Unpolitische Erinnerungen

The anarchist publicist and writer Erich Mühsam (1878-1934) was expelled from school as a student due to his social democratic activities. From 1904 to 1908, he alternated between Italy, Berlin, Vienna, Paris, and Ascona, where he made contact with the life reformers on Monte Verità. Since 1909, he lived in Munich as a central figure of the Schwabing bohemia and was friends with, among others, Lion Feuchtwanger, Heinrich Mann, Frank Wedekind, and Fanny zu Reventlow. In 1919, Mühsam was part of the leadership of the Munich Soviet Republic, for which he was imprisoned in fortress custody until 1924. Mühsam was arrested on the day of the Reichstag fire in 1933 and murdered in the Oranienburg concentration camp in 1934. In his apolitical memoirs, Mühsam vividly describes his early literary attempts, his years of wandering across Europe, and ultimately the bohemian life in Munich, which ended with the First World War.