Paul Mendes-Flohr, Anya Mali - Gustav Landauer - Anarchist and Jew-De Gruyter Oldenbourg (2014) PDF

Gustav Landauer: Anarchist and Jew
Gustav Landauer:
Anarchist and Jew
Edited by Paul Mendes-Flohr and Anya Mali

in collaboration with Hanna Delf von Wolzogen
ISBN 978-3-11-037395-0
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-036859-8
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-039560-0
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Contents
Abbreviations  vii
Paul Mendes-Flohr
Introduction  1
Paul Mendes-Flohr
Messianic Radicals: Gustav Landauer and Other German-Jewish
Revolutionaries  14
Ulrich Linse
‘Poetic Anarchism’ versus ‘Party Anarchism’: Gustav Landauer and the
Anarchist Movement in Wilhelmian Germany  45
Michael Löwy
Romantic Prophets of Utopia: Gustav Landauer and Martin Buber  64
Martin Treml
Between Utopia and Redemption: Gustav Landauer’s Influence on
Gershom Scholem  82
Anthony David
Gustav Landauer’s Tragic Theater  92
Gertrude Cepl-Kaufmann
Gustav Landauer and the Literary Trends of his Time  107
Philippe Despoix
Toward a German-Jewish Construct: Landauer’s Arnold Himmelheber  121
Corinna R. Kaiser
Gustav Landauer’s Early Novella Geschwister: Dying to Communicate  132
Hanna Delf von Wolzogen

Gustav Landauer’s Reading of Spinoza  155
Yossef Schwartz
Gustav Landauer and Gerhard Scholem: Anarchy and Utopia  172
vi Contents
Wolf von Wolzogen

Ina Britschgi-Schimmer: Co-Editor of Gustav Landauer’s Letters  191
Chaim Seeligmann
Gustav Landauer and his Judaism  205
Ernst Simon
Der werdende Mensch und der werdende Jude: Gustav Landauer’s Development
as a Human Being and Jew  213
Brigitte Hausberger
My Father, Gustav Landauer  233
Index  238
Contributors  241
Abbreviations
GLAA Gustav Landauer Nachlass, International Institute for Social
History, Amsterdam, No.
GLAJ Gustav Landauer Nachlass, The National Library of Israel,
Jerusalem, Varia, No.
Lebensgang I/II Gustav Landauer, Sein Lebensgang in Briefen, ed. Martin
Buber and Ina Britschgi-Schimmer, 2 vols., (Frankfurt/Main:
Rütten & Loening, 1929).
Mauthner Briefe Gustav Landauer–Fritz Mauthner: Briefwechsel 1890-1919, ed.
Hanna Delf, (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1994).
Aufruf 1911/1919 Gustav Landauer, Aufruf zum Sozialismus, (Berlin: Socialist
Bund, 1911; 2nd ed. Berlin: P. Cassirer, 1919).
Beginnen Beginnen: Aufsätze über Sozialismus, ed. Martin Buber, (Köln:
Marcan-Block, 1924).
Meister Eckhart 1903/1920 Gustav Landauer, trans., Meister Eckharts mystische Schriften.
In unsere Sprache übertragen, (1903; 2nd ed., Berlin: K.
Schnabel, 1920).
Revolution Die Revolution, vol. 13, Die Gesellschaft. Sammlung sozial-
psychologischer Monographien, ed. Martin Buber, (Frankfurt/
Main: Rütten & Loening, 1907; new ed., Berlin: K. Kramer,
1974).
Der Sozialist Der Sozialist, Berlin: 1891-1899; Der Sozialist. Organ des
Sozialistischen Bundes, ed. Gustav Landauer, (Bern/Berlin:
1909-1915; repr. Vaduz, 1980).
Shakespeare I/II, 1920/1923 Shakespeare. Dargestellt in Vorträgen, (1920), 2nd ed.
(Potsdam: Rütten & Loening, 1948).
Skepsis 1903/1923/1978 Skepsis und Mystik: Versuche im Anschluß an Mauthners
Sprachkritik, (Berlin: Marcan-Block, 1903; 2nd ed., Köln:
Marcan-Block, 1923; repr. Wetzlar: Büchse der Pandora, 1978).
WM 1921 Gustav Landauer, Der werdende Mensch: Aufsätze über Leben
und Schrifttum, ed. Martin Buber, (Potsdam: Kiepenheuer, 1921).
WA III Gustav Landauer, Dichter, Ketzer, Außenseiter: Schriften zu
Literatur, Philosophie, Judentum, ed. Hanna Delf, vol. III of
Gustav Landauer, Werkausgabe, (Berlin: Akademie, 1996).
Macht und Mächte Gustav Landauer, Macht und Mächte: Novellen, (Berlin: Egon
Fleischel, 1903; 2nd ed. Köln: Marcan-Block, 1923).
Gespräch Gustav Landauer im Gespräch: Symposium zum 125.
Geburtstag, Conditio Judaica 18, ed. H. Delf and G.
Mattenklott, (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1997).
Sensation “… die beste Sensation ist die Ewige … ” Gustav Landauer
– Leben, Werk und Wirkung, (Düsseldorf: Theatermuseum,
Dumont-Lindemann-Archiv, 1995).
NG Die Neue Gemeinschaft: Ein Orden vom wahren Leben.
Vorträgen und Ansprachen, part 2, Das Reich der Erfüllung,
ed. Heinrich Hart and Julius Hart (Leipzig: Diederichs, 1901).
Paul Mendes-Flohr
Introduction
Idealist war ich immer, Idealist bin ich und
das will ich bleiben. Amen … . Güte, grosse,
unendliche Güte thut uns noth, und die will
heute so warm aus mir hinausströmen in alle
Welt.
Gustav Landauer1
In February 1912, the forty-two-year-old Gustav Landauer (1870-1919) addressed

a group of young socialist Zionists in Berlin. His topic was pointedly entitled
“Judaism and Socialism.” Acknowledging his bond to his fellow Jews, he reflected
on the “Jewish renaissance,” the awakening sense of Jewishness among erstwhile
assimilated Jews. The renewal of a Jewish consciousness, he suggested, is born
“first and foremost” of a new appreciation that Jewishness is “an indomitable
fact, a natural characteristic that there is something that by nature bonds Jews to
one another. One is a Jew, even if one does not know it or wish to confess it.” The
socialist anarchist Landauer further observed that this reawakened conscious-
ness obliged the Jews to face fateful decisions, and hence the need for leaders
beholden to a spiritual vision: “For when a nation stands once again at a turning
point when it should initially become what it could and what its inner possibil-
ity demands of it, then the poets, then the prophets are needed.” These leaders,
Landauer held, should emerge from the ranks of Jewish socialists, who would
ally the re-born nation with a cause greater than itself – the command to create
a compassionate and just social order. Some socialists will understandably seek
to shape the “national community as the basis of the new society. Hence, many
Jewish socialists will decide that what is initially needed is a [new] Jewish com-
munity.” But, Landauer continues, for other Jewish socialists “the Galut, exile
as an inner disposition of isolation and longing, will be the utmost calling that
bonds them to Judaism and to socialism. For these [lonely] individuals Judaism
and socialism will be the same; they will know that Judaism and socialism have
1 “An idealist I always was; an idealist I am and I will remain so. Amen … . Goodness, abundant,
endless goodness is what we need most; and goodness will warmly flow from me throughout
the world.” The epigraph is taken from G. Landauer, “Aus meinem Gefängnis-Tagebuch,” Der
sozialistische Akademiker I (1895), nos. 13-18, 319. Cited in Ruth Link-Salinger, Gustav Landauer.
Philosopher of Utopia (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1977), 47, n. 103.
2 Paul Mendes-Flohr
charged them to demand [human] solidarity and justice.”2 A year later Landauer
had the occasion to elaborate this gracious and elegant explanation of why he
could not align himself with Zionism. In an essay provocatively entitled, “Are
these Heretical Thoughts?”– frequently cited in the present volume – he asserts
that “the Jews can only be redeemed with [all of] humanity, and that the two are
one and the same: to pursue persistently the messiah in [national] banishment
and dispersion, and to be the messiah of the nations.”3 In the same breath, he
gently rebukes the Zionists for posing a false dilemma of having either to be true
to one’s Jewish identity and cultural memory or to embrace world culture and
court the inevitable scandal of assimilation. The embrace of world culture, he
defiantly affirmed, need not vitiate one’s Judaism. On the contrary, Judaism and
other cultural affiliations may dwell parallel to one another in mutual enrich-
ment. The modern Jew is a complex amalgam of many cultures, and the demand
for a “simplification” of his or her cultural identity and loyalty is both insipid and
invidious. Similarly, Landauer regarded himself to be both a socialist – or rather
an anarchist – and a Jew. He saw no contradiction between these commitments,
nor even a necessary tension between them.
This volume of essays explores various aspects of Landauer’s parallel fidel-
ities as a Jew and as an anarchist. He fashioned his anarchism as a form of Kul-
tursozialismus, with a view to enlisting culture – theater, music, literature – to
nurture the values and attitudes necessary for the “realization” of socialism. This
conception of the political function of culture goes back to the German romantics
who assigned to aesthetic education the exalted task of transforming a society’s
moral and spiritual sensibilities. Hence, Landauer’s critique of Marxism, which
he faulted for placing what he regarded to be a false emphasis on the objective
forces of political economy. True socialism, he argued, would emerge only through
the moral and spiritual regeneration of human beings; it cannot be imposed from
above either by governmental fiat or by the decree of a revolutionary vanguard:
“Revolution is not what revolutionaries think it to be.”4 There is nothing inevi-
table about socialism, no inner dialectical logic guiding history. A revolutionary
change of the moral fabric of human relations in all spheres of life – economic,
social and interpersonal – is indeed the exigent need, but it will only come about
with the maturing of the “will to revolution,” with the resolute decision to break
with history, to fold back the sad millennial record of social injustice, and begin
2 Landauer, “Judentum und Sozialismus,” Selbstwehr (7 February 1912); also in Die Arbeit. Organ
der Zionistischen Volkssozialistischen Partei (June 1920). Reprinted in WA III, 160f.
3 “Sind das Ketzergedanken?” in Vom Judentum, published by the Jüdischer Studentenverein,
Bar Kochba (Leipzig: K. Wolff, 1913), 250-57; also in WA III, 170-74.
4 Letter to Fritz Mauthner, 5 October, 1907. Lebensgang I, 172.
Introduction 3
anew. Marking a radical caesura with history, revolution paves the way “toward
something that has yet to come – [that is] not yet in the world.”5 The revolution-
ary must look forward beyond history, adopting an unabashed Utopian vision.
Tellingly, Landauer solicits the support of the second-century Platonist, Maximus
Tyrius (c. 125-185), whom he cites as having declared: “Here, now, you will see the
road of passion, which you call ‘decline’ – because you make [your] judgment on
the basis of those who have already passed away thereon – which I, however, call
‘salvation’ (Rettung), basing myself on the order of those yet to come.”6
The envisioned “radical disjunction between history and redemption,”
echoed traditional Jewish apocalyptic messianism.7 But rather than waiting for
a divinely appointed redeemer to usher in the eschaton, Landauer transposed
the axis of hope to human deed (Tat), that is, to concrete, small deeds – acts of
love, kindness, empathy and the creation of utopian communities (Siedlungen),
implanted as seeds of redemption within and in opposition to the present social
reality; their efflorescent multiplication would ultimately overwhelm the domi-
nant structures of economic and political power and, reigning supreme, witness
the dawn of a humanity born anew. The desired revolution would thus evolve
without resorting to violence. Nor would it be secured by establishing new con-
figurations of state power. The state, any state, Landauer averred, is inherently
tyrannical; even when associated with the most noble ideals, a state is but an
organized form of violence. Authentic socialism, therefore, cannot be realized
through the auspices of a state. “In our souls we take no part in the compulsory
unity of the state, since we wish to create a genuine human bond, a society pro-
5 Cited, without source, by Link-Salinger, Gustav Landauer, 60.

6 Landauer, Revolution, epigraph to volume. Translated by Ruth Link-Salinger in Gustav Lan-
dauer, 60. Cf. the concluding sentence of Die Revolution: “Nur das können wir wissen: daß unser
Weg nicht über die Richtungen und Kämpfe des Tages führt, sondern über Unbekanntes, Tief-
begrabenes und Plöltzliches.” Ibid., 118. Landauer held firm to this meta-historical – one may
even say, given its apocalyptic overtones, anti-historical – view of revolution. In the midst of the
Bavarian Revolution, Landauer wrote: “Das Chaos ist da: neue Regsamkeit und Erschütterung
zeigen sich an; die Geister erwachen; die Seelen heben sich zur Verantwortung; die Hände zur
Tat; möge aus der Revolution die Wiedergeburt kommen; mögen, da wir nichts so sehr brauchen
als neue, reine Menschen, die aus dem Unbekannten, dem Dunkel, der Tiefe aufsteigen, mögen
diese Erneuer, Reiniger, Retter unserm Volke nicht fehlen; … möge den Völkern … aus dem urtief
Ewigen und Unbedingten der neue, der schaffende Geist zuströmen, der erst recht neue Ver-
hältnisse erzeugt; möge aus der Revolution Religion kommen, Religion des Tuns, des Lebens,
der Liebe, die beseligt, die erlöst, die überwindet.” Preface, signed 3 January 1919, to the second
edition of Landauer’s Aufruf, xvii.
7 This formulation is from Gershom Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism, and Other Essays
on Jewish Spirituality, trans. Michael A. Meyer et al. (New York: Schocken, 1971), 10.
4 Paul Mendes-Flohr
ceeding from the spirit and therefore from freedom.”8 Indeed, Landauer’s anar-
chism was wedded to an unbending pacifism.
Hence, his participation in the Bavarian Revolution, which erupted in Novem-
ber 1918, surprised many. At first he heeded the call of his friend Kurt Eisner (1867-
1919), a former student of the neo-Kantian philosopher Hermann Cohen and leader
of the motley band of socialist intellectuals who proclaimed the Bavarian Demo-
cratic and Social Republic. Inspired by Eisner’s vision of an ethical “reformation
of spirits,” he joined the Revolutionary Workers Council, a sort of advisory com-
mittee of fifty radicals, who were charged with the task of directing the revolution
toward socialism and genuine democracy (based on decentralized councils or Räte
of workers, soldiers, and peasants, as opposed to an “authoritarian,” parliamen-
tarian central government).9 When Eisner was killed by an assassin’s bullet in
February 1919, Landauer assumed a role in the preparation of a so-called Second
Revolution and in the establishment of a Räterepublik (a republic of workers’
councils) to replace the tottering and defective republic founded by Eisner. Led by
a band of anarchist intellectuals, the Räterepublik was declared on 7 April of the
same year, which was by chance Landauer’s birthday. Landauer joined the govern-
ing central council, which appointed him commissioner for “enlightenment and
public instruction.” Within less than a week the Räterepublik was overthrown by
the more radical Spartacists, as communists were then called. A few weeks later,
on the first of May, troops of the German federal government entered Munich and
with dispatch brutally suppressed the revolution. Although no longer playing an
active role in the revolution, Landauer was apprehended and on the second of May
bludgeoned to death by soldiers of the reactionary White Guard.
The pacifist Landauer met a violent death on behalf of the revolution. He was
a martyr of the revolution. His friend Martin Buber (1878-1965) eulogized him as a
latter-day Jesus, as a Jew who sacrificed his life for humanity, a suffering servant in
the cause of redemption: “In a church in Brescia I saw a mural whose whole surface
was covered with crucified men. The field of crosses stretched to the horizon, and
on all of them hung men of different shapes and faces. There it seemed to me was
the true form of Jesus Christ. On one of those crosses, I see Gustav Landauer hang-
ing.”10 Against his better judgment, Buber explained, Landauer joined the revolu-
tion. As an act of solidarity with the workers and fellow socialists, he reluctantly
8 Cited in Maurice Friedman, Martin Buber’s Life and Work. The Early Years. 1878-1923 (London
and Turnbridge Wells: Search Press, 1982), 235.
9 Eugene Lunn, Prophet of Community. The Romantic Socialism of Gustav Landauer (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1973), 296-305.
10 Buber, “Landauer und die Revolution, “Masken. Monatsschrift des Düsseldorfer Schauspiel-
hauses, XIV (May 1919), 291.
Introduction 5
participated in the revolution, despite the likelihood that circumstances would

eventually force his comrades to resort to what he feared most: political and –
worse, perhaps – also physical violence. But, Buber insisted, “Landauer fought in
the revolution against the revolution for the sake of the revolution.”11 He joined
the revolution in order to ensure that it would eschew violence – and reject all
instruments of governance that diminish human dignity – and be the redemptive,
eschatological event it promised to be. But he was soon consumed with dark pre-
monitions of (as he wrote just months prior to his tragic death) “the frightful danger
that listless routine and thoughtless imitation might take hold of the revolution-
aries and render them philistines of radicalism, of resounding words, and violent
gestures, and that they would not know or wish to know that the transformation
of society can only come about through love, work – through stillness (Stille)” – in
other words, through undemonstrative, quiet deeds.12 Revolution as socialist praxis
was a matter of personal virtue, of sacrificial love. “Now is the time to bring forth a
martyr (Opfer) of a different kind, not heroic, but a quiet, unpretentious martyr who
will provide an example for the proper life.”13 When Landauer wrote these words in
1911, words that would later be inscribed on his tombstone, he understood martyr-
dom as a metaphor for selfless idealism and not as the giving of one’s life for one’s
ideals.14 Landauer became a martyr in both senses: he was remembered as one who
had given his life for the revolution that he had hoped would herald the ethical and
spiritual regeneration of humanity, and as one who embodied the humane virtues
envisioned by that revolution.
Landauer’s thought and life thus merge into one skein. He was a man of
letters and genuinely a man of Geist, with all the inflections that the term bears in
German, and which are only inadequately conveyed by the English word “spirit.”
The life of intellect and culture was also the life of the spirit, which for Landauer
had an explicit religious quality. Socialism, he explained, means abandoning
both God (i.e., formal religion) and the material and personal ambitions of the
world, “in order to serve God and the world.”15 True religion will emerge from the
revolution, “the religion of deed, of life, of love that ensouls, redeems (erlöst),
overcomes. What remains of life? We all eventually die, we all are destined to die
… . Nothing lives on but what we have made from out of ourselves, what we have
11 Buber, “Recollection of a Death” (1929), in Buber, Pointing the Way. Collected Essays, trans.
and ed. by Maurice Friedman (New York: Harper & Row, 1957), 120.
12 Landauer, Preface to the second edition of Aufruf, written in January 1919.
13 Ibid., 152: “Jetzt gilt es, dazu noch Opfer anderer Art zu bringen, nicht heroische, sondern
stille, unscheinbare Opfer um für das rechte Leben ein Beispiel zu geben.”
14 Lunn, Prophet of Community, 342.
15 Aufruf, xvi.
6 Paul Mendes-Flohr
set in motion; creation (Schöpfung) lives on, that which is created (Geschöpf), not
only the Creator (Schöpfer). Nothing lives but the act of the honest hands and the
rule (das Walten) of pure, genuine Geist.”16 The life of the Geist – of intellect and
deed – was thus one for Landauer.17
Hence, also Landauer’s engagement on behalf of all the disinherited members
of society was necessarily complemented by his activity as a literary and theatre
critic, novelist, translator, scholar of mysticism, philosopher of language, and
author of studies on Shakespeare. For Landauer, culture and politics occupied
the same spiritual space; both were compelled by the same passionate, unyield-
ing commitment to illuminate and effectively approach the Utopian horizon of
human possibility and hope. This is the governing thesis of this volume, which
has its origins in a conference – “Gustav Landauer: Anarchism and Judaism” –
held in Jerusalem in December 1998. Co-sponsored by The Franz Rosenzweig
Minerva Research Center for German-Jewish Literature and Cultural History (The
Hebrew University of Jerusalem), The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, the Goethe
Institute (Jerusalem), and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (Herzliyah, Israel), the con-
ference hosted scholars from Austria, France, Germany, Israel and the U.S.A. to
assess Landauer’s ramified literary and political activities, his life as a Jew and
anarchist.
The conference was occasioned by an exhibition on Landauer prepared by
Michael Matzigkeit, a curator at the Theater-Museum Düsseldorf, which was
brought to Israel at the initiative of Christiane Günther, the director of the Jeru-
salem Goethe-Institute.18 She approached Gabriel Motzkin, then serving as the
director of the Rosenzweig Center, and suggested that a conference be held in
conjunction with the exhibition. Paul Mendes-Flohr was invited to organize the
conference. With the collaboration of Hanna Delf von Wolzogen, co-editor of the
collected writings of Gustav Landauer, Mendes-Flohr developed a program for
the conference and identified the most prominent scholars currently engaged in
research on the legacy of Landauer.19 On behalf of the Rosenzweig Center, Maria
Diemling attended to logistics of the conference.
16 Ibid., 55.
17 Cf. “Der Geist gibt dem Leben einen Sinn, Heiligung und Weihe; der Geist schafft, zeugt und
durchdringt die Gegenwart mit Freude und Kraft und Seligkeit; das Ideal wendet sich vom Gegen-
wärtigen ab, dem Neuen zu; es ist Sehnsucht nach der Zukunft, nach dem Besseren, nach dem
Unbekannten. Es ist der Weg aus den Zeiten des Niederganges heraus zu neuer Kultur.” Ibid., 9.
18 ‘… die beste Sensation ist das Ewige … ’ Gustav Landauer – Leben, Werk und Wirkung, ed. Mi-
chael Matzigkeit (Düsseldorf: Theatermuseum der Landeshauptstadt Düsseldorf/ Dumont-Lin-
demann-Archiv, 1995).
19 Gustav Landauer Werkausgabe, ed. Gert Mattenklott and Hanna Delf (Berlin: Akademie Ver-
lag, Berlin, 1997), vol. 3.
Introduction 7
The papers in this volume were originally presented at the conference, with
the exception of three: Paul Mendes-Flohr’s article, which is an adaptation of a
previously published essay;20 a memoir of Landauer by his second daughter, Bri-
gitte Hausberger (1906-1985), which is based on an interview conducted in October
1976 by Paul Avrich, published by him in 1995 and reprinted here with the per-
mission of Princeton University Press;21 and an essay by Ernst Simon (1899-1988),
first published in German in 1921, which pays homage to the martyred Landauer
and records his impact on post-World War One Central European Jewish youth.22
The essay was conscientiously translated by Carl Ebert and is printed here with
the kind permission of Uriel Simon.
In light of the intervening years since the conference, the contributors were
asked to update their articles, taking into consideration the most recent scholar-
ship. In this respect, the present volume reflects the current state of research on
Landauer, building upon a volume published in 1995: Gustav Landauer (1870-
1919). Eine Bestandsaufnahme zur Rezeption seines Werkes.23 The first chapter,
penned by Paul Mendes-Flohr, situates Landauer in the political discourse of his
contemporary German-Jewish radicals. The second essay by Ulrich Linse exam-
ines Landauer’s distinctive brand of anarchism from the more general perspective
of the German anarchist movement of his day. This essay is followed by Michael
Löwy’s analysis of what on the face of it was the improbable friendship between
Landauer and Martin Buber – and not only because Buber was barely five foot two
and Landauer close to six foot six. Raised in the traditional Jewish home of his
paternal grandparents in the Austrian-Hungarian province of Galicia, Buber had
well-defined Jewish commitments, whereas Landauer came from an assimilated
home in South West Germany and subscribed to a cosmopolitan ethos. Yet, as
Löwy deftly shows, an “elective affinity” evolved from their very first encounter
in 1899 and over the next two decades until Landauer’s tragic death, crystallized
into a symbiotic relation of mutual influence.
The pioneering scholar of Jewish mysticism Gershom Scholem (1897-1982)
fashioned himself to be a religious anarchist. In his contribution to this volume
Martin Treml traces the affinities between Scholem’s and Landauer’s anarchism,
and notes the resonance of the latter in Scholem’s conception of mystical myths.
20 “‘The Stronger and Better Jews.’ Jewish Theological Responses to Political Messianism in the
Weimar Republic,” in Jews and Messianism in the Modern Era, ed. J. Frankel (New York: Oxford
Univ. Press, 1991), 159-93.
21 Paul Avrich, ed., Anarchist Voices. An Oral History of Anarchism in America (Princeton: Prince
ton Univ. Press, 1995), 33-37.
22 E. Simon, “Der werdende Mensch und der werdende Jude,” Der Jude, 6 (1921-1922), 457-475.
23 The volume is edited by Leonhard M. Fiedler, Renate Heuer, and Annemarie Taeger-Alten-
hofer, and published by Campus Verlag in Frankfurt/Main.
8 Paul Mendes-Flohr
He further discerns a striking parallel between Landauer’s conception of revolu-

tion as a continuous, unending dialectical process between “utopia and topos,”
or social renewal, followed by inevitable conservative calcification, and in its
wake a renewal of the utopian regenerative impulse – and Scholem’s notion of
restorative and utopian messianism.
Anthony David offers a novel perspective of Landauer as a dramaturge of
the Bavarian Revolution, in which his tragic death at the hands of vengeful reac-
tionaries could be seen in retrospect to have been a symbolic coda of what he
regarded to be inherently tragic but ethically necessary attempts to change the
course of history. As David puts it, Landauer “choreographed his death accord-
ing to a very precise theory of history, art, and society. He knew full well that he
and the revolution aesthetics served both to nurture socialist sensibilities that
overcome the invidious individualism of bourgeois society and, at the same time,
to inculcate a sober existential realism about the human condition and the dark
hope that progressive politics would secure the promise of human decency and
solidarity. In elaborating this thesis, David probes Landauer’s understanding of
the intimate relation between aesthetics, honed through literature and theater,
and politics.
Gertrude Cepl-Kaufmann reconstructs the evolution of this dialectical cou-
pling of aesthetics and politics in Landauer’s thought through his efforts to define
a distinctive voice in the vibrant bohemian literary circles of fin-de-siècle Berlin.
What he would eventually call his “cultural anarchism,” she notes, had two
formative, overlapping moments, one expressly literary and the other political.
Under the sway of his friend Fritz Mauthner’s language skepticism, and drawn to
a mystical epistemology, he rejected the prevailing literary naturalism. His quest
for a mystical communion with a noumenal reality beyond the grasp of language
did not blunt his social conscience, however. In consonance, he developed a dis-
tinctive form of anarchism. Wary of the position of those anarchists who held
that to be politically effective it was necessary to jettison all traces of bourgeois
culture to reach the masses, Landauer resolutely refused to relinquish a commit-
ment to Bildungskultur. Rather he deemed it a political imperative to share with
the masses the aesthetic and intellectual sensibilities of high culture. The anar-
chistic political ethos is thus to be furthered by aesthetic pedagogy directed to the
proletariat. At bottom, he held, personal and communal renewal are one.
Landauer articulated this vision primarily as an essayist, playwright, drama-
turge, novelist, and lecturer on cultural topics (on such themes as Shakespeare’s
plays). In a detailed analysis of Landauer’s novella Arnold Himmelheber, Philippe
Despoix demonstrates how Landauer detached Bildungskultur from its prevail-
ing affinities to bourgeois morality and values, and transformed it into a Nietzs-
chean-inflected affirmation of eros and life. Challenging bourgeois familial and
Introduction 9
sexual taboos, Landauer the novelist also questions the culture of shame and
guilt engendered by the Jewish Law and Christian love. The protagonist of the
novella thus exclaims, “There is no sin, there is only life.” The liberation of the
individual from a culture of repression is correlated to the forging of interpersonal
and communal bonds that can be genuinely called love. Within the vision of this
aesthetic utopia, Despoix points out, Landauer advocated a renewal of Judaism
as post-traditional anarchistic ethic – an ethic in support of a Diasporic identity
that resists all ideological self-enclosure and fixed cultural fidelities.
Corinna Kaiser explores the same theme in Landauer’s early, unpublished
novella Geschwister (Siblings), which unyieldingly questions the incest taboo.
Penned in 1890 by the then twenty-year-old aspiring writer, the novella presents
a sympathetic portrait of the trials and tribulations of a brother and sister who,
despite daunting social and psychological obstacles, are determined to realize
their compelling libidinal love for each other. Their ultimate failure to give full,
uninhibited expression to their love is marked by suicide; hand in hand they sub-
merge themselves in the depths of the sea. The possible melodramatic effects of
their ill-fated love, as Kaiser deftly shows, is softened by the narrative strategy
of inter-textual citation and reference to literature that deals with sibling love.
Imbricating the narrative with a rich array of inter-textual references and allu-
sions allows Landauer not only to subvert bourgeois morality, but also to point
to the utopian vision of all barriers frustrating genuine fraternal love between all
human beings. Spontaneous (anarchic) love is to displace the bourgeois code of
duty and social conformity. There is even a further, deeper message embedded in
Landauer’s literary style: language itself proves inherently incapable of express-
ing human experience at its deepest emotional level. In this regard, as Kaiser
argues, Geschwister powerfully anticipates Landauer’s seminal study of 1903,
Skepsis und Mystik, which as its subtitle indicates was inspired by his mentor and
friend Fritz Mauthner’s critique of language.
Landauer elaborated Mauthner’s “godless mysticism” as a means to over-
come the epistemological and ontological limits of language. Toward that end,
he developed a mystical anthropology by which an individual isolates herself
from the invidious influences of the “surrounding” culture and social structures.
By retreating into one’s self, one sinks into “eternity,” which is present in every
moment of ordinary lived time, but which contains time as a whole and, pari
passu, transcends time. Utopia is thereby moved from the future into the eternal
presence, whereby the individual experiences “primordial” unity of the world. A
mystical pantheism is thus the true road to socialism; the realization of genuine
human community is not dependent on the socio-political dialectics of history.
As Hanna Delf von Wolzogen argues in her contribution to this volume, Landauer
marshaled the support of Spinoza to propagate “the idea that ‘true’ knowledge
10 Paul Mendes-Flohr
does not take place from without, but rather is bound up in the ‘knower’ … .” Lan-
dauer thus aligns his mystical anthropology with Spinoza’s Ethics and the ratio-
nal acknowledgment of the divine order of the world as leading to self-knowledge
and release from an individuated ego. This reading of Spinoza, Hanna Delf von
Wolzogen observes, also prompted Landauer to affirm his ties to his ancestral
Judaism and “to consider Jewish tradition in a new light, unfettered by the restric-
tions of proscribed orthodoxy.” Spinoza also provided Landauer with a unique
perspective by which to examine the legacy of Shakespeare as advocating indi-
vidual introspection and the creation of a new world order and a new human
being from within one’s self.
Landauer’s distinctive conception of anarchism as primed by a mystical
self-understanding was refracted through the study of the writings of medieval
Christian mystics, principally of Meister Eckhart. In the chapter on Landauer and
Gerhard (Gershom) Scholem, Yossef Schwartz avers that Landauer had a pro-
found intuitive understanding of the psychological and ethical presuppositions
of Eckhart’s teachings, even though these would only be given clarion articulation
as the result of later scholarship that considered Eckhart’s more metaphysically
informed Latin texts and those that reflect his relationship to Maimonides, in par-
ticular the belief that the philosopher has a pedagogical and political responsibil-
ity to the masses. It was precisely this ethic that Landauer discerned in Eckhart’s
teachings and which recommended Eckhart to him as a spiritual guide, indeed
as one “deeply involved in the philosophical questions that Landauer himself
explores in his Skepsis und Mystik.” From the perspective of the political theol-
ogy, a secular blending of messianic-mystical or antinomian anarchism, that Lan-
dauer crafted in great measure from his reading of Eckhart, Schwartz argues that
Scholem’s religious anarchism demonstrates but superficial similarities to that
of Landauer’s mystical anarchism. The most telling and far-reaching difference
between them, Schwartz concludes, is the unbridgeable gulf between “Landau-
er’s universal anarchist position” and Scholem’s Zionism and his corresponding
attempt to reformulate what he held to be the fundamental Jewish ethos with
“rhetoric taken from the arsenal of modern nationalism.”
In March 1919, shortly before he left his home and family to join the govern-
ment of the Räterepublik, Landauer wrote his last will and testament, in which
he named Buber as the executor of his literary estate. Buber dedicated himself
with unflagging devotion to the task of assembling and publishing Landauer’s
ramified writings. Among the four collections he edited,24 that of Landauer’s
24 Buber edited the following volumes: Shakespeare. Dargestellt in Vorträgen (Frankfurt/Main:

Rütten und Loening, 1920), 2 vols.; Der werdende Mensch. Aufsätze über Leben und Schriftum
(Postdam: Kiepenheuer, 1921); Beginnen. Aufsätze über Sozialismus (Köln: Marcan-Block, 1921);
Introduction 11
correspondence surely presented the most daunting challenge. Landauer’s corre-

spondents had to be identified and located, their letters read, and those selected
for publication had to be annotated. Close to six hundred letters were finally pub-
lished in two volumes, totalling 899 printed pages. Wolf von Wolzogen provides a
“biography” of the fraught gestation of the edition of Landauer’s correspondence
by focusing on the relationship between Buber and his editorial assistant, Ina
Britschigi-Schimmer (1881-1949). She proved to be an exceedingly resourceful and
indefatigable collaborator. Upon completion of the project, she felt that given the
extent of her part in the editing she deserved to be designated on the title page
as a co-editor. Although acknowledging her prodigious editorial labors, Buber
insisted that in accord with Landauer’s testamentary mandate, he was obliged
to take upon himself full editorial responsibility for the volume. Hence, he was
ethically, if not legally obliged to indicate on the title page that he edited the
correspondence “with the collaboration of Ina Britschgi-Schimmer” (Unter Mit-
wirkung von Ina Britschgi-Schimmer herausgegeben von Martin Buber).
Britschgi-Schimmer’s intense engagement in the editing of the correspon-
dence led her to explore Landauer’s ambiguous Jewish identity, a project she
never fully realized. The late Chaim Seeligmann (1912-2009) shared this interest
in Landauer’s Judaism. Born in Landauer’s native city of Karlsruhe, in southwest
Germany, Seeligmann claimed an intimate familiarity with Landauer’s tenuous
Jewish roots; indeed, his father was personally acquainted with Landauer and
his family. His essay, translated from the German by Eric Jacobson, thus has an
implicit autobiographical dimension. Stemming from an assimilated family with
a marginal affiliation to Liberal Judaism, much like Landauer’s family, Seelig-
mann argues that despite its attenuated Judaism, the Jewish milieu of Landauer’s
youth somehow “allowed the individual to preserve his or her own inner Jewish
essence (jüdische Substanz).” Over the years Landauer’s abiding Jewish sensibil-
ity increasingly gained, in great measure due to Buber’s influence but not only,
voluble expression. Seeligmann also identified with Landauer’s anarchism and
ethical socialism, which upon his emigration to Palestine in 1935 he sought to
integrate into the ethos of the kibbutz he joined and remained a member until his
death just shy of his 97th year.
Ernst Simon (1899-1988) also traces Landauer’s incremental self-affirmation
as a Jew, parallel to his intellectual and spiritual development, indeed, to his mat-
uration as a human being, as the essay’s title – Der werdende Mensch und der wer-
dende Jude – suggests. Originally published in Buber’s cultural review Der Jude
in 1922, Simon’s essay was addressed to German Jews seeking to clarify their own
and “in collaboration with Ina Britschgi-Schimmer,” Gustav Landauer. Sein Lebensgang in Brie-
fen (Frankfurt/Main: Rütten und Loening, 1929), 2. vols.
Jewish identity and its relation to their most pressing intellectual and ethical con-
cerns as human beings. Accordingly, Simon presented to them Landauer’s legacy
as paradigmatic. Landauer’s engagement in politics as an ethical calling both
challenges the cynical abuse of political power and resists the equally cynical
withdrawal into “sheltered solitude.” Landauer’s homo politicus is at root a homo
religiosus whose “ego is never full of the overflowing sense of his own existence;
it is always imbued with God, the world, and one’s brethren of earth.” It is from
this perspective that one is to appreciate Landauer’s utopian socialism. He was
no naïve idealist, however. Fully cognizant of the complex discordant reality of
the world, his utopians and revolutionaries are buoyed by an “uncanny assured-
ness of a dream” – a “will to delusion” that arises from knowledge of the world.
Similar to Ernst Bloch’s Geist der Utopie (1918), Landauer taught that discontent
with the existent political and social order leads one to embrace utopia, fairy
tales, fantasy, and the hope of an alternative, more humane reality. The politi-
cal imperatives issued by the utopian impulse are directed to the here and now.
Hence, he objected to Zionism, fixated on a future resolution of the Jewish Ques-
tion, which he deemed to be a movement that substitutes verbal litanies of idle
messianic hope for concrete political deeds. Although Simon faults Landauer for
not acknowledging the ongoing Zionist settlement in Palestine and the practi-
cal work of reconstructing the land, he enjoins Landauer’s prophetic warning
against the dangers of “vacuous nationalism.” Yet due to his failure to perceive
the utopian possibilities of Zionism, Simon avers, Landauer gave his life for the
chimerical hopes of revolution. Nonetheless, his legacy has a profound Jewish
dimension: To establish the sacred in the midst of life – “that is the hallowed law
of Judaism.”
The volume concludes with a memoir by Brigitte Hausberger, Landauer’s
youngest daughter. In the late 1920s she married the Vienna-born physician Dr.
Igor Peschkowsky, who upon emigrating to the U.S.A. changed his name to Paul
Nicholas, after his father, Nicolai. The eldest of their two sons is Mike Nichols
(b. 1930), the renowned film director and Oscar laureate. In April 1938 Mike and
his brother joined their father who had settled in New York City a few months
earlier. Brigitte would, however, manage to reunite with them in 1940, escaping
the clutches of the Nazis via Italy. After her husband died, she married Dr. Franz
Hausberger, a research physician who emigrated to the U.S. after the war and
settled in Philadelphia. Her memoir, as noted above, is based on an interview
conducted at her home in Philadelphia on 28 October 1976.
Anya Mali meticulously prepared the manuscript for publication, a demand-
ing task exacerbated by the fact that, since most of the participants in the volume
are not native English speakers, their contributions often required fundamental
rewriting. Her attentiveness to stylistic and conceptual detail has immeasurably
Introduction 13
enhanced the quality of this volume. In translating citations from German she
was graciously aided by Dorthe Seifert and Ashraf Noor. Itta Shedletzky assisted
in identifying arcane sources. Julia Matveev and Heike Wagner of the Rosenzweig
Center provided much appreciated technical assistance in preparing the manu
script for publication. At a critical hour in the process, Sam Berinn Shonkoff
pitched in with unfailing resourcefulness to reorganize the footnotes. Erik Dreff
conscientiously prepared the index. I am especially grateful to Margaret M. Mitch-
ell, Dean of the University of Chicago Divinity School for arranging a subsidy in
support of the preparation of the index. I wish to record my gratitude to all the
individuals named above, as well as Julia Brauch of de Gruyter, for their invalu-
able collaboration in the realization of this volume.
Jerusalem, July 2014

Paul Mendes-Flohr
Messianic Radicals:
Gustav Landauer and Other German-Jewish
Revolutionaries
The false Messiah is as old as the hope for the
true Messiah. He is the changing form of the
changeless hope. He separates every Jewish
generation into those whose faith is strong
enough to give themselves up to an illusion,
and those whose hope is so strong they do not
allow themselves to be deluded. The former
are the better, the latter the stronger.
Franz Rosenzweig1
In the midst of the Bavarian Revolution of 1918-1919, a group of students at the

