Tuesday 11 July 2017

Erich Mühsam ( 6/4/ 1878 - 10/7/ 34) - The Revolutioner


Yesterday  in 1934 Erich Mühsam, German anarchist poet,cabaret performer, who 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.was found dead at the Orianenburg concentration camp. He had been murdered during the night by Nazis.The nazis claimed that he committed suicide. Many details and many testimonies proved that he was coldly killed by the SS. 
Miihsam was the son of a pharmacist. In his first collections, which included The Desert (1904), he depicted the world through the eyes of a lonely hero. He published topical verse in satirical journals. In its thematic content, Mühsam’s poetry was similar to the rebellious antiwar lyric poetry of left-wing expressionism. For the first time in 20th-century German democratic poetry, Miihsam created the heroic figure of the revolutionary.
Erich Mühsam represented the idea of ​​nonviolent anarchism and characterized anarchists as follows:
"An anarchist never enters into voluntary commitments that can  affect self-determination or subordinate him to authority."
The way he lived shows how consistently he followed his credo, formulated in 1918: "And if they slay me, to obey is to lie!" Mühsam tried repeatedly to unite all left-wing parties in solidarity against the war and with these pacifist efforts he was a thorn in the eye of the imperial empire. After a counterrevolutionary coup in Munich, he was arrested and remained in prison until 1925. When, after his release, he and his wife arrived at the Anhalter Bahnhof in Berlin, thousands of comrades were waiting for him singing the Internationale, for which they were attacked by the police.
In 1929, the Jewish-born Mühsam warned the SPD and the KPD that the fascists were planing a coup.In the night of the burning of the Reichstag, 27th to 28th February 1933, Mühsam was arrested and taken to jail. His plan to escape the next morning to Prague did not work out. He was held in various prisons and concentration camps and suffered  repeatedly months of beatings and torture.
In his satirical play Weather for All (1930; published posthumously), he exposed the behind-the-scenes collusion of the Nazis, industrialists, and the German military clique and the conciliatory policy of the right-wing Social Democratic leaders.
After his death he was buried on 16 July 1934 in the cemetary of Dahlem. The following  is a short account of his life, work and subsequent  martyrdom.:- https://libcom.org/library/erich-m%C3%BChsam-his-life-his-work-his-martyrdom-%E2%80%93-augustin-souchy

The Revolutioner - Erich Mühsam, 1908 (Original in German)

Dedicated to German Social Democracy

A guy for revolution screamed
Who as civilian lanterns cleaned
Marched like chased by Lucifer
With all the revolutioners

And he cried: “I revolute!”
His revoluting hat so cute
Tilted over his left ear
Felt most dangerous, oh dear!

But the revoluters roved
In the middle of the road
Where usually, without dismay
He cleans the lanterns every day

The revolutionary crowd
Began to tear the lanterns out
The pavement disarrayed
They built a barricade!
The pavement disarrayed
They built a barricade!

Our revolutionary cried:
“People, I’m the cleaning guy
Of this lamp, so kind and warm
Please, don’t do it any harm.”

“If we take away their light
The citizens won’t see at night
Spare these lamps, I do deplore
Or I won’t play with you no more!”

The revolutionaries laughed
And the gas lanterns they smashed
And the lampman slid away
Cried so bitter in dismay

So he stayed at home
And wrote a mighty tome:
Called: How to revolt
and still scrub lanterns to the last bolt


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