the appearance that Mühsam had committed suicide.

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