University of Munich organized a study circle to discuss the urgent social and
political questions of the day. To distinguish themselves from the right-wing Corp-
studenten, they fancied themselves to be a Freistudentenschaft, and met weekly in
a local bookshop.2 In January 1919, they were addressed by Max Weber, who was
soon to assume a professorship at the university.3 In a room packed to overflow-
1 The epigraph by Franz Rosenzweig is from “The False and True Messiah: A Note to a Poem by
Jehuda ha-Levi,” in Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought, ed. Nahum N. Glatzer (New York:
Schocken, 1961), 350. I wish to dedicate this article to the memory of Ernest Frankel and Ernst
Akivah Simon, who exemplified the cultural sensibilities and human ideals of German Jewry.
2 Karl Löwith, Mein Leben in Deutschland vor und nach 1933: Ein Bericht (Stuttgart: Metzler,
1986), 16. The Freistudentenschaft was formally known as the Freistudentischer Bund, a left-lean-
ing liberal student group with branches throughout Germany.
3 Marianne Weber, Max Weber: A Biography, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Oxford Univ. Press,
1975), 707. Karl Löwith, who attended the lecture, gives the date of the lecture “Science as a Vo-
cation” simply as during the winter semester 1918-1919 (Löwith, Mein Leben, 16). Although there
is considerable disagreement among Weber scholars, most now tend to follow Marianne Weber,
who in her biography of her husband holds that the lecture took place in January 1919. See also
Wolfgang Schluchter, “Excursus: The Question of the Dating of ‘Science as a Vocation’ and ‘Pol-
itics as a Vocation,’” in Max Weber’s Vision of History: Ethics and Methods, ed. Günther Roth
and Wolfgang Schluchter (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1979), 113-116. On
the basis of his research, Schluchter himself believes that ‘Science as a Vocation” was actually
delivered as early as November 1917 (114-115). There is a reason, however, to doubt the veracity
of Löwith’s report, which is given in vivid detail, although it is, of course, possible that Weber
delivered the same lecture twice or had given substantially different lectures under the same
Messianic Radicals: Gustav Landauer and Other German-Jewish Revolutionaries 15
ing, Weber spoke to the enthralled students about the moral tasks and sociologi-
cal boundaries of scholarship in the modern world. This lecture, delivered freely
and without a pause, was recorded by a stenographer and later published under
the title “Science as a Vocation.” Two months later, Weber once again addressed
the students on a parallel theme, “Politics as a Vocation.”4 In these now-famous
lectures, the sociologist offered, in striking contrast to the heated rhetoric of the
day, a cold analysis of what he regarded to be the misconceived idealism of the
youths then ruling the streets of Munich.5
Indeed, Weber had a profound appreciation of the ideals that inspired the
youthful and older intellectuals (some of whom he knew personally and held in
great esteem) who led the revolution that erupted in November 1918 and came to
a brutal end in May 1919.6 He shared, to some degree, their conviction that – with
title. Löwith claims that the lecture he heard was virtually identical to the printed version that
was prepared on the basis of a stenographer’s protocol of Weber’s oral presentation. See Löwith,
Mein Leben, 16. It may be noted that Löwith was first demobilized from the Kaiser’s army in De-
cember 1917, commencing his studies at the University of Munich shortly thereafter (13). Accord-
ingly, if we are to lend credence to his testimony that he attended Weber’s lecture, it would have
to have been sometime after the November 1917 date suggested by Schluchter.
4 Marianne Weber, Max Weber, 707. Löwith merely notes that Weber delivered a second lecture,
“Politics as a Vocation,” but he does not specify the date (Mein Leben, 17). Contradicting the
February date given by Marianne Weber, Schluchter cites a Munich newspaper that announced:
“Prof. Max Weber (Heidelberg) will speak on ‘Politics as a Vocation’ on Tuesday, 7:30 p.m., Jan-
uary 28 [1919] at the Kunstsaal Steinicke.” See Roth and Schluchter, Max Weber’s Vision, 114.
Schluchter acknowledges that Weber may have postponed the lecture to a later date.
5 Löwith, Mein Leben, 17: “In [Weber’s] statements, the experience and knowledge accumulat-
ed were concentrated; everything sprang directly from the inner self and was thought through
with the most critical intellect, forcibly and intensively, thanks to the human emphasis that his
personality placed on it. The renunciation of any easy solution corresponded to the acute formu-
lation of the questions posed. He tore apart all the veils of wishful thinking, and yet everybody
could not but feel that at the heart of this clear intellect there was a deeply earnest humanity.
After the innumerable revolutionary addresses of the literary activists, Weber’s words were a
relief [Erlösung].”
6 Weber was particularly fond of Ernst Toller, who served as chairman of the Central Council
of the short-lived Räterepublik proclaimed in April 1919. After the suppression of the revolution,
Toller was placed on trial for high treason, and Weber at the trial voluntarily attested to his moral
integrity. He also told the court that Toller was weltfremd, utterly unaware of the realities of the
world, and ironically added, “in a fit of anger, God made [Toller] a politician” (Marianne Weber,
Max Weber, 661). It is also of interest to note that in his lecture, “Politics as a Vocation,” in which
he delineated the limitations of a politics of Gesinnungsethik (an ethics of ultimate ends), Weber
seems to have had in mind his young friend Toller (Roth and Schluchter, Max Weber’s Vision,
116). Cf. also Toller’s reflections on the failure of the revolution:
I have always believed that socialists, despising force, should never employ it for their own
ends. And now I myself had used force and appealed to force; I who hated bloodshed had
defeat in the First World War and with the collapse of the old regime – Germany
had the unique opportunity of reversing the sins of the older generation. What
he objected to was the messianic enthusiasm of the students and the attendant
assumption that with goodwill alone they could usher in a better, utterly just
world in which pure morality would be the sole principle of governance; in which
public life, free of bourgeois cynicism, would once again be suffused with spiri-
tual and ethical meaning; in which knowledge (by which he meant science and
scholarship) would cease to serve sinister, impersonal ends and be transformed
into the sole instrument of personal edification and relevance.7
Such a vision, Weber held, was indeed noble; and yet it reflected an utter
lack of understanding of the complexity and nature of the modern world. The
principal error of the well-intentioned but benighted idealists, in Weber’s view,
was their unwillingness to accept the “disenchantment of [a] world” in which all
mystery had been removed from existence by the ascendancy of reason as the
fundamental ground of genuine knowledge and social organization. Further,
Weber pessimistically noted that in the rational, bureaucratic order characteristic
of the modern era, “precisely the ultimate and most sublime values have [forever]
retreated from public life.”8
caused blood to be shed … . I meditated on the position of the men who try to mould the
destiny of the world, who enter politics and try to realize their ideas in the face of the mass-
es. Was Max Weber right after all when he said that the only logical way of life for those who
were determined never to overcome evil by force was the way of St. Francis? Must the man of
action always be dogged by guilt? Always? (Ernst Toller, I Was a German: An Autobiography,
trans. E. Crankshaw [London: The Bodley Head,1934], 275).
Despite the image of the revolutionaries as being youthful, not all were actually that young.
Among the principal Jewish activists in the Bavarian Revolution, only Toller was still in his twen-
ties; in 1918, Kurt Eisner was fifty-one; Gustav Landauer, forty-eight; Eugen Leviné, thirty-five;
Erich Mühsam, forty.
7 See Max Weber, “Science as a Vocation,” in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, trans. and
ed. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1946), 129-156. On the apoc-
alyptic mood of the supporters of the Bavarian Revolution, see Arthur Mitzman, The Iron Cage:
An Historical Interpretation of Max Weber (New York: Knopf, 1970), 225f. Also see Hansjörg Viesel
ed., Literaten an der Wand: Die Münchner Räterepublik und die Schriftsteller (Frankfurt: Suhr-
kamp, 1980); and Allan Mitchell, Revolution in Bavaria, 1918-1919 (Princeton: Princeton Univ.
Press, 1965), 304-331. For the messianic rhetoric typical of the Bavarian revolutionaries, see the
speech by Kurt Eisner – who served as the first president of the Bavarian Republic – at the festivi-
ties celebrating its establishment: “The world seems shattered, lost in the abyss. Suddenly in the
midst of darkness and despair the sounds of trumpets ring out, proclaiming a new world, a new
mankind, a new freedom.” Quoted in Stephen Lamb, “Intellectuals and the Challenge of Power:
The Case of the Munich Räterepublik,” in The Weimar Dilemma: Intellectuals in the Weimar Re-
public, ed. Anthony Phelan (Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press, 1985), 140.
8 Weber, “Science as a Vocation,” 155.
If meaning were to be found, it was in pianissimo, in the purely personal and

internal realms of existence.9 Weber concluded his first lecture with a sermonic
rebuke of those who were impatient with the world as it was and thus longed for
redemption: “[For them,] the situation is the same as resounds in the beautiful
Edomite watchman’s song of the period of exile – the night of exile – that had
been included in Isaiah’s oracle: He calleth to me, … Watchman, what of the night?
The watchman said, The morning cometh, but it is still night: if ye will enquire,
come again another time (Isa. 21:11).”10 And Weber added in a grave tone that
deeply moved his audience:11 “The people to whom this was said has enquired
and tarried for more than two millennia, and we are shaken when we realize its
fate. From this we want to draw the lesson that nothing is gained by yearning and
tarrying alone, and we shall act differently.”12 One is to reconcile oneself to the
night of exile, forgo the hope of redemption and fulfill the ‘‘‘demands of the day’
in one’s personal relations as in one’s vocation.”13
Weber’s association of the naive, romantic messianism of the Munich radi-
cals with the fate of the Jews and the vain, self-defeating longing for redemption
may have been an oblique reference to the fact that so many of the young radi-
cals were Jews. Indeed, he was troubled that Jews – among others, Kurt Eisner,
Gustav Landauer, Eugen Leviné, Erich Mühsam and Ernst Toller – were playing
such a conspicuous role in the Bavarian Revolution.14 Weber was convinced that
the inevitable defeat of the revolution and the equally inevitable backlash would
lead to the heightening of anti-Semitism15 – as in fact it did.16 For Jewish radicals,
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid., 128. The translators of Weber’s lecture render the citation from Isaiah according to the
Revised Standard Version of the Bible. I have, however, translated the citation anew in order to
reflect Weber’s own translation of the Hebrew text.
11 Löwith, Mein Leben, 149f.
12 Weber, “Science as a Vocation,” 156.
13 Ibid.
14 For a detailed discussion of the Jews in the Bavarian Revolution, see Werner T. Angress,
“Juden im politischen Leben der Revolutionszeit,” in Deutsches Judentum in Krieg und Revolu-
tion, 1916-1923, ed. Werner Mosse (Tübingen: J. C. Mohr, 1971), 234-251.
15 Marianne Weber, Max Weber, 648f.:
Weber despised antisemitism, but he regretted the fact that in those days there were so many
Jews among the revolutionary leaders … . He said that on the basis of the historical situation of
the Jews it was understandable that they in particular produced these revolutionary natures.
But given the prevailing ways of thinking, it was politically imprudent for Jews to be admitted
to leadership and for them to appear as leaders. He thought in terms of Realpolitik and saw the
danger that basically desirable political talents would be discredited in the minds of the public.
16 See Donald L. Niewyk, The Jews in Weimar Germany (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ.
Press, 1980), 27f.; Saul Friedländer, “Die politische Veränderung der Kriegszeit und ihre Auswir-
of course, such considerations could not compromise what they regarded as a

matter of principle; worse yet, they were a betrayal of humanity’s hope – a hope
that the philosopher of revolutionary politics, Ernst Bloch, unabashedly identi-
fied as messianic. But the revolution primed by messianic hope (according to this
German-Jewish philosopher) was not to be viewed as a chimerical attempt to rush
the gates of paradise. It was rather a defiant refusal to accept the misery of human
existence. For hope, Bloch explained, is a projection of a future that transcends
existing realities; hope allows humanity to envision an alternative, happier
world; hope, as such, has inspired revolutionary politics from time immemorial.
Bereft of an eschatological vision and passion, a forlorn humanity would hap-
lessly resign itself to the indignities and injustices of the established order.
Hence, for Bloch, the type of realism recommended by Weber would only
serve to deny hope and to perpetuate human misery, both material and existen-
tial. Humanity would be doomed were it to reconcile itself to the disenchantment
of the world. The refusal to do so was not to be construed as naive optimism; it
was rather born of an unflinching recognition of prevailing evil. “The messianic,”
Bloch explained in Geist der Utopie (a volume he wrote in the wake of the horrors
he witnessed during the First World War), “discerns the future precisely in the
dark of the lived moment.”17 Hope is a brave confrontation with evil; it resists all
temptation to deny evil’s fearsome reality with the anaesthetizing categories of
the sociologist and political scientist. Hope recognizes evil to be evil, as a force to
be overcome if humanity is to endure with dignity.
Thus, revolutionary politics, according to Bloch, was in the first instance an
angry protest against evil. But the revolutionary, he added, is preeminently an
agent of hope, of a hope emboldened by what he called “a revolutionary Gno-
sis.”18 Painfully aware of human suffering and injustice, Bloch’s revolutionary
discards all illusion that the world is ruled by a benevolent, caring God, and he
unapologetically assumes the Gnostic view that the world, as presently consti-
tuted, is not our home. A homeless humanity is adrift in a universe governed by
kungen auf die Judenfrage,” in Mosse and Paucker, Deutsches Judentum, 50-54. On the role of
Jews in the revolution in Bavaria – and elsewhere in Germany – and the anxieties this aroused
in the Jewish community, see Donald L. Niewyk, “The German Jews in Revolution and Revolt,
1918-19,” in Studies in Contemporary Jewry, vol. 4, The Jews and the European Crisis, 1914-1921,
ed. Jonathan Frankel (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1988), 41-50.
17 Ernst Bloch, Geist der Utopie (repr. of 2nd ed. of 1918, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1973), 237. On the
messianic aspect of this radicalism, see Klaus Schreiner, “Messianism in the Political Culture of
the Weimar Republic,” in Toward the Millennium: Messianic Expectations from the Bible to Waco,
ed. Peter Schäfer and Mark R. Cohen (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 311-362.
18 Bloch, “Nachbemerkung” [1963] in Bloch, Geist der Utopie, 347.
satanic forces,19 which in the modern period have tightened their grip by pro-
moting the disenchantment of the world and the attendant cynicism masquer-
ading as rational sobriety: “The devil once again totally dominates us; even if
one does not wish to believe in him, one sees his cloven foot, and he, the devil,
absolutely undisturbed, rules us as apparently pure nothingness, as utter disen-
chantment [Entzauberung], intrinsically blocking human beings from mystery.”20
Bloch regarded it as the task of revolutionary politics to rescue “mystery” – the
misty climes in which the human spirit allows itself to hope – in order to restore
to humanity the vision of the eschaton, the vision of a future in which one will be
truly at home in the world.
Bloch thus sought to illuminate the spiritual and moral passion informing
the revolutionary ethos – duly defined by him as “the categorical imperative
with revolver in hand”21 – by demonstrating its fundamental continuity with
the eschatological imagination. Indeed, his entire œuvre (embracing sixteen
volumes)22 may be regarded as a sustained meditation on messianism as “the
a priori of [all genuine] culture and politics.”23 Despite his frequent reference to
Jewish messianic lore and teachings, Bloch would resolutely reject the characteri-
zation of his thought as specifically Jewish. The sources of his thought were eclec-
tic: Jewish, Christian and pagan. He recruited innumerable traditions to illustrate
what he regarded to be the basic, albeit often repressed, eschatological impulse
of humanity throughout the ages. Moreover, he discerned this impulse not only
within religious traditions, but also in art and, above all, in music.24 Although he
did not hesitate to cite Jewish sources, they did not enjoy any particular preem-
19 The reference to Satan is not merely rhetorical; by hypostatizing the source of human suffer-
ing as the work of Satan, Bloch seeks to underscore that “evil” (a metaphorical term that serves
to apostrophize “unjustifiable” suffering) is both fundamentally antagonistic to human nature
and a power to be boldly confronted.
20 Quoted in Irving Fetscher, “Unzeitgemäss und spekulativ: Ernst Blochs ‘Geist der Utopie,’”
Neue Züricher Zeitung, weekend edition, 10-12 November 1979, 69.
21 Bloch, Geist der Utopie, 302.
22 Sixteen volumes of Bloch’s collected writings have thus far been published by Suhrkamp
Verlag of Frankfurt, now Berlin.
23 Bloch, Geist der Utopie, quoted in Fetscher, “Unzeitgemäss und spekulativ,” 69.
24 See Ernst Bloch, On Music, trans. Peter Palmer, intro. David Drew (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
1974), 243: “Music as a whole stands at the farther limits of humanity, but at those limits where hu-
manity, with a new language and hallowed by the call to achieved intensity, to the attained world
‘we,’ is first taking shape. And this ordering in our musical expression means a home, indeed a
crystal home, but one derived from our future freedom; a star, but one that will be a new Earth.”
inence in his writings. Certainly Bloch did not regard himself as spiritually and
intellectually beholden to Judaism.25
Furthermore, his “revolutionary Gnosticism,” with its denial of the world as
God’s creation (not to speak of his avowed atheism)26 put him at extreme odds
25 Bloch’s Jewishness is frequently noted in connection with his messianism, but how his an-
cestral faith may have influenced the development of his thought is rarely explicated. See the
insightful comments by van Asperen:
[It is difficult] to designate precisely to what extent Bloch’s Jewish origin has influenced his
ideas … . Bloch certainly did not have a traditional Jewish upbringing … . Yet we know that
as a student he counted quite a few East-European Jews among his friends with whom the
questions of Jewishness were discussed … . Bloch at least had a conscious confrontation
with his Jewishness. [To be sure, he was not a Zionist,] but he was aware of the typical con-
tribution of Jewish spirituality. [He regarded] the Jews as the symbol of the utopian attitude
… . [But] he states explicitly that Judaism is not an anthropological quality, but a Messianic
attitude which transcends national boundaries. Thomas Münzer showed it, says Bloch, the
Rothschilds did not. (G. M. van Asperen, “Hope and History: A Critical Inquiry into the Phi-
losophy of Ernst Bloch,” [Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Utrecht, 1973], 18f.).
The question of the Jewishness of German Jewish revolutionaries and radical thinkers has exercised
many. See, e.g., Rolf Kauffeldt, “Zur jüdischen Tradition im romantisch-anarchistischen Denken
Erich Mühsams und Gustav Landauers,” Bulletin des Leo Baeck Instituts, 69 (1984): 3-28; Anson
Rabinbach, “Between Enlightenment and Apocalypse: Benjamin, Bloch and Modern German Jew-
ish Messianism” New German Critique 34 (Winter, 1985): 78-124; and Michael Löwy, Redemption
and Utopia: Jewish Libertarian Thought in Central Europe; trans. H. Heaney (Stanford: Stanford Univ.
Press, 1992.) Cf. Scholem’s comment that “acknowledged and unacknowledged ties to their Jewish
heritage are evident [in] the writings of the most important ideologists of revolutionary messian-
ism, such as Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse,” in Gershom
Scholem, “Reflections on Jewish Theology,” in his On Jews and Judaism in Crisis: Selected Essays,
(New York: Schocken, 1976, 287). Scholem’s use of the term “ties” in this context is ambiguous, for
he merely demonstrates parallels between “the messianic idea of Judaism” and that of the writers
mentioned. Specifically, there is a tendency in the literature to regard the Jewish radicals of the
Bavarian Revolution and the Weimar Republic as votaries of the Jewish messianic tradition, noting
that this tradition promotes a this-worldly Redemption and, accordingly, historical activism. The
question of the Jewishness of the Jewish revolutionaries and radicals, however, is more complex
than whether they represent (even unconsciously and by virtue of some peculiar ethnic sensibility
to which they may have been heirs, often supposedly despite themselves) any particular tendency
within the Jewish messianic tradition. First, why in this particular generation? How would one ex-
plain the revolutionary politics of the many non-Jews who shared the messianic vision of their Jew-
ish comrades? My own preference is for a historical-sociological explanation of the kind reportedly
suggested by Weber. See Marianne Weber, Max Weber, 648: “On the basis of the historical situation
of the Jews it was understandable that they in particular produced these revolutionary natures.” For
an attempt at such an analysis, see Paul Mendes-Flohr, “Jewish Intellectuals: A Methodological Pro-
legomena,” chapter 1 of his Divided Passions: Jewish Intellectuals and the Experience of Modernity
(Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press, 1990). See also Löwy, Redemption and Utopia, ch. 3.
26 This is not to say Bloch was devoid of a religious sensibility. See Gershom Scholem, “Wohnt
Gott im Herzen eines Atheisten? Zu Ernest Blochs 90. Geburtstag,” Der Spiegel, 7 July 1975, 110-114.
with the most fundamental theological presuppositions of Judaism.27 There is

thus a paradox in the fact that his conception of the overarching task of philos-
ophy as developing an “epistemology of the future” seems to have been inspired
by Hermann Cohen (1842-1918), a philosopher who explicitly sought to ground
his work in a systematic elaboration of what he regarded to be the basic Jewish
principle of messianic hope. In July 1908, Bloch submitted his doctoral disser-
tation to the University of Würzburg.28 His dissertation, which was devoted to a
probing appraisal of Heinrich Richert’s theory of knowledge, was written before
Bloch’s adoption of Marxism and Hegelian dialectics. Yet the dissertation already
displayed the rudiments of his philosophy of hope, presented in a critical Ausein-
andersetzung along with Hermann Cohen’s conception of hope and the future as
philosophical categories.29 Significantly, on completing his dissertation, Bloch
sent a copy to the famed neo-Kantian philosopher of Marburg with a dedication:
“For Herr Geheimrat Hermann Cohen with high esteem. Ernst Bloch.”30
27 Heterodoxy per se, of course, would not disturb Bloch. He self-consciously and proudly identi-
fied with religious heretics, regarding them as the custodians of the eschatological impulse in their
respective communities. But heterodoxy and heresy are positions that emerge dialectically from
within a specific tradition; they bear the imprint of a spiritual and intellectual struggle with that
tradition. Accordingly, heresy is to be distinguished from simply contrary opinions. In this respect,
it is questionable whether Bloch’s gnosticism and atheism are to be deemed Jewish heresies.
28 Ernst Bloch, Kritische Erörterungen über Rickert und das Problem der modernen Erkennthis-
theorie. Inaugural dissertation (Ludwigshafen: 1909).
29 Ibid., 71-75. For a detailed discussion of Bloch’s dissertation, see Paul Mendes-Flohr, “‘To
Brush History Against the Grain’: The Eschatology of the Frankfurt School and Ernst Bloch,”
Journal of the American Academy of Religion 51, no. 4 (December 1983), 636-640. In his disserta-
tion, Bloch refers exclusively to Hermann Cohen’s Logik der reinen Vernunft (Berlin: B. Cassirer,
1902), a purely philosophical work that makes no reference to Judaism. (Cf. Cohen’s Logik der
reinen Erkenntnis.) Yet in the preface to the first edition of the 1902 work, Cohen makes oblique
but striking reference to his Jewish creed. In decrying Germany’s retreat to nationalism from its
earlier humanistic and universal ideals, he expresses his conviction that it is but a temporary
relapse. He ascribes his “optimism” to his reassuring experience as a teacher at the University
of Marburg and to his “faith in the religious truth of prophetic messianism.” See “Vorrede zur
ersten Auflage,” in Hermann Cohen, Logik der reinen Erkenntnis, 2nd rev. ed. (Berlin: B. Cassirer,
1914), xiif. In 1908, when Bloch was working on his dissertation, Cohen forcefully presented
his concept of prophetic messianism in a widely reviewed essay, “Religiöse Postulate,” a lec-
ture held at the second conference of the Verband der deutschen Juden on 13 October 1907. (See
Hermann Cohens Jüdische Schriften, intro. Franz Rosenzweig, ed. Bruno Strauss ([Berlin: C. A.
Schwetschke, 1924], vol. 1, 1-14). For a list of reviews of the lecture, see ibid., 335. Also see Cohen’s
systematic discussion of the twin prophetic concepts of the “future” and “messianism” in Ethik
des reinen Willens (Berlin: B. Cassirer, 1904), 405-411. It is plausible that at the time he wrote his
dissertation Bloch was familiar with these works.
30 Cf. the copy of Bloch’s dissertation deposited in the Hermann Cohen Archive, The National
Library of Israel, Jerusalem, varia COH 121/B62.
Cohen introduced the categories of “hope” and the “messianic future” into
philosophic discourse, linking and explicitly developing them on the basis of
Jewish sources.31 He sought to show that the biblical, or rather, prophetic vision
of a messianic future was not only the basis for, but also the most refined expres-
sion of, the Enlightenment’s doctrine of progress and the moral unity of man-
kind.32 To be sure, Cohen was aware of the fact that, as a collective singular, the
“future”33 – denoting a common historical experience – and “humanity” – as
31 Cohen tended to maintain a fast division between his strictly philosophical and Jewish writ-
ings. In the former, he developed the categories “messianic hope” and “future” on the basis of his
idealistic method. See Nathan Rotenstreich, “Hermann Cohen: Judaism in the Context of German
Philosophy,” in The Jewish Response to German Culture, ed. J. Reinharz and W. Schatzberg (Ha-
nover: New England Univ. Press, 1985), 51-63; Paul Natorp, “Zu Cohens Religionsphilosophie,” in
Cohen und Natorp, ed. Helmut Holzhey (Basel and Stuttgart: Schwabe, 1986), vol. 2, 112-114, 137.
Cohen’s Jewish writings were collected in three volumes as Hermann Cohens Jüdische Schriften.
For an English selection of these writings, see Hermann Cohen, Reason and Hope, intro. and
trans. Eva Jospe (New York: Norton, 1971). Cf. Cohen’s posthumous Religion of Reason from the
Sources of Judaism, trans. S. Kaplan (New York: Ungar, 1972). One important exception to Cohen’s
separation of his strictly philosophical and Jewish interests is his massive revision of Kantian
ethics, Ethik des reinen Willens, in which he discussed anti-Semitism (Judenhass) as grounded
in a misunderstanding of the Jews’ notion of honor (Ehre) and their persistence as a people in
the Diaspora. Jewish fidelity, Cohen argued, is not a matter of “atavism” but rather of an alle-
giance to the prophetic mission “to prepare the union of states in the messianic idea of a united
mankind,” (ibid., 499f.). In the same volume (399-409), Cohen also discussed in extenso the pro-
phetic (he refrains from saying “Jewish” in this context) concepts of the future and messianism.
32 See William Kluback, The Idea of Humanity: Hermann Cohen’s Legacy to Philosophy and The-
ology (Lanham: University Press of America, 1987).
33 Jürgen Gebhardt, “Messianische Politik und ideologische Massenbewegung,” in Von kom-
menden Zeiten: Geschichtspropheten im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Joachim H. Knoll and Julius
H. Schoeps (Stuttgart and Bonn: Burg, 1984), 49-52. The emergence of the “future” as a collective
singular was correlated with the crystallization of the modern concepts of “history” and “prog-
ress.” Cf. ibid., 50:
Future originally meant a spatial advent, the arrival of someone or something. This was
the chief meaning until the seventeenth century. Only first in the early modern period does
the term attain a temporal meaning, denoting also the temporal point of the advent [i.e., a
future age]. It is important to note the role that the word [“future”] played in the language
of the Church , the Bible … where it marked but the eschatological event. It entirely corre-
sponded to the old Latin concept of status futurus, which signifies the future things, the last
things … . As a collective singular, “future” developed first in the eighteenth century out
of the general concept of a future time … . Henceforth, it denotes the temporal space and
content that follows the present time.
The concept of a future historical age, of course, could have existed avant la lettre, indeed, that
is what Cohen endeavors to show with regard to prophetic messianism.
a moral attribute of “mankind”34– were unique to the modern period. But he

sought to show that these concepts were also implicit in the ideational structure
of biblical Judaism. Thus, as he declared in a lecture of 1907 (the year in which
Bloch was working on his dissertation) “from the very first, the One God implied
a mankind united in the ideal of morality.”35
For Cohen, “messianism,” which was also a term of modern coinage, referred
to a vision of redemption without the mediation of God’s appointed Messiah
whose miraculous advent was awaited by traditional Jewry.36 The freeing of the
conception of a messianic future from a dependence on the miracle of a personal
Messiah – a Son of David dispatched by God – was typical of modern Liberal
Judaism, particularly as it had evolved in nineteenth-century Germany.37 A deper-
sonalized messianism was one of the essential tenets of Liberal and Reform Juda-
ism.38 Cohen argued that this transformation of the messianic concept was an
immanent, dialectically necessary development within Judaism, “The ideality
of the Messiah, his significance as an idea, is shown in the overcoming of the
person of the Messiah and in the dissolution of the personal image in the pure
notion of time, the concept of the age. Time becomes future and only future.”39
Cohen’s conception of prophetic Judaism as anticipating the precepts of modern
humanism provided a systematic, and eloquent, articulation of German-Jewish
liberal sensibility and what Reform and Liberal Jewish theologians referred to
34 Hans Erich Bödeker, “Menschheit, Humanität, Humanismus,” in Geschichtliche Grundbegrif-

fe: Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, ed. O. Brunner, W. Conze
and R. Koselleck (Stuttgart: E. Klett, 1982), vol. 3, 1063-1128. Cf. H. Cohen, Religion of Reason, ch.
13. Cohen attributed to Kant the decisive move in rendering mankind a moral concept: The exact
terminological meaning of the word “mankind” in Kant is, to be sure, first of all determined by
opposition to the empirical man as understood in psychological and historical experience, so
that mankind is equivalent to the moral rational being. However, in his terminology the term
does not refer exclusively to the rational being derived from the methodology of ethics. Mankind
occupies the most important position in all his formulations so that there is no doubt that it has
for Kant a universal, cosmopolitan meaning (ibid., 241).
35 Cohen, “Religiöse Postulate,” in Strauss, Hermann Cohens Jüdische Schriften, vol. 1, 6.
36 The term “messianism” was apparently first coined by the Polish-born mathematician Józef
Maria Hoene-Wronski (1778-1853) to characterize a conception of absolute intellectual and polit-
ical progress. See Gebhardt, “Messianische Politik,” 44-46.
37 Steven S. Schwarzschild, “The Personal Messiah; Toward the Restoration of a Discarded Doc-
trine,” in Arguments and Doctrines: A Reader of Jewish Thinking in the Aftermath of the Holocaust,
ed. Arthur A. Cohen (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1970), 521-537; Max
Weiner, “Der Messiasgedanke in der Tradition und seine Umbiegung im modernen Liberalis-
mus,” in his Festgabe für Claude Montefiore (Berlin: Philo, 1928), 151-156.
38 See Schwarzschild, “The Personal Messiah,” 526f.
39 H. Cohen, Religion of Reason, 249.
as the ideals of ethical monotheism.40 Moreover, with his claim that monothe-
ism had foreshadowed the ethical idealism of Germany’s finest spirits, especially
the teachings of Kant, Cohen did much to strengthen the self-esteem of German
Jewry.41 But his intention was not merely apologetic. Indeed, throughout his life
he vigorously sought to guard the honor of middle-class Jewry as it sought accep-
tance in a world presumably beholden to liberal values.42 Cohen was no mere
liberal, however. For him, the prophetic heritage of Israel enjoined a committed
concern for the poor and disinherited members of society: “The messianic God
does not represent merely a future image of world history, however. He demands
– by virtue of the eternal ideas conjoined in Him – political action [in the present]
and continuous, tireless participation in various concrete national tasks. It is the
duty of every Jew to help bring about the messianic age by involving himself in
the national life of his country.”43 Cohen’s moral-religious commitments led him
to endorse socialism,44 observing that the politics of the prophets “is nothing
other than what nowadays we call socialism.”45
For him, however, socialism was more than a moral slogan. He was sharply
critical of capitalism, regarding its system of production as morally unacceptable
and, accordingly, advocated the establishment of a cooperative economy con-
trolled by the workers.46 His doctrine of ethical socialism was perhaps his most
enduring legacy. Basing himself on the Kantian principle that each human being
must be regarded as an end-in-itself, Cohen held that a human being should,
therefore, never be treated as a means or a tool by others, “The deepest and most
40 Cf. “[Hermann Cohen’s] thought represents the culmination and representation in systematic
form of the ideas which had become the common coin of the Reform movement in the nineteenth
century.” Michael A. Meyer, Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism
(New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1988), 206.
41 See, e.g., H. Cohen, “Affinities Between the Philosophy of Kant and Judaism,” in Reason and
Hope, 77-89. Cf. “Not all German Jews, of course, had an accurate idea of Kant, nor, for that matter,
had all Germans … . But what more could [middle-class German Jews] have desired than [Cohen’s]
message of a sort of identity of the Jewish spirit with the doctrine of Germany’s greatest philosoph-
ical genius!” Robert Weltsch, “Introduction,” in Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 13 (1968): viii.
42 Franz Rosenzweig, “Einleitung,” in Strauss, Hermann Cohens Jüdische Schriften, vol. 1, xxvi-xxxi.
43 H. Cohen, “Religious Postulates” [1907], in H. Cohen, Reason and Hope, 49.
44 See Harry van der Linden, Kantian Ethics and Socialism (Indianapolis: Hackett Pub. Co., 1988),
ch. 6; and Steven S. Schwarzschild, “The Democratic Socialism of Hermann Cohen,” Hebrew
Union College Annual 27 (1956): 417-438.
45 H. Cohen, Ethik des reinen Willens, 559.
46 Van der Linden, Kantian Ethics, 221-236. Noting that Cohen’s ethical socialism is to be dis-
tinguished from the reforms advocated by liberals, van der Linden reminds us (333, n. 35) that
“socialists typically focus on the conditions of production, whereas [welfare] liberals typically
focus on the conditions of distribution.”
powerful meaning of the categorical imperative is expressed in this [proposition]; it

contains the moral program of a new era and the entire future world history … . The
idea of the priority of humanity as an end becomes the idea of socialism, which
defines each human as an end-in-itself [Selbstzweck].”47
Among Cohen’s students was Kurt Eisner, the leader of the band of largely
Jewish intellectuals – philosophers, poets, playwrights, pacifists and anarchists
– who launched the Bavarian Revolution. It was Eisner’s conviction that politics
could be pursued without violence. Accordingly, as an admirer had affectionately
observed, “he had hoped to change Germany by kindness.”48 Eisner had studied
with Cohen at the University of Marburg, being particularly drawn to the philos-
opher’s ethical socialism, which, as he later recalled, touched him to the core
of his being.49 To the end of his life – he was assassinated by a crazed opponent
of the revolution in February 1919 – he remained true to his teacher’s ideals of a
socialism guided by the categorical imperative and the vision of the prophets.50
Were Eisner and his fellow Jewish revolutionaries, indeed, representatives of
Judaism or, at least, of Cohen’s conception of prophetic messianism?51 To be sure,
the question is more rhetorical than substantive. For one, we have no evidence
that Eisner read Cohen as a fellow Jew whose message was addressed to his Jewish
loyalties.52 In his socialist writings, Cohen addressed Jews and non-Jews alike.
Many non-Jews, of course, were influenced by Cohen’s neo-Kantian conception
47 H. Cohen, Ethik des reinen Willens, 320, 321 (trans. in van der Linden, Kantian Ethics, 223).
48 Frederic V. Grunfeld, Prophets Without Honor: A Background to Freud, Kafka, Einstein, and
Their World (New York: Holt, Reinhart and Winston, 1979), 123.
49 Van der Linden, Kantian Ethics, 303.
50 Ibid., 302-307.
51 Having died in April 1918, Hermann Cohen did not witness the Bavarian Revolution. Al-
though he did not rule out “eruptive revolution” in principle when there were no other options
left to resist a repressive, unjust political system (cf. van der Linden, Kantian Ethics, 266), it is
doubtful whether he would have countenanced the actions of Eisner and his followers. With a
passion and devotion equal to that with which he promoted socialism, Cohen throughout his life
underscored the patriotism of German Jewry, especially during the First World War. See Steven
S. Schwarzschild, “‘Germanism and Judaism’ – Hermann Cohen’s Normative Paradigm of the
German-Jewish Symbiosis,” in Jews and Germans from 1860 to 1933: The Problematic Symbiosis,
ed. David Bronsen, (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1979), 129-172, esp. 156f. Moreover, Cohen would
never have regarded any act, no matter how dramatic or far-reaching, as ushering in the final Re-
demption. The eschaton, he taught, lies in the absolute future that is ever-receding into eternity;
messianism is, therefore, an asymptotic task.
52 Cf. David Melchior, “[Although Eisner] never left the Jewish community, Judaism and the
Jewish heritage … meant to him as good as nothing” (“Stiefkind der Geschichte? Zum 100. Ge-
burtstag von Kurt Eisner,” Allgemeine Wochenzeitung der Juden in Deutschland 22, no. 7 (1967);
quoted by Angress, in Mosse and Paucker, Deutsches Judentum, 247.
of socialism.53 Further, Eisner’s Jewish comrades were apparently unfamiliar with

Cohen’s teachings. If they were aware of them, they were not particularly inspired
by them;54 and there is no evidence of any other specifically Jewish teachings that
may have informed their politics.55 Yet the question of the Jewishness of the Bavar-
53 Among the more notable disciples of Cohen’s socialism were Albert Gorland, Paul Natorp,
Franz Staudinger and Karl Vorländer. None of these individuals, who did much to disseminate
Cohen’s teachings, were Jewish.
54 The term “inspired,” of course, is ambiguous; it may suggest that one’s thought had its source
or origins in Hermann Cohen or that one’s thought was given added force or passion through an
encounter with Cohen and his writings. In the latter case, it is conceivable that one’s socialism
or inclination to socialism had its origins independent of Cohen and that a Jew reading his writ-
ings on the prophetic basis of socialism may have derived from them a special sense of Jewish
calling, enhancing his or her commitment to socialism. Although it is, indeed, plausible that
some Jewish socialists (e.g., Bloch or Eisner) may have been so “inspired” by Cohen, we have no
documentation permitting us to present this assumption as a fact.
55 Rolf Kauffeldt has sought to uncover the Jewish sources inspiring the utopian vision and
political activism of two leading protagonists of the Bavarian Revolution, Erich Mühsam and
Gustav Landauer. Basing himself on an article by Gershom Scholem on the Jewish messianic tra-
dition, Kauffeldt concludes Mühsam and Landauer were “beholden to this tradition” and specif-
ically to that tendency within the tradition emphasizing that Redemption is a public, historical
event and that its vision enjoins action in the here and now. “Landauer and Mühsam … assumed
precisely the tradition of active messianism and interpreted it according to their social Utopian
goal.” See Kauffeldt, “Zur jüdischen Tradition,” Bulletin des Leo Baeck Instituts, 22. (Kauffeldt
refers to Scholem’s article that appeared in English under the title “Toward an Understanding
of the Messianic Idea in Judaism,” in Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays
on Jewish Spirituality [New York: 1971], 1-36.) For reasons developed throughout this chapter, I
find this line of argumentation faulty. I shall simply note here that it is based on an imprudent
reading of Scholem, isolating one element in his depiction of the complex dialectics of the Jewish
messianic tradition; it is doubtful whether Scholem would have regarded political activism of
Jewish utopians as, eo ipso, reflecting the messianic activism of which he spoke. (See the state-
ment, “According to some of its observers, devotees, and critics, [socialism] has in it a great deal
of secular messianism. It is a moot question whether that is correct. There is an element of truth
to it, but how much is a very big question.” [M. Tsur and A. Shapira, “With Gershom Scholem: An
Interview,” in Scholem, Jews and Judaism in Crisis, 26].) Further, Kauffeldt bases his argument on
an apodictic assertion that, as Jews, Landauer and Mühsam had, perforce, regarded themselves
as commanded by this tradition. However, an assertion, no matter how plausible, cannot be
presented as evidence in the absence of compelling documentation. It is true that Landauer does
seem to have taken some ethnic pride in the fact that Jews played a leading role in the Bavarian
Revolution. On reading an article, “The Revolution and Us,” that Martin Buber published in Der
Jude 2 (November-December 1918), Landauer urged his friend to write another article “treating
the leading role played by the Jews in the upheaval. The revolution in Munich, for instance,
where no one had thought of organizing on a wider scale beforehand, was prepared by seven
persons: at the head Kurt Eisner … two ardent young Jews [Mühsam and Toller] were his best
and most tireless helpers; another ally was a well-to-do Bavarian farmer who has been blind
for seven years; the other three were young workers” (Letter from Landauer to Buber, 2 Decem-
ian revolutionaries – and other Jewish protagonists of the revolutions that swept
Europe in the years 1917-1919 – was frequently raised.56 As Franz Kafka anxiously
recorded after having overheard a conversation of German guests at a hotel dining
room, “They don’t forgive the Jewish Socialists and Communists a single thing;
they drown them during the soup and quarter them while carving the roast.”57
In more polite circles, the question of the Jewishness of so many prominent
revolutionaries was posed in order to focus on the apparent Jewish inclination to
political activism, a charge that was reinforced by the postwar upsurge in Zionism
among German-Jewish youth. Christian theologians suggested that the Jews’ this-
worldly conception of redemption was at fault. Typical was a widely discussed
essay, “Judentum und Christentum” (“Judaism and Christianity”) by the highly
reputed Jesuit philosopher Erich Przywara.58 Published in 1926 in the respected and
influential cultural and political monthly, Stimmen der Zeit, this article advanced
the argument that the restless “political activism” of the Jews threatened the very
foundations of a Christian civilization that was grounded in a quiet, patient faith in
the saving grace of Jesus Christ. With the learned inflections of an objective scholar,
Przywara maintained that the political passions of secular Jews were dialectically
related to Israel’s rejection of Jesus – who had brought to mankind the promise of a
genuinely spiritual relationship to God – and to the consequent enslavement of the
Jews’ religious imagination to a this-worldly messianism.
Przywara held that the messianism of the modern secular Jew, whose humane
and high ideals he acknowledged, was but a misplaced idealism. Other Christian
writers were less charitable and accused the secular radical Jews of more sinis-
ter motives, linking them with the spiritually desiccated and calculating piety of
ber 1918, in Martin Buber, Briefwechsel aus sieben Jahrzehnten, ed. Grete Schaeder [Heidelberg:
1973], vol. 2, 15). In the eulogy he delivered at Eisner’s burial, Landauer also emphasized that the
martyred revolutionary was a Jew. See Friedländer, “Politische Veränderungen der Kriegszeit,”
in Mosse and Paucker, Deutsches Judentum, 51 (n. 70).
56 In the mind of German and Jew alike, the revolution that enflamed Germany in 1918-1919
was a Jewish affair. As one anti-Semitic author noted, “In Magdeburg it is Brandes; in Dresden,
Lipinsky, Geyer and Fleissner; and in the Ruhr, Markus and Levinsohn; in Bremerhaven and
Kiel, Grünewald and Kohn; in Pfalz, Lilienthal and Heine (Quoted in Friedländer, “Politische
Veränderungen,”51f.) Of course, the fact that Jews were also prominent in the contemporaneous
revolutions in Hungary and Russia served to reinforce the popular association of the Jews with
revolutionary politics. In fact, according to the exemplary archival research of Werner Angress,
among the hundreds who played a leading position in the German revolutions, we find only
fifty-two Jews or individuals of Jewish descent, that is, baptized or half-Jews (Angress, “Juden
im politischen Leben der Revolutionszeit,” in Mosse and Paucker, Deutsches Judentum, 301-315).
57 Kafka, Briefe, 1902-1924 (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1975), 275 (cited in Grunfeld, Prophets Without
Honor, 123).
58 Erich Przywara, “Judentum und Christentum,” Stimmen der Zeit, 3 (1926): 81-99.
the Pharisees. Perhaps the most outrageous of these critics was the novelist and
cultural critic, Oskar A. H. Schmitz, who (in a special issue of Martin Buber’s Der
Jude devoted to a Jewish and Christian exchange on anti-Semitism) published an
article with the deliberately antagonistic title “Desirable and Undesirable Jews”
(“Wünschenswerte und nichtwünschenswerte Juden”)59 Schmitz identified the
former as the Orthodox Jews “who disturb no one [and] can be most desirable
fellow citizens with Aryans.”60 The undesirable Jews – deracinated and secular
pacifists, socialists, Zionists – are animated by the “demonic” spirit of Pharisa-
ism, which Schmitz defined as a sort of negative messianism. The Pharisees and
their latter-day disciples, albeit irreligious, are “bearers of a messianic hope”;
they view it as their task to inform the Christians that the Messiah has yet to come
and, indeed, that “he must remain unreal, never to be in the here and now.”61
Hence, Schmitz concluded, “the true essence of the Pharisees is their No.”62 By
insisting that redemption must be this-worldly, the Jews, in effect, denied the
very possibility of true redemption.63
The challenge to Jewish scholars and religious thinkers to clarify the Jewish
messianic doctrine and its relationship to political activism also came from within
the Jewish community. The postwar generation of Jewish youth, particularly the
Zionists among them, increasingly demanded that the Jews as a people return to
history and actively seek to shape their own historical destiny in order to achieve
what the more enthusiastic would call redemption.64 Within German-Jewish
59 Der Jude, Sonderheft 5: “Antisemitismus und jüdisches Volkstum” (1925): 17-33.

60 Ibid., 25.
61 Ibid., 31.
62 Ibid., 33.
63 Oskar Schmitz fails to explain, or rather does not bother to explain, how contemporary Ortho-
dox Jews – the “desirable” Jews – manage to avoid the deleterious effects of the Pharasaic spirit.
For a more comprehensive discussion of the views about Judaism and Jews that were voiced with
such intensity during the Weimar Republic by Schmitz and other Christians, see Paul Mendes-
Flohr, “Ambivalent Dialogue; Jewish-Christian Encounter in the Weimar Republic,” in Judaism
and Christianity Under the Impact of National Socialism, ed. Otto Dov Kulka and Paul Mendes-
Flohr (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 1987), 99-132. For a convenient collection of Jewish and
Christian exchanges in this period, see Versuche des Verstehens: Dokumente jüdisch-christlicher
Begegnung aus den Jahren, 1918-1933, ed. Robert Raphael Geis and Hans-Joachim Kraus (Munich:
Kaiser, 1966).
64 Martin Buber seems to have captured the mood of the postwar generation when he declared,
“Youth is the eternal chance for mankind’s happiness [Glückschance], the chance eternally of-
fered to it and eternally squandered by it.” And addressing Jewish youth specifically, he con-
tinued, “the Jewish people is deciding its fate today.” Buber, “Zion und der Jugend,” Der Jude
3 (June 1918): 99, 102. Cf. Eva G. Reichmann, “Der Bewusstseinswandel der deutschen Juden,”
in Mosse and Paucker, Deutsches Judentum, 511-612, esp. 581-604. A fuller appreciation of the
disposition of Jewish youth in this period would require a consideration of the general spiritual
circles, this problem was primarily illuminated, like so many other theological
issues during the period, by Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig, who here, as so
often, adopted radically different positions.
In striking contrast to the mood of the period, Rosenzweig taught that, by virtue
of their conception of redemption, the Jews were to remain apart from history and
were to resist the temptation to participate in the perfecting of the world. The “soul”
of the Jewish people, “replete with the vistas afforded by [messianic] hope, grows
numb to the concerns, the doing, and the struggling of the world … . Its holiness
hinders it from devoting its soul to a still unhallowed world, no matter how much
the body may be bound with it.”65 Since their exile, Rosenzweig observed, the Jews
no longer live in history – which is the affair of sovereign states – but beyond it,
blissfully sequestered in a spiritual reality that anticipates the Kingdom of God.66
The Jews’ experience of time is exclusively set by the rhythms of their liturgical cal-
endar. The fixed and elaborate pattern of prayer, commemoration and celebration
of the ancient Jewish liturgy orders the year, so that each year replicates the preced-
ing one. Jewish time is, thus, cyclical; it does not grow, it does not include or notice
current events. In contrast to the peoples of the world whose life unfolds in history
and whose sense of time is shaped both by current events and the fortunes that
those events bear, the Jews focus their imagination and their sense of themselves as
a Schicksalsgemeinschaft (community of destiny) on eternity – a time beyond “the
growth of the world,” in which all the contradictions of history will be resolved. As
Rosenzweig explained in his magnum opus of 1921, The Star of Redemption:
agitation of postwar German society, which was marked by intense and varied utopian and rad-
ical political activities. See Michael Andrizky and Thomas Rautenberg, ed. ‘Wir sind nackt und
nennen uns Du’: Von Lichtfreunden und Sonnenkämpfern: Eine Geschichte der Freikörperkultur
(Giessen: Anabas, 1989). This insightful collection of essays focuses on the German back-to-na-
ture movement and also illuminates what the editors depict as the “mood of departure [Auf-
bruchsstimmung], the thirst for action and the pathos of belief that reverberated in the 1920s.”
The editors similarly note:
Those of the young generation fortunate enough to have returned from the inferno of the
war were convinced that they were standing at a turning point in history, that a fundamen-
tal change of all values, of paradigms, was imminent. The violent ending of the nineteenth
century [viz., the demise of the era of bourgeois optimism brought about by the First World
War and the revolutions that followed] was regarded as the great opportunity for creating a
new, better world (ibid., 50f.).
65 Franz Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, trans. William W. Hallo (New York: Holt, Reinhart
& Winston, 1970), 332.
66 Franz Rosenzweig was introduced to this distinctly German conception of history by his teach-
er, Friedrich Meinecke. See Alexander Altmann, “Rosenzweig on History,” in The Philosophy of
Franz Rosenzweig, ed. Paul Mendes-Flohr (Hanover, N.H.: New England Univ. Press, 1988), 124ff.
[In the circuit of its liturgical year, the People of Israel is] at its goal and knows it [is] at the
goal … . It anticipates eternity. The future is the driving power in the circuit of its year. Its
rotation originates, so to speak, not in a thrust but in a pull. The present passes not because
the past prods it on but because the future snatches it toward itself. Somehow, even the
festivals of creation and revelation flow into Redemption … . The meaning of [the eternal
people’s] life in time is that the years come and go, one after the other as a sequence of
waiting, or perhaps wandering, but not growth … . And so that eternal people must forget
the world’s growth, must cease to think thereon. It must look upon the world, its own world,
as complete … . As a nationality, [the Jewish people has thus] reached the point to which
the nations of the world still aspire. Its world had reached the goal … . Because the Jewish
people is beyond the contradiction that constitutes the vital drive in the life of the nations –
the contradiction between national characteristics and world history, home and faith, earth
and heaven – it knows nothing of war. The Jew is practically the only human being who
cannot take war seriously, and this makes him the only genuine pacifist. For that reason,
and because he experiences perfect community in his spiritual year, he remains remote
from the chronology of the rest of the world. He does not have to wait for the world history
to unroll its long course to let him gain what he feels he already possesses in the circuit of
every year: the experience of the immediacy of each single individual to God, realized in the
perfect community of all with God.67
Although indifferent to the “growth of the world,” the Jews – or rather “the Syna-
gogue” – is not irrelevant to world history; indeed, the Synagogue plays a crucial
role in the unfolding of history as an eschatological process.68 As a nation beyond
history, the Jews project the image of the future, of the goal of history. As such, the
Synagogue constitutes the ontological ground of the future; because of the Jews,
the eschatological future is not merely a divine promise or mere utopian goal, but
a concrete reality, proleptically foreshadowed in the present. The Synagogue thus
embodies humanity’s hope of redemption. Accordingly Rosenzweig evokes the
ancient Hebrew benediction recited upon reading the Torah. “Blessed art Thou
… who has planted eternal life in our midst.”69 Thus, the Jews are, indeed, an
“eternal people,” their eternity referring not so much to their perdurability as to
their realization, within historical pre-messianic time, of the future redemption.70
67 Rosenzweig, Star of Redemption, 328-331.

68 In order to underscore Israel’s detachment from history and its organization as principally a
community of divine worship, Rosenzweig preferred to speak of the Synagogue.
69 Rosenzweig, Star of Redemption, 298.
70 A similar conception of a prolepsis, or spiritual anticipation, of Redemption, which one en-
joys while still physically resident in the historical era, is often used to describe the Christian’s
experience of salvation through Jesus Christ. New Testament scholars and Christian theologians
refer to this experience as realized eschatology. Within the context of Rosenzweig’s polemic with
Christianity, it may be argued that, by characterizing the Jewish experience of Torah and God as
realized eschatology, in effect, he is appropriating what Christians had hitherto regarded to be
their privileged relationship.
Rosenzweig thus likens the Synagogue to “a star” that “must burn incessantly,”
its flames eternally feeding upon itself. “It required no fuel from without. Time
has no power over it and must roll past.” Its eternal flame, Rosenzweig observes,
marks it as a “star of redemption.”71
Hovering majestically above history, the “star of redemption” – the Synagogue
– beckons the peoples of the world to reach out beyond history to eternity, to a
“redeemed” existence freed from the political and existential torments of history.
The “star of redemption,” however, is only truly apprehended by the Church
because, in regarding itself as the true Israel, it alone takes notice of the Synagogue.
Despite itself, perhaps, the Church is challenged by the abiding reality of the Jews
as an eternal people. The Synagogue resides where the Church knows it should,
but cannot. (And here, Rosenzweig argues, lies the ultimate ground of Christian
anti-Semitism).72 By virtue of its mission to the pagans, the Church enters history,
associating itself with the struggles and fate of the peoples of the world. There
within the bosom of history, the Church as a “supranational power”73 is to lead
the peoples of the world to Zion, to the eschatological community in which all will
dwell together in common recognition of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.74
In so doing, the Church transforms the divisive histories of the nations of the world
into a “world-history” flowing along a messianic trajectory.75 Judaism and Chris-
tianity, according to Rosenzweig, are thus joined in a special, albeit unacknowl-
edged, alliance. From the perspective of God’s Heilsplan, both Covenants – the Old
and the New – are valid; together, they work to bring the redemption, the Syna-
gogue as a metahistorical community of prayer and the Church through history.
“From two sides there is … a knocking on the door of the future.”76
Rosenzweig’s vision of history was informed by his conviction that, on its
own, history cannot redeem itself and that, left on its own, history spins upon
its own directionless axis, lost in an endless cycle of wars and revolutions. This
conviction began to crystallize while Rosenzweig was still a student of history

72 Cf. Rosenzweig’s letter to Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, undated, in Judaism Despite Christianity:
The ‘Letters on Christianity and Judaism’ Between Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy and Franz Rosenzweig,
ed. E. Rosenstock-Huessy (New York: Schocken, 1971), 107-115, letter 11.
74 “[Through Christianity] the messianic hope, the Torah and the commandments have become
familiar topics, topics of conversation among the inhabitants of the far isles and many peoples,
uncircumcised of heart and flesh” (Ibid., 336).
75 For a detailed discussion of Rosenzweig’s messianic conception of “world-history,” see Paul
Mendes-Flohr, “Rosenzweig and the Crisis of Historicism,” in Mendes-Flohr, Philosophy of Franz
Rosenzweig, 138-161.
at the university, and especially as he was writing his doctoral dissertation on

Hegel’s conception of the nation-state, which he submitted in the summer of
1912.77 But it was later, during the First World War (in which he served as a combat
soldier on the eastern front) and its convulsive aftermath, that Rosenzweig con-
cluded that in order to achieve the envisioned era of universal peace and a unity
of peoples, history requires a metahistorical reference, an ever-present glimpse
of the paradise beyond history. On the stormy seas of history (according to one
image employed by Rosenzweig), the clear sight of land keeps the ship of human-
ity on course toward its destination. Significantly, he originally developed these
thoughts without reference to Judaism or any other theological considerations,
and, indeed, only later was he to assign a metahistorical role to Jewry.78 Once he
had done so, however, he reached the paradoxical conclusion that, for the sake of
history, the Jews had to remain apart from history, resisting the allure of Zionism
and political activism.
Gershom Scholem has commented that, with his doctrine of redemption,
Rosenzweig aligned himself with “a deep-seated tendency” within Judaism
to deny messianism its apocalyptic sting.79 The traditional conception of mes-
sianism, Scholem observed, most often envisions redemption as an apocalyp-
tic event accompanied by a catastrophic disruption of history; accordingly, it is
said, redemption breaks into history with a cataclysmic, revolutionary force. To
be sure, as Scholem acknowledged, Rosenzweig rejected the “bourgeois” concep-
77 Rosenzweig’s doctoral dissertation was later expanded and published in two volumes under
the title Hegel und der Staat (Munich and Berlin: R. Oldenbourg, 1920); Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2010.
78 For a discussion of the development of Rosenzweig’s conception of metahistory and history,
see Mendes-Flohr, “Rosenzweig and the Crisis of Historicism,” 138-161. The roots of Rosenzweig’s
messianic thought lie in the Enlightenment and in German idealism as much as in Judaism. With
Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy and other friends, Rosenzweig shared the conviction that Europe was
on the threshold of the Third Millennium prophesied by St. John on the island of Patmos. This
notion goes back to Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Friedrich von Schelling and, ultimately, to
Joachim of Fiore. Cf. Altmann, “Rosenzweig on History,” 125-128, and Harold Stahmer, ‘Speak
That I May See Thee!’: The Religious Significance of Language (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 109-
115, 121-124. Indeed, an appreciation of Jewish messianic thought in the modern period in gen-
eral, both secular and theological, cannot be divorced from this ideational context. This is not
to say that Jewish messianic thought in this period is not authentically Jewish or that it merely
reflects non-Jewish thinking. The latter may, indeed, have informed the Jewish messianic imag-
ination, thereby stimulating and triggering ideas and passions immanent within the Jewish tra-
dition. In that case, one would speak of a dialectical symbiosis between non-Jewish and Jewish
messianic thought. Of course, this may be true for all periods of Jewish thought – and not only in
the modern period and not only with respect to messianism.
79 Gershom Scholem, “On the 1930 Edition of Rosenzweig’s Star of Redemption,” in his The Mes-
sianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality (New York: Schocken, 1971), 323.
tion of progress and understood that there must be a radical disjunction between
history and redemption.80 But Rosenzweig sought to bridge the chasm and soften
the opposition between history and redemption. His notion of an eschatological
alliance between the Synagogue and the Church suggested that redemption would
be attained without any apocalyptic paroxysms. Certainly, for Rosenzweig, Jewry
experiences redemption without passing through the purgatory of an apocalypse.
One suspects that Scholem, as a Zionist, was particularly disturbed by the his-
torical passivity sponsored by Rosenzweig’s conception of messianism. For “his-
torical passivity,” Scholem contended, “is … hardly compatible with the deepest
impulses of messianism.”81 Whenever messianic faith is a living force within
Judaism, he noted, it invariably engenders an apocalyptic mood that rivets the
imagination and expectations of the Jew on divine deliverance. The more intense
this expectation, the greater the desire to do something to hasten the eschaton, to
“force the End.” Hence, according to Scholem, Jewish messianism is characterized
by an inevitable tension between a passivity born of a pessimistic view of history
and an eagerness to rush headlong into the future.82 Although the tradition seeks
to constrain messianic activism, it is, nonetheless, in Scholem’s judgment, a recur-
ring expression of messianism as a vital reality in Judaism.83 Scholem associated
Rosenzweig with Liberal Judaism and with “much more ancient” tendencies in
Orthodox Judaism that have sought to deny this reality by making “a virtue of his-
torical necessity,” forbidding “the Jewish people any historic initiative, even though
80 Gershom Scholem, “Toward an Understanding of the Messianic Idea in Judaism,” in ibid., 15;
and his “The Messianic Idea in Kabbalism,” in ibid., 38. The latter essay was, indicatively, first
published in English under the title “Jewish Messianism and the Idea of Progress,” Commentary
25, no. 4 (1958): 298-305.
81 Scholem, “Reflections on Jewish Theology,” in On Jews and Judaism, 288.
82 Scholem, “Toward an Understanding of the Messianic Idea,” in The Messianic Idea in Juda-
ism, 12-17.
83 Scholem’s emphasis on the apocalyptic moment of messianism – he identified it as a poten-
tial source of the utopian, history-oriented passion of the Jews – would seem to have led him to
regard Zionism, sponsoring as it does the Jews’ return to history and utopian deeds, as a messi-
anic movement. He, however, balked at this conclusion. David Biale explains this apparent in-
consistency as stemming, in the first instance, from political rather than theological or scholarly
considerations. In the mid-1920s, the right-wing Revisionist Zionists often adopted the rhetoric of
messianism to promote policies that Scholem found loathsome and dangerous. He, accordingly,
declared, “I absolutely deny that Zionism is a messianic movement and that it has the right to
employ religious terminology for political goals.” Biale notes that in his scholarly work, Scholem
endeavored to indicate the demonic forces that are often released by apocalyptic messianism.
As a Zionist, his problem was, therefore, to show that the movement could tap the messianic
energies of the people while pursuing a sober and rational political program. See Biale’s insight-
ful analysis, Gershom Scholem: Kabbalah and Counter-History (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ.
Press, 1979), 174-188; the quotation from Scholem, 177.
the alleged commandment of historical passivity [opposed] the deepest impulses of

messianism and, in fact, spelled its perversion.”84
Rosenzweig, however, actually had a profound appreciation of the apocalyp-
tic impulse of messianism, phenomenologically, if not theologically. In various
obiter dicta, he expressed a most positive regard for the apocalyptic dimension
of Israel’s messianic faith. But these comments are contained in his correspon-
dence, first published in 1935. Thus Scholem had no access to them when he
wrote his critique of Rosenzweig in 1930; indeed, he based his criticism of Rosenz-
weig’s messianic doctrine exclusively on The Star of Redemption. In a letter to
an anti-Zionist rabbi, for instance, Rosenzweig – who in his last years regarded
himself as a non-Zionist as opposed to an anti-Zionist – urged his correspondent
to acknowledge the achievements of the burgeoning Hebrew culture in Pales-
tine.85 The “dogmatic” opposition of Liberal Judaism to Zionism, he contended,
was not truly religious but rather reflected the politics of Emancipation. The dis-
ingenuousness of Liberal Judaism was betrayed no less when, in opposition to
Zionism, it appealed to Hermann Cohen’s teaching that redemption is in eternity,
in an asymptotic, thus unattainable, future. A Jew of genuine faith, Rosenzweig
averred, could not dismiss Zionism simply because of its alleged messianic pre-
84 Scholem, “Reflections on Jewish Theology,” in Scholem, On Jews and Judaism, 288. These re-
marks were made in 1974 and with no direct reference to Rosenzweig; however, they clearly apply
to Rosenzweig since he represented for Scholem the most sophisticated – therefore, all the more
beguiling – articulation of a messianic theology that denied the Jews the promise of living their
lives on the historical level. In the same vein, Scholem undoubtedly objected to Rosenzweig’s
presentation of Redemption as a purely inward, spiritual experience. Scholem would regard this
as a perversion of Jewish teachings, for Judaism, he insisted, “in all forms and manifestations,
has always maintained a concept of Redemption as an event which takes place publicly, on the
stage of history and within the community.” (“Toward an Understanding of the Messianic Idea”
in Messianic Idea in Judaism, 1.) Although, for Rosenzweig, Redemption is experienced by the
Jews in community (in the praying congregation), it certainly does not have a historical dimen-
sion; indeed, as I have noted, Rosenzweig held that, as an eschatological community, the Syn-
agogue is a metahistorical reality. On the other hand, it should be emphasized, he taught that
through Christianity, inspired by the Synagogue, Redemption would become a historical, public
reality. It will be a reality, however, that is obtained not by virtue of an apocalyptic rupture in his-
tory but rather as one that gradually grows and emerges in the public weal; indeed, Redemption
is a process that Rosenzweig and his Christian friends associated with the incipient emergence of
the “invisible” Church of John at the beginning of the Enlightenment (cf. n. 77).
85 Glatzer, Franz Rosenzweig, 159. Indicatively, Rosenzweig supported the participation of
non-Zionists in the Jewish Agency and various projects for the upbuilding of the Jewish com-
munity in Palestine. (Ernst Simon, interview with me, 1980). On Rosenzweig’s evolving attitude
toward Zionism, especially as reflected in his letters and diaries, see Stefan Moses, “Politik und
Religion: Zur Aktualität Franz Rosenzweig,” in Der Philosoph Franz Rosenzweig, ed. W. Schmied-
Kowarzik (Munich: K. Alber, 1988), vol. 2, 871-875.
tensions: “I can imagine that one objects to a particular present with ‘You are
not yet it.’ How one can, however, do this out of principle for the future, and
indeed for all future, without thereby destroying the future, I cannot understand.
I have no idea how one can pray for something, which one holds beforehand to
be impossible … . The prophets meant an earthly Zion of the future. The eternity,
which we Jews mean, lies not in infinity [Unendlichen], but ‘speedily’ in our days.
What only comes in eternity … does not come in an eternity.”86 Even Hermann
Cohen, Rosenzweig continued, once conceded that messianism can never be a
mere asymptotic ideal. “I am still hoping to see the dawn of the messianic age,”
the elder philosopher had unabashedly confided to Rosenzweig, adding the tra-
ditional refrain, “and speedily in our days.”87
Rosenzweig was even more emphatic in a gloss to one of the poems of Judah
Halevi that he translated. On a joyous hymn composed by the Spanish Hebrew
poet, one that sings of Israel’s imminent “return home”88 and one that Rosenz-
weig surmised was written under the impact of one of the many pseudomessiahs
who recurrently emerged in Jewish history,89 he commented:
The expectation of the coming of the Messiah, by which and because of which Judaism lives,
would be a meaningless theologumenon, a mere “idea” in the philosophical sense, empty
babble, if the appearance again and again of a “false Messiah” did not render it reality
and unreality, illusion and disillusion. The false Messiah is as old as the hope for the true
Messiah. He is the changing form of the changeless hope. He separates every Jewish genera-
tion into those whose faith is strong enough to give themselves up to an illusion, and those
whose hope is so strong that they do not allow themselves to be deluded. The former are
the better, the latter the stronger. The former bleed as victims on the altar of the eternity
of the people, the latter are the priests who perform the service at this altar. And this will
go on until the day when all will be reversed, when the belief of the believers will become
truth, and the hope of the hoping a lie. Then – and no one knows whether this “then” will
not be this very day – the task of the hoping will come to an end and, when the morning
of the day breaks, everyone who still belongs among those who hope and not among those
who believe will run the risk of being rejected. This danger hovers over the apparently less
endangered life of the hopeful.90
86 Franz Rosenzweig to Benno Jacob, 23 May 1927, in Franz Rosenzweig, Briefe und Tagebücher,
ed. Rachel Rosenzweig and Edith Rosenzweig-Scheinmann in cooperation with Bernhard Casper
(The Hague: M. Nijhof 1979), vol. 2, 593f.
87 Glatzer, Franz Rosenzweig, 351.
88 Cf. “Du schick dich an zur Heimkehr ins vielschöne Land.” This line is from the poem Ro-
senzweig titled “The Happy Tidings” (Die frohe Botschaft) in his Jehuda Halevi: Zweiundneunzig
Hymnen und Gedichte Deutsch, 2nd ed. (Berlin: L. Schweider, 1927), 122.
89 Rosenzweig, Jehuda Halevi, 238. In this estimation of the circumstances occasioning Halevi’s
poem, Rosenzweig is following the nineteenth-century Italian Jewish scholar, Samuel David Lu-
zzatto, whom he cites.
90 Ibid., trans. in Glatzer, 350f.
In his appraisal of Rosenzweig’s conception of messianism, Scholem seems to

have overlooked this passage – contained in a volume published in 1927 and thus
available to him when he wrote his critique of Rosenzweig – perhaps because
he viewed it as nothing more than a phenomenological aperçu that Rosenzweig
failed to integrate into his theology of redemption.91 Indeed, Rosenzweig was not
saying here that the Jews should enter history and hasten the Kingdom. Rather,
he is saying that the hope for the Kingdom, if it is real and strong – if it is truly
aflame in their breasts – recurrently confronts the Jews with the temptation to
enter history in order to greet the Messiah. It is a temptation, however, that is
to be resisted. For Rosenzweig, the future, at least as experienced by the Jews,
was to remain beyond history. To be sure, in his later years, Rosenzweig did
develop warm feelings for the young Zionists who were among his followers and
co-workers. He learned to respect their commitment to Jewish spiritual renewal
and came to admire the cultural achievements of the Zionist movement in Pales-
tine. These sentiments certainly blunted any tendency he may have had to adopt
an actively anti-Zionist position; indeed, as noted earlier, to distinguish himself
from Jewish opponents to Zionism, he called himself a non-Zionist,92 and looked
favorably on the upbuilding of the Jewish community in Palestine.93 He once even
acknowledged in a private conversation that “Zionism is perhaps after all one of
the nations’s roads into the future. This road too should be kept open.”94 Yet he
never endorsed Zionism as an ideology, nor did he seek to adjust his theology to
accommodate this movement and its call to the Jews to return to history. For him,
the Jews were to remain a metahistorical community, serving as custodians of the
future and eschatological hope.
91 There is also a passage in The Star of Redemption ignored by Scholem that indicates a pro-
found understanding of the contemporary Jew’s messianic passion to enter history. Scholem
may have similarly dismissed this passage, notwithstanding its phenomenological sensitivity, as
ultimately irrelevant to Rosenzweig’s theology of Redemption:
The believer in the kingdom uses the term “progress” only in order to employ the jargon of
his time; in reality he means the kingdom. It is the veritable shibboleth for distinguishing
him from the authentic devotee of progress whether he does not resist the prospect and
duty of anticipating the “goal” at the very next moment. The future is no future without
this anticipation and the inner compulsion for it, without this “wish to bring about the
Messiah before his time” and the temptation to “coerce the kingdom of God into being”;
without these, it [i.e., the future] is only a past distended endlessly and projected forward.
For without such anticipation, the moment is not eternal; it is something that drags itself
everlastingly along the long, long trail of time (227).
92 Glatzer, Franz Rosenzweig, 159.
93 Cf. n. 85, above.
94 Cited in Glatzer, Franz Rosenzweig, 113.
Significantly, Rosenzweig in his later years became increasingly and self-con-

sciously apolitical, an attitude that surely served to reinforce his messianic quiet-
ism.95 He was conservative by temperament, and looked upon the collapse of the
German Empire and the abdication of the Kaiser with great grief. The revolution
of 1918-1919 in particular outraged him. He decried the revolutionaries as “sim-
pletons and peacemongers”96 who had struck an unholy alliance with “fifteen-
and eighteen-year-old do-nothings playing soldier.”97 Indicatively, he exclaimed,
“I believe I’ll never be a democrat again! It is as impossible as pacifism. There will
always be government, and there will always be war. Freedom and peace, I regard
as lying – beyond.”98 Only reluctantly did Rosenzweig accept the Weimar Repub-
lic, and undoubtedly would have regarded himself a “Vernunftsrepublikaner” (“a
republican of reason”), a term coined by his Doktorvater Friedrich Meinecke when
he declared, “I remain, facing the past, in my heart a monarchist, and facing the
future, I become a republican of reason.”99
In utter contrast to Rosenzweig’s conservative and apolitical disposition,
Buber was both a Zionist and a socialist who expressed manifest sympathy for
the revolutionaries of 1918-1919.100 His closest and dearest friend was Gustav Lan-
dauer, who played an instrumental role in all the varied stages of the Bavarian
Revolution. At Landauer’s behest, Buber came to Munich in order to acquaint
himself firsthand with the revolution. In February 1919, he spent, in his words, “a
profoundly stirring week”101 in the company of the revolutionaries of Munich.102
He met frequently with Eisner and his comrades. As he reported in a letter to his
future son-in-law, the poet Ludwig Strauss:
The deepest human problems of the revolution were discussed with the utmost candor: in
the very heart of events I posed questions and offered replies; and there were nocturnal hours
95 Stefan Meineke, University of Freiburg, “A Life of Contradiction: Franz Rosenzweig and His
Relationship to History and Politics,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 36 (1991): 461-490.
96 (Unpublished letter from Rosenzweig to Margrit Rosenstock).
97 Letter from Rosenzweig to his mother, 13 November 1918, in Rosenzweig, Briefe, 618. In the
same letter (619), Rosenzweig states his political credo as “the more democracy in peace, that
much less revolution and radicalism in war.”
98 Unpublished letter, quoted in Meineke, “A Life of Contradiction,” n. 94.
99 Cited in Phelan, “Some Weimar Theories of the Intellectual,” in The Weimar Dilemma, 26.
100 Buber did question the readiness of the revolutionaries, especially of the Spartacus party, to
employ violence. See Martin Buber, “Recollection of a Death,” in his Pointing the Way: Collected
Essays, ed. and trans. Maurice Friedman (New York: Schocken, 1974), 119.
101 Buber to Ludwig Strauss, 22 February 1919, in Martin Buber: Briefwechsel, vol. 2, 29.
102 For a brief memoir of the week in February 1919 in Munich in which Buber also participated
in a debate with several of the revolutionary leaders at the Diet of the Bavarian Republic, see
Buber, “Recollection of a Death,” Pointing the Way, 119.
of apocalyptic gravity, during which silence spoke eloquently in the midst of discussion, and
the future became more distinct than the present. And yet for all but a few it was nothing
but mere bustle, and face-to-face with them I sometimes felt like a Cassandra. As for Eisner,
to be with him was to peer into the tormented passions of a divided Jewish soul; nemesis
shone from his glittering surface; he was a marked man. Landauer, by dint of the greatest
spiritual effort, kept up his faith in him, and protected him – a shield-bearer terribly moving
in his selflessness. The whole thing, an unspeakable Jewish tragedy.103
Buber left Munich on the morning of the day, 21 February 1919, on which Eisner
was assassinated. Ten weeks later, Landauer would be brutally battered to death
by counterrevolutionary troops. Buber was deeply shaken by the tragic death of
his friend;104 he viewed Landauer as a martyred idealist, a gentle anarchist who
had sacrificed his life in a doomed effort to herald an era of politics without vio-
lence.105 Buber would devote himself to honoring the memory and vision of Lan-
dauer – a man he would unabashedly eulogize as a “crucified” prophet.106
In his last will and testament, Landauer named Buber as the executor of his
literary estate, a task that the latter faithfully fulfilled. With exemplary care, Buber
103 Buber to Ludwig Strauss, 22 February 1919, in Buber, Briefswechsel, vol. 2, 29.

104 For Buber, Landauer’s murder was “a death in which the monstrous, sheerly apocalyptic
horror, the inhumanity of our time, has been delineated and portrayed,” quoted in Maurice
Friedman, Martin Buber’s Life and Work: The Early Years, 1878-1923 (New York: Dutton, 1987),
256. On the impact of Landauer’s revolutionary activity and death on Buber, see the sensitive and
detailed discussion, ibid., 245-258.
105 A pacifist, “Landauer fought in the revolution against the revolution for the sake of the
revolution” (Buber, “Recollection of a Death,” in Buber, Pointing the Way, 120). “When I think
of the passionate glance and words of my dead friend, I know with what force of soul he fought
to protect the revolution from itself, from violence.” In Buber’s judgment, his friend erred in
joining the revolution, and certainly in participating in the government of the short-lived Soviet
Republic of Bavaria. “I also believe that no man has ever erred out of purer motives,” quoted in
Friedman, Martin Buber’s Life and Work, 247.
106 As Buber stated in a memorial address:
Gustav Landauer had lived as a prophet of the coming human community and fell as its
blood-witness. He went upon the path, of which Maximus Tyrius – whose words Landauer
used as the motto to his book, Die Revolution [1906] – said:
Here is the way of the Passion, which you call a disaster [Untergang], and which you
[falsely] judge according to those who have passed upon it; I, however, deem it salva-
tion, since I judge it according to the result of what is still to come.
In a church at Brescia I saw a mural whose entire surface was covered with crucified indi-
viduals. The field of crosses stretched until the horizon, hanging from each, men of varied
physiques and faces. Then it struck me that this was the true image of Jesus Christ. On one of
the crosses I saw Gustav Landauer hanging. (Martin Buber, “Landauer und die Revolution,”
Masken: Halbmonatschrift des Düsseldorfer Schauspielhauses 14, nos. 18-19 [1919]: 291.)
The frontispiece of this edition of the journal reproduces a photograph in full color of the Brescia
mural.
issued various volumes of Landauer’s writings107 and edited two volumes of his
correspondence.108 He also published several stirring essays on Landauer,109 and
introduced his ideas to the postwar generation, especially to Zionist youth who
were to be inspired by Landauer’s concept of communitarian socialism.110 Landau-
er’s legacy also had a formative influence on Buber’s own thoughts regarding the
saliency of interpersonal relations in the shaping of spiritual and communal life.111
But one aspect of Landauer’s legacy seems to have haunted Buber through-
out his life: the tragedy of messianic politics. He initially sought to clarify his
thoughts on the subject by way of fiction, in the form of a novel. Projected on the
image of the apocalyptic struggle between Gog and Magog described in the Book
of Daniel, the novel was to explore alternative ways of working for the redemp-
tion. In a letter to Rosenzweig, dated January 1923, he apologized for not visiting
him, explaining that he was preoccupied with his novel: “‘Gog’ is crowding in on
me, but not so much in an “artistic” sense. Rather, I am becoming aware, with a
cruel clarity that is altogether different from any product of the imagination, of
how much “evil” is essential to the coming of the Kingdom. In thinking about this
I had a flash of insight about Napoleon, something I had previously not under-
stood. On the Island of Elba, he once said that his name would remain on earth as
long as le nom de l’Eternel … . Nostra res agitur.”112 After two false starts, countless
drafts,113 and more than twenty years later, Buber completed his novel, publish-
ing it first in Hebrew in 1944,114 and then in German in 1949.115 Both the title of the
107 See WM; and Beginnen.

108 Lebensgang I/II.
109 See Martin Buber, Der heilige Weg (Frankfurt: 1919); “Landauer und die Revolution,” Mas-
ken 16, nos. 28-29 (1919): 282-291; “Der heimliche Führer,” Die Arbeit 2, no. 6 (1920), 36-37; “Erin-
nerung an einen Tod,” Neue Wege 23, no. 2 (1929): 161-165; and the chapter on Landauer in Buber,
Paths in Utopia (London: R. F. C. Hull, 1949). Buber also published several essays on Landauer
in Hebrew.
110 See Ruth Link-Salinger (Hyman), Gustav Landauer: Philosopher of Utopia (Indianapolis:
Hackett, 1977), 52-54; and Eugene Lunn, Prophet of Community: The Romantic Socialism of Gustav
Landauer (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1973), 251-252, 271-273.
111 See Paul Mendes-Flohr, From Mysticism to Dialogue: Martin Buber’s Transformation of Ger-
man Social Thought (Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press, 1989), 101-126; also A. Schapira, “Wer-
dende Gemeinschaft und die Vollendung der Welt,” afterword, in Buber, Pfade in Utopia: Über
Germeinschaft und deren Verwirklichung, 3rd expanded ed. (Heidelberg: 1985), 437-439.
112 Buber to Rosenzweig, 18 January 1923, in Buber, Briefwechsel, vol. 2, 153f.
113 See epilogue to Martin Buber, Gog und Magog: Eine Chronik (Heidelberg: Lambert-Schnei-
der, 1949), 401.
114 Martin Buber, Gog u’magog: Megilat yamim (Jerusalem: Tarshish, 1944). Aside from the last
seven chapters, the novel was first published in weekly installments in the Tel-Aviv Hebrew daily
Davar from 10 January to 23 October 1941.
115 Bloch, Geist der Utopie, quoted in Fetscher, “Unzeitgemäss und Spekulativ,” 69.
Hebrew and German captured the apocalyptic drama that was chronicled in the
novel Gog and Magog: A Chronicle. The English edition, which appeared in 1958,
obscured the drama by rendering the title, For the Sake of Heaven: A Chronicle.116
It was actually an anti-apocalyptic tale meant to point to the folly of attempts
to usher in the Kingdom of God with one grand stroke – in the case of some of
Buber’s Hassidic rabbis, through theurgic prayer promoting that one last battle
of “Gog of the Land of Magog.” To Buber this was the road of false messianism
leading inexorably not only to inconsolable disappointment, but also to a nihil-
ism, a rejection of our moral task within history.117 There is, Buber insisted, no
leaping over history and the laborious – often humble and unnoticed – work of
spiritual and moral transformation of society. Redemption, as Buber understood
biblical and Jewish teachings, is not as the apocalyptic vision has it, “the end of
history,” but, instead, its perfection or, rather, the “sanctification” of the world
within history. Hence, as Buber declared in an essay of 1930, “we can only work
on the Kingdom of God through working on all the spheres of man allotted to
us.”118 No sphere, he emphasized, is more valid or effective than the other: “One
cannot say, we must work here and not there, this leads to the goal and that does
not.”119 Accordingly, Buber concluded, there is “no legitimately messianic, no
legitimately messianically-oriented politics.”120 Again in contrast to Rosenzweig,
Buber refused to conclude from this observation that politics was in vain: “The
political sphere is not to be excluded from the hallowing of all things. The politi-
cal ‘serpent’ is not essentially evil, it is itself only misled; it, too, ultimately wants
to be redeemed.”121
Buber identified this attitude with that of the Bible, particularly as articu-
lated by the prophets. Indeed, he regarded the apocalyptic attitude – introduced
into Judaism from Iranian religions – as a fundamental perversion of the pro-
phetic teaching of the quiet, humble work of hallowing the world and thus pre-
paring it for the messianic kingdom.122 The prophetic attitude – represented for
Buber in the simple message of Jeremiah, “Better your ways and your affairs and I
shall allow you to dwell in this place” – expresses a faith in freedom, indeed, the
necessity of human decision and responsibility, and thus also in history.123 The
apocalyptic attitude, Buber maintained, is a flight from human responsibility and
116 Martin Buber, For the Sake of Heaven: A Chronicle (New York: Meridian, 1958).
117 Buber, epilogue to Gog und Magog, 405.
118 Buber, “Gandhi, Politics, and Us,” in Friedman, Pointing the Way, 137.
119 Ibid.
120 Ibid.
121 Ibid.
122 Martin Buber, Two Types of Faith, trans. Norman P. Goldhawk (New York: Collier, 1961), 145f.
123 Buber, “Prophecy, Apocalyptic, and the Historical Hour,” in Buber, Pointing the Way, 196.
history. Although sharing with the prophets a vision of the Kingdom of God, the
apocalyptic message is that this Kingdom will be borne by a radical, “rupture of
history” and the advent of a new aeon when, in the words of the Johannine Rev-
elation cited by Buber, “Time will no longer be.”124 Born of a despair in human-
ity and history, the apocalyptic vision finds solace in an imminent redemption
initiated from beyond history and human decision. Hence, from the perspective
of the apocalyptic vision, all “is predetermined, all human decisions are only
sham struggles. The future does not come to pass; the future is already present in
heaven, as it were, present from the beginning.”125 Publishing these reflections in
a liberal German journal in 1954,126 Buber added a parenthetical comment that
many of his readers must have construed as an oblique indictment of their own
failings in what was then the very recent past, “And whenever man shudders
before the menace of his own work and longs to flee from the radically demand-
ing historical hour, there he finds himself near to the apocalyptic vision of a
process that cannot be arrested.”127
Clearly unlike Scholem, Buber saw the apocalyptic attitude as essentially
alien to Judaism; this, in part, was due to the fact that he defined it strictly in
terms of its original expression in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, where it
indisputably sponsored an eschatology that denigrates history and the efficacy of
human deeds. Scholem, however, employed the concept of the “apocalyptic” in
a looser sense to characterize the eagerness to anticipate a redemption deemed
imminent. Thus, the vision of an approaching redemption beyond history –
124 Ibid., 203.
125 Ibid., 201.
126 Buber, “Prophetie, Apokalyptik und die geschichtliche Stunde,” Merkur 8, no. 12 (1954):
1101-1115.
127 Buber, “Prophecy, Apocalyptic, and the Historical Hour,” in Friedman, Pointing the Way,
203. The delineation of the difference between the apocalyptic and the prophetic principle was
one of the overarching themes of Buber’s writings. In 1932 he published the first of a projected
two-volume study on the biblical origins of messianic faith to be entitled Das Kommende (The
Coming One). Only one volume appeared: Kingship of God, trans. Richard Scheimann (London:
George Allen & Unwin, 1967); he never realized his plans to complete the second volume, but he
did publish several chapters separately (see “Der Gesalbte,” in Martin Buber, Schriften zur Bibel
[Heidelberg: Lambert-Schneider, 1964] 725-846). He also devoted a scholarly book-length study
to “the prophetic faith” (see his The Prophetic Faith, trans. from the Hebrew by Carlyle Witton-Da-
vies [New York: Macmillan,1949]). Many of his essays are directly or indirectly informed by this
theme. See Marie Natalie Barton, “The Jewish Expectation of the Kingdom According to Martin
Buber” (Ph.D. dissertation, Theologische Fakultät, Munich: 1968) and A. Schapira, “Messianis-
mus und Erlösung in Martin Bubers Denken,” in Vom Erkennen zum Tun des Gerechten: Martin
Buber (1878-1965): Internationales Symposium zum 20. Todestag, ed. Werner Licharz and Heinz
Schmidt (Frankfurt: Haag & Hirchen, 1989), vol. 2, 73-85.
beyond the here and now – Scholem deemed to have, paradoxically, inspired the
revolutionary attitude and the quest for radical change within history. In other
words, Scholem understood “apocalyptic” in a broad phenomenological fashion,
whereas Buber restricted himself to the ideas and moral values associated with
the apocalyptic attitude. This does not mean, of course, that his interest was
strictly historical or that he did not extend his purview to consider contempo-
rary manifestations of the prophetic and apocalyptic impulse. Buber spoke, for
instance, of Marx’s view of the future as “an optimistic modern apocalyptic”:
“In [Marx’s] announcement of an obligatory leap of the human world out of the
aeon of necessity into that of freedom, the apocalyptic principle alone holds
sway. Here in place of the power superior to the world that effects the transition,
an immanent dialectic has appeared. Yet in a mysterious manner its goal, too,
is the perfection, even the salvation of the world. In its modern shape, too, the
apocalyptic knows nothing of an inner transformation of man that precedes the
transformation of the world and co-operates in it; it knows nothing of the pro-
phetic “turning.”128 Marx’s vision of the future, Buber contended, has thus been
falsely attributed to a prophetic origin.129 Far from being a child of the prophets,
Marx represented to Buber the insidious hold that the apocalyptic principle has
on modern civilization – and not only in the realm of politics. Art, poetry, thought
have become bound to an ethos of necessity, often bereft even of Marx’s opti-
mism, and what prevails – veiled as objectivity and amor fati – is an utterly lost
faith in the efficacy of human moral decision and responsibility, in partnership
with God, to change the course of history.
Although eschewing apocalyptic politics, Buber did, at least on one occa-
sion, suggest that the prophetic ethos might lead one to mount the barricades in
order to storm the kingdom. The occasion was a lecture that he delivered in April
1925 at a festive gathering in Berlin to mark the opening of the recently founded
Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The lecture, entitled “The Messianic Mystery”
(“Das messianische Mysterium”), was a scholarly disquisition on the Suffering
Servant of Isaiah 53.130 Buber argued at length that the anonymous servant of
Deutero-Isaiah must ultimately be understood as the conscience of Israel, as
the paragon of faith and responsibility before God. The Suffering Servant, he
128 Buber, “Prophecy, Apocalyptic, and the Historical Hour,” in Buber, Pointing the Way, 203f.
129 Ibid.
130 Martin Buber, “Das messianische Mysterium (Jesaja 53): Vortrag Martin Buber bei der Berli-
ner Feier anlässlich der Eröffnung der Universität Jerusalem, 6 April 1925.” This hitherto unpub-
lished lecture was published in the original German with a Hebrew translation and an introduc-
tion by Theodor Dreyfus in the journal of Jewish thought sponsored by Bar Ilan University, Da’at
5 (1980): 117-133.
reasoned, performs his task in silence and without glory and public notice. His
redemptive role is even concealed from himself. Yet the redemption depends on
him. The advent of the Messiah would be but the revelation of the mystery of the
Suffering Servant, or rather the suffering servants who humbly transverse history.
Hence, the mystery of the Suffering Servant becomes the mystery of the Messiah.
God’s suffering servants appear in history, in the “hidden history” that is “world
history,” the process of redemption. It is noteworthy, Buber remarked, that Jewish
tradition speaks of the Suffering Servants as the nistarim – those “hidden ones”
especially celebrated in the Kabbalah and Hassidic lore – who by virtue of their
deeds are said to prepare the secret path of redemption.131
Toward the conclusion of his lecture, Buber turned to his audience and
begged its indulgence if he were to descend from the plane of the academic and
the conceptual to consider the implications of Deutero-Isaiah’s teachings for the
“reality” of Jewish and world history. This reality is characterized, Buber argued,
by a tension, a creative tension between the nistarim and the meshihiim – messi-
anic enthusiasts “who are all too facilely called false messiahs”:
The meshihiim are those who do not want to adapt themselves to God’s unknown ways, and
want to turn the everlasting task [die allmalige Aufgabe] into a onetime duty. The meshihiim
are those who, in order to realize the Redemption, estrange themselves from the context of
Redemption. The meshihiim are those who believe themselves to be the fulfillment and no
longer the preparation of Redemption. These are indeed standing in the shadow of the eved
[the Servant] – the misunderstood, the elementary misunderstood eved, who is [mistakenly]
deemed to be the one-time Messiah, who is lifted to the position of the final, decisive eved.
The meshihiim – mighty holy men and weak-minded and semi-scoundrels – stand in his
shadow, and through them his shadow directs the hidden destiny of humankind.132
Buber’s audience may have been somewhat baffled by this rather abstruse ref-
erence to “the reality of Jewish and world history,” but his message was none-
theless clear, especially when in the closing sentence of the lecture he declared,
“The hidden, true history of the world [Weltgeschichte] takes place between the
meshihiim and the hidden servant.”133 The messianic enthusiasts – who, to be sure,
number morally dubious individuals but also include persons of the most noble
intentions – are animated by a genuine prophetic spirit, and, indeed, in conjunc-
tion with the more pristine servants of God, those who “hallow” the world with a
silent grace, serve to quicken the redemption.
131 Theodor Dreyfus demonstrated that the thesis propounded by Buber in “Das messianische
Mysterium” served as the basis of his chapter on “the mystery of the Suffering Servant” in The
Prophetic Faith, 202-235. Cf. Dreyfus, introduction to Buber, in Da’at 5 (1980): 117-119.
132 Buber, “Das messianische Mysterium,” 126f.
133 Ibid., 127.
This apparent retreat from his position that there is no messianic politics
may, of course, have been but a momentary lapse; in fact, he chose not to publish
the lecture and would never reiterate his approval of the meshihiim in print. But
surely Buber’s insistence that the messianic enthusiasts who seek to hasten the
kingdom are not to be summarily dismissed as false messiahs reflected his desire
to secure the proper appreciation of the idealism of the beloved Gustav Landauer
and his fellow Jewish revolutionaries who dared to dream of a just world free of
violence.
Ulrich Linse
‘Poetic Anarchism’ versus ‘Party Anarchism’:
Gustav Landauer and the Anarchist
Movement in Wilhelmian Germany
1 “The Anarchists are no Political Party”1
Gustav Landauer’s life and death coincided with the Kaiserreich, the epoch of Bis-
marck and Emperor Wilhelm I. His ideas “appear to be the negative of the Wilhel-
mian epoch.”2 They reflect and negate the regnant political culture of the German
Kaiserreich. Landauer’s ‘poetic anarchism’3 and the more prevalent ‘party anar-
chism’ represented two distinct types of German anarchism in the period before
World War I. Despite essential differences between the two, they did have one
national characteristic in common: prewar anarchism in Germany was thor-
oughly influenced – even shaped – by the existence of the world’s largest social-
ist party, the Social Democratic Party (SDP). The two anarchist streams, however,
responded differently to the challenge posed by the SDP. Whereas Landauer
completely rejected the Social Democrats’ political model, the ‘party anarchists’
adopted it – at least in part. However, neither of these two anarchist trends was
of any relevance in German power politics. Despite the influence they wielded in
the cultural sphere, especially in the field of literature,4 the anarchists remained
1 The quote is taken from G. Landauer, “Der Anarchismus in Deutschland,” Die Zukunft 10
(1895), quoted from: Ruth Link-Salinger, ed., Gustav Landauer: Erkenntnis und Befreiung. Aus-
gewählte Reden und Aufsätze (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1976), 17.
2 Philippe Despoix, Ethiken der Entzauberung. Zum Verhältnis von ästhetischer, ethischer und poli-
tischer Sphäre am Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts (Bodenheim: Philo Verlagsgesellschaft, 1998), 108.
3 The term “poetic anarchism” is taken from Kurt Eisner, Psychopathia spiritualis: Friedrich
Nietzsche und die Apostel der Zukunft (Leipzig: W. Friedrich, 1892), 87, where he speaks of the
“poetic anarchists” among the social-democratic opposition – “die Jungen,” literally, the “young
ones.”
4 Hansjörg Viesel, ed., Literaten an die Wand: Die Münchner Räterepublik und die Schriftsteller
(Frankfurt/ Main: Büchergilde Gutenberg, 1980); Heribert Baumann, Francis Bulhof, Gottfried
Mergner, eds., Anarchismus in Kunst und Politik. Zum 85. Geburtstag von Arthur Lehning (Olden-
burg: Univ. Oldenburg, 1984, 2nd ed. 1985); Ulrich Klan and Dieter Nelles, “Es lebt noch eine
Flamme”: Rheinische Anarcho-Syndikalisten/-innen in der Weimarer Republik und im Faschismus
(Grafenau-Döffingen: Trotzdem-Verlag, 1986); Walter Fähnders, Anarchismus und Literatur: Ein
vergessenes Kapitel deutscher Literaturgeschichte zwischen 1890 und 1910 (Stuttgart: Metzler,
1987); Despoix, Ethiken; Hubert van den Berg, Avantgarde und Anarchismus. Dada in Zürich
und Berlin (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1999); Dieter Scholz, Pinsel und Dolch. Anarchistische Ideen
46 Ulrich Linse
on the margins of political life and were more or less ineffective during, and even
after, the prewar period.5
At the turn of the century the German anarchist movement had only some
two thousand followers;6 Landauer’s libertarian socialism was essentially rep-
resented by one person alone, Landauer himself. His isolation, even in relation
to his ideological comrades, is surprising given that his anarchism had the same
origins as that of the other German anarchists. They all shared a deep-rooted
opposition to both Bismarck’s state and to the Social Democratic Party. Bis-
marck’s Sozialistengesetz, or Anti-Socialist Law (1878-1890), and the resulting
ban on the party had stimulated discussion among party leaders and members
as to whether reform or revolution was the right path. Even when Bismarck’s
Anti-Socialist Law was lifted in 1890, and the Social Democratic Party regained
the freedom to promote its views, the controversy continued to gain momentum.
The question now was whether legal action within the constitutional framework
was sufficient to bring about the “new society” dreamed of by the socialists, or
whether revolutionary action was indispensable to reach that goal.
Around 1890, an opposition movement, referred to as “die Jungen,” emerged
within the Social Democratic Party and became the vanguard of a new form of
anarchism in the German Reich; Landauer was one of the main spokesmen of
the group, which sought to guide the party on the road to the new anarchism.7
Whereas the old-style anarchists of the Bismarck era had criticized the lack of
in Kunst und Kunsttheorie 1840-1920 (Berlin: Reimer, 1999); Die Rote Republik. Anarchie- und
Aktivismuskonzepte der Schriftsteller 1918/19 und das Nachleben der Räte, Schriften der Erich-
Mühsam-Gesellschaft, 25 (Lübeck, 2004); Jaap Grave, Peter Sprengel, Hans Vandervoorde, eds.,
Anarchismus und Utopie in der Literatur um 1900. Deutschland, Flandern und die Niederlande
(Würzburg: Königshausen and Neumann, 2005); Allan Antliff, Anarchy and Art. From the Paris
Commune to the Fall of the Berlin Wall (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2007); Theresa Papani-
kolas, Anarchism and the Advent of Paris Dada. Art and Criticism, 1914-1924 (Farnham: Ashgate,
2010); Sebastian Veg, ed., Littérature et Anarchisme, Études Littéraires, 41,3 (Quebec: Université
de Laval, 2011); Nina A. Gur’janova, The Aethetics of Anarchy. Art and Ideology in the Early Rus-
sian Avant-garde (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012).
5 Dieter Fricke and Rudolf Knaack, eds., Dokumente aus geheimen Archiven. Übersichten der Ber-
liner politischen Polizei über die allgemeine Lage der sozialdemokratischen und anarchistischen
Bewegung 1878-1913, vol. III, 1906-1913 (Berlin: Böhlau, 2004), 239.
6 Ibid., 80.
7 Hans Manfred Bock, “Die ‘Literaten- und Studenten-Revolte’ der Jungen in der SPD um 1890,”
Das Argument 63 (1971): 22-41; Herbert Scherer, Bürgerlich-oppositionelle Literaten und sozial-
demokratische Arbeiterbewegung nach 1890 (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1974); Hans Manfred Bock, Syn-
dikalismus und Linkskommunismus von 1918-1923 (Meisenheim am Glan: Anton Hain, 1969),
5-23; Hans Manfred Bock, Geschichte des “linken Radikalismus” in Deutschland: Ein Versuch
(Frankfurt/ Main: Suhrkamp,1976), 38-73; Dieter Fricke and Rudolf Knaack, eds., Dokumente aus
geheimen Archiven. Übersichten der Berliner politischen Polizei über die allgemeine Lage der
‘Poetic Anarchism’ versus ‘Party Anarchism’ 47
revolutionary decisiveness in the Social Democratic Party, thereby reflecting the

anger and irritation of those driven out of their jobs – and often out of the country
– by Bismarck’s anti-socialist policy, the new anarchists of the 1890s were con-
fronted with a different situation. Anarchist criticism was still being leveled at the
Social Democrats – who were accused of being revolutionary in words but not in
actions – but this accusation was no longer voiced by victims of political persecu-
tion; nor was it fuelled by an ‘underground mentality’ or the zeal of professional
revolutionaries. The remarkable success enjoyed by the party, now free of legal
constraints, gave rise to a wave of opposition. Millions of voters had elected the
Social Democrats to the National Parliament, and so the party now began to con-
centrate its energies on strengthening its organization. From that point on, party
policies were shaped by the members of Parliament, the party secretaries, and
the editors of party newspapers – in short, bureaucracy took over.
Critics such as Landauer rightly pointed out the contradiction between the
Social Democrats’ revolutionary program and the pragmatics of party machin-
ery, between Karl Kautsky’s belief in the automatic dawning of socialism and the
absence of any concrete action toward that goal, between the proclaimed revo-
lution and actual reforms. Of course, Eduard Bernstein’s “revisionism” was one
possible response to such discrepancies, but this was not what the new anar-
chists like Landauer wanted.8 But neither did they advocate a return to the violent
revolutionary tradition.
German anarchism in the aftermath of Bismarck’s reign was new insofar as
it sharply dissociated itself from the old anarchism of the Bismarck period, best
represented by August Reinsdorf or Johannes Most.9 The old anarchism had been
violent in words and sometimes in action. “Propaganda der Tat” or “propaganda
sozialdemokratischen und anarchistischen Bewegung 1878-1913, vol. II, 1890-1906 (Weimar: Böh-
lau, 1989).
8 Landauer, “Rede von der Reichstagsgalerie. Sitzung vom 11. November 1911,” The Socialist,
quoted from Landauer, Rechenschaft (Berlin: Paul Cassirer, 1919), 68. Cf. Gerhard Senft, Essenz
der Anarchie. Die Parlamentarismuskritik des libertären Sozialismus (Vienna: Promedia, 2006).
9 Rudolf Rocker, Johann Most: Das Leben eines Rebellen (Berlin: Der Syndikalist [Fritz Kater],
1924; Max Nettlau, Anarchisten und Sozialrevolutionäre: Die historische Entwicklung des Anar-
chismus in den Jahren 1880-1886 (Berlin: Asy, 1931; new ed., Münster: Thélème Library, 1996);
Andrew A. Carlson, Anarchism in Germany, vol. I, The Early Movement (Metuchen N.J.: Scarecrow
Press, 1972); Joachim Wagner, Politischer Terrorismus und Strafrecht im deutschen Kaiserreich von
1871 (Heidelberg: R. v. Decker, 1981); Dieter Fricke, Rudolf Knaack, eds., Dokumente aus gehei-
men Archiven. Übersichten der Berliner politischen Polizei über die allgemeine Lage der sozialde-
mokratischen und anarchistischen Bewegung 1878-1913, vol. I, 1878-1889 (Weimar: Böhlau, 1983);
Karl Härter and Beatrice de Graaf, eds., Vom Majestätsverbrechen zum Terrorismus. Politische
Kriminalität, Recht, Justiz und Polizei zwischen Früher Neuzeit und 20. Jahrhundert, Studien zur
europäischen Rechtsgeschichte, 268 (Frankfurt/Main: Klostermann, 2012).
48 Ulrich Linse
by deed” had been its slogan, which could entail bomb-throwing or the assas-
sination of state representatives, or at least approval of such crimes.10 The new
anarchism adapted itself to the reality of the post-Bismarck era, a period in which
there was less state repression and socialist activity was no longer a criminal
offense though close police surveillance continued.11 The new anarchists there-
fore rejected violence, leading their contemporaries to refer to them teasingly as
Edelanarchisten, or “salon revolutionaries.”
The most notorious advocate of this peaceful anarchism was Gustav Lan-
dauer. Like other representatives of “die Jungen” he was influenced by the ideas
of Max Stirner, Eugen Dühring, Friedrich Nietzsche or Leo Tolstoy, and turned
away from poetic naturalism12 without becoming a neo-Romantic.13 In his 1905
article, “Anarchism in Germany,” he explains that “propaganda by deed as I
understand it” could not mean “killing people”; killing could only be an expres-
sion of “passion or desperation or craziness.” Landauer’s credo, especially his
hope “to regenerate the spirit of man, to recreate the human will and the produc-
tive energy of big communities,”14 was the exact opposite. In his view, this spir-
itual anarchism could not be embodied in a party organization at all, hence his
insistence that “the anarchists are not a political party.”15 This, however, was the
point on which the majority of Germany’s new anarchists disagreed. They were
keen to win support and attract followers by employing the same methods that
had proven so effective in the Social Democrats’ camp. As the largest socialist
party in the world, the Social Democrats clearly set an overwhelming example for
others to follow – one that even anarchists could not ignore. German anarchists
also hoped to make progress by means of a strong and efficient organization,
10 Walter Laqueur, Terrorism (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1977); Walter Laqueur, ed., Ter-
rorism Reader (New York: New American Library, 1978); Andrew R. Carlson, “Anarchism and
Individual Terror in the German Empire, 1870-90” in Social Protest, Violence and Terror in Nine-
teenth- and Twentieth-Century Europe, ed. Wolfgang J. Mommsen and Heinrich Hirschfeld (Lon-
don: Macmillan, 1982), 175-200; Ulrich Linse, “‘Propaganda by Deed’ and ‘Direct Action’: Two
Concepts of Anarchist Violence,” ibid., 201-229; David C. Rapoport, ed., Terrorism, vol. I, The First
or Anarchist Wave (London: Routledge, 2005).
11 Andreas W. Hohmann and Dieter Johannes, Der Spitzelbericht. Die Anarchistenüberwachung
im Deutschen Kaiserreich (Frankfurt: Edition AV ’88, 1999); Fricke and Knaack, eds., Dokumente,
vols. II-III.
12 In his period of spiritual transition Landauer also came to appreciate the “peasant”-poet
Christian Wagner: Ulrich Linse, “Gustav Landauer entdeckt Christian Wagner”, in Wiederent-
deckung eines Autors. Christian Wagner in der literarischen Moderne um 1900, ed. Burckhard Dü-
cker and Harald Hepfer (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2008), 88-136.
13 Despoix, Ethiken, 79, 83, 94, 98, n. 81.
14 Landauer, “Der Anarchismus in Deutschland,” 13.
15 Ibid., 17.
which would enable them to finance the journals and propaganda leaflets that
might attract followers. Clearly, they were concerned to avoid the traps that lay
on the way, and in their tactics they formed a welcome contrast to the “corrupt”
Social Democratic Party, which was becoming increasingly middle-class. The
anarchists, for example, considered parliamentary action to be out of the ques-
tion; in their endeavor to prevent the organization from becoming centralized and
bureaucratic, they opted for an elaborate “federal” – in the sense of decentralized
– organizational structure. In this way they hoped to lend impetus to the revolu-
tionary drive and spur the movement on to a bright socialist future.
This was the point at which Landauer and most other German anarchists went
their separate ways. In 1909 the rift took on a programmatic dimension:16 Lan-
dauer was looking for supporters for his Socialist League, or Sozialistischer Bund.
The majority of German anarchists, who were organized under the Anarchist Fed-
eration of Germany, refused to cooperate. Instead, their leader Rudolf Lange tried
to strengthen the Anarchist Federation at its sixth conference in Leipzig in 1909
by introducing a new constitution for the organization. The twenty-one para-
graphs of that document strengthened the influence of the Berlin center, both
tightening and formalizing the organizational structure. Against opponents from
within his own ranks, Lange argued that the anarchist movement “must shed its
sectarian character” by becoming “a freely chosen but firmly binding association
(eine freiwillig eingegangene festgeschlossene Verbindung), that is not opposed to
anarchist principles.” He also added: “We are part of the proletarian movement
and must take the organizational consequences.”17
Landauer, however, completely rejected the new rules.18 He turned on the
anarchists with the same deep resentment he harbored against the Social Dem-
ocrats, and scathingly criticized the anarchists’ attempt to create an alternative
to the SDP, while in fact imitating it – albeit in a limited way. He declared in no
uncertain terms that there are two kinds of organizations, which are different in
principle: “The first is an alliance of associations or groups, whose members have
resolved to act independently [Selbsttätigkeit], who never resign, and who assign
certain activities to representatives only for practical purposes, for a limited time
and under close supervision. The second creates a permanent bureaucracy and
a system of authorities; it is centralized, and the representatives act ‘in their own
16 For details see Ulrich Linse, Organisierter Anarchismus im Deutschen Kaiserreich von 1871
(Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1969), 213-230, 281-288.
17 Quotations, ibid., 219.
18 G. Landauer, “Organisationsfragen,” Der Sozialist 1 (1909), in G. Landauer, Auch die Vergan-
genheit hat Zukunft: Essays zum Anarchismus, ed. Siegbert Wolf (Frankfurt/Main: Luchterhand,
1989), 99-103.
50 Ulrich Linse
high-handed fashion’ and decide on matters for which they received no mandate
from those whom they represent.”19
The first model was embodied in the Socialist League, the second in the Anar-
chist Federation, which according to Landauer, had institutionalized a “bureau-
cratic centralization of representatives” instead of stressing the autonomy of
member groups.20 Landauer felt that only the “imperative mandate,” should be
allowed, in other words, that every political decision made by the representative
should be authorized by the electorate. Landauer also charged that by install-
ing Lange as a salaried secretary of the organization, members had “ceased
their own activity and replaced it with [that of] a salaried bureaucrat [angestell-
ter Beamter].”21 The result according to Landauer, was an “odd anarcho-demo-
cratic party.” “I can see,” he added, “no difference between the statutes of the
Social Democratic Party and those of the [Anarchist] Federation.”22 Rendering his
final verdict, he announced “you will never reach liberty by means of bondage,
freedom by means of bureaucracy.”23
There was another argument underlying this violent attack, but it remained
unarticulated. Lange’s aim was to form an organization of the proletariat within
the greater proletarian movement. Landauer himself, however, did not consider
himself to be one of the proletariat and indeed, thought it should be abolished.24
He could find neither “religion” nor “spirit” in the working classes. He personally
detested manual labor, which he considered “stupid,” and had even reproached
Tolstoy for having – in all Christian humility – advocated manual labor as a way
of solving the social question.25 Landauer saw himself instead as the leader of
a reformed elite drawn from the educated classes; he wanted to convince the
19 “Die erste ist ein Bund von Bünden oder Gruppen, deren Glieder zur Selbsttätigkeit ent-
schlossen sind, die niemals abdanken und nur zu praktischen Zwecken, vorübergehend und
unter dauernder Aufmerksamkeit bestimmte Tätigkeiten Beauftragten übertragen. Die zweite
schafft sich eine dauernde Bürokratie und ein Instanzensystem; sie is zentralistisch, und die
Vertreter handeln ‘aus eigener Machtvollkommenheit’ und entscheiden über Dinge, um deret-
willen die Vertretenen sie gar nicht entsandt oder gewählt haben.” Ibid., 99.
20 Ibid., 99.
21 Ibid., 102.
22 Ibid., 102.
23 Ibid., 101.
24 Lebensgang II, 308.
25 Gustav Landauer, “Die religiöse Jugenderziehung,” Freie Bühne für modernes Leben, 2 (1891):
134-138; he also refers here to Graf Leo Tolstoj and his “Körperliche Arbeit als Lösung des sozia-
len Problems,” ibid., 1-7. Concerning Landauer’s attitude to Tolstoj see Edith Hanke, Prophet des
Unmodernen. Leo N. Tolstoi als Kulturkritiker in der deutschen Diskussion der Jahrhundertwende
(Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1993), 136-149; Wolfgang Sandfuchs, Dichter, Moralist, Anarchist. Die deut-
sche Tolstojkritik 1880-1900 (Stuttgart: M&P Verlag für Wissenschaft und Forschung, 1995); Des-
workers that they should abandon their excessive “materialistic” aims and that
spiritual reform was more important than solving the Magenfrage, the problem
of keeping one’s stomach full. Landauer felt that the Marxist concept of “class”
should be replaced by that of “community” based on an individual awakening of
the “spirit.” As a consequence of these beliefs Landauer rejected the concepts of
class struggle and of a dictatorship of the proletariat, as well as the avant-garde
role ascribed to the proletariat.26 Also, it should be remembered that he had been
strongly influenced by Benedict Friedländer (who himself drew on the writings of
Eugen Dühring, Henry George, Henry Charles Carey or Theodor Hertzka), espe-
cially by Friedländer’s combination of individual freedom and socialism in the
concept of a “Manchester socialism” with its fundamental criticism of the “reac-
tionary schools of socialism,” among which he included the “Marxist state social-
ists and the communists who employed coercion” (Zwangskommunisten).27
The German anarcho-syndicalist and socialist Robert Michels developed
in his 1911 book “Zur Soziologie des Parteiwesens in der modernen Demokratie.
Untersuchungen über die oligarchischen Tendenzen des Gruppenlebens” the polit-
ical theory of the “iron law of oligarchy” (i.e., the rule of an elite, in this case of
the party leaders, over the rank and file) as the inevitable result of the neces-
sities of mass organization: “He who says organization, says oligarchy.” In this
way socialist parties such as the German Social Democrats – by becoming larger
and more complex - would become more centralized and bureaucratic and less
democratic and revolutionary. Though Landauer never analyzed its underlying
sociological mechanism as Robert Michels had done, he assumed that the newly
adopted anarchist strategy of party organization would automatically lead to the
deformation of any radical policy, thereby failing to achieve the revolutionary
goal of socialism as he understood it.
Landauer’s “spiritual revolution” had nothing in common with the tra-
ditional revolutionary concept of Marxian socialism. Therefore, he distanced
himself not only from the Social Democratic Party and the Anarchist Federation,
but also from the revolutionary wing of the Free Union of the so-called Localists.28
Even they, he argued, had had to compromise with capitalism. As far as he was
poix, Ethiken, 92-95; Johanna Renate Döring-Smirnov, “Ein Licht mir aufgegangen.” Lev Tolstoj
und Deutschland, exhibition catalogue, Literaturhaus München (München 2010).
26 Despoix, Ethiken, 58.
27 Benedict Friedländer, “Hertzkas Freiland,” Freie Bühne für den Entwicklungskampf der Zeit ,
1 (1890): 672-680. On Landauer’s adoption of Friedländer, see Eugene Lunn, Prophet of Commu-
nity: The Romantic Socialism of Gustav Landauer (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1973), 66-69.
28 Dirk H. Müller, Gewerkschaftliche Versammlungsdemokratie und Arbeiterdelegierte vor 1918:
Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Lokalismus, des Syndikalismus und der entstehenden Rätebewe-
gung (Berlin: Colloquium, 1985).
52 Ulrich Linse
concerned they shared the error of the “state socialists” in thinking that the laws
of social development would gradually lead them to a point in the future when
it would be possible to introduce a new social order.29 Yet he also rejected the
revolutionary strategy of the anarcho-syndicalists,30 because to him the General
Strike was an expression of the destructive class struggle. Landauer objected to
such strategies, because he felt the revolution could not and should not be post-
poned to some indefinite future but had to begin right now through voluntary
action. Indeed, this socialist “beginning” or Beginnen was meant to be a con-
structive one, that is, geared to establishing free and self-determined coopera-
tives and rural communities.31
This concept of a cultural revolution as an alternative to a seizure of power
by force was not so much his own idea, but rather an imitation of the “new life”
notion established by the German Life-Reform Movement (Lebensreformbewe-
gung).32 Of course, settlements such as the fruit-growing colony of Eden-Oranien-
burg and the artists’ experiment with a “new community”(Neue Gemeinschaft) in
the Berlin suburb of Schlachtensee had not been anarchist in any way.33 Landau-
er’s “socialism of self-realization,” or Verwirklichungssozialismus, stressed indi-
vidual responsibility as the source of community strength, while at the same time
emphasizing the political consequences of agrarian reform; this was the reason
for returning to the idea of communal settlements of the life-reform variety. Com-
munal settlements thus constituted the embodiment of this notion of building
socialism in the present based on individual responsibility. Moreover, they prom-
29 Bock, Syndikalismus und Linkskommunismus, 20.

30 See Wayne Thorpe, “The Workers Themselves”: Revolutionary Syndicalism and International
Labour, 1913-1923 (Amsterdam: Kluwer, 1989).
31 G. Landauer, Beginnen. Aufsätze über Sozialismus, ed., Martin Buber (Köln: Marcan- Block,
1924).
32 Diethard Kerbs and Jürgen Reulecke, eds., Handbuch der deutschen Reformbewegungen 1880-
1933 (Wuppertal: Peter Hammer, 1998); Ulrich Linse, “Das ‘natürliche’ Leben: Die Lebensre-
form,” in Erfindung des Menschen: Schöpfungsträume und Körperbilder, 1500-2000, ed., Richard
van Dülmen (Vienna: Böhlau, 1998), 435-456; Kai Buchhold, Rita Latocha, Hilge Peckmann,
Klaus Wolbert, eds., Die Lebensreform. Entwürfe zur Neugestaltung von Leben und Kunst um 1900,
2 vols. (Darmstadt: Häusser, 2001); Florentine Fritzen, Gesünder leben. Die Lebensreformbewe-
gung im 20. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2006).
33 On Landauer’s place in the literary ‘bohemia’ of the Berlin suburbs (Berliner Vorort-Boheme),
see Gertrude Cepl-Kaufmann and Rolf Kauffeldt, Berlin-Friedrichshagen: Literaturhauptstadt um
die Jahrhundertwende. Der Friedrichshagener Dichterkreis (Berlin: Boer, 1994); Gertrude Cepl-
Kaufmann, “Gustav Landauer im Friedrichshagener Jahrzehnt und die Rezeption seines Ge-
meinschaftsideals nach dem 1. Weltkrieg” in Gespräch, 235-278; Christoph Knüppel, ed., Gustav
Landauer und die Friedrichshagener: Ausgewählte Briefe aus den Jahren 1891 bis 1902, Friedrichs-
hagener Hefte, 23 (Berlin-Friedrichshagen: Brandel, 1999.)
ised to have an impact in the realm of politics by “freeing up the soil,” as Adolf
Damaschke, the “reformer of the soil” (Bodenreformer), put it.34
In this way, despite having a touch of romantic rural escapism,35 Landauer’s
communal alternative to party anarchism tried to create the impression that this
was not a totally unrealistic enterprise. Landauer’s opponents in the Anarchist
Federation, however, maintained that establishing cooperatives and communal
settlements was no revolutionary strategy at all, but rather a “conservative policy,”
which would have the effect of stabilizing the capitalist system.36 Landauer’s main
counterargument was that either one begins socialist life here and now, or there
will never be a beginning at all. But he himself never joined any rural experiment.
He was a man not “of the spade or shovel” but of the spoken word and the pen.37
2 ‘Poetic Anarchism’
Gustav Landauer was first and foremost a ‘poet,’ which to him was the same as
being a “prophet of tomorrow”38 or “messenger of a new era” (Künder einer neuen
Zeit).39 His anarchism was, above all, literature. As he showed in his essay on
the “German spirit,”40 written during World War I, political reality itself – in this
case he was referring to the French Revolution – is “like the dream of a poet.”
Landauer believed that “the nations [Völker] are called to realize materially, in
the form of living men and conditions, the presentiments, visions, loves, longings
and aspirations, which the poet has awakened in their spirits.”41 Poetic visions
would have to be turned into political activity, “men of deeds must come, who
build in reality the new order of mankind which has been founded by the spirits
of the poets. The consequence of poetry is revolution, the revolution, which con-
sists in building and regeneration. Those who do not know this have never really
34 Despoix, Ethiken, 94, denies – against Lunn, Prophet – that Landauer supported agrarian
romanticism.
35 Hans Diefenbacher, “Adolf Damaschkes ‘Geschichte der Nationalökonomie’,” in Adolf Da-
maschke und Henry George. Ansätze zu einer Theorie und Politik der Bodenreform, ed. Klaus Hug-
ler and Hans Diefenbacher (Marburg: Metropolis, 2005), 70 f.
36 Linse, Organisierter Anarchismus, 285.
37 Lebensgang, I, 424: Landauer sees himself as “agitator” and “poet.”
38 Eisner, Psychopathia spiritualis, subtitle.
39 G. Landauer, “Aus meinem Gefängnis-Tagebuch,” in Der sozialistische Akademiker. Organ der
sozialistischen Studirenden und Studirten deutscher Zunge, 1 (1885), 320.
40 G. Landauer, Ein Weg deutschen Geistes, Kleine Schriften des Forum-Verlages, no. 2, ed. W.
Herzog (München: Forum, 1916), 4-5.
41 Ibid., 4-5.
54 Ulrich Linse
understood the poets.”42 Politics then, is built on the visions of poets. As a young
man he had believed that out of Friedrich Nietzsche’s “Zarathustra” “a new Volk”
would arise.43 Landauer, a Jewish member of the German educated classes, truly
believed that books could change the world. And that future philosopher-poets
such as Nietzsche44 and Landauer himself would not be “book worms” but the
active leaders of the “young Volk.”45
But why did Landauer’s “socialism of self-realization” turn out to be nothing
more than poetry – and on occasion bad poetry at that?46 The answer can only
be that Landauer believed in the magic quality of the word – that is, that the
right word could create a reality of its own, even “a new Volk.” Assuming that
the poetic word has this utopian dimension, speaking the right word could trans-
form reality. This at least was the gift of the charismatic leader, of the poet-proph-
et-savior as envisioned by Landauer (and other writers and thinkers of the fin de
siècle).47 The “Spirit” to which Landauer referred “was a rhetorical strategy to
42 Ibid., 15.
43 G. Landauer, Friedrich Nietzsche und das neue Volk, GLAJ, 82 c.
44 On Landauer’s adoption of Nietzsche, see: Christine Holste, “Gustav Landauers Nietzsche-
Bild zwischen Nihilismus, Politik und Jugendstil,” in De Sils-Maria à Jérusalem. Nietzsche et le
judäisme: Les intellectuels juifs et Nietzsche, ed. Dominique Bourel and Jacques Le Rider (Paris:
Cerf, 1991); Hanna Delf, “‘Nietzsche ist für uns Europäer’: Zwei unveröffentlichte Aufsätze Gus-
tav Landauers zur frühen Nietzsche-Rezeption,” Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte,
44 (1992): 263-273 and 303-321; Steven E. Aschheim, The Nietzsche Legacy in Germany 1890-1990
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 170-171, 217; Hanna Delf, “‘Nietzsche ist für uns
Europäer’: Zu Gustav Landauers Nietzsche-Lektüre,” in Jüdischer Nietzscheanismus, ed. Wer-
ner Stegmaier and Daniel Krochmalnik, Monographien zur Nietzsche-Forschung, 36 (Berlin: de
Gruyter, 1997), 209-227; Ulrich Linse, “Libertäre und theosophische Strömungen,” in Handbuch
Fin de Siècle, ed. Sabine Haupt and Stefan Bodo Würffel (Stuttgart: Kröner, 2008), 218-237.
45 Landauer, Nietzsche und das neue Volk.
46 With regard to his novels and short stories, it has been noted that Landauer’s poetic anar-
chism was not lacking in kitsch. (See Luc Lambrechts, “Die schöpferische Prosa Gustav Land-
auers: Nietzsche-Rezeption und künstlerische Gestaltung,” Studia Germania Gandensia (1970):
219-241. See also Corinna Kaiser’s article in this volume.) At the end of his novel, The Preacher
of Death, for instance, he poetically evokes the future anarchist life of an exclusive suburban
residential area (Villenkolonie), a garden city, as well as the role of bards in the new community.
Even the concluding sentence, “I am certain it will not come about as I have described it because
it would then be useless to strive for it!” shows a kitschy style that conjures up the ambience of
a painting by Fidus. This is also true of his later descriptions of the future socialist settlements.
See Der Todesprediger (1893; 3rd ed., Köln: Marcan, 1923), 122-123.
47 Landauer’s close friend Martin Buber had a parallel poetic concept and it seems reasonable
to assume the influence of the Jewish version of the creation of the world out of the word of
Yaweh, which was also voiced by the Israelite prophets, in whom the spirit (ruach) of Yaweh
lived. In addition there is a strong influence of Nietzsche. See Grete Schaeder’s preface to Mar-
tin Buber, Briefwechsel aus sieben Jahrzehnten, vol. I, 1897-1918 (Heidelberg: Lambert-Schneider,
legitimize himself (Strategie der Selbstautorisierung) that was not supported by

any institution.”48
In Landauer’s lexicon, “word” refers primarily to the spoken word. The
reading of books in solitude, as he wrote in his essay Die Revolution, is evidence
of the atomization of society and the breaking up of the spiritual community into
isolated individuals.49 But how was it possible to integrate these atoms again into
a new spiritual community? Landauer’s initial solution involved placing empha-
sis on family life and friendship, both of which he saw as the vital nuclei of the
regenerated future community. This was the reason Landauer so vehemently pro-
tested the bohemian ‘free-love’ ethos, which undermined the traditional insti-
tutions of marriage and the family.50 Motivated by what Else Eisner referred to
as his “Old Testament Jewish sense of family,”51 as well as by his reverence for
bourgeois patriarchal values, Landauer even attacked his closest friends Erich
Mühsam52 and Margarete Faas-Hardegger53 for, as he put it, mixing anarchy with
1972), 40-44; I owe the reference to Itta Shedletzky, Jerusalem, and her paper “The Creation of
Charismatic Stereotypes in Martin Buber’s Early Writings” (International Workshop on Neo-Pa-
ganism, ‘Völkische Religion’ and Antisemitism II: The Religious Roots of Stereotypes, Tübingen,
Germany, 27-29 October 1997). Landauer’s “Spirit” was, of course, not the Spirit of God but the
“Public Spirit” (Gemeingeist).
48 Elke Dubbels, Figuren des Messianischen in Schriften deutsch-jüdischer Intellektueller 1900-
1933 (Berlin-Boston, De Gruyter, 2011), 260, 160, 260-261.
49 Revolution, 46.
50 Ulrich Linse, “Sexual Revolution and Anarchism,” in Max Weber and the Culture of Anarchy,
ed. Sam Whimster (Houndmills: Macmillan, 1999), 129-143; Ulrich Linse, “‘Die Freivermählten’:
Zur literarischen Diskussion über nichteheliche Lebensgemeinschaften um 1900,” in Liebe, Lust
und Leid: Zur Gefühlskultur um 1900, ed. Helmut Scheuer and Michael Grisko (Kassel: Kassel
Univ. Press, 1999), 57-95; Richard D. Sonn, Sex, Violence and the Avant-Garde. Anarchism in Inter-
war France (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press: 2010); Jamie Heckert and
Richard Cleminson, eds., Anarchism and Sexuality. Ethics, Relationships and Power (New York:
Routledge, 2011).
51 BAB, SAPMO, NY 4060/104.
52 This is a reference to the bohemian occasional prostitution (in secondary literature played
down as “free love” or “erotic rebellion”) practised by Mühsam’s friend Franziska zu Reventlow;
see Frauen um Erich Mühsam: Zensl Mühsam und Franziska zu Reventlow, Schriften der Erich-
Mühsam-Gesellschaft, 11 (Lübeck, 1996); Richard Faber, Franziska zu Reventlow und die Schwa-
binger Gegenkultur (Köln: Böhlau, 1993); idem., Männerrunde mit Gräfin (Frankfurt/Main: Lang,
1994). It refers also and especially to Mühsam’s homosexual friendship with Johannes Nohl:
Peter Dudek, Ein Leben im Schatten. Johannes und Herman Nohl – zwei deutsche Karrieren im
Kontrast (Bad Heilbrunn/Obb.: Klinkhardt, 2004); Christoph Knüppel, ed., „Sei tapfer und wach-
se dich aus.” Gustav Landauer im Dialog mit Erich Mühsam. Briefe und Aufsätze, Schriften der
Erich-Mühsam-Gesellschaft, 24 (Lübeck, 2004).
53 Theodor Pinkus, ed., Briefe nach der Schweiz. Gustav Landauer, Erich Mühsam, Max Hoelz,
Peter Kropotkin (Zürich: Limmat, 1972); Ina Boesch, Gegenleben. Die Sozialistin Margarethe Har-
56 Ulrich Linse
“pornocracy.”54 Reading and playing music together with others were important
features of Landauer’s own bourgeois family life with his second wife Hedwig
Lachmann and their children,55 and friendships (not always characterized by
uninterrupted harmony) – with Martin Buber or Fritz Mauthner, for instance –
created for him a wider spiritual circle. In practice, however, this principle proved
viable only on a pre-political or better yet, non-political level. Landauer sought
to set up “Bünde” and international friendship leagues to act as the mediating
link between an inspired private sphere and the greater public sphere, to serve as
vehicles for a spiritual truth with a political message. But almost from the outset
it became obvious that these associations were bound to fail, as the fate of the
“Sozialistischer Bund” or of the Forte-Kreis56 amply demonstrated.
Poetry, Landauer nevertheless insisted, should be part of the communal life
and wield its influence wherever people meet. While still under the influence of
Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, he wrote in his novel Der Todesprediger (“The Preacher
of Death”), “I cannot rid myself of a vision I had before falling to sleep when I
degger und ihre politischen Bühnen (Zürich: Chronos, 2003); Regula Bochsler, Ich folgte meinem
Stern. Das kämpferische Leben der Margarethe Hardegger (Zürich: Pendo, 2004).
54 Lebensgang I, 250. In this letter, signed “the father,” Landauer vehemently protested against
the “gypsy” approach to morality, i.e., the view that considers “father” and “parents” to be
“bourgeois institutions,” which are of no relevance for a socialist future. This was, of course,
the position of Otto Gross and his psychoanalytic concept of liberation: Anarchismus und Psy-
choanalyse zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts. Der Kreis um Erich Mühsam und Otto Gross, Schriften
der Erich-Mühsam-Gesellschaft, 19 (Lübeck, 2000). For Landauer’s criticism of Otto Gross and
his concept of revolutionary liberation, see Lebensgang I, 265-266, 372, 381-383. See also Hans-
Joachim Rothe, “‘Mein Nicht-Vetter Gustav Landauer.’ Der Psychoanalytiker Karl Landauer und
seine Beziehung zu Gustav Landauer,” in Gespräch, 165-180.
55 See Annegret Walz, “Ich will ja gar nicht auf der logischen Höhe meiner Zeit stehen”: Hedwig
Lachmann. Eine Biographie (Flacht: Die Schnecke, 1993); Birgit Seemann, “Gustav Landauers
‘Bund’ mit der jüdischen Dichterin Hedwig Lachmann,” in Gustav Landauer (1870-1919). Eine Be-
standsaufnahme zur Rezeption seiner Werke, ed. Leonhard M. Fiedler, Renate Heuer, Annemarie
Taeger-Altenhofer (Frankfurt/Main-New York: Campus, 1995), 187-203; Gustav Landauer (1870-
1919). Von der Kaiserstraße nach Stadelheim, exhibition catalogue, Oberrheinischen Dichtermu-
seum Karlsruhe 1994 (Eggingen: Isele, 1994), 28 (on Landauer’s first wife Margarete Leuschner),
38-48 (on Hedwig Lachmann). Landauer’s privately printed “Wie Hedwig Lachmann starb” is
published in Siegbert Wolf, ed., Gustav Landauer: Nation, Krieg und Revolution. Ausgewählte
Schriften, vol. 4 (Lich/Hessen: Edition AV, 2011), 351-361.
56 Christine Holste, Der Forte-Kreis (1910-1915): Rekonstruktion eines utopischen Versuchs (Stutt-
gart: M&P Verlag für Wissenschaft und Forschung, 1992); Richard Faber and Christine Holste,
eds., Der Potsdamer Forte-Kreis. Eine utopische Intellektuellenassoziation zur europäischen Frie-
denssicherung (Würzburg: Königshausen and Neumann, 2001); Anna Wołkowicz, “Mystiker der
Revolution. Der utopische Diskurs der Jahrhundertwende. Gustav Landauer – Frederik van Eeden
– Erich Gutkind – Florens Christian Rang – Georg Lukács – Ernst Bloch” (Ph.D. Dissertation.
Warsaw, 2007).
was a boy: The powerful and united body of the people, which storms forward,
and I [was] one of them and yet above them as an orator and bard, prophet and
leader.”57 He then elaborated on this Zarathustrian theme: “There he is, there he
stands in the midst of an assembly of thousands, he towers high above the people
… Do you behold him, do you see? Now be silent! But this exhortation is unneces-
sary; everybody hearkens, holding his breath; everybody is sweetly enticed by the
charm of his speech. O how he holds sway over the hearts of men!”58 Landauer
admired the “oriental tone” of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra and the way it called to
mind the Bible, not by imitating it, “but in a free way.”59 In his “Call to Socialism ”
lecture – which in a way was his own “Zarathustra” – Landauer himself drew both
on the prophetic motif and on the lofty language of the prophets.60 He himself
was the bard of the new community, comparable to the poet Walt Whitman – “the
priest, prophet, creator”61 – who had sung the “New Testament of America” and
thus had become “a prophet of the new mankind.”62
This conception of the charismatic poet and prophetic orator as the legitimate
spiritual leader of a cultural revolution – this obvious “exaggeration (Überhöhung)
of the poetic power”63 – had several consequences for Landauer’s anarchism.
Obviously, he enjoyed delivering speeches and lectures to different audiences,
and, being a gifted ex tempore speaker,64 he succeeded in casting his spell over
manual workers and middle-class ladies alike. But, as Else Eisner criticized, by
refraining from party politics Landauer could not inspire successful revolution-
ary mass action as Kurt Eisner had done at the end of World War One.65 It was
perhaps because of his own prowess as orator in the small circles of his devoted
supporters, that Landauer tended to overestimate the power of his spoken word:
When, for instance, after the fall of the second Bavarian Council Republic, his
57 Landauer, Der Todesprediger, 109.

58 Ibid., 72.
59 G. Landauer, Notizen zu Nietzsche, GLAJ, Gustav Landauer, 28.
60 Dubbels, Figuren, 260
61 G. Landauer, “Walt Whitman,” Der Sozialist 5 (1913), in WA III, 81.
62 Title of a lecture delivered by Landauer in 1915: Hanna Delf, ed., Gustav Landauer- Fritz Mau-
thner. Briefwechsel 1890-1919 (Munich: Beck, 1994), 459.
63 Dubbels, Figuren, 264.
64 Hanna Delf, “‘Manuskript kann ich dir keines schicken’: Gustav Landauer oder: Die freie
Rede, ein Stilmittel,” in Sensation, 205-217.
65 See Else Eisner’s comparison between Landauer and Eisner, part of an outline of a never
completed biography of Landauer: BAB, SAPMO, NY 4060/104. It should not be forgotten, how-
ever, that even after the end of the Bavarian Revolution the syndicalist unions erected a monu-
ment in memory of Landauer in a Munich cemetery: Helge Döhring, Damit in Bayern Frühling
werde! Die syndikalistische Arbeiterbewegung in Südbayern von 1914 bis 1933 (Lich/Hessen: Edi-
tion AV, 2007), 107-119.
58 Ulrich Linse
friends urged him to save his life by fleeing Munich, his reply was that when the
counterrevolutionary soldiers came to arrest him, he would be able to change
their minds. What actually happened when he was arrested was that the crowd of
onlookers cheered, applauded, waved their handkerchiefs and cried: “Bump him
off, that dog, that Jew, that rogue!”66 In the poisoned atmosphere of those days,
the poetic voice went unheard.
Another result of Landauer’s overestimating the charismatic word was that
he was inclined to confuse words and reality or, to put it more precisely, he
tended to live in the world of words as if they were reality. In 1907 he wrote in his
Die Revolution that he lived in an “in-between time,” or Zwischenzeit, straddling
the revolutions of the past and the utopian revolution of the future, but added:
“nevertheless, I have, I must admit, completely merged with the revolution.”67
Moreover, in the introduction to his collection of letters from the French Revolu-
tion, dated June 1918, he expressed his hope “that the intimate knowledge of the
Spirit and the tragedy of the [French] Revolution may be of help in the serious
times ahead.”68 Even during the Bavarian Revolution itself Landauer continued
to live in a fantasy world of revolutionary words from the past. He repeatedly
drew the attention of his fellow deputies in the councils to the French Revolution,
noting that it had set an example of how revolutionaries were expected to act, he
exhorted them to live up to that heroic model.69 To him, the Bavarian Revolution
was the reenactment of the historia sacra of the Revolution, indeed, a “holy tradi-
tion” of “the new Spirit in the Völker.”70
66 Else Eisner to Ina Britschgi-Schimmer of 28 March 1927, BAB, SAPMO, NY 4060/111.

Britschgi-Schimmer collected material for Martin Buber’s edition of Landauer’s letters. See also
Wolf von Wolzogen’s article in this volume.
67 Revolution, 107. Richard Saage, “Zur Differenz und Konvergenz von Utopie und Apokalyp-
se. Von Gustav Landauer zu Franz Werfer und Oskar Maria Graf,” in Utopie und Apokalypse in
der Moderne, ed. Reto Sorg and Stefan Bodo Würffel (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2010), 17-31. See
also Richard Saage, Utopische Horizonte. Zwischen historischer Entwicklung und aktuellem Gel-
tungsanspruch, Berlin: Lit-Verlag, 2010, 128), suggests that in Die Revolution Landauer’s utopian
thinking on the modernizing energy of revolutions in the historical process had also incorporat-
ed the older religious chiliastic elements which – by being secularized in this way – lost their
original apocalyptic contents.
68 G. Landauer, Briefe aus der Französischen Revolution, 2 vols. (Frankfurt/Main: Rütten & Loe-
ning, 1919), vol. 1, XXXII.
69 Ulrich Linse, ed., Gustav Landauer und die Revolutionszeit 1918-1919. Die politischen Reden,
Schriften, Erlasse und Briefe Landauers aus der November-Revolution 1918- 1919 (Berlin: K. Kra-
mer, 1974), 67, 85, 108.
70 “Der neue Geist in den Völkern: Die Revolutionen,” was the title of the eighth lecture in
Landauer’s series, which he entitled “Der Geist der Geschichte entworfen in einer Geschichte
des Geistes,” (Lyceum-Club, Berlin, 6 October 1913 - 8 December 1913). GLAJ, 20.
Of course, reality did not conform to these poetic dreams. In the introduction
to the 1919 edition of his most influential work, Aufruf zum Sozialismus (A Call to
Socialism), he presents his vision of the spiritually transforming power of the rev-
olution: “Marionettes turn into human beings; rusty philistines become capable
of emotion; every fixed thing, even convictions and denials, begin to totter; the
intellect, usually concentrated on one’s own well-being, turns into reasonable
thinking … for the common weal; everything opens to the good; the unbelievable,
the miracle becomes feasible; the reality otherwise hidden in our souls, in our
religious beliefs, in dreams and in love, in the dance of the limbs and in spar-
kling glances, is pressing to become reality.”71 The suggestive power of words like
these was so appealing that the new Bavarian prime minister, Kurt Eisner, asked
Landauer to join the new revolutionary regime in order “to assist in transforming
souls by the activity of [public] speaking.”72 Landauer himself believed that the
“Gemeingeist” – destroyed by the mutual war of one person against the other in
the capitalist world – would be strengthened during the socialist revolution by
joint action in which people experienced themselves as being “brothers.”73 And
the “Federal Republic of Councils (Räterepublik)”74 would prefigure an ideal com-
munity of people inspired by the Spirit.75
In actual fact, the souls which had been brutalized during the war sought
only relaxation, not refinement. Eisner’s widow, who also became Landauer’s
mistress after her husband’s assassination in February 1919,76 recorded a moving
scene in her diary which illustrates the intellectual distance and non-communi-
cation between Landauer and the Bavarian workers in 1919: Landauer had been
invited by the local branch of the Independent Social Democrats, Eisner’s former
71 Aufruf, 49-50.
72 Lebensgang II, 296, n. 1.
73 Sven-Uwe Schmitz, Homo democraticus. Demokratische Tugenden in der Ideengeschichte (Op-
laden: Leske und Budrich, 2000), 254.
74 On the contemporary theory of councils in general, see Horst Dähn, Rätedemokratische Mo-
delle: Studien zur Rätediskussion in Deutschland 1918-1919 (Meisenheim am Glan: Anton Hain,
1975); Volker Arnold, Rätebewegung und Rätetheorien in der Novemberrevolution: Entstehung
und Verlauf der Rätebewegung in Deutschland, 1918-1923, 2nd ed. (Berlin: SOAK, Junius,1985). On
Landauer’s theory of councils: Ulrich Linse, “Vom ‘Gemeingeist’: Gustav Landauers Räteutopie,”
in Der Potsdamer Forte-Kreis (1910-1915): Eine utopische Intellektuellenassoziation zur europäi-
schen Friedenssicherung, ed. Richard Faber and Christine Holste (Würzburg: Königshausen and
Neumann, 2001), 123-144.
75 Schmitz, Homo democraticus, 230-254.
76 Handwritten announcement of marriage signed by Gustav Landauer and Else Eisner-Belli
“To Our Friends” (An unsere Freunde): “( … ) wir zwei haben uns in dieser wilden Zeit, die in so
stürmischem Tempo verläuft, still und fest in Liebe gefunden und wollen ein Paar sein, solange
das Leben währt”: BAB, SAPMO, NY 4060/111.
60 Ulrich Linse
party, to deliver a speech in Augsburg at the end of March 1919 to celebrate the
revolution. The event took place on a Sunday and because the heavily falling
snow was already knee-deep, driving to the workers’ rally was difficult. Else
Eisner describes what occurred:
We arrived at Ludwigsbad. There we found a merry party waiting for a beer concert. The
program [for the celebration] showed a brash superficiality and barbarism. After three
[entertainment] numbers Landauer spoke. The people did not understand when he apol-
ogized for having to interrupt this harmless gathering with some serious words. Landauer
spoke very well and touched on the policies of those days [one week before the procla-
mation of the First Bavarian Council Republic]. After he finished, a singer appeared and
sang a silly piece about a princess. Landauer did not return to the hall again … . ‘Don’t you
know,’ I asked the people, ‘that this must offend our sensibilities? Such a celebration of the
revolution is a disgrace. Where is the revolutionary spirit? If you wish to listen to satirical
songs and drink beer, go to a variety show, not to a celebration in honor of the revolution.
You behave like the clubby members of a veterans organization! As for the [entertainment]
program … that we should have to experience this. I am ashamed for you. And for this you
[had to] bother [someone like] Landauer.’ At that very moment the singer had finished and
received more applause than had the speaker for the revolution [Revolutionsredner].77
The cultural revolution envisaged by Landauer had not taken place, neither
during the five years of war nor in the revolutionary turmoils following it. Edu-
cation therefore was necessary in order to humanize the brutalized masses.78 For
the moment the gulf dividing the poetic anarchist vision and the real life of the
working class should be bridged by community rituals. Landauer, the “preacher,”
chose to perform those spiritual rituals in the theater.79 The stage was where
poetic dreams come to life. In Landauer’s view the main function of the theater
was indeed “religious.” The Volksbühne, or people’s theater, was meant to trans-
form the audience into a new Volk; to him then, the theater was the revolution-
ary political institution par excellence. Already in 1892 Landauer formulated the
following program as an alternative to the materialistic revolution of the Social
Democrats: “Above all a transformation of Spirit [eine Umwälzung der Geister] is
77 Diary of Else Eisner, entry dated 9 April 1919, 12-13 (the celebration itself had taken place on
30 March 1919): BAB, SAPMO, NY 4060/101.
78 Ulrich Klemm, ed., Anarchismus und Pädagogik: Studien zur Rekonstruktion einer vergesse-
nen Tradition (Frankfurt/ Main: Dipa, 1991); Siegbert Wolf, “‘Revolution heißt ein neuer Geist’.
Gustav Landauers libertäre Pädagogik und ihre Weiterentwicklung durch Martin Buber,” in Be-
standsaufnahme, 76-97; Ulrich Klemm, Libertäre Pädagogik (Baltmannsweiler: Schneider-Verlag
Hohengehren, 2011).
79 Landauer was in conflict with himself over whether to work for the “Neue Freie Volksbühne”
in Berlin or the “Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf.” See: Frank Pfeiffer, “Mir leben auch die Toten …
” Gustav Landauers Programm des libertären Sozialismus (Hamburg: Dr. Kovač, 2005), 157-167.
necessary in order to systematically educate adults and children to moral and

spiritual liberty.”80 This was the aim behind Landauer’s public speeches, and
even more so, behind his concept of the theater. The theater was for him the
central therapeutic place of psychic healing. It is not surprising then that during
the German Revolution of 1918-1919 Landauer delivered speeches in the Bavarian
councils and at the same time developed the concept of the revolutionary peo-
ple’s theater, with him in the role of producer and director. “For me,” he wrote,
“this is all one thing: Revolution – liberty – socialism – the dignity of man in pol-
itics and society – regeneration and rebirth – art and the stage.”81 He hoped that
on and through the stage, the new revolutionary spirit of politics could be infused
in a “people religiously caught up and united by the Spirit.”50 By touching and
moving the souls of the audience and thus effecting a transformation in the most
intimate realm of the individual, Landauer also hoped to transform and transfig-
ure politics: “Public life can only find redemption and regeneration in that which
is most intimate.”82
In particular, Landauer’s interpretation of Shakespeare’s plays as a theory of
liberty83 is a good illustration of the political as well as religious dimension of the
theater. He revised his Berlin Shakespeare lectures from the spring of 1917 until
the outbreak of the revolution and intended to publish his book on Shakespeare
in 1919, the year of the revolution (Shakespeare, 1920). Shakespeare, he writes,
deals with “what is most personal and intimate in the individual soul and [with]
the great public problems of the peoples.”84 Recent scholarship has stressed that
Landauer’s theory of liberty – contrary to earlier interpretations – was lacking
apocalyptic, chiliastic or messianic elements.85 Indeed he never suggested an end
of history; history was – like in Shakespeare’s plays – a drama, and contemporary
history was experienced by him to be as dramatically structured as plays on the
stage: “In the letters written by Landauer in the turbulent days of the revolution
80 Sensation, 90.
82 Ibid., 184.
83 See Leonhard M. Fiedler, “‘Shakespeare ist der Genius der Freiheit.’ Gustav Landauers Shake-
speare-Studien,” in Bestandsaufnahme, 246-264; Hanna Delf, “‘In die größte Nähe zu Spinozas
Ethik.’ Zur Gustav Landauers Spinoza-Lektüre,” in Gespräch, 69-90; Stefana Sabine, “Seins-
grund. Landauers Shakespeare: Zur Politisierung philologischer Interpretation im Kontext der
deutsch-jüdischen Moderne,” in Seelengrund auf Seinsgrund. Gustav Landauers Shakespeare-
Studien und seine Übersetzungen des Meister Eckhart, ed. Stefana Sabin and Yossef Schwartz
(Berlin-Vienna: Philo, 2003), 5-23; Pfeiffer, “Mir leben auch die Toten,” 133-149.
85 Dubbels, Figuren, 273-274.
62 Ulrich Linse
it can be seen that for him the events on the stage and the historical moment
merged.”86
The underlying tenet of Landauer’s ‘poetic anarchism’ then, was that both
the new libertarian world and the new spiritual word had to be found in the
“mine shafts”87 of the individual soul. And, as Landauer added in Skepticism and
Mysticism, the prerequisite for that regeneration of the soul and of society was the
“killing of the [old] word.”88 For Landauer an inevitable consequence of killing
the old word was, of course, the basic rejection of political party anarchism,
along with its notion of class consciousness as a source of political strength, and
its political programs, statutes, resolutions and proposals. These all belonged to
that world of the old word, which had to pass away or even be killed in order
for the “new humanity” to become a reality. Linguistic criticism (Sprachkritik)89
thus opened the way to language poetics (Sprachpoetik), to the creative new lan-
guage of an energizing myth.90 This redemptive “new word” could not be spoken
by anarchist party politicians but only by Landauer, who himself was “a poetic
man.”91 Whereas the Marxian socialist tradition sought to demystify the world,
Landauer’s socialist anarchism under the influence of Nietzsche’s Lebensphiloso-
phie reintroduced the myth into the realms of culture and politics.92
One can see why the members of the proletarian anarchist movement, fight-
ing for the economic and political emancipation of their class, attacked Landau-
er’s position as intellectual arrogance93 and denounced his version of socialism
86 Despoix, Ethiken, 99-107, quotation 101.

87 Skepsis, 7.
88 Ibid., 3.
89 Thomas Regehly, “‘Die Welt ist ohne Sprache.’ Bemerkungen zur Sprachkritik Gustav Land-
auers, ihre Voraussetzungen und ihre Konsequenzen,” in Bestandsaufnahme, 219-245; Thomas
Hinz, Mystik und Anarchie. Meister Eckhart und seine Bedeutung im Denken Gustav Landauers
(Berlin: Karin Kramer, 2000); Joachim Willems, Religiöser Gehalt des Anarchismus und anarchis-
tischer Gehalt der Religion? Die jüdisch-christlich-atheistische Mystik Gustav Landauers zwischen
Meister Eckhart und Martin Buber (Albeck bei Ulm: Ulmer Manuskripte, 2001); Yossef Schwartz,
“Seelengrund. Landauers Eckhart. Zur Säkularisation des Mystischen in der deutsch-jüdischen
Kultur,” in Seelengrund auf Seinsgrund, 25-45; Elke Dubbels, “Sprachkritik und Ethik. Landauer
im Vergleich mit Spinoza,” in An den Rändern der Moral. Studien zur literarischen Ethik, Ulrich
Kinzel ed. (Würzburg: Königshausen and Neumann, 2008), 103-115. For Martin Buber’s mysticism
see Paul R. Mendes-Flohr, From Mysticism to Dialogue. Martin Buber’s Transformation of German
Social Thought (Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, 1989).
90 Dubbels, Figuren, 79-86; see also Rolf Kauffeldt, “Die Idee eines ‘Neuen Bundes’ (Gustav Lan-
dauer),” in Gott im Exil. Vorlesungen über die Neue Mythologie, vol. II, ed. Manfred Frank (Frank-
furt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1988), 131-179.
92 Aschheim, Nietzsche, 217; Dubbels, Figuren, 82, calls this “Remythologisierung.”
93 Bock, Syndikalismus und Linkskommunismus, 20.
as “a revisionist anarchism with watered-down bourgeois tendencies.”94 Party

anarchism and poetic anarchism, despite both having their roots in the “new
anarchism” of the 1890s, were thus indeed fundamentally different. The proletar-
ians and the prophetic poet could find no common ground.
94 Linse, Organisierter Anarchismus, 285.

Michael Löwy
Romantic Prophets of Utopia:
Gustav Landauer and Martin Buber
1 Introduction
Gustav Landauer and Martin Buber shared a romantic utopian vision that inspired
their literary, religious and political writings, and made them the twentieth centu-
ry’s principal prophets of community. It may be useful to explain from the outset
what I understand by ‘prophet’, ‘romantic’ and ‘utopia.’ The term ‘prophet’ is used
here not in the sense of a magician who pretends to foresee the future, but rather in
the truly biblical sense of one who warns the people of impending catastrophe and
calls for action before it is too late.1 The term ‘utopian’ should not be understood
as “an ardent but unpractical reformer” as the Concise Oxford Dictionary defines it,
but rather as the advocate of a just and humane social order that does not yet exist
anywhere – according to the original meaning of the Greek ou-topos.
And ‘romanticism’ refers not only to the German literary movement at the
beginning of the nineteenth century, but also to the more general current of protest
waged against modern, industrial bourgeois society, in the name of past social, cul-
tural or religious values. The romantic protest, running through modern culture
from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s day to our own is directed at the cold, calculating,
utilitarian, spirit of the modern and capitalistic age – what Max Weber called Rech-
enhaftigkeit – against the mechanization and reification of the soul, and above all,
against what Weber referred to as die Entzauberung der Welt, or “disenchantment
of the world.” To a large extent then, romanticism constitutes a nostalgic and often
desperate attempt to re-enchant the world through poetry, myth, religion, mysti-
cism and utopia. A powerful force in Central European culture at the beginning
of the twentieth century, this romantic trend usually took on a conservative and
restorative character – the main exception being Jewish intellectuals, who often
demonstrated marked socialist, utopian or revolutionary tendencies.2
Gustav Landauer and Martin Buber met for the first time in 1899 at the Neue
Gemeinschaft, or “new community,” a sort of neo-romantic circle founded that
year by the well-known literary critics, Heinrich and Julius Hart. The group also
1 “Thus saith the Lord : … if ye will not hearken unto me to hallow the sabbath day … then will
I kindle a fire in the gates … and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem, and it shall not be
quenched.” (Jer. 17:27)
2 For the social and cultural background to these tendencies, see my Redemption and Utopia:
Libertarian Judaism in Central Europe (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1992).
Romantic Prophets of Utopia: Gustav Landauer and Martin Buber 65
attracted writers and artists such as Erich Mühsam, Else Lasker-Schüler and Fritz
Mauthner.3 Curiously enough – but perhaps quite typically, given the assimila-
tion of German-speaking Jewish intellectuals and the romantic quest for religious
spirituality – Buber’s and Landauer’s first area of common interest was Christian
mysticism. Landauer was preparing an edition of Meister Eckhart’s writings at
the time, while Buber had given a lecture on Jakob Böhme. For both, mysticism
seemed a fascinating alternative to the empty rationalism, materialism and posi-
tivism of bourgeois culture.4
But they shared another, even more important, passion, namely the ideal of
Gemeinschaft, or “community.” According to Martin Buber’s biographer, Hans
Kohn, the encounter with Landauer, who was six years his senior, was “a land-
mark in his [Buber’s] life. From that point on, and up until Landauer’s death, the
two were bound by a close friendship. Buber’s views on communitarian life were
decisively influenced by Landauer.”5 Indeed, on social and political issues Buber
was to become, to a significant degree, a follower or disciple of his older friend – a
debt, which he always acknowledged.6
This does not mean that Buber was not a profoundly original social philoso-
pher. If one compares the key lectures that they gave at the Neue Gemeinshaft in
1900, one can see both their common aspirations and some differences. In June
1900, Gustav Landauer gave his lecture “Through Isolation to Community,” an
important statement of his new communitarian theory: “The community we long
for and need we will find only if we isolate ourselves as individuals; then we will
at last find, in the innermost core of our hidden being, the most ancient and the
most universal community: the human race [Menschengeschlecht] and the cosmos.
Whoever has discovered this joyous community in himself is enriched and blessed
for all time and is finally removed from the common accidental communities of our
age.”7 Among the old communities which were to be rejected in order to create the
3 Buber mentions the year 1899 as the moment when he first met Landauer. See his introduction
to Lebensgang I, vii.
4 Buber intended to produce, with the German publisher Eugen Diederichs, a collection of es-
says on European mysticism, divided into three sections : German, Slav and Jewish. He was going
to ask Landauer to write a piece on Eckhart, if the project went ahead. See his letter to Landauer
of 10 February 1903, in Martin Buber, Briefwechsel aus sieben Jahrzenten, ed. Grete Schaeder, vol.
I, 1897-1918 (Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider, 1972), 186.
5 H. Kohn, Martin Buber: Sein Werk und seine Zeit (Hellerau: J. Hegner, 1930), 29.
6 As Paul Mendes-Flohr aptly sums it up, “without Landauer it is difficult to appreciate the ide-
ational nuance and passion of Buber’s conception of politics … . Landauer was his alter ego on
social and political matters.” See his paper “Prophetic Politics and Meta-Sociology: Martin Buber
and German Social Thought,” Archives de Sociologie des Religions 60/1 (1985): 71.
7 G. Landauer, “Durch Absonderung zur Gemeinschaft,” in Die Neue Gemeinschaft: Ein Orden
vom Wahren Leben, part 2: Das Reich der Erfüllung: Flugschriften zur Begründung einer neuen
66 Michael Löwy
Menschengemeinschaft, or human community, there was of course the state, that

authoritarian Gemeinheitsgemeinschaft, or communal community.
Similar views were expressed a few months later in Martin Buber’s path-
breaking lecture, “Old and New Community,” also given at the Neue Gemein-
schaft. In his lecture Buber referred to the above passage by Landauer as the most
adequate description of the common “experience,” or Erlebnis – a key term in the
Buberian lexicon – shared by those searching for a new Gemeinschaft. But Buber
also developed some critical reflections concerning the German sociologist Ferdi-
nand Tönnies, which led him to a new and unprecedented definition of the new
community as “post-social” rather than “pre-social” (the latter term was used
by Tönnies in his well-known opus, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, published in
1887). Buber meant that the new community does not hark back to ancient forms,
but rather seeks to overcome modern society, while taking into account its achieve-
ments, such as the principle of individual freedom. It is not bound, as was the old
community – whether the tribe, the clan or the religious sect – by one single word
or opinion, such that quickly becomes frozen into dogma or a rigid law; instead
it is held together by a common life in freedom and creativity, one that requires
a diversity of opinions. In a remarkable sociological synopsis, illuminated by
his visionary utopia, Buber argued: “Thus will humanity, which came out of a
beautiful but rough primitive community, after having gone through the growing
slavery of society [Gesellschaft], arrive at a new community, which will no longer
be grounded, as was the first one, on blood affinities [Blutsverwandtschaft], but
on elective affinities [Wahlverwandtschaft]. Only in this new community can the
old eternal dream be accomplished and the instinctive life-unity of the primeval
man [Urmenschen], which has been for so long fragmented and divided, return
on a higher level and in a new form.”8 The utopian community is thus construed
as a renewal of the primitive one – this is an essential theorem of romantic social
philosophy – but it ceases to be a world of constraint inasmuch as it is bound by
the mutual affinity of free individuals.
Both Buber’s and Landauer’s communitarian views were clearly romantic,
not only in their critical slant against the individualism and egotism of modern
bourgeois society, but also in their nostalgic celebration of the lost Urgemein-
schaft, or primeval community. However, unlike reactionary and conservative
Weltanschauung, ed. Heinrich und Julius Hart (Leipzig: Diederichs, 1901), 46-48; quoted in
Eugen Lunn’s fine biography, Prophet of Community: The Romantic Socialism of Gustav Landauer
(Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1973), 125.
8 M. Buber, “Alte und neue Gemeinschaft,” in Paul Mendes-Flohr and B. Susser, “Alte und neue
Gemeinschaft : An Unpublished Buber Manuscript,” AJS Review, I (1976): 52-56. Flohr and Susser
perceptively define Buber’s vision as a sort of non-political anarchism (ibid., 49).
German romantics, they did not dream of restoration, but rather of a new form
of communitarian life; nostalgia for the past is thus invested with hope for the
utopian future. Prompted by his admiration for Landauer, Martin Buber asked
him a few years later, in 1906, to contribute a volume to his sociological and
socio-philosophical series, Die Gesellschaft. Landauer’s contribution, Die Rev-
olution, published in 1907, is a largely unacknowledged landmark in modern
political thought. This was the first attempt to challenge Friedrich Engels’ sym-
pathetic but firm dismissal of utopia as a pre-scientific stage in the history of
socialism in his Anti-Dühring (1878), and to re-instate the concept at the center
of social philosophy. Well in advance of Ernst Bloch’s Spirit of Utopia (1918) and
Karl Mannheim’s Ideology and Utopia (1929) Gustav Landauer had raised utopia
to a universal human principle, which was to find its active expression in revolu-
tion.9 Landauer’s apologia for utopia was to influence not only Buber, Bloch and
Mannheim, but also Gershom Scholem, Maneś Sperber, Walter Benjamin and the
Jewish youth movement, Hashomer Hatzair. It is difficult to estimate the impact
this book had on its publisher, but we do know that Buber shared Landauer’s idea
of revolution as regeneration, as well as his belief that the utopian change would
come from “the unknown, the deeply buried and the sudden.”10
Buber was also very interested in Landauer’s essay “Volk and Land: Thirty
Socialist Theses” (1907), which attempted to reformulate socialist theory. Lan-
dauer felt that if socialism were ever to emerge, it must be built up outside the
state through decentralized communities, which would constitute the “new
organism of the people.” Buber eagerly joined Gemeinschaft, the Berlin branch of
the Sozialistischer Bund, which was the libertarian, socialist association created
by Landauer in 1908 on the basis of his “Theses.” In its first pamphlet, “Was will
der Sozialistische Bund?” the new organization, which attracted a significant fol-
lowing of a few thousand members, called for an “active general strike” to further
their goal: a situation in which working people would no longer work for the cap-
italists but for themselves.11
9 Revolution, 17-18: “Utopia survives underground, also during times of relative stable topias,
and undertakes to make out of this complex of memories, desires and feelings a unity, which it
tends to designate with the name: the revolution.”
10 “Unbekanntes, Tiefbegrabenes und Plötzliches” are the last words of Landauer’s Die Revo-
lution, 119. This, and several other passages from this work are quoted in Buber’s later work, Der
utopische Sozialismus (Köln: J. Hegner, 1967), 81-100.
11 G. Landauer, “Volk und Land. Dreissig sozialistischen Thesen” and “Was will der Sozialis-
tische Bund,” in Beginnen, 3-20, 91-95. In the preface to this posthumous collection of Landau-
er’s socialist essays, which he edited, Martin Buber commends the “presuppositions of a true
socialism” and pays homage to the visionary character of the Socialist Bund. See his preface to
Beginnen, iii. See also Lunn, Prophet of Community, 124-125.
68 Michael Löwy
Buber and Landauer also shared a radical criticism – inspired by both

German romantic and Jewish messianic ideas – of the evolutionist philosophy
of progress common to both liberals and Second International Marxists. Both of
them – more or less at the same time in 1911 – published books in which this
new conception of history is couched in almost identical terms. It is impossible
to know who influenced whom. Rejecting the conformist ideology of progressive
“improvement” (Verbesserung), Buber wrote, in his Three Addresses on Judaism:
“By ‘renewal,’ I do not in any way mean something gradual, a sum total of minor
changes. I mean something sudden and immense [Ungeheures], by no means a
continuation or an improvement, but a reversal and a metamorphosis.” Rather
than hope for ordinary progress (Fortschritt), one should “desire the impossible
[das Unmögliche].” Buber found the paradigm for such a complete renewal in the
Jewish messianic tradition. Referring to the end of the Book of Isaiah where God
says ‘I create new heavens and a new earth,’ (Isaiah 65:17), Buber states that “this
was not a metaphor but a direct experience.”12
In the course of the same year Landauer’s A Call to Socialism appeared. One
of the century’s great works of romantic socialism, it offers a negative credo,
which can be summed up in the phrase “no progress, no technology, no virtu-
osity can bring us salvation or happiness.” Rejecting the German Social Dem-
ocrats’ “belief in progressive development” (Fortschrittsentwicklung), Landauer
presented his own vision of historical change: “To my mind, human history is not
made up of anonymous processes, nor is it merely an accumulation of countless
small events … . When something noble and grandiose, deeply moving and inno-
vative, has happened to humankind, it has turned out that it was the impossible
and the unbelievable … that have brought about the turning point.”13 Against the
positivist-evolutionist perception of progress as quantitative and gradual accu-
mulation, Buber and Landauer proposed a qualitative conception of historical
time, according to which, the radical change or great metamorphosis results from
a sudden eruption of what had hitherto been considered impossible. Whereas in
Buber’s thought this vision has a strong religious, even messianic character, for
Landauer the privileged moment of such an irruption is revolution – and here
too, the religious undertone is unmistakable, as Landauer asserts that in revolu-
12 M. Buber, Drei Reden über das Judentum (1911; Frankfurt/Main: Rütten & Loening, 1920), 60-
61. Landauer wrote Buber a warm letter on May 1911, referring to his “inner joy” when reading
the book, and emphasizing that he felt they were “friends walking the same path together.” See
Buber, Briefwechsel I, 294.
13 Aufruf 1919, 11, 44, 108.
tionary events “the unbelievable, the miraculous move toward the realm of the
possible.”14
As Karl Mannheim has noted with some insight, Landauer can be seen as the
heir of anabaptist millenarianism and even as the representative of “the Chiliastic
mentality … preserved in its purest and most genuine form.” This style of thinking
precludes any concept of evolution or any representation of progress. Within a
“qualitative differentiation of time,” revolution is perceived as a breakthrough
(Durchbruch), an abrupt moment, an experience lived in the here-and-now
(Jetzt-Erleben).15 Mannheim’s analysis is all the more striking in that it applies
not only to Landauer, but also, with a few subtle differences, to Martin Buber, to
Walter Benjamin (in particular, to the latter’s messianic concept of Jetztzeit) and
to several other Jewish-German thinkers
2 Romantic Judaism
On the issue of communitarianism, Buber followed – albeit in his own unique
way – the ideas of his friend, and the two also shared a contempt for the modern-
ist and social-liberal ideology of progress; there was one area, however, regarding
which Landauer was clearly indebted to Buber, namely, Judaism. Before 1908,
there are very few references to Judaism in Landauer’s writings – or even in his
letters. In the “Thirty Socialist Theses” essay mentioned earlier, Landauer refers
to spiritual figures from every nation – for example Goethe in Germany – and
then adds: “The Jews too, have their unity and their Isaiah, Jesus and Spinoza”
– a selection that is very characteristic for Landauer, insofar as two of these pur-
portedly greatest representatives of Judaism had an ambiguous relationship to
the Judaism of their day.16 What caused Landauer to turn toward Judaism was
not anti-Semitism or the Dreyfus affair – as was the case with Theodor Herzl or
Bernard Lazare. It was rather his discovery – through the writings of Martin Buber
– of a new conception of Jewish spirituality, a romantic Jewish religiosity.
Landauer showed enthusiastic interest in Buber’s first Hassidic book, Tales
of Rabbi Nachman (1906). He was particularly impressed by the story called “The
Master of Prayer,” which has a strong anti-bourgeois, critical slant. The story
recounts how, once upon a time, there was a land of wealth, where gold, money
and affluence were the only recognized values; where the rich were revered as
14 Landauer’s preface to Aufruf, x.

15 K. Mannheim, Ideologie und Utopie, 1929; 5th ed. (Frankfurt/Main: Schulte-Bulmke, 1969), 196.
16 Beginnen, 7.
70 Michael Löwy
gods and received human sacrifices; and where compassion and solidarity were
considered shameful nonsense. In the end, the inhabitants of the land are saved
from their folly by the “master of prayer.”17 Landauer had read this story to his
friend, the Jewish philosopher Constantin Brunner (pen name of Leopold Wert-
heimer) and his wife, and he reported their reaction in a letter to Buber: “Deep
joy, strong emotion and astonishment was the effect. It is indeed a marvelous
text.”18
But the real watershed for Landauer was Buber’s The Legend of the Baal-Shem
(1908), which for Landauer had the effect of a sort of profane illumination, to use
Walter Benjamin’s term. He was not the only one impressed by the book. It had a
tremendous impact on many Jewish – and non-Jewish – intellectuals in Central
Europe, because it presented for the first time a new image of Judaism, one rad-
ically different from both assimilated liberalism and Rabbinic Orthodoxy.19 For
Landauer, as for several other German-Jewish intellectuals, only a romantic,
mystical and poetic Judaism, such as that created by Buber from the old Has-
sidic legends, could have an appeal. It appeared as a direct challenge to the view
of Judaism as a rationalist, legalistic, non-mystical, and anti-magical religion,
which prevailed in various guises in German sociology, Weber and Sombart being
but two of the names which immediately spring to mind.
Writing to a friend in October 1908, shortly after the publication of the book,
Landauer hailed these “marvellous stories and legends, from the tradition of
eighteenth-century Polish-Jewish mystics, of the Baal-Shem and Rabbi Nach-
man.”20 He also wrote a review of the book – which appeared only in 1910 – that
brought to the fore its romantic and messianic aspects: “The extraordinary thing
about these Jewish legends is … that not only must the God who is sought after,
free people from the limitations and illusions of the life of the senses, but he must
first and foremost be the messiah who will raise the poor, tormented Jews out of
their suffering and oppression.” In his view the Hassidic tales were the collective
work of a people (Volk), and this did not mean something “popular” or trivial,
17 M.Buber, “Die Geschichte vom Meister des Gebetes,” in Die Geschichten des Rabbi Nachman
(Frankfurt/Main: Rütten & Loening, 1906) from Die Chassidischen Bücher (Berlin: Schocken,
1927), 77-103.
18 The letter from Landauer is lost, but the comment is proudly quoted by Buber in a letter to his
wife from December 1906, see Buber, Briefwechsel I, 252.
19 Among those whom it fascinated were such different figures as Rainer Maria Rilke, Walther
Rathenau, Georg Lukacs, Ernst Bloch, and Franz Kafka. See Paul-Mendes Flohr’s remarkable
essay, “Fin-de-siècle Orientalism, the Ostjuden and the Aesthetics of Jewish Self-Affirmation,”
in Divided Passions: Jewish Intellectuals and the Experience of Modernity, ed. Paul Mendes-Flohr
(Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press, 1991), 100.
20 G. Landauer to Margarete Faas-Hardegger, 20 October 1908, in Lebensgang I, 218.
but rather betokened “living growth: the future within the present, the spirit
within history, the whole within the individual … . The liberating and unifiying
God within the imprisoned and lacerated human being; the heavenly within the
earthly.”21 The review also holds a confession of sorts, as Landauer tells us how
his own attitude toward Judaism changed as a result of reading Buber’s opus:
“Nowhere can a Jew learn, as he can in Buber’s thoughts and writings, what many
today do not know spontaneously, and discover only when there is an outside
impulse: namely, that Judaism is not an external accident [äussere Zufälligkeit]
but a lasting internal quality [unverlierbare innere Eigenschaft], and identifica-
tion with it unites a number of individuals within a Gemeinschaft. In this way, a
common ground and a common situation of the soul [Seelensituation] is estab-
lished between the person writing this article and the author of the book.”22 In
the first, unpublished version of the review, which was recently discovered by
Paul Mendes-Flohr, Landauer is even more explicit: “It is precisely through the
mediation of Martin Buber that I have found Judaism.”23
In fact, Landauer himself was one of those Jews for whom Judaism had been
an “external accident”; in response to an anti-Semitic article by Helmut Von
Gerlach, Landauer wrote a letter to the editor of Die Zeit, in which he character-
ized his Jewishness as “fortuituous.”24 A few years later, Landauer wrote another
sympathetic article on Buber, in which he presented his friend as “the apostle of
Judaism before humanity,” and praised his Hasidic books as “filled with melan-
choly, tender beauty, and … the desire to be delivered from earthly oppression.”
Landauer notes that as a result of Buber’s writings, which had saved a buried
and underground tradition from oblivion, “the image of the Jewish essence [des
jüdischen Wesens] became different for Jews and non-Jews.”25 In other words,
Buber’s Jewish writings were the “outside impulse” that allowed Landauer to dis-
cover his own Jewish identity.
It would, however, be rather one-sided to suggest that Buber’s influence
alone accounted for Landauer’s “Jewish turn,” especially given the fact that
Buber’s own religious ideas were themselves deeply influenced by Landauer’s
social philosophy and by his writings on Christian mysticism. According to Hans
Kohn, there are quite a few similarities between the way Landauer prepared his
translation of Eckhart and the way Buber undertook his first translations of Has-
21 G. Landauer, “Die Legende des Baalschem,” Das literarische Echo 13, no. 2 (1910): 149.
22 Ibid. 148.
23 Mendes-Flohr, Divided Passions, 107.
24 GLAJ, MS Varia 432, File 162. Although the document is not dated, it can certainly be estab-
lished as having been written before 1908.
25 G. Landauer, “Martin Buber,” (1913), in WM 1921, 244-246.
72 Michael Löwy
sidic documents.26 The two men in fact drew on a common source of German
neo-romantic culture, and it was from this shared background that a process of
mutual influence developed during those years. Indeed, after 1908 Landauer not
only interpreted Judaism in the light of romantic hermeneutics, but also consid-
ered German romanticism in terms of the Jewish prophetic tradition. The most
astonishing example of this latter concern is found in his lecture on Hölderlin
from March 1916, in which he compares the German poet’s words – “harsh as the
merciless verdict of a God” – to those of the Jewish prophets, and likens Hölder-
lin’s ultimate spiritual power as a modern prophet to that of his “brothers in the
ancient times of the Hebrews.”27
The friendship and deep spiritual affinity between the two utopian proph-
ets did not mean that there were no important differences between them. There
were two main issues that set Landauer’s thinking apart from Buber’s: religion
and Zionism. Whereas Buber’s spirituality falls within the realm of religious faith
in the strict sense, Landauer’s philosophy belongs to the ambiguous domain of
religious atheism. The prophetic, mystical or Jewish messianic topoi were secu-
larized in Landauer’s socialist utopia. This of course was not secularization in the
usual sense of the word, for there was still a religious element at the very heart of
Landauer’s political imagination. The religious dimension was not simply nulli-
fied but rather preserved and suppressed – in the dialectical sense of Aufhebung –
in utopian revolutionary prophecy. In Landauer’s mystical secularization – some
authors speak of his “mystical atheism” – a religious symbolic universe became
part of his revolutionary discourse and imbued it with a sui generis spirituality,
which seemed to elude the usual distinctions between faith and atheism.28 Lan-
26 To illustrate his argument, Kohn quotes from the pamphlet issued by Landauer announcing
the publication of his Eckhart-book: “Concepts such as modernization or selection are entirely
false for this book … . It is the reappearance of a hidden something, which should be not histor-
ically honoured, but fulfilled in life.” Kohn, Martin Buber, 30. See also Norbert Altenhofer’s in-
sightful article “Tradition als Revolution: Gustav Landauer’s ‘geworden-werdendes’ Judentum,”
in Jews and Germans from 1860 to 1933, ed. David Bronsen (Heidelberg: Carl-Winter-Universitäts-
verlag, 1979).
27 G. Landauer, “Friedrich Hölderlin in seinen Gedichten,” WM 1921, 165n., 168. See Bernd
Witte, “Zwischen Haskala und Chassidut,” in Gespräch, 39-41. It is interesting to note that a few
years later, in 1918, the young Gerhard Scholem, in his personal diary, also compared Hölderlin’s
‘canonical’ texts to the Bible. See G. Scholem, Tagebuchaufzeichnungen: 1. August 1918 – 1. August
1919, Adelboden – Bern. 89 pages, 37. Document to be found in the Gershom Scholem Archive of
The National Library of Israel, Jerusalem. See also: G. Scholem, Lamentations of Youth: The Dia-
ries of Gershon Scholem 1913–1919, ed. and trans. Anthony David Skinner (Cambridge: Harvard/
Belknap, 2007).
28 Heinz Joachim Heydorn, preface to Gustav Landauer: Zwang und Befreiung (Köln: J. Hegner,
1968), 15.
dauer refused to believe in a “celestial and other-worldly God”; following Feuer-

bach, he affirmed that it was man who created God, and not the other way round,
but this still did not prevent him from defining socialism as a “religion.”29
Landauer shared with Buber an attitude toward Jewish religion that was
inspired by the romantic dialectic of utopia, linking the millennial past with a lib-
erated future; tradition perseveres in the collective memory and in emancipation.
In an important article on the Jewish question, entitled “Sind das Ketzergedan-
ken?”(“Are these heretical thoughts?”), Landauer asserts that “the age-old path,
which we keep in our soul, is that taken by mankind toward the future, and the
tradition of our martyred and nostalgic heart is nothing other than the revolu-
tion and regeneration of mankind.”30 Landauer, however, emphasized the revo-
lutionary social and political dimension of Judaism much more than did Buber.
For instance, in his A Call to Socialism (1911) he interpreted the institution of a
jubilee set down in Mosaic law in the following terms: “The uprising [Aufruhr]
as a constitution, transformation and upheaval as a rule expected to last for ever
… were the grandiosity and the sacredness of the Mosaic social order. We need
that once again: new regulations and a spiritual upheaval, which will not make
things and commandments permanently rigid, but which will proclaim its own
permanence. The revolution must become an element of our social order, it must
become the basic rule of our Constitution.”31 A note which I came across in the
Landauer Archive takes up this theme from another angle; Landauer suggests
that, whereas in other religions the gods help the nation and protect its heroes,
in Judaism, “God is eternally opposed to servility; he is therefore the subversive
one [Aufrührer], the one who rouses [Aufrüttler], the one who warns [Mahner].”
The Jewish religion is evidence of “the people’s holy dissatisfaction with itself.”32
With regard to the issue of Zionism, Landauer had ambivalent feelings, even
if he was not hostile to the movement itself. On the one hand, he rejected what
he considered to be the “cold” and “doctrinaire” concept of a “Hebraic Judaism”
aimed at suppressing German-Jewish, Russian-Jewish and Yiddish culture.33 On
the other hand, he praised “the movement, generally known as Zionism, which
29 WM, 1921, 30, 35.

30 G. Landauer, “Sind das Ketzergedanken?,” in WM 1921,135.
31 Aufruf 1919, 136-137. This does not mean that Buber disagreed with this sort of argument – he
quotes this same passage at the end of his chapter on Landauer in Paths in Utopia, trans. R. F. C.
Hull, 2nd ed. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1960). But Landauer did not share Buber’s faith in the “God
of Abraham and Isaac.”
32 GLAJ, Ms. Varia 432, File 23. Paul Mendes-Flohr is right in emphasizing the role of aesthetics
in Landauer’s conception of Judaism (Divided Passions, 108), but the social and political dimen-
sion are no less important.
33 Landauer, “Sind das Ketzergedanken?,” in WM 1921, 127.
74 Michael Löwy
runs through Judaism,” for seeking to give “a pure and creative form” to the spe-
cific essence of the Jewish nation.34 What he particularly resented was what he,
in an angry letter to the Zionist educator Siegfried Lehmann, called “the falsify-
ing ‘either/or’ choice, which the Zionist calls upon me to make between being a
German and a Jew, a European and an Oriental.”35 In any case, his true commit-
ment was not to Zionism – as it was for Buber – but to a sort of messianic dias-
pora socialism. He believed that the Jewish people have a specific messianic-rev-
olutionary role in modern history: their mission (Amt), vocation (Beruf) or task
(Dienst) being to help transform society and create a new humanity.
Why the Jews? Landauer’s answer can be found in an astonishing passage
from his “Heretical Thoughts” article: “A voice, like a wild cry resonating through-
out the world and like a sigh in our heart of hearts, tells us irrefutably that the
redemption of the Jew can take place only at the same time as that of humanity;
and that it is one and the same [thing] to await the messiah while dispersed and
in exile, and to be the “messiah of the nations.”36 This was, of course, a typical
form of pariah messianism, which, in the spiritual domain, reversed the “nega-
tive privileges” (to quote Max Weber) of the pariah people. In Landauer’s view,
the Jewish vocation could be traced back to the Bible itself. In a commentary on
Strindberg written in 1917, he claims that there have been only two great prophe-
cies in human history: “Rome, world domination; Israel, world redemption.” The
Jewish tradition, which never forgot God’s promise to Abraham – the redemption
of the Jew along with all nations – was evidence of “a messianic conception, a
messianic faith, a messianic will.”37
The Jewish redemptive mission in modern times has taken the secular form
of socialism. Landauer regarded the situation of the Jews in his generation to be
the objective foundation for their internationalist, socialist role. Unlike other
nations, the Jews were in the unique position of being a people, a community, a
nation, but not a state; and this gave them the historical opportunity to avoid the
delirium associated with statehood.38 This explains why he states in the conclu-
sion to his “Heretical Thoughts” essay that while other nations have closed them-
selves off within state borders (“sich zu Staaten abgegrenzt haben”) “the Jewish
34 G. Landauer, “Zum Beilis-Prozess,” in WM 1921, 133.

35 The letter to Lehmann, from 30 November 1915, was published in November 1929 in the jour-
nal Der junge Jude. See Mendes-Flohr, Divided Passions, 131.
36 WM 1921, 125.
37 Ibid., 273, 284.
38 According to Norbert Altenhofer, Landauer the anarchist rejected the two dominant currents
within the German-Jewish community: assimilation, which implied acceptance of the German
imperial state, and Zionism, which sought to establish a Jewish state. See “Tradition als Revolu-
tion … ,” 194-195.
nation carries its neighbours in its bosom.” He regarded this singular situation as
the surest sign of the Jews’ “mission to humanity.”39
When, in 1912, Landauer was invited by the West Berlin branch of the German
Zionist movement to give a speech on “Judaism and Socialism,” he put forward
the provocative idea that it was in fact the Galut (literally the exile), that linked
Judaism to socialism – a notion that followed logically from his entire analysis of
the Jewish condition. The Jewish people, he believed, was particularly qualified
for the task of helping to build socialist communities, precisely because it was
less addicted to the cult of the state.40
3 War and Revolution

These differences never led to a clash between the two thinkers: their friend-
ship and spiritual Wahlverwandtschaft, or elective affinity, was strong enough
to overcome this and other differences of opinion. But things changed with the
outbreak of World War I; now, for the first time, a real conflict emerged. While
Buber, like many other Jewish-German intellectuals, seemed to follow – albeit
with ambivalent feelings – the general trend of German patriotism, Landauer had
been a staunch opponent of the war from the outset. In June 1914, just before the
war, Landauer and Buber had taken part in an international cultural meeting in
Potsdam of the Forte-Circle. When the war began, several of its members – such
as the writers Erich Gutkind and Florens Christian Rang – sided with the German
Reich, and hailed the war as a fight for German spiritual values and against
French and English commercialism. To what extent Buber shared this viewpoint
is not clear. Landauer, however, in a letter to Erich Gutkind expressed his utter
rejection of such views, which he considered a sort of perverse aestheticism.
Apparently this critique was also directed at Buber, who in a letter to Landauer
of 18 October 1914, protested what he considered to be the latter’s unfair verdict:
“Gutkind reports that you reproach me – as well as him – for having an aesthet-
icist attitude; is it possible that you really misunderstand and misjudge me so? I
39 WM 1921, 128.

40 G. Landauer, “Judentum und Sozialismus,” Die Arbeit: Organ der Zionistischen Volkssozia-
listischen Partei, 2 (1920): 51. As Paul Breines emphasizes, in Landauer’s opinion “the Diaspora
became the social base so to speak of the idea of the Jews as redeemers of humanity. The dis-
persion, in fact, freed the Jews; it allowed them to remain a nation, and at the same time, to
transcend that nation and all nations, and to perceive the future unity of mankind as being made
up of a variety of true nations.” See P. Breines, “The Jew as Revolutionary: The Case of Gustav
Landauer,” Leo Baeck Yearbook, 12 (1967): 82.
76 Michael Löwy
cannot believe it.”41 Apparently there was a personal exchange of explanations,

and though the quarrel was neutralised, the tension remained.
Landauer’s attitude is succinctly expressed in a letter from November 1914
to his friend Fritz Mauthner, who had also adopted a German nationalist stance:
“I do not have the slightest feeling of association with the policies and actions
of the German Reich.”42 In Der Sozialist, a journal that was closely monitored by
the authorities, he tried to fight German chauvinism by publishing cosmopolitan
and anti-war texts by Herder, Fichte and Romain Rolland. He also supported the
initiatives of the democratic, pacifist organization Bund Neues Vaterland, created
in 1915 by certain intellectuals who favored an immediate compromise for peace,
such as Friedrich Wilhelm Foerster and Albert Einstein. At the same time, he was
deeply offended by the pro-war position taken by trusted friends such as Fritz
Mauthner and Richard Dehmel.43
Martin Buber’s views were much less clear-sighted. In the editorial he wrote
for the first issue of his journal Der Jude in 1916, he took a highly ambiguous
stand. While emphasizing that Judaism as such had no connection to the war, he
praised individual Jewish commitment to the war effort as an instance of “the dis-
covery of community” and “the first step to inner liberation!”44 In another essay
from the same year, “The Spirit of the Orient and Judaism,” Buber celebrated
Germany as the only nation in Europe with a spiritual affinity to the Eastern
cultures, and therefore best suited to the historical mission of bringing together
East and West in a fruitful reciprocity. He also emphasized that of all European
nations, Germany had the strongest cultural interaction with Judaism.45
This was too much for Landauer. In a highly emotional letter to Buber on 12
May 1916 he reacted to his friend’s arguments with bitter anger and disappoint-
ment. He notes that in these two texts he once again discerns the “Kriegsbuber”
or warmonger (literally war-Buber) he had almost forgotten – probably a refer-
ence to their first exchange in 1914. For Landauer, these texts of Buber’s were
“very painful, offensive, and almost inconceivable,” representing the worst sort
of “aestheticism and formalism,” which was the very reproach he had leveled at
Buber in 1914. Landauer’s criticism was particularly aimed at Buber’s editorial
“Die Losung”; indeed, what could be the meaning of discovering “community”
41 Buber, Briefewechsel I, 381.

43 Lunn, Prophet of Community, 243-246.
44 M. Buber, “Die Losung,” 1916, in Die jüdische Bewegung: Gesammelte Aufsätze und Anspra-
chen, 2nd series, 1916-20 (Berlin: Jüdischer Verlag, 1920), 7-15.
45 “Der Geist des Orients und das Judentum,” in Vom Geist des Judentums (Leipzig: Kurt Wolff,
1916), 46. These passages do not appear in the 1919 edition of the essay.
in the midst of war and murder? Referring to the “Spirit of the Orient” lecture,
Landauer also told Buber that he had met several young people who had once
admired him, but having heard the lecture now viewed him as a traitor rather
than as a leader. Landauer’s own verdict was somewhat milder. He felt Buber
was guilty not of treason, but rather of confusion (Trübung). Landauer considered
Buber’s presentation of Germany as the redemptive nation for the Orient to be war
politics and officialistic rhetoric (Offiziosentum) – especially in light of the fact
that Buber had neglected to mention Germany’s policy of colonial conquest in
the preceding decades. Finally, at the end of his letter, Landauer predicted – quite
accurately – that Buber would soon regret these writings, and would abandon
his positive view of Germany’s war against the other European nations; indeed to
Landauer, this view reflected Buber’s state of “deep confusion” (Verwirrung) and
“entanglement” (Verstrickung).46
How did Buber react to this harsh indictment – which at the same time, bore
witness to a wounded friendship? In 1972, Grete Schaeder, the editor of Buber’s
correspondence, added a note to Landauer’s letter: “Buber’s answer is missing;
there was probably a spoken exchange between the two.”47 Thanks to a letter
discovered in the Landauer Archive by Eugene Lunn, we in fact have a more con-
crete answer. Lunn explains Buber’s rebuttal: “Denying that he had defended
the German war policies, he claimed that Landauer had read his article ‘with the
eyes of a fanatic’ and had imposed [on it] a political meaning that was foreign to
it. Landauer, in turn, concluded the exchange by saying that Buber, whether he
wanted to or not, had played into the hands of the imperialists, although he saw
Buber’s position as an unfortunate effect of the agony of the war.”48
Under pressure from Landauer, but also following a more widespread trend
among leftist intellectuals, Buber became increasingly hostile to the war during
1916-1918. This is already apparent in his dispute with Hermann Cohen, champion
of German “state consciousness,” in Der Jude, in September of 1916: “Humanity
is greater than the state – and to say so, Professor Cohen, is now more than ever
the duty of every man living in God.” His articles from 1917 are even more explic-
itly anti-war. Lamenting the fact that so many intellectuals had let themselves be
regimented by the war-machine, he denounced “this degenerate war.”49 Buber’s
46 Buber, Briefwechsel I, 433-438. For obvious reasons this letter was not included in the edition
of Landauer’s correspondence (Lebensgang) that Buber published in 1929.
47 Buber, Briefwechsel I, 438.
48 Buber’s answer is quoted in a letter Landauer wrote on 2 June 1916. See Lunn, Prophet of
Community, 246-247.
49 M. Buber, “Der Staat und die Menschheit,” in September 1916, and “Ein politischer Faktor,”
in August 1917, in Die Jüdische Bewegung, 57-58, 113.
78 Michael Löwy
change of mind allowed the friendship with Landauer to grow once more, as the
correspondence from those years readily shows. This does not mean that there
were no disagreements; differences of opinion persisted, particularly with regard
to political issues such as the question of Zionism vs. revolution. This issue did
not produce the same kind of conflict between them as did the war issue, but
it did determine in a decisive way the different paths they followed during the
crucial years of 1918-1919.
Landauer welcomed the Russian Revolution with enthusiasm, despite his
strong hostility to Marxism. A letter to Buber from 5 February 1918 documents in
a sharp and concrete way Landuaer’s disagreement with his friend, whose main
interest at that precise moment was the future of the Jewish homeland in Pales-
tine. Explaining his refusal to contribute to a volume of collected essays, which
Buber was planning as a protest “against the penetration of imperialism and mer-
cantilism into Palestine” Landauer writes: “My heart has never lured me to Pales-
tine, nor do I believe that it necessarily answers the geographical requirement for
a Jewish community [Gemeinschaft]. The real event of importance, one that may
even be decisive for us Jews, is the liberation of Russia … . To me it seems prefer-
able – in spite of everything – that Bronstein is not teaching at the University of
Jaffa, but is Trotsky in Russia.”50
Landauer’s attitude toward the Bolsheviks was ambivalent but in the preface
to the new edition of his A Call to Socialism he expressed joy at the news that
they – like Friedrich Adler or Kurt Eisner – seemed to have overcome their doctri-
narism and allowed federation and freedom to take precedence over centralism
and military-proletarian discipline.51 However, Landauer’s main interest, during
the last year of his life was the future of the revolution in Germany. His friend-
ship with Kurt Eisner led him to make a decisive commitment to the movement in
Bavaria. As soon as he arrived in Munich in November 1918, Landauer, together
with Erich Mühsam, became leaders of the most radical current, the Revolution-
ary Workers’ Council, which included both partisans of Eisner’s USPD (Indepen-
dent Social Democrats) and anarchists. During January and February 1919, he
was even willing to cooperate with the Munich Spartacists – a group he had once
50 Despite this harsh rebuttal, Landauer still showed interest for the Jewish kibbutzim in Pales-
tine and agreed to participate in a meeting with Zionist socialists (organized by Buber) in order
to discuss the topic; the meeting was to have taken place in April 1919, but by that time Landauer
was involved with the revolutionary councils in Munich. There is a letter between Landauer and
Nahum Goldmann on the subject, dated March 1919 (Landauer Archive, MS Varia 432, Files 167-
168). It has been published in Hebrew with an interesting introduction by Avraham Yassour, “Al
hityashvut shitufit va tiyus” (On communal settlements and industrialization), Kibbutz 2 (1975):
165-175.
51 G. Landauer, “Vorwort zur neuen Aufgabe,” Aufruf 1919, vii-viii.
despised – in the common struggle against the counterrevolutionary forces; his

involvement became more intense following the assassination of his close friend
Kurt Eisner, at the hands of the fanatical aristocrat, Count Arco-Valley.
Martin Buber followed his friend’s political endeavors with sympathy but
increasing anxiety. He went to Munich in February 1919, and met with both
Eisner and Landauer. In an impressive letter from February 22 – shortly after the
Jewish revolutionary leader had been murdered – Buber describes to his friend
Ludwig Strauss the “apocalyptic” mood among the Munich revolutionaries and
the “demonic character [Dämonie] of Eisner’s divided Jewish soul.” Landauer,
he notes, “kept faith in Eisner with an extreme effort of the soul, like a sentinel
inspired by a moving self-denial.” The whole situation, he concluded, was an
“unspeakable Jewish tragedy.”52
When the Räterepublik, or Council Republic was proclaimed in Munich on
7 April 1919, Landauer agreed to become commissioner for enlightenment and
public instruction. He had few illusions about the chances of the revolution
lasting for long. In a letter to Fritz Mauthner, written the same day, he comments
“if we are allowed a few weeks time, then I hope to be able to accomplish some-
thing; it is very possible, however, that it will last only a few days and it will then
seem as if it had been a dream.”53 The dream soon ended in a nightmare. After the
defeat of the revolution three weeks later, Landauer was brutally murdered by
counterrevolutionary troops on 2 May 1919. In an article written soon after Lan-
dauer’s death, Martin Buber payed a moving tribute to the memory of his friend:
“Landauer lived as a prophet of the human community to come, and fell as its
martyr.”54
In his will Landauer had named Buber the executor of his estate. His friend
carried out this duty with exemplary dedication, publishing Landauer’s corre-
spondence (1929) and two volumes of collected articles and essays, Der werdende
Mensch (1919) and Beginnen (1924). Above all, Buber remained faithful to the
romantic, libertarian, anti-authoritarian, federalist and communitarian social-
ism of Gustav Landauer. This debt is reflected in all of Buber’s social-philosophi-
52 Buber, Briefwechsel, I, 67.

53 Lebensgang II, 414. In fact, Landauer had ceased to serve as people’s commissioner after
April 14, when a Communist leadership (Eugen Leviné) replaced the socialist/anarchist coalition
at the head of the ephemeral Council Republic. His project for educational reform, based on a
“Revolutionary University Council” was to transform the universities into a libertarian coopera-
tive society of lecturers and students. Of course, he did not have time to implement it. See Lunn,
Prophet of Community, 330. For a dramatic eye-witness account of his murder, see ibid., 338.
54 M. Buber, “Landauer und die Revolution,” Masken, 19 (1919): 290-291. Buber compared him
to his ancestors, the Jewish prophets and martyrs of the past, and to Christ crucified by the Ro-
mans.
80 Michael Löwy
cal writings, from The Holy Way (Der heilige Weg) of 1919, which was dedicated to
Landuaer, through to his last essays. In a lecture held in 1939 on the occasion of
the twentieth anniversary of Landauer’s death, he referred to the state-centered,
bureaucratic degeneration of Stalinist Soviet Russia (“a Leviathan that presents
itself as messiah”) and insisted that history had confirmed Landauer’s ideas:
“Landauer had argued again and again, with perfect clarity and consistency, that
such an accumulation of power and violence could not become socialism.”55
But, it is primarily in Paths in Utopia (first published in Hebrew in 1947) –
his most important discussion of socialist theory – that Buber pays homage to
Landauer as a thinker. He shared Landauer’s romantic conception of the socialist
utopia as a revival, a regeneration, or renewal – outside of the state and its institu-
tions – of ancient communitarian traditions still present in the collective memory.
He of course agreed with his friend’s conception of socialism as “religion,” in the
etymological sense of the word, as a free common life of human beings linked by
a common spirit.56 The definition he proposes for Landauer’s social philosophy
also applies perfectly to his own. “Revolutionary conservatism,” he writes, “was
exactly what Landauer had in mind; a revolutionary choice of those elements of
social being which deserve to be preserved and are viable in the building of a new
structure.” Finally, he did share Landauer’s belief in the need to begin building
socialism here and now, by creating an “organic” social life, through a decentral-
ized network of local socialist villages or communities.57
There are, however, significant differences between Buber’s utopian social-
ism and Landauer’s anarchism. First of all, the author of Paths to Utopia was
critical, but not in a totally negative way, in his assessment of Marx’s socialism;
he also positively acknowledged the federalist and democratic content of Marx’s
writings on the Paris Commune of 1871. Secondly, Buber did not call for the com-
plete abolition of the state, but only of the “surplus-state” (Mehrstaat), or that
amount of state power that has been made unnecessary by the people’s increased
capacity for voluntary common life in justice and order.58
55 M. Buber, “Landauer heute,” 1939, unpublished paper, Martin Buber Archive, The National
Library of Israel, Jerusalem.
56 The root religare means to link, to bind.
57 Buber, Der utopische Sozialismus, 83, 88. See also his comments on the “most ancient tradi-
tions” (uralte Überlieferung) of communitarian life, ibid., 85. As is well known, Buber considered
the kibbutz to be an “exemplary non-failure” in the history of practical socialist experiments. On
the differences between Landauer’s anarchism and Bubers’s “communitarian religious socialism
tinged with anarchism,” see Avraham Yassour’s essay “Utopia and Anarchism in Buber’s and
Landauer’s Social Thought,” (Hebrew), in Buber, Hakibbutz ve hara’ayon hashitufi (Buber, the
Kibbutz and the Communitarian Idea), University of Haifa, 1979.
58 Buber, Der utopische Sozialismus, 83.
Gustav Landauer and Martin Buber were unarmed prophets, to use Machia-
velli’s well-known phrase. They were also romantic socialists and communitar-
ian utopians. Was their utopian socialist dream a reasonable one? The answer is
perhaps best expressed in the words of George Bernard Shaw: “The reasonable
man adapts himself to the world: The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt
the world to himself. All progress therefore depends on the unreasonable man.”
Martin Treml
Between Utopia and Redemption:
Gustav Landauer’s Influence
on Gershom Scholem
Gershom Scholem’s memoirs of his youth, From Berlin to Jerusalem, not only
describe the formative years of this great historian, but also offer a broad view of
fin-de-siècle Judaism in Germany.1 One might call it a panoramic view, even though
it is biased and presented in a deliberately unbalanced fashion. Throughout his
life Scholem was critical of what has been called “the German-Jewish symbiosis”
or “myth of the German-Jewish dialogue,” as he derisively referred to it.2 Of course
“myth” is not meant here in any formal, technical sense, but rather points to the
illusion, or kind of wishful thinking that failed, because “it takes two to have a
dialogue, who listen to each other, who are prepared to perceive the other as what
he is and represents, and to respond to him.”3 This precondition for ein wahrhaf-
tiges Gespräch, a true dialogue of the kind aspired to in all forms of Lebensphiloso-
phie, was completely lacking in the Germany of the time. Scholem’s utter contempt
for the complex phenomenon of Jewish assimilation to German culture led him to
undertake a description of the milieu from which he had emerged ira et studio.
Scholem, it must be noted, was definitely streitbar, a militant and polemi-
cal thinker. He often developed his own opinions by attacking those of others,
especially views that were fashionable or widely accepted. This was the scholarly
approach behind Scholem’s writing, for which David Biale would later coin the
term “counter-history.”4 As Biale explains it, counter-history emerges as a new
kind of Volksgedächtnis, a collective but repressed memory running under the
surface of the great epic of official historical commemoration. Scholem himself
viewed this interpretation with a certain skepticism and, in a private letter, made
an ironic comment about the title of Biale’s book, musing “who Gershom Scholem
is I hope I know more or less; what Kabbala is, I have tried to find out in my life-
time, and what counter-history is, I frankly do not know.”5
1 See G. Scholem, From Berlin to Jerusalem: Memories of My Youth (New York: Schocken, 1980).
2 G. Scholem, “Against the Myth of the German-Jewish Dialogue” (1964), in On Jews and Judaism
in Crisis, ed. W. J. Dannhauser (New York: Schocken, 1976), 61-64.
3 Ibid., 61f.
4 See D. Biale, Gershom Scholem: Kabbalah and Counter-History (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard
Univ. Press, 1979).
5 G. Scholem to Edward Ullendorf, 8 October 1980, G. Scholem, Briefe, vol. III, 1971-1982, ed. I.
Shedletzky (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1999), 215.
Between Utopia and Redemption: Gustav Landauer’s Influence on Gershom Scholem 83
Yet in his approach to the historiography of Jewish mysticism and in his

effort to contribute to the renaissance of Jewish spiritual life, Scholem certainly
ran counter to the common opinion of his time, and he persevered in his sin-
gular approach for decades. At the same time, however he felt deeply indebted
to ideas that had been expounded by thinkers a decade or so before his time.
One of the most interesting figures on the intellectual landscape of Scholem’s
youth, and one of several eccentrics – even outsiders – who dominated the intel-
lectual and reform-oriented circles of late Wilhelmian Germany, was Gustav Lan-
dauer. In tracing Landauer’s influence on Scholem’s thinking, one can begin with
Scholem’s own comments on the impact that Landauer’s lectures and writings
had on him. In From Berlin to Jerusalem he mentions Landauer twice, but only
the first remark is of interest here.6 The passage cited below reflects Scholem’s
personal attitude toward the man and his work, and can also be seen as his public
account of his relationship to Landauer:
Gustav Landauer’s Aufruf zum Sozialismus [A Call to Socialism] made a profound impres-
sion not only on me but on a considerable number of young Zionists as well. The same
may be said of the personality of Landauer, who frequently lectured in those days before
Zionist groups, and with whom I had several conversations toward the end of 1915 and
in the following year. By that time I had already attempted to understand the three sub-
stantial volumes of Fritz Mauthner’s Beiträge zu einer Kritik der Sprache [Toward a Critique
of Language] to which an older student had directed my attention. Landauer, who was a
great admirer and also a collaborator of Mauthner (though he made very negative remarks
about the latter’s attitude during the war), encouraged me to read his own observations and
conclusions from Mauthner’s theories which he had written down in his book Skepsis und
Mystik [Skepticism and Mysticism].7
The information provided in this passage must be analyzed step by step, and each
step supplemented with details provided by Scholem in his other writings. First
of all, Scholem recounts that he was profoundly impressed by Landauer’s social-
ism, and particularly by his essay A Call to Socialism. Yet Landauer’s call was to
a very different type of socialism, and it was expressed in a very different tone
than that associated with the “political” socialism of the time. Indeed the term
“political” is aptly used here by way of contrast, given that Landauer considered
his position to be “unpolitical.”
In fact, Scholem attended more or less clandestine meetings, held by a
minority within the Social Democratic Party, which was strictly opposed to the
6 The second reference to Landauer was made in a discussion about the Forte-Kreis, to which
Landauer belonged. See Scholem, Berlin to Jerusalem, 81. Regarding the group itself, see Christine
Holste, Der Forte-Kreis (1910-1915), (Stuttgart: M&P - Verlag für Wissenschaft und Forschung, 1992).
7 Scholem, Berlin to Jerusalem, 52f.
84 Martin Treml
war. He attended the meetings in the company of his brother Werner and in April
1915 he even “took an active part in … the distribution of the Marxist journal Die
Internationale, of which only one issue had appeared and which was immedi-
ately banned.”8 He notes, however, that “the Marxist doctrines that my brother
now urged on me amicably rather than forcibly still impressed me far less than
the writings of the anarchists, quite a few of which I read in the Berlin municipal
library … I went on to read Peter Kropotkin and Gustav Landauer, as well as Pierre
Joseph Proudhon and Elisée Reclus. Their socialism was more meaningful to me
than the supposedly scientific kind, which I never found convincing.”9
Though he had considered joining the Social Democrats from time to time,
Scholem ultimately rejected this option for several reasons. As he confessed in his
diary, joining would have been a step taken only out of protest or curiosity, not
out of conviction. On 18 December 1915 he wrote how he almost became a member
of the Social Democratic Party: “suddenly something came over me, I went to the
house where Werner had registered at the time, and had I found the clerk of the
fourth constituency that I was looking for, I would be a party member now. Only
afterwards did a skeptical reflection arise: in times of peace I would never ever
become a member of the party, and was doing so now out of curiosity for opposition
news. Is that right? What have I got to look for in the party? Very little.”10
It was certainly the party’s support for the war, which deeply shocked
Scholem. Given his Zionist convictions, he did not think it his business to fight for
the interests of imperial Germany, especially since the latter could by no means
be regarded as a power that protected Jewish interests, either in Palestine or in
Eastern Europe. One must not forget that Scholem was one of a growing number
of young German Jews who were fascinated by the religious aura, which seemed
to issue from Russian immigrants and refugees from Poland and Galicia. It was
felt that these Eastern European Jews did not need to be Western, on the contrary,
they could exert a great influence on the German Jews who had apparently lost all
ties to their Jewish identity. On the other hand, not all the political views voiced
by these Eastern European Jews were equally well received by their admirers in
the West.
Of the four Scholem brothers, it was Werner and Gerhard (later Gershom),
who protested against the authority and values incarnated in their father; he was
branded a petty-bourgeois by the one and a self-deceptive assimilationist by the
8 Ibid., 52.
9 Ibid.
10 See G. Scholem, Tagebücher, 1913-1917, ed. K. Gründer and F. Niewöhner (Frankfurt/Main:
Jüdischer Verlag), 207.
other. At the family table, Scholem the elder called them “incorrigible rogues.”11
To the rebellious sons, who left home in 1913 and 1917 respectively, after disas-
trous quarrels with their father, the latter came across as a dangerous dog, always
on guard and growling “rogues, rogues.” They considered him part of a society
in decay, which would soon pass, and saw themselves as part of what Gershom
called “the proletariat of longing (Sehnsucht).”12 In their ideological struggle the
two brothers stuck together for quite some time. Decades later, in the famous
interview with Muki Tsur, Scholem spoke of Werner: “This brother of mine, who
at first had thought that Zionism might be the way, one day wrote a letter to that
Zionist youth organization saying that he had found something broader than
the narrow little thing called Jewish nationalism; he had found: Humanity. He
became a left-wing radical socialist and took part in all splits of the Social Dem-
ocratic Party in Germany, finally landing with the Communists in 1921. Six years
later they expelled him as a Trotskyist, along with most of the Jews in the Com-
munist movement.”13
Werner’s decision to pursue “something broader than the narrow little thing
called Jewish nationalism” led him bit by bit into complete isolation. By contrast,
Gerhard’s Zionism proved to be an option that enabled him to spend his life among
others. Yet it seems that the younger brother would also have to find “something
broader” – a profile of his own in the larger context. An anarchist stance in oppo-
sition to Marxism would have been one such possible choice. In a letter of 7 Sep-
tember 1914, which is the second letter in Itta Shedletzky’s remarkable edition of
Scholem’s correspondence, the young Gerhard gives Werner another reason for
his disapproval of the Social Democrats, explaining it is “because you are ‘orga-
nized.’ I don’t like any organization. Organization is like a muddy lake into which
the beautiful torrential stream of the idea flows and [is] not let … out again. Orga-
nization is a synonym for death. This holds not only for the Social Democrats –
but also for the other ‘ists and ‘isms, only with the socialists it is appallingly so.”14
Presumably, Scholem is here indicating a different ideal, indeed a genuinely
anarchistic notion aiming at a bundisch kind of association or league. He could
have borrowed this ideal from Landauer, and it appears that this was in fact the
case. In his argument against organization of any kind at all, he refers to a muddy
lake into which the beautiful stream of ideas flows, never to be let out again. These
11 Werner Scholem to Gerhard Scholem, 22 September 1914, Scholem, Briefe, vol. I, 1914-1947,
ed. I. Shedletzky (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1994), 14.
12 Scholem, Tagebücher, 85.
13 G. Scholem, “With Gershom Scholem: An Interview,” in On Jews and Judaism, ed. Dannhauser,
1-48, 3. See Mirjam Zadoff, Der rote Hiob: Das Leben des Werner Scholem (Berlin: Hanser, 2014).
14 Scholem, Briefe I, 5.
86 Martin Treml
words contain a veiled reference to Landauer’s critical comment on Zionist party

politics. In an article entitled “Sind das Ketzergedanken?” (“Are these Heretical
Thoughts?”), that appeared in the collective volume Vom Judentum of the “Verein
jüdischer Hochschüler Bar Kochba in Prag,” he had written: “Characteristic of
what is called the party here is the kind of masturbating self-gratification of the
so-called movement in itself; the party is like a continental lake, into which the
idea has flowed, but from which it will not emerge again.”15
In Scholem’s diary the first allusion to the Bar Kochba volume can be found
in the entry for 23 January 1915. Since he appears to have picked up on Landauer’s
comment likening an organized party to a muddy lake, already half a year earlier,
one can assume that he already possessed, or at least knew of the volume at this
time. In the note to this diary entry, he mentions but a single essay, namely, Adolf
Böhm’s “Wandlungen des Zionismus.”16 Writing about this essay with a certain
sympathy, he declares “our Zionism is the teaching of the breaking down of walls,
the teaching of revolutionizing the East, it is the most sublime anarchist teach-
ing there is. With special emphasis we demand the Zionist deed rather than this
organisational talk, that is, we demand a move toward the East, possibly to Pales-
tine … . Even Landauer will not defeat us by words. And to think that he considers
himself to be a critic of language!”17
Sooner or later Scholem changed his mind about Landauer’s “Ketzergedan-
ken.” In a diary entry for 28 June 1916, Scholem writes that Landauer’s work is,
“through the clarity of conviction, extraordinary and important.”18 One should
add that the young Scholem was more radical than consistent, at least in some
of his ideas. In the letter to Werner from September 1914 he listed the pitfalls of
organization and continues: “I, Gerhard Scholem, do not stand on the ground
of anarchism even though I have the highest admiration for Gustav Landauer.
Because it does not know unity. Perhaps you have heard of a mystical Jewish sect,
the Hasids in Galicia, who teach (taught!) socialism sans phrase. They stood on
the ground of unity and of myth that is life … I believe in socialism and in the path
that it takes. I believe in the will to happiness, but I do not believe that you or we
will bring happiness. But with regard to happiness, Martin Buber, in his Three
15 G. Landauer, “Sind das Ketzergedanken”, in WA III, 170-174, 265f., 171.

16 Scholem, Tagebücher, 82. The volume Vom Judentum, 2nd ed. (Leipzig: K. Wolff, 1913), can be
found in the Scholem Library, The National Library of Israel, under sign. 16 364. There are an-
notations in quite a few essays, and there is a single undated page with comments in Scholem’s
handwriting, relating not to Landauer, but to Moritz Goldstein’s “Wir und Europa,” 195-209.
Scholem calls this latter essay “Höhe des Buberism,” literally “The Height of Buberism.”
18 Ibid., 327.
Addrresses on Judaism, told the parable: In front of the gates of Rome a leprous
beggar sits and waits, It is the Messiah … Who is he waiting for? ‘For you’...!”19
Here Scholem expresses a degree of admiration and esteem for Landauer,
which does not accord with his own feelings about anarchism. Scholem felt that
anarchism lacked unity or Einheit, to use another magic fin-de-siècle term. Ex
negativo Landauer is credited with possessing this quality. As far as Scholem is
concerned, there may be greater masters of unity – and of this capacity for myth
– than Landauer, namely, the Hasids of Galicia. Yet they taught their “socialism
sans phrase,” they no longer teach it. The hope is that Landauer will fill the void
in order to become their genuine successor. Were he to do so, happiness might
reign; and this, of course, would also be thanks to Buber’s interpretation of
“socialist” Hasidism, which, as it were, brought socialism into closer alignment
with messianic redemption.
One of the best sources for tracing Scholem’s reception of Landauer is
Scholem’s diary. One can assume, for example, that Scholem must have read Lan-
dauer’s Die Revolution before he started recording regular entries on 15 November
1914.20 In any case, Scholem followed the course and fate of Landauer’s public
pronouncements quite meticulously. On 8 May 1915 he refers to Landauer’s
recently published article on anarchism in Zeitecho, which had been “censored,
and how censored?!! It is dreadful.”21 The article, “Aus unstillbarem Verlan-
gen,” constituted yet another “call.” It was a call to not sacrifice oneself on the
battle-fields, “because human beings long for the connecting spirit, which has
become lost, for a substitute for the old religions, which have perished in [terms
of] their forms.”22 In place of the cult of the moloch, Landauer gave the following
advice: “practice the innate and eternally equal religion of love in small matters
and that of justice in great matters – then the special form of religion of humanity
will surely grow out of your life.”23
19 G. Scholem to Werner Scholem, September 1914, Briefe I, 6. He is alluding to one of Buber’s
famous Bar Kochba speeches in Prague.
20 Scholem mentions a visit from Brauer, who brought him Landauer’s Die Revolution: “Vor-
mittag Brauer. Hat mir die Revolution von Gustav Landauer sehr schön gebunden gebracht.”
See Tagebücher, 44, 50. Elsewhere Scholem notes “In 1915, I began to read the works of Gustav
Landauer, especially his Aufruf zum Sozialismus.” See G. Scholem, Walter Benjamin: The Story of
a Friendship (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1981), 6.
21 Scholem, Tagebücher, 104; see also G. Landauer, “Aus unstillbarem Verlangen,” in WA III,
12-15, 232.
22 WA III, 15.
23 Ibid.
88 Martin Treml
Scholem not only read Landauer’s works, he also attended some of his
lectures.24 Most of these were held at an institution called the Siedlungsheim,
which was located in Berlin’s Zoological Gardens and attended by members of
the “social reform-minded wing” of the youth movement.25 In fact, Landauer
had come in close contact with its protagonists, Ernst Joël and Hans Blüher. His
relationship with them was most certainly born of his isolation after 1914, when
at least two of the three men “who were humanly and spiritually” close to him,
namely Martin Buber and Fritz Mauthner, became patriots and war enthusiasts.26
His cooperation with the “few young people … who might come to some good”
ended half a year later, in the spring of 1916, because of differing views on the role
of women in the group.27 When the crisis between Landauer and the leaders of
the Siedlungsheim was still in its early stages, Scholem began attending the meet-
ings. In December 1915 he attended a lecture on romanticism, and noted down
his impressions: “Gustav Landauer is a very tall, handsome man with elevated
language and an artist’s tie. He spoke about Jean Paul, Hölderlin, and Kleist and
he said very nice things about the latter two. About love and the longing for unity
that transcends oppositions.”28 At the end of January 1916, Scholem referred to
Landauer’s lecture on democracy:
Greeted Herr Landauer who came very punctually at half past eight. [He did not come at
all, when the lecture was announced the first time.] So he spoke rather nicely for about
one and a half hours about the “problem of democracy.” In his speech, he was frightfully
dismissive with regard to the right to vote [for candidates] to the Reichstag. In the debate
that followed the speech all kinds of things were asked and talked about, also by myself.
Afterwards spoke with Landauer personally at length; he said that ‘he sympathizes with
Zionism very much’, then I drove home with some of the people.29
24 The following books by Landauer are stored in the Gershom Scholem Library in Jerusalem:
Rechenschaft, under sign. 7991; Revolution, (sign. 7997); Aufruf zum Sozialismus (sign. 7999),
Skepsis und Mystik, both the 1903 edition (sign. 8001), as well as the second edition of 1923, cor-
rected by Buber against Landauer´s own copy (sign. 8000); and Erkenntnis und Befreiung, ed. R.
Link-Salinger (Hyman), (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1976), with dedication (sign. 16096). There
are no annotations or glosses in any of these volumes.
25 Scholem, Berlin to Jerusalem, 76.
26 G. Landauer to Margarete Faas-Hardegger, 20 October 1908, Lebensgang I, 218.
27 G. Landuaer to Hedwig Lachmann, 5 August 1915, Lebensgang II, 65. For the beginning of the
break with the Siedlungsheim, see Landauer’s letter to Ernst Joël, at Christmas 1915, and for the
final stage, see the letter to Hans Blüher, 26 February 1916, in Lebensgang II, 112-114 and 129-132,
respectively.
29 Ibid., 250f.
Neither Scholem nor Landauer could be said to be brimming with enthusiasm

about the relations between them, even after they had become better acquainted.
But Scholem still attended the lectures, which were the first in a whole series on
socialism, and remarked that Landauer “speaks very well.”30
It was at the Siedlungsheim, however, that by chance, Scholem’s “acquain-
tance with Walter Benjamin took place,” and it was Landauer who unintention-
ally played an important role at the beginning of the friendship.31 Having read
Landauer’s A Call to Socialism Scholem talked to Benjamin about Landauer’s
attempt “to unite the two paths of socialism and Zionism.” It is worth noting
that Benjamin “was interested especially in [Landauer’s] monograph Die Rev-
olution,” of all of the many books in Scholem’s library.32 However, the folie à
trois soon cooled. Benjamin had become skeptical of a journal, “which, so we
thought, suffered from general feebleness and despite its antiwar stance lacked
a definite aim.”33 The monthly, called Der Aufbruch, an obvious choice of title
in those years, was edited by Ernst Joël, his enemy of old from their days in the
Free Student Movement (Freie Studentenschaft). Landauer contributed an article
entitled “Stelle dich, Sozialist!,” a shorter and less sophisticated version of his
Call to Socialism.34 Scholem states “Benjamin made a very good analysis of [the]
essay, which I defended to some extent.”35 Scholem recounts that when the three
friends met in the summer of 1916 near Munich – at Seeshaupt on Lake Starn-
berg – this time in the company of Benjamin’s wife Dora, Landauer joined the
conversation when “Benjamin said that Buber represented feminine thinking. In
contrast to Gustav Landauer, who had once said the same thing about Buber in an
essay by way of praise, Benjamin meant it here as a rebuke.”36
Even without delving deeply into what Landauer really had meant by calling
his friend “a resurrector (Erwecker) and advocate of specifically feminine think-
ing … without which there will be no renewal and refreshment for our played-
out and abased culture,” one notes how close the two of them had been brought
together by Benjamin.37 In those years, Buber was in fact the main target of both
30 Ibid., 284.
31 Scholem, Berlin to Jerusalem, 77.
32 Scholem, Walter Benjamin, 6f., 11.
33 Ibid., 13.
34 See G. Landauer, “Stelle dich, Sozialist!,” in Auch die Vergangenheit ist Zukunft, ed. S. Wolf
(Frankfurt/Main: Luchterhand, 1989), 224-230.
35 Scholem, Walter Benjamin, 13.
36 Ibid., 29.
37 G. Landauer, “Martin Buber,” in WA III, 162-170, 263-265, esp. 165. For Landauer´s answers to
Buber in the discussion concerning his statement, see his letters from 17 and 19 March 1913, in
Lebensgang I, 434-436.
90 Martin Treml
Scholem and Benjamin, whereas Landauer could be thought of as another Buber,

only better. Benjamin, as Scholem gladly reported, rejected “the cult of ‘experi-
ence’ (Erlebnis), which was glorified in Buber’s writings of the time (particularly
from 1910 to 1917). He said sarcastically that if Buber had his way, first of all one
would have to ask every Jew “Have you experienced Jewishness yet?’” or “‘Have
you had the Jewish experience yet?’” – a blasé, even silly question.38 Compared
with Buber’s position, Landauer’s stance was more neutral – at least with regard
to Zionist issues. One could disagree with some of his statements, but still be
enthusiastic about others. Scholem was thus a passionate advocate of Landau-
er’s epistemology in Skepticism and Mysticism, of his philosophy of history in Die
Revolution and A Call to Socialism, and he was also interested in Landauer’s occa-
sional reflections on Judaism.39 Certainly, Landauer’s work in these areas was
unsystematic, but there was a connecting – albeit sometimes torn and re-knotted
– thread running through them all. The very same holds for Scholem’s own recep-
tion of Landauer. Despite his long-standing interest in Landauer, all reference to
the latter could vanish from Scholem’s writing for a time, only to reappear later in
some other context. This special relationship can be likened to the tie that exists
between close friends, who may lose contact now and then, but feel great plea-
sure when they meet again. For Scholem this relationship was never as ambiva-
lent as that which he had with Buber, nor was it marked by a change of heart as
was the case with regard to Hermann Cohen.
Scholem’s lifelong affinity to Landauer is evident in Scholem’s writing even
in places one would least expect. When he discovered the notion of an integral
Judaism, comprising the sum total of all its forms throughout history, Scholem
fiercely attacked Siegfried Lehmann, a disciple of Buber and the head of the Volk-
sheim in Berlin Mitte: “Judaism is not Buber, Judaism is not the Rambam, not mys-
ticism and not Rashi, but [rather] Rabbi Akiba + Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai, Isaac
Luria + Joseph Karo and perhaps Hillel Zeitlin + David Hoffman: they together
constitute Judaism. This is the meaning of the totality of Judaism: the sum of the
currents of the Torah.”40 Six years earlier Landauer had expressed similar senti-
ments in a letter to the young writer, Rafael Seligmann: “If you take Moses, Jesus,
and Spinoza away from Judaism then there is no Jewish people. The Kabbalah is
as genuine as Spinoza.”41 Yet Landauer’s concept of revolution is marked not by
38 Scholem, Walter Benjamin, 29.

39 See the fourth part of WA III in toto; besides the “Ketzergedanken” article, see esp. “Die Le-
gende des Baalschem,” 158-160, 261f. and “Kiew,” 177-184, 269-271 (formerly titled “Zum Beilis-
Prozeβ”).
40 G. Scholem to Siegfried Lehmann, 9 October 1916, Briefe I, 48f.
41 G. Landauer to Rafael Seligmann, 17 September 1910, Lebensgang I, 324.
progress, but by a kind of simultaneity. In his view, the past will come into its own
in the future, and this means “that the past is not something finished, but rather
in the process of becoming. For us there is only the path, only future; also the
past is future, which as we proceed, becomes, changes, has become something
different.”42
Revolution is thus the master of time, and through it “the world of the possi-
ble, like a beacon that flares throughout and beyond the times, is brought to ful-
fillment.”43 Here we see an idea that comes near to the meaning of the messiah in
Judaism, namely, a figure of future fulfillment and redemption; it was Scholem,
who analyzed the forces that steered the course of the messianic idea in Judaism.
In so doing, he made a distinction between the conservative, the restorative and
the utopian tendencies, none of which could exist as a “pure instance “or “crys-
tallization.”44 He explained that “even the restorative force has a utopian factor,
and in utopianism restorative factors are at work … . The completely new order
has elements of the completely old, but even this old order does not consist of the
actual past; rather, it is a past transformed and transfigured in a dream bright-
ened by the rays of utopianism.”45
This bright dream betrays an “anarchic element” or, as Scholem explains,
“the dissolution of old ties which lose their meaning in the new context of mes-
sianic freedom.”46 Redemption is thus a “blazing landscape,” as Scholem notes
in the famous last paragraph of his essay on the messianic idea: “Little wonder
that overtones of messianism have accompanied the modern Jewish readiness
for irrevocable action in the concrete real, when it set out on the utopian return
to Zion. It is a readiness, which no longer allows itself to be fed on hopes. Born
out of the horror and destruction that was Jewish history in our generation, it is
bound to history itself and not to meta-history.”47 This attempt to grasp some-
thing concrete by the unredeemed may herald the end of messianism rather than
its secularization. One could argue that messianism has lost its apocalyptic force,
once it has been successfully deployed in history. Or, as Landauer wrote in the
“Ketzergedanken” article, “no one who feels within himself a task, which spares
him the question of what he is living for, is able to live in suspenso.”48
42 Revolution, 26.
43 Ibid., 80f.
44 G. Scholem, “Toward an Understanding of the Messianic Idea in Judaism” (1959), in The Mes-
sianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality (New York: Schocken, 1971), 1-36, 3.
45 Ibid., 4.
46 Ibid., 19.
47 Ibid., 35f.
48 WA III, 172.
Anthony David
Gustav Landauer’s Tragic Theater
The Drama of Revolution
In the late summer of 1918, throughout Central and Eastern Europe seismic shock
waves set off by the defeat of armies sent cracks deep into the foundations of ancient
kingdoms. Generals ran for cover, revolutionaries began plotting their course, and
utopians dreamt of a New Order. During these months, the Jewish anarchist Gustav
Landauer sat quietly in the village of Krumbach in southwest Germany, putting the
finishing touches on the second volume of a book he called Letters from the French
Revolution. Compiled by this bearded bohemian who had spent a considerable
time behind bars for his radical political convictions, the volumes were expected
by friends and opponents alike, to sing the praises of the great executioners and
dreamers of the past – Danton, Robespierre, Saint-Just, and others.
There is, however, nothing radical about Landauer’s montage of letters, which
draws equally from revolutionaries and their sympathizers along with counter-rev-
olutionaries and theirs.1 Royalists are not portrayed as tyrannical fools, just as the
revolutionaries are not presented as noble, angry prophets of a new age. The impres-
sion given by the book is rather one of universal helplessness. None of the revolution-
aries saw what lay ahead. Armed with ideals incapable of taming the terrible forces
released by their own actions, all stumbled in the dark and were swept forward by
events far beyond their control. The actors in this vast drama, said Landauer, “mis-
understood the larger relationships within which they moved, the whole, true, and
essential picture (das Ganze, das Wahre, das Wesentliche).”2 The letters betray a story
more like a Greek tragedy than the teleological terminus of Progressive Mankind.
Landauer’s tragedy did have a hero, though. The collection begins with a
large number of letters – over 130 pages of them – from the pen of Gabriel Riqueti,
Duke of Mirabeau. The book opens with a letter written from prison in 1777. “Oh
Sophie!” exclaimed Mirabeau to his mistress. “What kind of magical love is this
that binds us to life. I am no longer in those years in which I delight in plans to
storm the heavens or in vacuous hopes to create for myself an illusory good and
evil. [...] I have but one address for all of my likes, ambitions, and desires. I only
know of one form of happiness; and you alone can give it to me.”3
1 Gustav Landauer, Briefe aus der französichen Revolution 2 vols. (Frankfurt, Rütten & Loening,
1919), vol. 1, xxi.
2 Ibid., xi, xii.
3 Ibid., 5.
Gustav Landauer’s Tragic Theater 93
The second letter in the collection was sent by Mirabeau to the police official
who had secretly passed on his love letters to his beloved Sophie. “Freedom,” he
writes, “prayed to like an idol by so many strong spirits; freedom, which in the
state of nature is wild and within civilization makes one proud; freedom, this irre-
vocable gift from heaven, this seed of every happiness and virtue – this freedom
rules in my spirit and heart, and always will.”4
Landauer’s hero the duke never seemed to be on the right side of authority.
Mirabeau was a skilled seducer and libertine who made off with the fiancée of a
colonel in the French army and also wrote a pornographic novel entitled Erotica
Biblion. His father had him imprisoned for debauchery. Mirabeau escaped from
a dungeon, was sentenced to death in absentia, and finally made his way to
Holland and England, where he matured into a political thinker of extraordinary
brilliance.
And it was on this role that Landauer focused in the subsequent letters. Mira-
beau’s correspondence after 1789 shows him in opposition both to the tyrannical
outrages and absurdities of the ancien régime and to the revolutionary theorizers
who opposed them. The duke’s political model was England rather than dream-
ers with fine-sounding speeches and grand, hollow decrees. Landauer described
him as “enthusiastic and skeptical, revolutionary and political,” equally equipped
with “a soft aridity and a turgid caution.”5 Mirabeau tried to save the monarchy
through permanent constitutional changes and popular, mass support within
a new, decentralized France. “If the government had even a trace of deftness,”
he declares in one letter, “the king would proclaim himself a man of the people
instead of letting on that he is the precise opposite.”6 Mirabeau failed. He died in
the midst of the revolution, his realism and wisdom largely ignored. Nothing the
strange duke wrote or did could prevent the rise of the two political figures who,
through violence, negated everything he had lived for: Robespierre and Napoleon.
The question arises, then, why did Landauer give so much space in his collec-
tion to a failed politician, and this in the summer of 1918? It seems that Landauer
deemed dramatic quality and insight into human nature to be more important
than success. In his dramatic view of history, Landauer imposed his own theat-
rical requirements on people, events, and ideas of the past. “I am not going to
hide my intention in presenting this book to the public,” he states in the preface.
“The intimate knowledge of the spirit and the tragedy of the revolution should
be a help to us in the trying days that lie before us.”7 His book therefore set out
4 Ibid., 7.
5 Ibid., xiii.
6 Ibid., 95.
7 Ibid., xxxii.
94 Anthony David
to create the “effect of a drama” and to turn the wretched duke into a lead char-
acter in a pedagogical play composed for contemporary Germans.8 Against the
blindness, false idealism, misplaced hopes, and folly of the Revolution, his hero
joins a nobility of mind and love of freedom with a steeled political realism void
of illusions. And it was just this combination that Landauer felt Germans needed
to master.
The Revolution
Like his French hero, Landauer combined the offices of lover (he too dabbled in
erotic literature) with that of dreamer, hard-nosed realist, and political thinker
of the keenest insights. The two agreed that only a federation of smaller states
within a larger one could guarantee, quoting the duke, the “conquest of freedom
and of human rationality.”9 Finally, Landauer also found himself swept up into a
doomed revolution.
While Landauer sat over his manuscript in Krumbach, most Germans contin-
ued to assume that the world war would, at the very least, end in an honorable
stalemate. High-minded intellectuals, both left and right, began to make prepa-
rations for the New Order that would follow peace. The conservative publisher
Eugen Diederichs invited many of the leaders of state and society up to the myth-
shrouded Castle of Lauenstein where they were to seek out “new fixed abodes
for the new German spirit,” to make new “moral conquests,” and to “hammer
out a new lifestyle.”10 Landauer likewise placed high hopes in a cultural trans-
formation. During the summer of 1918 he accepted a job as dramatic adviser for
the Düsseldorf Volkstheater, the People’s Theater, where he aimed to introduce
the masses to the riches of the stage. One of the first suggestions he made to the
director of the theater, Louise Dumont-Lindemann, was to combine a stage per-
formance with his lecture on the Hindu poet and mystic, Rabindranath Tagore.
The events in late 1918 took Landauer, like everyone else, by surprise. The
German army’s precipitous collapse set off a swirl and tumble of events, rocking
the German Reich to the core. The first major blow occurred in Bavaria, where
a former editor of the Frankfurter Zeitung, the soft-spoken Jewish socialist Kurt
Eisner, declared himself the revolutionary head of the former Kingdom of Bavaria.
After Eisner got the militia on his side, King Ludwig III fled in a borrowed car. He
8 Ibid., xv.
9 Ibid., 116.
10 Gary Stark, Entrepreneurs of Ideology: Neo-Conservative Publishers in Germany, 1890–1933.
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981), 136.
did not know how to drive and crashed into a potato field outside the city. Eisner,
with his black floppy hat, shabby suit, and wild locks of hair, became the head
of state.
The new ruler of the kingdom gathered around him a host of like-minded
literati, for the most part fellow Jews. The poet and playwright Eric Mühsam,
a self-declared bohemian, whose philosophy of life was “to experiment with
chance, to play catch-ball with the accidents of the moment,” rushed to join.11
The Jewish poet Ernst Toller also headed south. Toller had spent much of the war
in an insane asylum due to his demand for “peace without annexation.”12 He was
also famous enough for his expressionist poetry and cabarets to merit Diederich’s
invitation up to Castle Lauenstein, though Toller’s ideas about the “fixed abodes
for the new German spirit” differed markedly from his conservative host’s. He
teamed up with Eisner in order to create a “new art form in drama, painting and
architecture in order to set mankind free.” The oddest member of the new gov-
ernment was Dr. Franz Lipp, Eisner’s foreign minister. As soon as he took office
he sent garbled telegrams to Lenin and to his “Comrade Pope” in Rome, alterna-
tively citing from Immanuel Kant’s Eternal Peace while bitterly complaining that
someone from the old guard had pilfered the keys to the men’s lavatory in the
foreign ministry.13
Landauer was an obvious candidate for the new government. His books Die
Revolution (1907) and Aufruf zum Sozialismus (1911) gave him an important stand-
ing among pacifists and anarchists. The events in Bavaria also captured Landau-
er’s imagination. In a letter to Louise Dumont-Lindemann he expressed his hope
that the new government would open up a “people’s theater” of its own. He was
certain that the Bavarian masses would “embrace” it with a “religious spirit.”14
On 14 November, ten days after posting this letter, Eisner invited Landauer to
join him in Munich, where he could use his “speaking talents” on behalf of the
“reconfiguration, the Umbildung, of the soul.”15 Landauer accepted the offer on
the spot. “Munich, where I am heading for today, is the absolute best place for
me,” he wrote to the philosopher Margarete Susman.16 He explained to another
friend, Fritz Mauthner, that “the German Volk has been defeated. Its kingdom
has collapsed and suddenly, for peoples everywhere wrestling with justice and
rationality in public institutions, a man stands out who has until now lived a
11 Gordon Craig, Germany, 1866–1945. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 411.

12 Ibid.
13 Ibid.
15 Ibid., 296.
16 Ibid.
96 Anthony David
wretchedly pure, honest life as a hungry writer: Kurt Eisner ... a man of the spirit,
a brave Jew.”17
Landauer had another reason for exchanging theatrical work in Dusseldorf
for Eisner’s revolution. “Happily, Germany is not France and 1918 is not 1789,” he
exclaimed. In other words, there was no monolithic power left to “determine the
fate of the people” because of the collapse of the central government in Berlin
and the traditional hostility between Bavaria and Prussia.18 He went to Munich,
as he asserted, to “hammer away at the last remnants of Bismarck’s creation”19
and hence to labor for his vision of a decentralized Germany.
On 15 November, Landauer took a train to Munich, but a bad flu forced him
to return to Krumbach where he sat out the first dramatic days of the revolution.
It was from afar that he conceived of grand schemes to reform society. He never
spoke of guillotining kings, executing capitalists, or even nationalizing industry.
When his son suggested allowing students to vote for professors, he replied that
this was as impossible as “a calf electing its own butcher.”20
He focused almost exclusively on establishing a new culture through theater
and a truly free press. Among other things, he revealed to Martin Buber his deter-
mination to give the communes and worker’s council a “monopoly over adver-
tising.” This would do away with the capitalistic press that allowed “the private
interests of a few to dominate the press, to suppress the freedom of public opinion
and, at the same time, to poison the public.”21 He also thought of ways of intro-
ducing theater to the masses. There must now be “power and movement” in the
revolutionary theater. Like the “blast of trumpets,” the theater and symphony
were to be the avant-garde in a “censorship-free era.” His revolutionary program
included George Kaiser directing the Burgher from Calais along with his own play
called Gas. Shakespeare’s Hamlet belonged to the revolutionary repertoire, as did
Aeschylus’ Persians and Beethoven’s Ninth.22
Meanwhile, Eisner’s unlikely cast of bohemians and anarchists went to work
laying the foundation of a new order. How they were to do so remained less clear,
since they all loathed centralization, bureaucracy, and the instruments of state
domination, whether controlled by Prussian aristocrats, Leninists, the Church, or
the working class. Eisner began by improving and expanding social legislation:
he installed an eight-hour day and free Saturday afternoons. To “fill in the leisure
17 Ibid., 322.
18 Ibid., 318.
19 Ibid., 323.
20 Ibid., 317.
21 Ibid., 298.
22 Ibid., 319.
hours” freed up by the shorter workweek, the government founded an adult edu-
cation program. It also did away with required religious education, removed all
militaristic books from school libraries, and made hiring at schools and universi-
ties independent of worldview and gender. Eisner’s most controversial move was
to publish the war papers found in the state archive exposing German war guilt.
“Only through the full truth can a relationship of trust be established between the
peoples,” he explained.23 Germans had to know the truth and have the courage
to tell it to others.
This did little to build support for the new government among the middle
class, so by the time Landauer finally settled in Munich the atmosphere had
already heated up. On one occasion a breathless man approached with an urgent
plea to follow him: “A gathering of the bourgeoisie, the mayor, and others are
giving old-style military, patriotic speeches in the National Theater.” Landauer
went directly to the theater where he found himself in the company of hide-bound
conservatives. In a letter to a friend he later recounted how he “spoke in the name
of the worker’s council” amidst the “harmless cheer of a ... military club.” He gave
a rousing speech and the applause was tremendous.24
With one success behind him he reported to his daughter of a second. The
new government orchestrated a mass rally to celebrate the revolution, where the
revolutionaries showed their true colors. Landauer told his daughter that the
program began with Eisner’s “extraordinary speech.”
He stood there like an earthly, firmly rooted figure from Barlach. [...] Excitement and surging
ferment rang through the hall. Lovely blasts of the trumpet from the Leonore Overtures fol-
lowed, heralding freedom out of the darkness of despair. Then came the aria from Han-
del’s Messiah of a people wandering in darkness, now seeing a great light. [...] The crowd
responded with unending calls of bravo and “carry on.” The most wonderful thing of all
happened at the end, when the entire house sang the song of the peoples (Gesang der
Völker),” sung to the melody of Das altniederländische Dankgebet. Gradually everyone rose
and the house shook, as if it wanted to open itself up to the heavens.25
The festive atmosphere did not last for long. Problems with deliveries of food,
coal, and other raw materials made the economic situation in the city desperate.
Unemployment rose, capital flight set in, and the call for elections became ever
stronger. Their middle-class enemies tried to characterize the leaders of the revo-
lution as bloodthirsty – and Jewish – usurpers.
23 Ibid., 325.
24 Ibid., 331.
25 Ibid., 312.
98 Anthony David
Eisner agreed to hold elections; when the results came in he and his govern-
ment had failed to get the support of the majority. His small faction of breakaway
Social Democrats lost to the larger, better organized and financed Social Demo-
cratic national party. Defeat left Eisner no choice but to tender his resignation.
En route, however, a chauvinistic aristocrat named Anton Arco-Valley assassi-
nated him. Leftists used the opportunity to declare martial law and proclaim their
socialist republic. A little over a month later, on 7 April 1919, Bavaria got its own
Council Republic, with Landauer as the “people’s commissar for popular enlight-
enment.” Since 7 April also happened to be his birthday, the new “people’s com-
missar” chose to celebrate the event in the (later infamous) Hofbräuhaus. It was
there that Landauer gave his first official speech. “The Bavarian Council Repub-
lic has given me the pleasure to make my own birthday a national holiday,” he
quipped in a letter to Mauthner. “If they give me a couple weeks I can do some-
thing.” He added grimly, however, that most likely “I will only have a couple days
and then everything will become just a dream.”26
The Council Republic lasted just under a week. Its end came when the gov-
ernment suggested allowing communists to test out their theories in an area of
rural Bavaria. This led to a middle-class revolt. The putsch came from right-wing
socialists, supported by the Munich militia which then occupied the palace. The
members of the government were arrested. Landauer escaped and went into
hiding for two days. The communists in the city, led by two Jewish intellectuals,
Eugen Leviné and Max Levien, staged a counter-attack and defeated the militia.
Because they controlled what they now called the Red Army, the extreme left
took control of the city government. The defeated rebels withdrew to the Munich
suburb of Dachau, pursued by the Red Army under the command of the poet and
pacifist, Ernst Toller. He waged the battle of Dachau with volunteers, many of
them women and children, who defeated the counter-revolutionaries. Meanwhile,
the forces against the Council Republic established a provisional government in
Nuremberg. They pleaded with the central government in Berlin to send in troops
to help, and once they arrived the march on Munich began. They first encircled
the city, then – in a classic example of the “Ruse of History” – invaded on the first
of May. The city fell and a massacre ensued. The young lieutenant Adolf Hitler,
who served in the city at the time, worked for the army as a stool-pigeon and sent
in reports denouncing those who had given support to the hated “gang of vagrant
Jews.” The French attaché in the city noted that “it would require a volume to
narrate all the atrocities committed by the Whites ... Organized barbarism was
given free rein ... a savage debauchery, an indescribable orgy.”27
26 Ibid., 413, 414.

27 John Toland, Adolf Hitler (New York, 1976), 83.
Landauer had a chance to escape the city but refused to. The White Guard
easily found him and lined him up for execution. But before soldiers could shoot,
someone pleaded with them to spare him. “He did not belong to the commu-
nists,” they told the soldiers. This only delayed the execution by a day. The next
morning an officer announced his decision that “Landauer will be immediately
shot.” Another officer, an aristocrat, hit Landauer with the wooden end of his
riding crop. The soldiers then leapt on him, kicking, hitting, and finally riddling
his body with bullets. Landauer’s last words were, “kill me, then. To think that
you are human!” The only soldier ever punished for the murder was the private
who stole Landauer’s watch.28
History as Tragedy
It would be easy to conclude from the debacle that the author of Letters of the
French Revolution proved less astute in the real world than at his writing desk.
The story of the Council Republic can illustrate how badly leftists such as Eisner,
Toller, Mühsam, and Landauer overreached themselves by misjudging the
utopian potential of a crippled and humiliated industrialized powerhouse omi-
nously filled with unemployed ex-officers and idle front-line soldiers. They were
Jewish literati with no experience in mass politics or street fighting. They never
had a chance. In many ways, the revolution seemed more befitting a slapstick
Chaplin film than a serious episode of history. It was the precise reverse of Marx’s
astute observation: in this case the farce became tragic because it led to hundred
of deaths, including Landauer’s.
One could also agree with Karl Mannheim who dubbed Landauer a “chili-
astic” dreamer longing for a pure community of fellow believers.29 Like all mes-
sianic figures, his mystical dream world and noble sentiments inevitably came
into conflict with the hard-knuckled political reality and the mighty tidal wave of
blind violent passion. One could go even further by agreeing with Franz Kafka,
who believed that Landauer spread the very poison that killed him. Kafka blamed
him and his co-revolutionaries for turning Germans against Jews by “pushing
Germany into things which it might have accepted slowly and in its own fashion,
but which it was bound to reject because they came from outsiders.” Franz Kafka,
who overheard German tourists speaking about the revolution in a restaurant,
28 Gordon Craig, Germany, 421.

29 Philippe Despoix, “Von der Buehne zur Geschichte: Gustav Landauer,” in: Internationales
Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur, 15/2 (1990), 167.
100 Anthony David
wrote that Germans now “drown” the Jews “during the soup and quarter them
while carving the roast.”30
But Landauer’s own personal correspondence, which Martin Buber pub-
lished in two volumes in 1928, tells a different story. The letters he wrote through-
out 1918 and 1919 do not portray a Martyr to the Revolution or a helpless, bearded
giant crushed by the inscrutable forces of fate. Indeed, this man who looked to
Buddha and Jesus for “true politics” was in reality a cold pragmatist without a
hint of a messianic faith in catastrophe and redemption.31
Landauer had no residual hopes in what he called “radical cures with a
magical appeal.”32 For example, there was scarcely anyone he attacked more
bitterly than Ernst Bloch, whom he depicted as a “charlatan” whose “system of
theoretical messianism” was little more than a “slap to the face.”33 He called Karl
Liebknecht a terrorist and dismissed the Bolsheviks as “tragic fools” longing
for a “Caesar-like proletarian dictatorship.”34 He likewise likened the Spartacist
revolutionaries to “pure centralizers” who, “like Robespierre and his ilk,” were
only out for power.35 He predicted to Margarete Susman that the military regime
they were busy preparing would be “more horrible than anything the world’s ever
seen.” “Dictatorship of the armed proletariat! I’d rather have Napoleon!”36
Nor did he ever give the Republic much of a chance. In one letter he admitted
that it would be “short lived,” and in another he said it would be a “miracle” if it sur-
vived. Throughout late 1918 until his death, he forecast doom and “chaos.”37 And the
masses, seen by some as agents of history, were in his mind not much better than the
old ruling class. He spoke of their “ignorance,” “base egotism,” and “folly.” “Idiocy
is becoming more idiotic, and the resulting baseness only worsens, just as the rulers
become ever more helpless. The simple question is whether one can survive and yet
still push ahead in one’s own work.” No wonder that he confessed to Mauthner that
his first task was to “save ourselves from utter annihilation.”38
Why then did he go to Munich in the first place if he knew the hopelessness of
the situation? And why did he stubbornly remain in the city after Eisner’s assassi-
nation? His calm walk into a death trap suggests something of a suicide mission.
30 Quoted in Frederic Grunfeld, Prophets without Honor (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston,
1980), 123.
32 Ibid., 336.
33 Ibid., 371.
34 Ibid., 314.
35 Ibid., 314, 315.
36 Ibid., 336.
37 Ibid.
38 Ibid., 305.
His letters, however, betray none of the melancholy or desperation associ-

ated with suicide. He predicted “long, difficult, confusing and wild” events, but
called himself the “only man alive who remains at peace and content.” In one
letter he said that he was “in the best of moods” despite the “ghastly confusion
and the rawest need.”39 He went on to say this, that “the ability to remain in the
midst of it all, as if led by a different star, only comes to someone who has seen
it all happen long before.”40 He told Louise Dumont-Lindemann in the same vein
that he accepted “all of the stupidity and depravity” with a smile because “we are
at work for coming generations.”41
The fact of the matter is that Landauer “choreographed” his death according
to a very precise theory of history, art, and society. He knew full well that he and
the revolution would most likely not survive and did all in his power to ensure
that the tragedy would at least contain a universal moral. One of the keenest
publicists and humanists of his day, he sought to pack a political farce with the
cathartic effect of a literary tragedy that could, at some point in the future, con-
tribute to a new social order.
In both the letters he collected on the French Revolution and those he wrote
himself, Landauer stressed that reason and truth do not triumph by virtue of the
cogitation of thinkers; that a new society or a New Man cannot ensue from the
grand schemes of a revolutionary elite; and that real social transformations can
only occur once the deeper sensibilities of the masses change – that is, once they
adopt a new “style” and “piety,” “the right and gripping tone.”42 As if quoting
from a nineteenth-century Bildungsroman, he asserted that the masses must turn
their lives “into a task” they “set” for themselves.”43
He had a theory to back this up. In a nutshell, he held that categorical imper-
atives, police regulations, and bourgeois taboos thundering down upon the
masses’ conscious life could not transform their inner life. How, he asked, was
it possible to combat prejudice and “spiritual servitude” which, unlike “ideas”
that can easily be changed like a pair of trousers, were so deeply rooted in mental
and spiritual habits?44 Like aesthetics, morality for Landauer had its source in
the intuitions and instincts; it was associative and intuitive and as such could be
changed only through example. Society needed, as it were, a modern myth free
of dogma, blind belief, and superstition. To phrase it somewhat differently, he
39 Ibid., 318.
40 Ibid., 357.
41 Ibid., 352.
42 Ibid., 336.
43 Ibid., 264.
44 Despoix, “Von der Bühne zur Geschichte,” 148.
102 Anthony David
sought a “deep therapy” that could work upon the basic desires, feelings, and
language of a society.
Landauer expected such a mass therapy from the hands of the artists who,
he said, could see the past and present from the perspective of a larger universal
hope and task. In his mind, the powers and energies that come to us from the past
must pass through the artist’s own will and fantasy to create a new image of an
event. By presenting his work to the public the artist helps determine the way it
sees the past and how it imagines the present and the future.
Landauer, in his decision to journey to Munich, was inspired by a very spe-
cific understanding of theater, which he called “the bridge between a picture of
humanity, as envisioned through art, and the swarming masses of men.”45 To
his mind, tragic theater was particularly well suited to luring twisted, debilitat-
ing mental habits and prejudices out into the open, and then producing among
Germans a moral catharsis. Poets, playwrights, and stage directors respond to a
particular catastrophe by turning it into a work of literature. This in turn trans-
forms meaningless acts of violence into universal lessons, which then filter down
into the masses through the stage.
The artist may need to give a broken nation hope by creating for it a humane
past full of power and beauty; conversely, a haughty, bellicose nation may require
a graphic display of its crimes and misdeeds. In both cases, the writer aims to
turn a collection of individuals, broken up into warring classes, regions, religions
into a unity based upon decency, tolerance, even love. In the German case, Lan-
dauer hoped that the artist could make “a war that began so senselessly” “burst
out with meaning.” “Debasement” must become the point of departure for “deep
ethical introspection (Einkehr), renewal and creativity.”46
To Be or Not to Be
Guided by such theoretical reflections, Landauer used the little time he had in
Munich to stage mass therapy. The cultural commissar looked to a number of theat-
rical works he considered best able to produce their cathartic effect upon a “land of
collapse and renewal, enemy occupation and liberation.” The play that topped his
list was Aeschylus’ The Persians. “It would be a great piece for your house,” he told
Louise Dumont-Lindemann after the latter had agreed to become the stage director,

46 Ibid., 168.
and a marvelous “drama for our time.” The Persians, a play about “victors and the
defeat of enemies,” was a perfect piece for postwar Germany.47
The play begins after the death of Darius, the Persian king, who leaves his
vast empire in the hands of his son, Xerxes. Darius was a scrupulous leader faith-
ful to the divine laws. The young king, less prudent and more cocksure, tries to
expand the kingdom through aggressive invasions of Greece. Aeschylus sets his
play in Susa, the center of the Persian Empire. It opens with a chorus of nobles.
The nation’s best has already gone off to war and those left behind await word.
“Come,” says the leader of the choir, “let us deliberate. How is Xerxes faring?”
Intimations of disaster begin with a vision of defeat that visits the queen in
her sleep. This is confirmed after a messenger arrives with the terrible news of
battle: the nobility of the nation has been destroyed; the navy is in ruins; the army
annihilated. After the messenger finishes, the ghost of Darius appears to predict
even greater misfortune. The ghost, moreover, understands the inner meaning of
the catastrophe. His son’s pride has brought ruin upon the Persian people. The
choir of elders follows by singing praise to the dead king who raised Persia to
greatness but wisely refrained from hubris. At the end of the hymn Xerxes himself
appears in rags, robes torn, disheveled, defeated. The play ends with an oriental
dirge. “Alas for our fallen nation,” cry out the elders.
For Landauer the play’s cathartic power centered upon the vanquished Per-
sians. Aeschylus did not write his play from the perspective of the Athenians,
gloating over their glorious victory. His theme had less to do with Greek victory
than with the reasons for the Persian defeat. He did so by showing how boundless
aggression had exacted the terrible price of total calamity. Equally important was
his portrayal of the Persians’ nobility. Both Darius, the queen, and even the elders
were depicted as wise. This gave the nation a large reserve of honor and dignity
with which it could rebuild itself.
Landauer found additional cathartic power in Shakespeare, whose histori-
cal plays formed the theme of the most important book he wrote during the war.
Like the Letters on the French Revolution, his Shakespeare explores what he called
the “philosophical, political, and social problems of our time,” rather than mere
technical, literary or historical questions.48
Landauer’s essay on Hamlet, completed shortly before the revolution broke
out, bore the marks of these stormy events. “There’s a divinity that shapes our
end,” was for him the motto of the play. The prince, a man of good intentions,
has a tragic fate far beyond his control. Landauer looked for the workings of this
fate deep inside his hero’s inner life. The “divinity” shaping the prince’s fate, he
47 Ibid., 287.
48 Shakespeare I, 182.
104 Anthony David
wrote, “is more in coalition with our spontaneous unconscious than with our
conscious deeds.”49
With this move Landauer set his interpretation squarely against that of Schle-
gel, who considered the prince a hapless playboy who “shifted between various
options.”50 But Hamlet does more than dabble and doubt, Landauer insisted; like
most coffee house literati, Hamlet is full of noble intentions. After his studies
at a German university, he returns to Denmark with a fierce faith in reason and
good will. He is a “decent and smart fellow with a natural knack for friendship
and love.” He in fact combines the roles of “hero, intellectual, and artist” and as
such already lives in a “new world, the world of the spirit and not of politics and
violence.”51 Philosophy, not the state, commands his interest. Lack of knowledge
is not his problem; it is his lack of a unified will to do what he knows he must.
The tragedy therefore revolves around Hamlet’s will. This “hero, intellectual,
and artist” falls into a crisis of will once his ideals face the reality of “the rotten
state of Denmark,” wholly absorbed in “military preparations” against the Nor-
wegians. The prince’s revulsion for militarism is soon joined by the dark message
from his father’s ghost. The news of the true source of his father’s death robs him
of his “happiness and peace of mind.” More than ever, Hamlet finds himself in a
world of “debasement” and “hideous disappointments” and “events fill him with
revulsion.” The man of reason and humanity simply “does not fit into this world
of murder, violence, greed, and venality. The human genuineness, the thinking
full of love and feeling yet guided by reason, ends up tormented, repelled, and
lonely in a murderous, hypocritical, political world.”52
Hamlet learns to master fate once he breaks free from his “still world of pure
contemplation” and begins to act within a world of “horrific depravity,” “rank wan-
tonness,” “filth and shame.”53 A crime has to be ascertained, the criminal found,
his secret exposed. Landauer proceeded to describe how Hamlet’s rationality and
humanity rise to the occasion. The play reaches its height in the famous monologue.
To be, or not to be – that is the question./Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer/The slings
and arrows of outrageous fortune,/Or to take arms against a sea of troubles/And by oppos-
ing, end them … For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,/The oppressor’s wrong,
the proud man’s contumely,/The pangs of dispriz’d love, the law’s delay,/The insolence of
office, and the spurns. (Act III, Scene I)
49 Ibid., 211.
51 Shakespeare I, 219.
52 Ibid., 252.
53 Ibid., 233.
Landauer’s exegesis created out of the scene a picture of a hesitant man finally
learning to bring the eternal categories of pure and practical reason in line with
real-life action. His Hamlet strips his own personal fate from “associations
derived from his own particular situation” and joins it with universal concerns
– with “das Ganze.” Accordingly, the tragic hero “does not speak about King Clau-
dius but about tyrants, injustice, arrogance, and oppression.” His true act is less
revenge for a crime committed against himself than a defense of the “oppressed
and the robbed.”54 He is driven by a “deed of freedom that liberates the world
from usurpers, frivolous men, tyrants, and a suicide that frees those who suffer
because of the world as it is.”55
This was what made Hamlet so relevant for German intellectuals, humanists,
and utopians, Landauer believed. In Germany, he wrote, “the outsider, the rebel,
the scoffer and the poet” must become the true “men of the republic” performing
“new deeds” in a corrupt and decaying society. And in this, he added, “there is
no other figure that is so close to us as Hamlet. … During the days before the 1848
revolution the rebels rightly said, ‘Hamlet is Germany.’ Today we must say that
Hamlet is humanity.”56
Quiet and Unnoticed Sacrifices

A similar strategy runs through Landauer’s anthology of revolutionary letters and
his interpretation of tragic theater. To quote from what he said about Goethe and
the role of the poet in politics, Goethe “made his intense participation in poli-
tics through secret oracles.” As such, “he who wants to speak the truth” about a
poet’s politics “must embark upon a journey of discovery.”57 This is a good guide
to understanding the way Landauer camouflaged his own voice in historical or
literary figures.
In his analysis of Hamlet’s soliloquy, for instance, he used the dense expres-
sion Vergegenwärtigung or “simultaneity” to describe the manner in which Hamlet
called up his own death before his mind’s eye in order to “free it from everything
that is not universal.” The dithering, uncertain prince learned to transform his
personal fate into something universal. By the same token, one can see in Lan-
dauer’s “Hamlet” his own “simultaneity,” one that announces a formula to turn
individual catastrophe into an act of universal significance. He said in a letter
54 Ibid., 236.
55 Ibid., 235.
56 Ibid., 254.
57 WM 1921, 138.
106 Anthony David
that he could keep a smile on his face despite the horror because he had “seen it
all happen before.” Indeed, he had often seen it on the stage and had penned its
best commentary.
Landauer’s reading of Hamlet accurately described his own role in the
tragedy of Munich, all the way to the brutal end. Munich was for him a tragic
stage and he himself was a tragic figure who did everything in his power to ensure
that his personal fate would become a symbol of human freedom, as profound
and moving and ultimately instructive as the great works of tragic theater. Seen
from this angle, Landauer’s death is more than an absurd accident that robbed
the world of a moral voice. What he did and how he died became symbols of his
political philosophy and deep expressions of his faith in universal liberation and
human decency. It is only fitting that his closest friends chose an epitaph for his
gravestone that summed up his life and death with poignant accuracy: “We must
be prepared to make sacrifices, not heroic ones, but quiet and unnoticed sacri-
fices in order to give an example for the good life.”58

Gertrude Cepl-Kaufmann
Gustav Landauer and the Literary Trends
of his Time
Any attempt to pinpoint Gustav Landauer’s place in fin-de-siècle literary culture
must begin with a close look at the naturalist and post-naturalist movements and
controversies in Berlin at the time. Landauer arrived in Berlin in 1889, leaving
only for a short time, from 1890 to 1891, to study in Strasbourg. Interestingly
enough, Landauer’s name is not particularly prominent in the most recent hand-
book of literary and cultural associations of the time; this meticulously compiled
catalogue lists him only as a member of the Friedrichshagener and Neue Gemein-
schaft circles.1 He arrived on the scene too late to play a role in what is known
as the “battle for a literary movement” waged by the advocates of naturalism.
Also, Landauer did not want to commit himself to symbolism or neo-romanti-
cism, which were making great strides in the years 1890-1891. In fact it is futile to
try to pin him to any of the many literary movements of the early 1890s. Since he
happened to be living in Friedrichshagen, a writers colony and cultural enclave
in south-east Berlin that was generally considered to be a dominant force on
the literary scene, Landauer is usually identified with this group. Yet this group
developed in a different direction than did either the circle associated with Bruno
Wille and Wilhelm Bölsche, or the Nordkolonie group led by Strindberg and the
Hansson couple; the Friedrichshagener also differed in many ways from the Hart
brothers’ circle.2
If one considers the joint activities and social events of this multifaceted lit-
erary milieu, one notes a marked difference between the way that Landauer, on
the one hand, and the Wille and Bölsche circle, on the other, saw the role of the
intellectual in society. This is especially true of their respective assessments of
the intellectual’s capacity to influence the masses. Wille characterized his own
group as “Sozialaristokraten,” a term which reflects not only the exceptional role
they had claimed for themselves once the honeymoon – or “Liebesbund” – with
Social Democracy was over, but also the pedagogical obligation they were taking
on.3 Their manifold endeavors to educate the people – evidenced for example
1 Handbuch literarisch-kultureller Vereine, Gruppen und Bände, 1825-1933, ed. Wulf Wülfing,
Karin Bruns and Rolf Parr (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1997).
2 See also Gertrude Cepl-Kaufmann, Rolf Kauffeldt, Berlin-Friedrichshagen, Literaturhauptstadt
um die Jahrhundertwende: Der Friedrichshagener Dichterkreis (Munich: Boer, 1994).
3 Bruno Wille, “Sozialaristokratie,” Freie Bühne für den Entwicklungskampf der Zeit, 4, no. 8
(1893): 914-920.
108 Gertrude Cepl-Kaufmann
by their efforts to publish editions of literary classics, to teach in working-class

educational frameworks, to establish adult-education colleges, and to make
people aware of contemporary discoveries in the natural sciences – certainly bore
witness to their high ideals, but were less a reflection of political concerns at the
time.
On the other hand, Landauer’s thinking was decidedly political in the 1890s.
He was convinced that a higher intellectual leadership guiding the working
classes was possible and envisaged a common struggle waged side by side with
them. However, his conception of a working-class anarchy failed because the
anarchist working population was unwilling to acknowledge an intellectual as
their leader. This was one of the factors that led Landauer, in the years between
1895 and 1898, to develop a social-aristocratic position not unlike that, which had
been espoused by Wille’s and Bölsche’s Friedrichshagener circle as early as 1892.
Before formulating his new position, however, Landauer first had to undergo a
kind of conversion to a new kind of anarchism.4
Just as Wille and the leaders of the Volksbühne-movement – Franz Mehring
in particular – had to weather disputes over the content and organization of the
Volksbühne, Landauer had to have his clash with the working-class anarchists.
This conflict centered on the leadership and structuring of Der Sozialist, a journal
serving as the dominant voice of anarchism in Germany. Things came to a head
over the question of the role the representatives of the “bourgeois intelligentsia”
could claim in determining the program and choosing texts for the journal. For
their part, the workers – under the leadership of the locksmith and ex-Indepen-
dent Socialist Paul Pawlowitsch – organized their rebellion against the heavily
Landauer-influenced Der Sozialist, and against the egotism of its literati and its
bias in favor of theoretical texts.5
It was as a result of this long-lasting conflict that Landauer broke allegiance
with working-class anarchism. Landauer rejected the workers’ notion or expecta-
tion that anarchist leaders should give up their middle-class, culturally defined
self-image as a given prerequisite for their turn to anarchism. On this point he
could draw on a clear line of anarchist tradition: none of the great anarchist
mentors had been proletarians; indeed, without their middle-class refinement
and education, they would never have attained their role as intellectual leaders.
Neither Landauer nor his middle-class comrades-in-arms saw their social posi-
tion as a dilemma. However, no matter how enmeshed in practical social struggles
4 See also Gertrude Cepl-Kaufmann, “Gustav Landauer im Friedrichshagener Jahrzehnt und die
Rezeption seines Gemeinschaftsideals nach dem I. Weltkrieg,” in Gespräch, 235-278.
5 Ulrich Linse, Organisierter Anarchismus im Deutschen Kaiserreich von 1871 (Berlin: Duncker &
Humblot, 1969), 73ff.
Gustav Landauer and the Literary Trends of his Time 109
Friedrichshagener anarchists like Landauer, Spohr and Albert Weidner became –

for example, in their support of the Berlin clothing workers’ strike in 1896 and of
the working-class consumer society, Befreiung – wide gaps remained. There was
also a further development, which, as we shall see, made it impossible to bridge
the gap. Indeed, the end of “Landauerian” working-class anarchism can be dated
to 1897 at the latest; with it, Landauer’s paradigmatic turn to cultural anarchism
was made possible.
One of the texts that gives clear evidence of Landauer’s turn from working-class
to cultural anarchism is his commentary on the history of German literature, which
appeared in the issue of Der Sozialist, from 26 February 1898.6 In this article, Lan-
dauer refers to his earlier essay “Die Zukunft und die Kunst” (“The Future and Art”),
and takes issue with his earlier view that art has no role to play in times of battle.
Thinking of his own literary work, he realized not only that this attitude was incon-
sistent but that he had also completely underestimated the proletariat’s potential to
develop in new cultural directions. With genuine displeasure, he states: “We who
have voluntarily linked our destiny to that of the proletariat [have] other things
to do than always to be prepared and wait.”7 Landauer here is looking ahead to
an open and promising future. His joyful, almost playful enumeration of what the
future holds in store peaks in the programmatic statement: “We [will] have time for
art again.”8
Landauer was obviously looking for a change of disposition and found it in
the settlement project headed by the Hart brothers. On 2 April 1900, Landauer had
already mentioned to Paul Eltzbacher that he thought a Siedlung, or settlement,
could form the nucleus of an alternative anarchist movement. He stated that he
had “not cast overboard the anarchistic future society, but only the belief that it
will be achieved in the foreseeable future by the masses of people alive today.”
He then adds, “in contrast, I believe that it is reasonable and possible to realize it
among human beings who are characterized only by moderate insight and good
will. In any case I believe in smaller anarchistic settlements.”9 What is of foremost
interest here is the complete and fundamental change in Landauer’s views on the
function and possibilities of art. This resulted from Landauer’s shift in allegiance
from a working-class to an intellectual point of view. By readmitting art into his
intellectual master plan he was indicating more than an abandonment of his former
6 G. Landauer, “Vortragszyklus zur Geschichte der deutschen Literatur,” Der Sozialist (1892),
quoted from Signatur: g. l. Gustav Landauer im “Sozialist” (1892-1899), ed. Ruth Link-Salinger
(Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1986), 368-371.
7 Ibid., 369.
8 Ibid., 370.
9 Lebensgang I, 52.
spartan denial of art. His new stance was evident already in the notice announc-
ing his series of lectures on literary history. Referring to his former understanding
of art as something that seduces one “to self-reflection or to the contemplation
of the deeds and souls of other human beings,” Landauer now abandoned his
truly naïve assumption that “this was the ultimate end of all art.”10 At the time
of writing his earlier article, he had given up on that late bourgeois educational
ideal. Landauer now reconsidered that idea or model of artistic identification and
adapted it to a new literary program, the coordinates of which, however, he had
not yet specified. Also, Landauer still upheld his outright rejection of naturalism –
which was directed mainly against Johannes Vockerat, the Bildungsbürgertum hero
of Hauptmann’s drama Einsame Menschen. He also added a denunciation of “art
that is still only art and that in its alluring play with forms, sought freedom, and …
was in danger of falling prey to the befuddlement of art.”11
Landauer thus, also rejected all anti-naturalistic trends of “art for art’s sake”
whether they be identified with “symbolism,” or with “decadent art,” or with the
stylized art of the fin de siècle. With regard to the brief period of time between
1898 and 1901 then, we must consider two key questions with regard to the
development of Landauer’s thought. First of all, how did he explain his changed
socio-political aims, and secondly, what kind of ideas does he develop concern-
ing aesthetics? The Hart brothers, whose Neue Gemeinschaft (New Community)
settlement project Landauer at first warmly endorsed, strongly disagreed with
Landauer’s assessment of the importance and function of community, monism
and Weltanschauung. This battle of paradigms revealed the different aesthetic
program of each side in the debate. Whereas the Harts pursued an uncritical
consecration of art and succumbed to the contemporary dictates of style, Lan-
dauer developed an opposing model. Building on Mauthner’s empiro-criticism,
he referred to the aesthetic potential that is grounded in the immanence of being.
When released in the process of creating and receiving art, this potential opens
up a qualitatively different approach to the world. Landauer can thus be seen as a
representative of the literary avant-garde; there are elements of his writing, which
can be traced back to Viennese modernist trends, to the “words as art” theory of
the Sturm and to the artistic theory of the Blaue Reiter. The poetic models for this
artistic program – one, which Landauer certainly did not have sufficient talent to
implement himself – were Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Richard Dehmel and Alfred
Mombert.
A few words are in order here on the controversy with the Hart brothers and
the Neue Gemeinschaft, which resulted in Landauer breaking with the group.
10 Landauer, “Vortragszyklus,” in Link-Salinger, Signatur g. l., 368.

11 Ibid., 370.
Following in the footsteps of Emile Zola who had committed himself to the
Dreyfus cause, Landauer was sentenced to prison in the spring of 1899 for his
role in trying to free a man by the name of Ziethen who had been sentenced to life
imprisonment. By the time Landauer completed his time in prison in February
1900, the founding meeting of the Neue Gemeinschaft had already taken place.
Landauer had not participated in the official founding event of the Neue Gemein-
schaft in December 1899 either. Immediately following his release from prison,
he became active in the settlement project that was trying to attract like-minded
souls to the cause in a variety of ways, producing its own journal and a series of
pamphlets. Those involved in the project were striving for a community based on
cooperative planning. Landauer worked on the journal and the celebration com-
mittees and was responsible for arranging lecture series and topics. It was most
likely at Landauer’s suggestion that Martin Buber, whom he had known since the
two worked together at Berlin’s Neue Freie Volksbühne, gave a talk on “Alte und
neue Gemeinschaft” during a series of lectures in March 1900. Landauer himself
worked together with Albert Weidner on the “new community’s” periodical, Die
Neue Gemeinschaft - Mitteilungen für Mitglieder und Gleichgesinnte, and also gave
talks, such as his programmatic lecture “Durch Absonderung zur Gemeinschaft”
on 18 June 1900 and another entitled “Nietzsche und die neue Generation.” As
early as 1902 Landauer began publishing critical attacks against Julius Hart and
the community in Der Arme Teufel, edited by Weidner.12 In the same year he with-
drew from the community, and the reasons for his decision must be closely scru-
tinized.
The Neue Gemeinschaft had aspired to be a “community of deeds.” They prom-
ised themselves a “life in the light” in an empire of art, raised to a higher plane than
that of day-to-day life. The project was not to be limited to just this one settlement;
the original community was seen as the precursor of a widespread network of set-
tlements, to be organized in accordance with the ideals of a future humanity. Julius
Hart described this ideal: “By living a new Weltanschauung, a harmonious exis-
tence, an exemplary life in light, we constitute centers of crystallisation every-
where in humanity in order to attract everything kindred in ever wider circles,
with ever-stronger power.”13
The cult-like religious tendency of the community made it stronger vis-à-vis the
position of the social revolutionaries. In a development similar to that taking place
in the Giordano-Bruno Bund around the same time, the community’s monistic, reli-
12 Landauer’s emphasis. G. Landauer, “Über Weltanschauungen: Offener Brief an Albert Weid-

ner,” Der Arme Teufel 2, nos. 2 & 5 (1902).
13 Heinrich Hart and Julius Hart, “Vom höchsten Wissen: Vom Leben in Licht. Ein vorläufiges
Wort an die Wenigen und Alle,” in NG, 88.
gious festivals – with their strong mystical overtones – eclipsed any serious reflec-
tion on the actual goal of effecting reform in the people’s way of life. There was a
tendency toward an esoteric, pantheistic pathos, as love feasts and consecration
ceremonies, or Liebesmahle and Weihefeste, became the actual forms of expression.
The community became renowned for these elaborate feasts and festivals and, as
a result, attracted in particular Berlin’s upper-middle-class ladies. This prompted
Erich Mühsam to comment in retrospect in 1904 “that the New Community, which
had been welcomed so enthusiastically, does not cause any more of a stir than the
dust, which is swirled up by women’s garments in the Tiergarten.”14 Indeed, part
of Landauer’s dispute with the Hart brothers, had to do with the cult-like self-conse-
cration of the “God-artist,” or Gott-Künstler, propagated by the pair.15
Superman, God-man, new humanity, (Übermensch, Gottmensch, Neumen-
schheit) – in this climactic sequence, the Harts combined the aristocratic indi-
vidualism of Nietzsche with the Neue Gemeinschaft’s goal of a new humanity:
“The Neue Gemeinschaft is a select community, a super-Volk, [a Volk] above
other Völker, a new humanity, not in terms of its rights, but rather in terms of
its strivings and achievements.”16 In the Harts’ imagined world, with its religious
prophetic traits, the elitist social ethics and claim to exclusivity developed into
the basis for their own transfiguration. Such a cultural ideal, in accordance with
which the “new humanity” pursues a life of consecration feasts and rituals, moves,
according to Landauer, from the sublime to the ridiculous. Although evolutionary
thinking has something in common with the social aristocratic thinking of the
earlier Friedrichshagener, Landauer concluded, the elitist Social Darwinism of the
Neue Gemeinschaft does not.
Gustav Landauer had envisaged the Neue Gemeinschaft developing in a com-
pletely different way. Already in the summer of 1900, while still in Karlsruhe, he sent
promotional letters to the Hart brothers and poured all his energy into preparing his
programmatic lecture.17 His actions in the first year clearly showed that he planned
to implement his ideas primarily in a practical way. He thus institutionalized the
Monday meetings, in which small groups met and were looked after by one of the
community’s Anregender, or facilitators. In his article “Unsere Zusammenkünfte”
(“Our Meetings”), which appeared in the Neue Gemeinschaft’s periodical, Landauer
explained that such groups were important “for it is necessary that the elements
14 Erich Mühsam, “Das Ende vom Liede,” Der Anarchist 2, no. 4 (1904). Quoted from Erich Müh-
sam, Briefe an Zeitgenossen, ed. Gerd W. Jungblut, 2 vols. (Berlin: Guhl, 1978), vol. 2, Material-
sammlung, 14.
15 Heinrich Hart, Julius Hart, G. Landauer, Felix Hollaender, “Der neue Mensch,” in NG, 36.
16 Ibid., 13.
17 Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek Dortmund, Best. Landauer, G., nos. 11461-11464.
of the New Community draw nearer, that they become acquainted with us and
finally, that we become acquainted with them. It is necessary that we create the
possibility and the necessity for intimately coming out of our shells in order to
bring out that, which is quietest and best in us.”18 Landauer was searching for
“friendly approaches” and for “personal links of togetherness,” as necessary condi-
tions for a Neue Gemeinschaft, which was at the same time, intended to be an expres-
sion of a “new, higher culture” as Albert Weidner termed it. Weidner also elaborated
the goals and efforts of this phase, which were completely in accordance with the
ideals of the anarchist faction of the Neue Gemeinschaft; this faction included – in
addition to Landauer and Weidner – Wilhelm Spohr, Bernhard Kampffmeyer and
Erich Mühsam. The effort was not supposed to take the form of political struggles;
rather the desired goal was to be achieved through renewal, which each person –
both as an individual and as a community member – had to undergo in order to par-
ticipate in a new “inner culture.” This “inner culture,” a veritable state of “freedom
in beauty,” could only result from what Landauer called an “Innenbefreiung,” or
“inner liberation.”19 Only by means of this inner process could the individual as
such meet the requirement of social self-realization within the community. And this
was the purpose of the settlement project.
Landauer detailed his idea of community in the programmatic lecture “Durch
Absonderung zur Gemeinschaft” (“Through Isolation to Community”). He believed
that an ontogenetically anchored “Erbmacht,” or hereditary power, ensures that
there will be a feel for the “original” community. This original community had, as it
were, been eclipsed by the community imposed on individuals by the state, and this
forced community had to be destroyed. The future utopian society was supposed to
reconnect with the “paleontological treasures”20 of the “primeval community.” The
need and ability to do so, Landauer maintained, are developed through isolation
and mystical immersion in the origins of the universe: “only if we totally separate
ourselves, if we sink down deep into ourselves as individuals, then we will at last
find, in the innermost core of our hidden being, the most ancient and universal
community: the human race and the cosmos. Whoever has discovered this joyous
community in himself is enriched and blessed for all time and is finally removed
from the common accidental communities of our age.”21 Landauer was aspiring to
the ideal of a “community of bodies” or Körpergemeinschaft. The phenomenon of
cultural memory is biologically reinterpreted: the individual, as part of humanity,
18 G. Landauer, “Unsere Zusammenkünfte,” Die Neue Gemeinschaft–Mitteilungen für Mitglieder

und Gleichgesinnte 1, no. 5 (1900): 2.
19 G. Landauer, “Durch Absonderung zur Gemeinschaft,” in NG, 45-68.
20 Ibid., 48.
21 Ibid.
can reach his goal only if he remembers. Hence the notion of “utopia as memory.”22
This was an ideal that the Hart brothers could not, and did not want to, grasp.
Landauer’s break with the Neue Gemeinschaft was, in a sense, predeter-
mined. It was the result first of all, of his displeasure over the extravagant living
arrangements that were taking over the community. Julius Hart had brought his
style of embracing the world to virtual perfection, causing Landauer to accuse
him of being superficial, arrogant and despicable.23 However, a more important
reason for the break was related to differences over basic issues. In their espousal
of monism, the Harts claimed that everything that exists is automatically a basic
material substance, which can have its own manifestation and is subject to the
law of permanent change. This, in Landauer’s opinion, was a claim devoid of any
social, and thus of any moral, merit. Indeed, Landauer not only posed the rhetor-
ical question, “what does monism have to do with our social movement?,” but
also provided a clear answer: “nothing whatsoever!” And here Landauer’s attack
took on a sarcastic note. If Julius Hart believed everything in the world was good,
and if one believed in his monistic dogma and were fulfilled by it, then one could
replace the word “transformation” or Verwandlung – which obviously embraced
everything – with anything:
Let us say a different word in its stead, let us for instance be filled with the teaching:
Everything is (not transformation, but rather) for the birds:
Life is for the birds.
Death is for the birds.
Poverty is for the birds.
Wealth is for the birds
Thus, if our entire being is filled with this inspiration, the result is precisely that, which
Hart associates with his religion: we will be very happy about it, we will not let anything be
contested, we will not find it worth the trouble to put impediments in the way of others.24
While the Harts were striving for some kind of mystical merging with the uni-
verse as an existential-transcendental, aesthetic act, Landauer was spurred by
two basic concerns. He was concerned, on the one hand, with social restructuring
and future-oriented actions, and, on the other, with finding access to an alter-
native aesthetic discourse in dealing with the conflict between skepticism and
mysticism.
22 See also the article by Bernd Witte, “Zwischen Haskala und Chassidut: Gustav Landauer im
Kontext der deutsch-jüdischen Literatur- und Geistesgeschichte,” in Gespräch, 25-41.
23 Lebensgang I, 73.
24 G. Landauer, “Die Neue Welterkenntnis,” Die Kultur 1, no. 10 (1902): 615.
We can see how Landauer’s position gradually began to take shape, ulti-
mately leading to his break with the Neue Gemeinschaft. Landauer’s idea of iso-
lation as the first step toward mystical immersion and the transformation of an
enlightened and self-assertive ego into a communal ego clashed, by definition,
with the idea of an aesthetic-cultural life externally manifested in love feasts and
festivals, as well as in the members’ vegetarianism and in social reforms. The
opening up of the community to visitors – indeed to a paying audience of onlook-
ers hungry for an experience – made the group, at best, into a “sober cabaret”
– as one well-intending visitor critically remarked.25 Permitting this kind of voy-
eurism made it impossible to retain the purity of communal life.26
The Hart brothers and Landauer had different notions of Gemeinschaft, and
these differences were not only on the level of everyday life. The Harts’ concept of
community had roots in the lifestyle of the early Friedrichshagener, and was based
on a sociological notion of “community” that followed the views of Ferdinand
Tönnies. For Landauer, on the other hand, Gemeinschaft was synonymous with a
mystical concept of unity. This did not betoken a belief in something already exist-
ing, as was the case with the Harts’s monism, but rather in an envisaged social
goal. The paradise, which the Hart brothers – with a kind of pentecostal euphoria
– already felt themselves be a part of, was something which Landauer still had to
attain, indeed, to discover. In the course of the controversy over the Neue Gemein-
schaft, which was waged and documented in Der Arme Teufel in 1902, Landauer
emphasized, that it was “not because of the positive faith, the Hart brothers were
striving for, but rather in spite of it” that he had labored in the Neue Gemeinschaft
“with all his strength, for positive creative work.”27
The final reason for Landauer’s break was that he was wary of the term Weltan-
schauung itself. Although the Harts derived from it their universal sense of unity, it
was, in Landauer’s view, really nothing more than the realization of what he termed
a hypertrophic ego. In the Hart brothers’ worldview, “psycho-physical monism”
was the third step, coming after “mechanistic-materialistic monism” and “hylozo-
ism”; this view led to a belief in a process of development from the “atomic soul”
to the “world soul” and the “universal soul.” All of this was based on the evolu-
tionary principle that allowed them hic et nunc passage into the “world soul,” and
25 Quoted from Janos Frecot, “Literatur zwischen Betrieb und Einsamkeit,” in Berlin um 1900,
exhibition at the Berlin Gallery, 1984, 319-347, 330.
26 See also Walter Fähnders, Anarchismus und Literatur: Ein vergessenes Kapitel deutscher Lite-
raturgeschichte zwischen 1890 und 1910 (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1987), 175 f.
27 See Landauer, “Über Weltanschauungen.”
conferred on the whole the status of a Weltanschauung. Given his adherence to a

principle of immanence, Landauer had to reject this Weltanschauung.28
The ecstasy entailed in such a bacchanalian universe, bolstered by the claims
associated with the term Weltanschauung, ultimately proved to be an escape mech-
anism for times in which all sense of unity was lost. The term itself became an
“uncritical noun of the educated classes” as Claudia Bibo demonstrated in her study
on naturalism as Weltanschauung.29 Viktor Klemperer traced the long-term effects
of this mythical, irrational noun and marked the path by which “this cliquey word
of the turn of the century became the pillar word of the LTI” (Lingua Tertii Imperii,
the language of the Third Reich).30 Landauer naturally also found fault with the
ways in which the word and the concept of Weltanschauung were being used.
In two letters that he wrote to Julius Bab, his satirical condemnation of the
dubious use of the term shows his contempt even more clearly than did the political
articles he published in Der Arme Teufel. In a letter to Bab dated 23 April 1903, Lan-
dauer, relates to an epigram in which Bab, had defined Erkenntnis, or knowledge,
with unusual modesty. Bab’s epigram is as follows: ‘“Knowledge” – to you a God,
/ to whom you dedicate life, / to us, at the hearth of life / only a good log.” Lan-
dauer sets against this the ongoing demand of world pervasion and reveals at the
same time the quietistic comforting effect and interchangeable nature of every
Weltanschauung:
‘Knowledge’ – to us a god,
to whom life is dedicated,
although all our knowledge
is only in the human image:
To you moral philosophers at the hearth,
an inflammable log of life
or a couch cushion
(for comfort and eternity)
Bang!
The newest models and patterns of Weltanschauung [are] always in stock. Specially rec-
ommended, a larger lot of “sleep softly” at ludicrously low prices; a larger shipment of the
popular “only a quarter-of-an-hour” brand will arrive soon.
With the adoption of two or more Weltanschauungen, a free membership card for the Gior-
dano-Bruno-Association.
28 In his review of Julius Hart’s then newly-published book Die neue Welterkenntnis he spares
no criticism; also in a letter to Auguste Hauschner (21 May 1902) he refers to it as a “bad book.”
See Lebensgang I, 109.
29 Claudia Bibo, Naturalismus als Weltanschauung: Biologistische, theosophische und deutsch-
völkische Bildlichkeit in der von Fidus illustrierten Lyrik, (1893-1902) (Frankfurt/Main: Lang,
1995), 34.
30 Viktor Klemperer, LTI: Notizbuch eines Philologen (Leipzig: Reclam, 1975), 153.
Haute Nouveté! Air cushions for the trip: to be filled with sceptical winds by the travelers
themselves. Comfortable – convenient – superb.
Bliss-maier & Co. Ltd.31
Landauer not only opposed the Hart brothers’ ineffectual speculations, which
he countered with his practically-oriented notion of “Beginnen” (beginning), but
also rejected, more than anything else, their moral claim on the world, which
they offered as “erknenntniHarmoni” (sic) or knowledge-harmony. Landauer saw
it as a dismal mistake when “the same words are used in moral and epistemolog-
ical matters.”32
The alternative presented by Landauer in his confrontation with the Hart
circle becomes even more pronounced in his controversy with Bab. The contro-
versy erupted in connection with Richard Dehmel’s work. Landauer complained
that Bab, in his review of Dehmel’s essay in “Moderne Kunst und Literatur,” pro-
vided only frayed attempts at interpretation that did not do justice to Dehmel.”33
Landauer insisted that instead of these ineffectual analyses and “laborious leaps”
of interpretation there should be a differentiation of the literary field according
to different standards. He inquires as to which of the existing genres Richard
Dehmel belongs.34 For him, Dehmel is the “modern artist.” Landauer formed
his own opinion in opposition to Bab’s Dehmel-study, and in so doing, aligned
himself with the modernist trend in art and literature. Landauer saw Dehmel as
a poet representing the particular view of music as the art form least burdened
with meaning. Landauer thus continues the endeavor – which had been pursued
and most notably formulated by Schopenhauer – of redefining artistic meaning
from a musical perspective. Music’s equivalent in the linguistic arts is poetry, and
Landauer believed in the power of words in a utopian sense, and not only in polit-
ical, but also in aesthetic, terms. Such views place Landauer squarely in the ranks
of those associated with theoretical developments in modernism, which went
as far as the “words-as-art-theory” (Wortkunsttheorie) expounded in Herwarth
Walden’s Sturm: “in poetry, words and concepts are the instrument that leads us
to music – to rhythm, to the unutterable that wells up in us and carries us along.
And the great artist will use his instrument, words, in such a way that between the
words there is not only music – the unutterable – but rather its perception by the
senses (sinnliche Anschauung) – once again the unutterable from the other end.
31 Lebensgang I, 114f.
32 Landauer’s emphasis. See Mauthner Briefe, 390, n. 50.
33 Julius Bab and Richard Dehmel, Moderne Essays zur Kunst und Literatur, 23 and 24 (1902); see
further the letter from G. Landauer to Julius Bab, 26 December 1902, in Lebensgang I, 110.
34 Ibid., 111.
It is precisely this duality in poetry – music and perception – that constitutes the
unity that distinguishes it from all other art. It stems from the special nature of its
instrument, language.”35 However, the ‘unutterable’ here is nothing other than a
category closely corresponding to Kandinsky’s notion of “innere Notwendigkeit”
or “inner necessity” as described in his theory of aesthetics, Über das Geistige in
der Kunst. Arnold Schönberg emphasizes the extent to which the older and now
largely forgotten generation of Dehmel and Landauer had laid the foundation
that was later built on by those acknowledged as the classic modernists: “from
them [Dehmel and Landauer] we acquired the ability to listen in to ourselves, and
yet still be a man of our times.”36
In Landauer’s insights regarding the material nature of language one can
already see the conditions being set for an alternative aesthetics, one that is con-
cerned with neither mimesis nor idealism, nor least of all with the apotheosis of the
artist himself – notwithstanding the numerous references to Nietzsche. Landauer
himself contributed to the desired differentiation of the literary field by naming two
additional witnesses to the pursued ideals, Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Alfred
Mombert. Both figure prominently in Landauer’s essays from this period. Landauer
opens his essay “Durch Absonderung zur Gemeinschaft” with a text from Mombert
and also uses the latter’s self-proclaiming phrase, “I am the music of the world,”
as the motto for his essay “Musik der Welt.” In his important essay on Mauthner’s
Critique of Language, Landauer refers to Hofmannsthal’s “Lord Chandos Letter.”
The identity crisis of Landauer’s generation could not be resolved by fleeing to
some distant Olympus where all would be united; all that was possible was a rem-
iniscence of “paleontological treasures” in combining the new and old identities.
Mysticism had to follow skepticism. The union of the two, according to Mauthner’s
critique of language, forms the basis for anarchy and socialism. Landauer thus writes
to Mauthner in 1911, “certainly, critique of language is inseparably tied to what I call
my anarchism and socialism.”37 In his essay, “Mauthners Werk,” Landauer assumes
that Hofmannsthal was familiar with Mauthner’s critique of language. Quoting the
central part of the “Lord Chandos Letter,” Landauer suggests that it is both a “man-
ifesto” and an “artistic exercise”; indeed he accepts the internal contradiction of
the text – which lends almost perfect artistic expression to the problem of ineffa-
bility – as a challenge or provocation. This, Landauer explains, is the successful
outcome of the attempt to overcome rhetoric for the sake of a “new poetry.”38 His
35 Ibid., 112.
36 Berlin um 1900, 329.
38 Gustav Landauer, “Mauthners Werk,” in idem., Zeit und Geist: Kulturkritische Schriften, 1890-
1919, ed. Rolf Kauffeldt and Michael Matzigkeit (Munich: Boer, 1997), 103-15, 114.
concern was with the unutterable, which can now be preserved in “images of the
material world.”39 This is where Landauer sees the “practical benefit” of the loss
of a conceptual language, as the ego is won back by means of art. The unutterable
becomes a precondition for a type of art that becomes its own subject, and thus is
far removed from any mimetics. In this context, the ordering categories of time and
space, thought to have been lost, gain a new dimension. Referring to Hofmannsthal
and Mombert, Landauer explains this in his Mauthner essay: “this swinging into
one another of unutterable entities, which flow together from opposite ends –
rhythm from time, the sensory image from space – this dissolution of everything
real in the element of the dream: This I am able to find in the poetry of those I
mentioned, and precisely this seems to me to be the only mood in which one can
return from the critique of language to the art of words. Mauthner has shown
us that conceptual science cannot satisfy our longing to comprehend the world
and that which is properly our own, as something other than merely human. Art,
however, is able to do so in those moments in which we live in it. We gain and
create worlds and lose ourselves.”40
Thus, Landauer not only interprets Mauthner in a practical sense and uses
Hofmannsthal’s topos of the unutterable in a creative way, but also hints at his fas-
cination with Mombert. Landauer adopted for himself the advice given by Mombert
to his friend, literary colleague and admirer, Richard Dehmel: “Try to take the poem
as reality, not as dream … . Try once to be at rest in your work. Not in life. For
otherwise you could not do so in art. Try once to be perfect. To be fulfillment, not
longing. Only in your works. Not in life. Try once to separate art and life.”41
Landauer’s reception of Mombert has rarely been acknowledged, even though
there is much in common between the two. Among other things, both hailed from
Karlsruhe and knew each other from school. This may explain why Landauer
already owned Mombert’s first publications at a time when the latter was still
virtually unknown. It is also possible that Hedwig Lachmann had spoken highly
of Mombert to Landauer, since she had been Dehmel’s girlfriend for a while,
and Dehmel and Mombert had been friends since 1893. Isi and Richard Dehmel
even moved to Heidelberg for a year in the summer of 1900, because Mombert
had opened a law office there a year before. From the beginning of Landauer’s
relationship with Hedwig Lachmann, Mombert played an important role in their
lives. Lachmann had arranged for Mombert’s works to be sent to Landauer, and
the latter wrote to her on 25 May 1899, thanking her and indicating that he would
39 Ibid., 115.
40 Ibid.
41 Richard Dehmel, Ausgewählte Briefe aus den Jahren 1883-1902 (Berlin: Fischer, 1923), 254.
acquire them himself. Indeed, when he was in prison, the first books he asked
Mauthner to have delivered to him were those of Mombert.
He did not manage to study Mombert’s work closely until he was released
from prison and spent some time in Karlsruhe. On 4 July 1900, one month before
he held his lecture “Durch Absonderung zur Gemeinschaft” he wrote to Hedwig
Lachmann: “Since yesterday I have been living in Alfred Mombert, whose cre-
ation I have now finally been able to read. I have always known what he would
mean to me. I do not know what is most important to me in this wonderful mystic:
the naturalness with which he can sometimes reveal what is most hidden and
shape it figuratively, or the colossal struggle with the most unutterable, which
still defeats him sometimes … . Perhaps we will find a free hour in the near future,
in which we will be able to read Mombert together. It would be so nice.”42 The
notion of “Beginnen,” literally the call to ‘begin,’ which informs Landauer’s polit-
ical work, is also a category of his aesthetics. This “beginning” takes place on the
threshold of the “unutterable.” That is what Mombert seems to have conveyed to
Landauer, and Landauer, for his part, must have perceived Mombert’s motto “I am
the music of the world” as the momentary fusion of the ego with the rhythm of
being. In the last verse of the motto-poem in the essay on community mentioned
above, the antinomy also seems to be a part of the process of gaining knowledge –
whereby ‘knowledge’ or Erkenntnis is meant in the Old Testament sense, indicating
both the perception of God by the senses, as well as sexual love: “Of dark questions
the world is full, / Therefore one should pluck the harp.”43
In early 1901, shortly before he withdrew from the community’s activities,
Landauer tried to convey to the Neue Gemeinschaft something of his intellectual
encounter with Mombert.44 By May, however, he had already withdrawn from the
community. Yet Mombert continued to influence him. The “dream-filled world
of the mind,” which he found in Mombert’s poetry, created a further bond to the
poet. In 1906 Landauer wrote to Mombert, “you probably know yourself how
indelibly your rhythms, your images and all your world live on in those who, at
the right time devoted themselves to these images.”45 For Landauer, the decisive
phase between conservative Weltanschauung and artistic modernism was indeed
the “right time.”
42 G. Landauer to H. Lachmann, 4 July 1900, Lebensgang I, 61.

43 G. Landauer, “Durch Absonderung zur Gemeinschaft,” in Zeit und Geist, ed. Kauffeldt and
Matzigkeit, 89-99, 81.
44 The titles of the planned lectures are recorded in a notebook. See Berlin um 1900, 330.
Philippe Despoix
Toward a German-Jewish Construct:
Landauer’s Arnold Himmelheber
One does not usually think of Gustav Landauer as a writer of literature. Literary
influences are certainly discernible in his diverse work not only as critic, trans-
lator, orator, and dramaturge, but also as philosophical essayist, and political
polemicist. However, it is in the essay form that Landauer’s writing finds its most
mature expression. His affinity to the medium of the stage – evident in his involve-
ment with the Volksbühne movement in the 1890s, in his great Shakespeare lec-
tures, as well as in the position he held at the Düsseldorf Theater toward the
end of his life – made him an advocate of modern drama. Yet, apart from a few
unpublished pieces from his youth – including a comedy – Landauer’s own lit-
erary production dates, for the most part, back to the turn of the century. His lit-
erary works comprise an early novella, Knabenleben (1891), which, according to
Theodor Fontane, was “not bad” in terms of artistic level and technique; a novel,
Der Todesprediger (1893); a volume of novellas, Macht und Mächte (1903), and the
later tale, Der gelbe Stein (1910).1
Already as a young man Landauer did feel a calling to be a writer. In 1899, in
one of his first letters to his future wife, the poet Hedwig Lachmann, he asserts his
literary ambition and specifically refers to “the novel and novella” as the focus of
his efforts and as his areas of literary strength.2 Landauer sent her a first draft of
his novella Arnold Himmelheber to read, but did not receive a positive response.
Nevertheless, during their life together they remained united by their work in the
field of literature, especially translation work, which they undertook in order to
secure a living. Hedwig Lachmann made a name for herself with her translation of
Oscar Wilde’s Salome around 1900. Other translations of Wilde and later of Tagore
were undertaken jointly with Landauer. Although she was also a poet, Lachmann
is considered one of the most notable German translators of modern prose – includ-
ing Balzac, Edgar Allan Poe and Joseph Conrad – of this period.3 Landauer, on the
1 Theodor Fontane to O. Neumann-Hofer, 5 January 1892, quoted in Gustav Landauer (1870-

1919): Eine Bestandsaufnahme zur Rezeption seines Werkes, ed. L. M. Fiedler (Frankfurt/Main:
Campus, 1995), 166.
2 G. Landauer to H. Lachmann, 15 May 1899, Lebensgang I, 21.
3 See H. Lachmann, Gesammelte Gedichte: Eigenes und Nachdichtungen (Potsdam: Kiepenheuer,
1919); Oscar Wilde, Salome, trans. H. Lachmann (Leipzig: Insel, 1903); Honoré de Balzac, Die
Frau von Dreissig Jahren, trans. H. Lachmann (Weimar: Kiepenheuer, 1912); Edgar Poes Werke, 6
vols., trans. H. Moeller-Bruck and H. Lachmann (Dresden: H. Minden, 1911-1914); J. Conrad, Lord
Jim, trans. H. Lachmann and W. Freissler, 1st-6th eds. (Berlin: Fischer, 1927).
122 Philippe Despoix
whole, showed a preference for lyrical, mystical and historical texts, as evidenced
in his translations of Walt Whitman and Meister Eckhart, as well as in his Letters
from the French Revolution.4
Landauer’s first important literary work, Der Todesprediger (“The Preacher
of Death”) is a parody of a Bildungsroman, with the main character’s apocalyptic
visions of death transformed at the end into an affirmation of life in the commu-
nity.5 This is a twenty-year-old’s credo of sorts, a work in which the influence of
Schopenhauer and Nietzsche are clearly discernible. Landauer’s next effort was a
novella, entitled Lebenskunst, published in 1897 in the literary supplement of Der
Sozialist, for which Landauer wrote essays on culture and politics.6 This text can
be seen as an early version of Arnold Himmelheber, a novella which was conceived
around 1900 as the main part of the volume Macht und Mächte. Landauer’s friend
Fritz Mauthner had to intervene several times to persuade the publishers not to
reject the literary text for “political reasons.” Thanks to Mauthner’s mediation, as
well as the support of Maximilian Harden, the book – which also contained the
novella Lebendig tot (“Living Dead”) – found its way into print in 1903 at Egon
Fleischel Publishers in Berlin.7
In the same year, Landauer’s translation of Eckhart, Meister Eckharts mys-
tische Schriften, and his own philosophical essay, Skepsis und Mystik also
appeared.8 The Himmelheber novella should be read in close connection with
these other two texts, perhaps all the more so because it does not in itself meet
the mark as a fully-formed literary work. The later tale, Der gelbe Stein (“The
Yellow Rock”), with its abstract, Jugendstil-influenced form probably represents
Landauer’s greatest literary endeavour.9 Yet Arnold Himmelheber is also a truly
significant work, albeit for reasons which lie beyond purely aesthetic consid-
erations. It represents a search for a genre that experiments with a blending of
translation, literary prose and philosophical reflection. This singular quest links
4 With Hedwig Lachmann, he translated O. Wilde, Das Bildnis des Dorian Gray (Leipzig: Insel,
1907); R. Tagore, Der König der dunklen Kammer (Munich: K. Wolff, 1915); and R. Tagore, Das
Postamt (Leipzig: Insel, 1918); His other translations include: W. Whitman, Gesänge und Inschrif-
ten (Munich: K. Wolff, 1921); and Briefe aus der französischen Revolution, 2 vols. (Frankfurt/Main:
5 See G. Landauer, Der Todesprediger (Dresden: H. Minden, 1893).
6 See Lorenz Jäger, “Der Herr des Lebens und die Anarchie: Zu Landauers Novelle ‘Arnold Him-
melheber’,” in Gespräch, 9 f.; and Signatur g. l.: Gustav Landauer im “Sozialist” (1892-1899), ed.
R. Link-Salinger (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1986).
7 See Macht und Mächte, 1903/1923; see also G. Landauer, Arnold Himmelheber: Eine Novelle, ed.
with commentary by P. Despoix (Berlin: Philo, 2000).
8 See Meister Eckhart and Skepsis, 1903/1923.
9 See P. Despoix, Ethiken der Entzauberung: Zum Verhältnis von ästhetischer, ethischer und politi-
scher Sphäre am Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts (Bodenheim: Philo, 1998), 76f.
Toward a German-Jewish Construct: Landauer’s Arnold Himmelheber 123
Landauer not only with his close friends Mauthner and Buber, but also with a
whole generation of German-Jewish intellectuals. But the utopia of a ‘lawless
life,’ the fantasy pursued in Himmelheber, also refers to a relationship between
German and Jewish culture, which is distinctive of Landauer’s work in general.
In formal terms, the novella shows unmistakable traces of an early-Roman-
tic influence. As is the case in Landauer’s other works, the blending of genres is
carried out almost programmatically; the text comprises dramatic scenes in which
dialogues predominate, together with a fairy-tale-like narration, correspondence,
a portrayal of idyllic love, and a phantasmagoric epilogue. In terms of form, one
senses a close proximity to drama. This is related not only to Landauer’s strong
ties to the theater, but also specifically to a dialogical technique already found in
Dostoevsky’s writing. While working on the final draft of the novella in Kent in
1902, Landauer explained in a letter to Mauthner, “for the time being, my material
has found its form, and this time it wants to be something like a play: a novella, in
which the author does not interject anything into the dialogue.”10
Beyond the experiment with literary form, it is the choice of subject matter
which makes this work unique. There is something daring, even scandalous about
the novella, as one social taboo after another is violated. Two parallel stories are
narrated: one involves the secluded life of a former doctor, Himmelheber, and his
“love-sick” daughter; the other involves the reunion of Ludwig Prinz with Judith,
the love of his youth. There is a merging of these two narrative threads and the
connecting link is the main character, Himmelheber, who has taken the orphan
Ludwig under his wing and raised him.
The novella unfolds step by step in a few episodic scenes. It opens with
the reunion between Ludwig, who has just returned home after completing his
medical studies, and Himmelheber’s daughter Lysa, who from the outset evokes a
Liebesverbot, forbidding love between the siblings. However, this prelude reaches
its climax with Himmelheber challenging his adoptive son Ludwig to want hap-
piness, and not to shy away from adultery. Ludwig’s and Judith’s early history,
i.e., the story of the chaste love of their youth, is narrated in the next chapter,
which is set in a small Jewish village located on the outskirts of a city in southern
Germany. The chapter also relates how Judith, who has since married, becomes
estranged from her “coarse” husband, the Jewish merchant, Wolf Tilsiter. Judith’s
despair and thoughts of regaining freedom come to a head after she daydreams
about reading a strange newspaper advertisement for a marriage partner while
thinking of Ludwig, her first love. The story then turns into an epistolary novel,
at the beginning of which Judith explicitly alludes to the adulterous thought
concerning the classified ad. The correspondence with Ludwig brings about the
10 G. Landauer to F. Mauthner, 20 February 1902, Lebensgang I, 103.

dreamed-of response to the ad. In the penultimate chapter, the reunion between
the two former lovers comes to pass at the very place where they had last parted,
in the heart of nature. After making love with Ludwig, Judith decides that she
will never let herself be touched by her husband again. The epilogue presents her
liberation in a most curious way. In a violent attempt to assert his conjugal rights,
the drunken Tilsiter is severely injured by Judith. He dies – while under general
anesthetic – on Himmelheber’s operating table. With the body of her dead
husband still in view, Judith asks to be formally joined with Ludwig, by whom she
is now pregnant. The two are blessed in a kind of profanatory ritual by Himmel-
heber, who confesses to murdering Tilsiter. The scene takes on phantasmagorical
proportions, as they all throw off their clothes and invoke life. Meanwhile, Lysa
– who appears as if possessed by her own dead mother – reveals the secret of her
incestuous relationship with her father. Freed from all feelings of guilt, she slides
ecstatically into death.
Certainly the notion of breaking taboos belongs to the context of the time,
from Franz Wedekind, Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Thomas Mann all the way
to Freud; and yet there is hardly a contemporary work in which one finds such
a systematic and massive build-up in this regard. In Landauer’s novella a tre-
mendous escalation of transgressions – adultery, marital violence, murder and
incest – is being staged. In addition, the explicitly profanatory character of the
transgressions obviously corresponds to Landauer’s Kulturkampf against mono-
theism, which he wages elsewhere in his work. Indeed the blasphemy indicated
in the last scene is twofold, for it indicates the dissolution of both Jewish law and
Christian love in favor of a pagan sovereignty of life: “When you are alone,” whis-
pers Himmelheber to Judith after the news of her husband’s death, “drop to your
knees before the nameless, the ineffable, the unbelievable and stammer: ‘I thank
you from the depths of my being, you magnificent, redemptive coincidence!’”11
This profanation of the God of the Jews becomes even more blasphemous in Him-
melheber’s justification of the murder of the Jewish merchant Tilsiter, which is
presented as a liberation from sin: “Let yourself be buried, you eternal Jew, old
Jehovah … I am the eternal heathen … . There is no sin, there is only life. Life never
ends.”12 One can discern here the use of Nietzschean language in countering St.
Paul’s message. Pauline Christianity’s commandment of love (agapé) has imper-
ceptibly come into view alongside the Jewish Torah. The words used by Lysa in
revealing the fact of her incestuous relationship with her father take this one step
11 Landauer, Macht und Mächte, 1923, 70.

12 Ibid., 76.
further: “The Mother and I are one” – a blasphemous reversal of the words of
Jesus: “The Father and I are one.”13
Why is so much blasphemy necessary? The plot of the story revolves around
Judith’s liberation from her unhappy and childless marriage to Tilsiter. She and
Ludwig can affirm life in a total way only if they are also declared guiltless. This is
precisely the function filled by Himmelheber’s profanatory rhetoric. In contrast
to Tilsiter who is law-abiding in bourgeois as well as religious terms, yet portrayed
as coarse and almost a-human, the two lovers are, as it were, reborn to human-
ity, obeying only the power of life. The blasphemous ritual marks the staging of
their “new birth” beyond the law, as a conquest over culture’s ultimate bound-
ary, namely shame. It is not by chance that the Dionysian ending is referred to
as taking place in “natural” nakedness against the background of a midsummer
night’s bonfire, with all its pagan connotations.
The connection established between Himmelheber’s incestuous behavior
and the abandonment of bourgeois law is precisely what shocked even Lan-
dauer’s closest friends. It was particularly the enigmatic ending of the novel
which caused the loudest objections. Hedwig Lachmann was the first to strongly
condemn the novella after reading an early version. Landauer’s reply, justifying
his work, was sent on 15 May 1899: “Now do not consider it vanity that I refuse to
defer to your judgment. That you knew from the beginning of the story what was
going to happen is to my credit. You were supposed to sense it. That you think
the narrative consists of two stories that have nothing to do with one another, I
find highly old-fashioned. I think it all flows together into one picture. Think of
Dostoevsky, how right he was to put a hundred stories into one for the sake of the
symbol which unites everything.”14 This argument does not seem to have con-
vinced the poet, for in addition to lambasting the abstract depiction of the char-
acters, she also criticized in her next letter, Himmelheber’s ruthlessness toward
Judith’s husband. It seems that the discussion was too personally charged to go
on, for the controversy broke off at this point.
One discerns a similar tone three years later in the comments of Landauer’s
friend Fritz Mauthner, after the novella had been revised. Mauthner, who had
been involved in trying to get the work published, noted in the blurb which Lan-
dauer had asked him to write for the booksellers: “The story’s main point is won-
derful. Everything concerning the Judith-Ludwig couple is the finest poetry. …
But there is something that troubles me. As for the nakedness, that is a big ques-
tion mark. That’s asking for the police. I think the emotional sense of longing for
new human beings gets abandoned. But it’s only a question mark. On the other
13 Ibid. 77.
14 Lebensgang I, 20 f.
hand, I definitely did not like the down-to-earth portrayal of Arnold and Lysa’s
relationship. I do not think it should have been spelt out.”15 Basically, the doubts
expressed by Landauer’s closest friends touch on the same point. It is precisely
the linkage established in the transgression of the two strictest social taboos,
murder and incest, which is to them disturbingly enigmatic or unresolved. Lan-
dauer himself concedes this difficulty in his reply to Mauthner written on 22 July
1903: “I don’t think you are right about the nakedness. On the other hand, con-
cerning the ‘down-to earth account’ (of Himmelheber and Lysa’a relationship), I
know I have not managed to resolve it. That is why I let years go by before I wrote
the last chapter. [The account] has to be there, and has to be at this point [in the
story] where one character after another rises up, but it has to be different.”16
Landauer even writes that he would like to integrate Mauthner’s comments into
the manuscript.
Both Lachmann’s criticism that the incestuous father-daughter relation-
ship should not be intimated already at the beginning of the story, and Mauth-
ner’s view that it should not be disclosed at the end, point to one and the same
problem: how to represent the uncanny. And it is this problem that lies at the
heart of the novella, for it is the underlying question not just in the linking of the
critique of the law with sexuality, but rather also in the linking of violence with
liberation. This is the linkage which touches on Landauer’s “anarchistic” cultural
blueprint; Landauer ultimately chose not to change the enigmatic ending in the
published version of Himmelheber.
The hubris-motif, as epitomized in the figure of Himmelheber, points to an
imaginary genealogy of “life” underlying the whole narrative construction. Up
to the last scene Himmelheber is portrayed as a kind of Faustian director with
noticeably demonic traits. However, the ending shows that at the precise turning
point where murder and incest are coupled, Himmelheber is no longer master
over life. A strange power seems to issue from Tilsiter’s corpse, which in the end
draws Lysa to her death. A death for a death: is this to be understood as intrinsic
retribution? Everything that happens here happens outside of the boundaries of
the law, for as Landauer would later say in reference to Shakespeare’s Measure
for Measure, “no punishment is required because the order comes from with-
in.”17 Death and life stand opposite one another as coequal forces. The powerful,
dream-like nature of the last scene has to do with the fact that it is played out on
the threshold of life and death, of nature and culture. Himmelheber was working
against the ideals of the Jewish Torah and Christian agapé, in the service of Eros
15 Ibid., 120 f.
16 Ibid., 121.
17 Shakespeare II, 51.
and life. The nasty, childless marriage with Tilsiter is over. Judith and Ludwig, as
if regenerated, find one other, and the child can be born without disgrace. But the
decisive question is what elements are pushed aside in the narrative?
The strong rejection of conventional Jewish life is brought to bear exclusively
on the figure of the merchant Tilsiter. Here, Landauer plays in an ambiguous
way with the anti-Jewish clichés of the time. Certainly no trace of his critique is
to be found in the figure of Judith, who is also Jewish. It is no coincidence that
Ludwig imagines her to be aristocratic. Her desire for freedom and later on, to
separate from her husband, is never given an anti-Jewish connotation. And just
when she learns of her husband’s death, the midsummer’s night procession and
the singing of the words “Be glad, daughter of Zion,” can be heard in the back-
ground. As if hallucinating, she then perceives the words “rejoice, Jerusalem.”18
Himmelheber’s words, which had been profanatory up to this point, have sud-
denly reversed their meaning. A joyful affirmation of life as well as of its Jewish
origins is articulated here.
Ludwig on the other hand, with whom Judith joins up, is clearly marked
by his German Christian origins. The prerequisite for the construction of a new
human generation, then, has a definite German-Jewish connection. In fact, there
is only one feasible future constellation, namely one in which there is a pairing
of the feminine-Jewish and the masculine-Christian elements, and in which, both
the Jewish and Christian religions are dispensed with. The other configurations,
both the “intra-Jewish” connection – or “inbreeding” as it is dismissively termed
– between Judith and Tilsiter, and the “intra-German” – in fact, incestuous – rela-
tionship between Himmelheber and his daughter, are denounced as failures. In
a kind of vision, Lysa is addressed by the dead Tilsiter before she, as it were,
“joins” him in “naked death.” The scheme of relationships is not unlike that in
Goethe’s Wahlverwandtschaften; it is as if this literary motif has served here as a
tacit genealogical model.
All of the distinctive features of the main characters – origin, gender, reli-
gion, culture, even social rank – are elements of an “alchemical” play of signs.
This playing with signs serves as a symbolic construction of a utopian symbiosis,
with Himmelheber acting as its Faustian mediator. Interestingly enough, Landauer
remarked in his letter to Hedwig Lachmann, that he had divided himself between
the novella’s two male characters. Also worth noting is the fact that Landauer
claimed that the novella’s ending was only one side of his mysticism, the other side
of which was to be found in Dostoevsky.19 Landauer seems to have been aware of
the dangerous flip-side of anomism. But he was too Nietzschean to let his depiction
18 Macht und Mächte, 1923, 71.

19 See Lebensgang I, 22.
of the transgression of the law take on a messianic, or even apocalyptic dimension

– as was the case with Dostoevsky. In Landauer, there is a positive attitude with
regard to life that surpasses the pure negation of the law. The ending of Arnold Him-
melheber is mystical in the sense that it presents not some collective eschatology,
but rather an ecstatic, Dionysian eros as the agent of life and death.20
The transgression of laws here can thus be understood as an aesthetic affir-
mation of a realm beyond bourgeois culture, in which the “German” and “Jewish”
elements are ordered in a new way. Freud’s claim that the constitution of culture
must be defined in terms of the law of the (Jewish) father is well-known, and
especially in the wake of his Interpretation of Dreams, which appeared in 1900,
this view of culture has been seen in connection with the necessity of upholding
sexual taboos – specifically the repression of incest.21 Landauer, however, points
in the opposite direction: Himmelheber is not a classic father-figure, but rather
a lawless educator – not of his own biological children, but of a future, chosen
generation. With Freud, the violence of the law, as represented by the figure of
the father, is directed against the sons, and the desire of the son is aimed at the
mother. In Landauer’s story, on the other hand, it is the actual father who is inces-
tuous, and the violence of the fatherly educator is directed outwards, as if he
might serve as a “doctor of civilization,” and subvert the oedipal conflict.
Here we see Landauer’s structural opposition to the contemporary Freudian
interpretation of incest as a necessary cultural taboo; this is even clearer if one
recalls Landauer’s emphatically positive appraisal of Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s
revival of the Oedipus myth.22 In his Ödipus und die Sphinx (1906), Hofmannsthal
dramatically reworked the prehistory of the Sophoclean play, giving the material
a distinctly untragic reinterpretation, which Landauer outlines in his review: “If
I am correct, Jocaste is the one who, in more than one sense, takes Oedipus into
her matrix [Geschlecht]; the one who, in her embrace, gives birth to the son once
again.”23 Hofmannsthal’s play is in fact no longer about the guilt of the incestu-
ous Oedipus, as Freud had suggested in deciphering this central Sophoclean motif;
rather, it is about Dionysian rebirth through the conscious violation of taboos – just
like in Landauer’s novella. Since, in Hofmannsthal’s version of the play, the story
breaks off after the incestuous transgression, the tragic “trial” does not take place.
In this sense, it is probably no coincidence that Landauer later became one
of the first advocates of “Indian drama,” in which no oedipal motif is to be found.
20 Note that ‘Lysa’ is the feminine form for ‘Lysios,’ one of the names of Dionysos.
21 See Sigmund Freud, Die Traumdeutung (1900); Eng. trans.: The Interpretation of Dreams
(London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1913).
22 See Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Ödipus und die Sphinx (Berlin: Fischer, 1906).
23 G. Landauer, “Hofmannsthals ‘Ödipus’,” Das Blaubuch 28 (1907): 867.
This strong interest was underscored by his translation into German of works by
Rabindranath Tagore. Together with Hedwig Lachmann, Landauer translated
two of Tagore’s plays, The Post Office and The King of the Dark Chamber, which
appeared in German in 1918-1919. (See n. 4, above.) Landauer saw Tagore not as
a world-denying ascetic, like the religious virtuosos of the West, but rather as a
quasi-pantheistic devotee of life: “He is the first one [from this tradition], who …
did not disdain life, but instead talked his way out of life itself … For him, too,
this world and the world beyond, also life and death, are not opposites; Brahma
is not behind the world, but in all things, and in their bond of love.”24 Landau-
er’s comment about the ending of Post Office – a play which he was involved in
staging when it was first performed in Düsseldorf – is reminiscent of the conclu-
sion of his own Himmelheber: “There has perhaps never before been a dramatist
who … not only transfigures death, but makes it virtually pleasurable. Pleasur-
able, but in the finest, most delicately sensitive way, and joined with melancholy
like in the fleeting flash of a dream.”25 The death of Lysa is also presented in the
novella in a dream-like scene, concluding almost like an elegy. In dying, Lysa
recovers her singing voice, which otherwise fails her. At the last moment, her soft
spoken singing, or “Sprechgesang,” eclipses her father’s powerful words.26
A key question here is how was Landauer’s aesthetic utopia of mixed (i.e.,
German-Jewish) cultural origins affected by his reception of – specifically Jewish
– mysticism, following the appearance in 1906-1908 of Martin Buber’s first trans-
lations of Hasidic tales?27 There was certainly a shift in emphasis, as Landauer
now began to articulate a positive stance toward Jewish culture – without this
changing in any fundamental way his view of a necessary bipolar, German-Jewish
alliance. It is known that Landauer supported and followed with great interest
the revival of Hasidic legends by his friend Buber; on occasion he would use his
impressive oratorial skills to read to his circle of friends from Buber’s Tales of
Rabbi Nachman. In 1908, when Buber was preparing his Legend of the Baal-Shem
for print, it was to Landauer that he turned for comments on the manuscript.28
Landauer’s reply came publicly in the form of a laudatory review in the journal
24 G. Landauer, “Rabindranath Tagore,” Das Programm: Blätter der Münchner Kammerspiele 10
(1916): 6f.
25 Ibid.
26 See L. Jäger, “Der Herr des Lebens und die Anarchie: Zu Landauers Novelle ‘Arnold Himmel-
heber’,” in Gespräch, 9f.
27 See Martin Buber, Die Geschichten des Rabbi Nachman, (Frankfurt/Main: Rütten & Loening,
1906); Die Legende des Baalschem (Frankfurt/Main: Rütten & Loening, 1908).
28 See letter to Paula Buber-Winkler, December 1906, in M. Buber, Briefwechsel aus sieben Jahr-
zehnten, vol. 1 (Heidelberg: Lambert-Schneider), 252; and letter to Landauer, 16 January 1908,
ibid., 260.
Das literarische Echo. Above all, he highlighted Buber’s revival of Jewish myth
– as it flourished in the Hasidic art of storytelling – from the spirit of German lan-
guage and poetry.29 Throughout, Landauer saw Buber’s work on Hasidic mysti-
cism in relation to motifs from his own early literary work. In Hasidism, Landauer
discerned a mystical literature that appeared to him to be the negative pole of his
own mysticism in Himmelheber: “[Hasidism] does not have that ecstatic-erotic
coloring … that we know in some eastern traditions … everything metallically
demonic … all wildness, all joyful exuberance and blissful ecstasy is completely
missing.”30 Yet, to Landauer Hasidic mysticism was a lived experience of “unend-
ing joy,” and as such represented another – albeit no longer Dionysian – type of
affirmation of life.
What is interesting in this context, is that Landauer considered Buber, this
literary representative of Jewish mysticism, not only as “a renewer of Judaism for
humankind,” but at the same time as “a reviver and advocate of a specifically
feminine way of thinking [frauenhaftes Denken].”31 In an essay written in honor
of Buber in 1913, Landauer articulates something he had already hinted at in his
own aesthetic construction of a “new life,” namely, the link between the transfor-
mation of Jewish identity and the rise of a specifically modern “women’s culture.”
Buber’s pointed disagreement with this assertion may lie in the fact that he – in
contrast to Landauer – adhered to a German-Jewish construct in which the Jewish
component was unequivocally pegged as masculine.32
In positing his aesthetic utopia of a crossing of elements from the Jewish and
German cultural traditions – and this was one of the reasons he distanced himself
from any metaphorics of purity – Landauer took up a most singular position
between Mauthner on the one hand, and Buber on the other. Landauer showed
no desire to repress Jewish culture; this is clear from his sharp criticism of Mauth-
ner, who had advocated assimilation in an article written for Arthur Landsberg-
er’s and Sombart’s anthology Judentaufe (1912).33 Yet Judaism could not become
the basic core of his identity, as it had for Buber. This also explains why Landauer
distanced himself from a cultural Zionism, which might become too strongly tied
to the “ground” (Boden). Indeed, Landauer saw “nation” above all in terms of a
language community and never as something anchored to territory. In his view,
29 See G. Landauer, “Die Legende des Baalschem,” in Das literarische Echo (October 1910): 148 f.
30 WM 1921, 247.
31 Ibid., 249.
32 This seems to be confirmed – among other things – by the fact that Die Legende des Baalschem,
which was written in close collaboration with his German wife, Paula Winkler, was published
under his name alone; see B. Hahn, Unter falschem Namen (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1991),
92 ff.
33 G. Landauer to F. Mauthner, 20 November 1913, Lebensgang I, 450 f.
the only possible model for the relationship between Judaism and socialism was
the Diaspora.34 Such a position, which was totally untypical for his time, shows
Landauer’s marked tendency to distance himself from collective thinking; for
him, all judgments and decisions – even those concerning Judaism – were deter-
mined on an individual basis alone.35
Paul Mendes-Flohr has aptly noted that, with Landauer, the outer limit of an
aesthetical self-affirmation of the Jewish element in turn-of-the-century German
culture was reached.36 This seems an appropriate remark, inasmuch as Landauer
always rejected the final leap into the religious realm. Yet, it is not only as an aes-
thetic affirmation, but rather also as a quasi-anthropological statement that Lan-
dauer refers to a unity of diversity. Thus, in his essay, “Sind das Ketzergedanken?”
(“Are these Heretical Thoughts?”), he writes: “Far more – to the extent that there
is a ‘more’ – than the Frenchman Chamisso was a German poet, am I, the Jew, a
German … As two brothers … are loved by their mother to the same degree, if not
in the same way … [S]o too I experience this strange and intimate coexistence as
a valuable one, and I see in this relationship nothing primary or secondary … . I
accept the complexity that I am and hope to be an even more multifarious unity
than I am now aware of.”37 It is precisely the paradox of such a manifold unity –
Spinoza’s philosophical legacy – which the history of subsequent decades was to
render impossible. Landauer’s brutal murder in 1919 was but an ominous fore-
shadowing of that future history.
34 See “Judentum und Sozialismus,” (1912) Die Arbeit: Organ der Zionistischen Volkssozialisti-
schen Partei (June 1920): 50-51; reprint in WA III, 158-159.
35 “Only the has-become/is-becoming lives … only he who takes himself, as he sincerely and
truly is, along on the journey to his promised land, in that alone, does Judaism seem to me to be
a living good” (emphasis mine); WM 1921, 127 f.
36 P. Mendes-Flohr, Divided Passions: Jewish Intellectuals and the Experience of Modernity (De-
troit: Wayne State Univ. Press, 1991), 108.
37 WM 1921, 126.
Corinna R. Kaiser
Gustav Landauer’s Early Novella
Geschwister: Dying to Communicate
1 Gustav Landauer’s literary works – corpus and
critical reception
In May 1890, the twenty-year-old aspiring writer Gustav Landauer spent a few
days around Pentecost with friends at the Baltic Sea spa Swinemünde (today
Świnoujście, Poland), about 250 km from Berlin.1 Though he would use this
Christian holiday’s central motif of the split tongues of fire that speak different
languages, only later in his novel Der Todesprediger, language, speaking, and
communication were clearly on his mind at that time.2 As we know from a letter
of 26 May 1890 to his friend Ida Wolf, he had just begun to write the fictional story
of a brother and a sister who fail in their quest to overcome their human desires.
Landauer returned to Berlin after his short vacation, but for the siblings in what
was become his novella Geschwister it was a trip of no return: Landauer has them
commit suicide by drowning in the sea on Swinemünde’s beach, tied together in
eternal conversation with the sister’s teeth firmly dug into her brother’s ear.
Gustav Landauer is known as a philosopher, anarchist, revolutionary, and
theater critic, but is rarely seen or discussed as a writer of literature. My essay is a
contribution to remedy this oversight and also illustrates how his early texts herald
the thoughts on language that he later formulated in Skepsis und Mystik (1903) and
other non-fictional texts. Quantitatively, his literary works play a rather minor role
in the corpus of his work. He published only one novel, Der Todesprediger (1893),
the three novellas, Ein Knabenleben (1891), Lebendig tot (1903), and Arnold Himmel-
heber (1903) – also known under its first title Lebenskunst (1896/97) – , two short
literary fairytales, Der gelbe Stein (1909) and Der Kinderdieb (1919), and two collec-
1 The following archival material has been used: Gustav Landauer Archives of Amsterdam
(GLAA): files 36, 40, 45, 73, 98. Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis, Amsterdam,
The Netherlands; Gustav Landauer Archives of Jerusalem (GLAJ): MS. Var. 432, file 89, The Na-
tional Library of Israel, Jerusalem. Landauer frequently underlined words or sentences in his
texts; all underlines had to be replaced by italics.
2 It was also the time of Shavuot, with 24 May 1890 being Erev Shavuot. Since Landauer refers
only to Pentecost, I will not explore here the possible relation between Shavuot which celebrates
the giving of the Torah, i.e., the old law in Leviticus and Deuteronomy that prohibits incest, and
the novella.
Gustav Landauer’s Early Novella Geschwister: Dying to Communicate 133
tions of anecdotes.3 However, he also left behind a number of unpublished literary

manuscripts, including the early novella Geschwister.4
The critical reception of Landauer’s literary writings was for many years any-
thing but favorable. In a 1970 essay on Nietzsche’s influence on Landauer, Luc
Lambrechts criticizes Landauer’s excessive style and “tendency towards kitsch
effects.”5 He dismisses Landauer as a hack writer, a verdict that had a long-term
impact. In 1987, Walter Fähnders wrote in a similar vein about Landauer’s Ein
Knabenleben, Arnold Himmelheber, Lebendig tot, and Der gelbe Stein that “these
texts, which revolve around love and free choice of a spouse, are incredibly
pompous and bad.”6 Three years later, Philippe Despoix undertook a close study
of the relationship between dream and reality in Der Todesprediger, Arnold Him-
melheber, Der gelbe Stein, and Skepsis und Mystik, and his overall view of the
quality of Landauer‘s literary texts concurred with that of his predecessors.7
First steps towards a critical reevaluation of Landauer’s literary merits were
made at a conference in Düsseldorf in 1995, when Lorenz Jäger offered the first
detailed analysis of the novella Arnold Himmelheber.8 At the same conference,
Thomas Regehly discussed Landauer’s “stormy confessions” in the novellas
Arnold Himmelheber, Lebendig tot, and Ein Knabenleben, the novel Der Todespre-
diger, and the literary fairytale Der gelbe Stein. Subsequently published, these two
essays were the first to pay attention to the subject of communication in Landau-
er’s literary works, “communication about catastrophes as well as catastrophic
communication,” to quote Regehly.9 Seen from this angle, Landauer’s texts can
3 Der Todesprediger (Dresden: Heinrich Minden, 1893); “Ein Knabenleben,” in Das Magazin für
Litteratur, 60 (1891), 26 Dec 1891, 821-825; “Lebendig tot,” in idem, Macht und Mächte (Berlin:
Egon Fleischel, 1903); “Lebenskunst,” in Litterarische Beilage zum Sozialist, 2 (1896), nos. 40,
41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51 (3 Oct 1896–19 Dec 1896), 3 (1897), nos. 12-14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19,
20, 22, 23 (3 Apr 1897–5 Jun 1897). “Lebenskunst” was later published in a revised version under
the title “Arnold Himmelheber” in idem, Macht und Mächte (Berlin: Egon Fleischel, 1903), 1-79.
4 More extensively on Landauer’s novella Geschwister and all his published and unpublished
literary writing see: Corinna R. Kaiser: Gustav Landauer als Schriftsteller: Sprache, Schweigen,
Musik, (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013).
5 Luc Lambrechts, “Die schöpferische Prosa Gustav Landauers. Nietzsche-Rezeption und künst
lerische Gestaltung,” Studia Germanica Gandensia 12 (1970): 231.
6 Walter Fähnders, Anarchismus und Literatur. Ein vergessenes Kapitel deutscher Literaturge-
schichte zwischen 1890 und 1910 (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1987), 206.
7 Philippe Despoix, “Von der Bühne zur Geschichte: Gustav Landauer,” IASL 15/2 (1990): 146-168.
8 Lorenz Jäger, “Der Herr des Lebens und die Anarchie: Zu Landauers Novelle ‘Arnold Himmel-
heber,’” in Gustav Landauer im Gespräch, 1-10.
9 Thomas Regehly, “‘Stürmische Bekenntnisse’: Gustav Landauers literarische Arbeiten,” 23, in
Gustav Landauer im Gespräch. Symposium zum 125. Geburtstag, ed. Hanna Delf and Gert Mat-
tenklott (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1997 [= Conditio Judaica; 18]), 11-23.
134 Corinna R. Kaiser
be understood as expressions of the modernist concern with language that was

characteristic of German and European turn-of-the-century literature with such
seminal texts as Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s A Letter (1902).10 I shall argue that, in
some respects, Landauer was even a forerunner of fin-de-siécle language skep-
ticism – but unnoticed because his early writings remained unpublished and
because he lacked the literary skills of writers such as von Hofmannsthal.
Before Landauer turned to non-fiction, he not only chose communication
and language as topics for his literary writings but also experimented with possi-
ble solutions to the paradoxical situation that, as a writer, his only tool to criticize
language was language. Luc Lambrechts acknowledges that Landauer had broken
away from traditional genres and forms, but does not appreciate his experiments
as a characteristic of modernist literature. Landauer, he claims, had simply not
been able to consolidate a new cohesive form when he overstepped established
boundaries. In his careful analysis of Landauer’s quotations from and references
to Nietzsche, Lambrechts discredits Landauer’s intertextuality as an inadequate
attempt to really acquire and absorb the ideas of others rather than recognizing
it as a distinctive feature of his writing.11 Bernd Witte, on the other hand, in his
essay on Landauer’s place in German-Jewish literature and intellectual history,
suggests that it is by virtue of Landauer’s densely intertextual writing, i.e., the
implicit and explicit references to other works of literature, that all of Landauer’s
texts should be seen as literature. He however criticizes Landauer for going about
it in a very amateur fashion, and argues that Landauer found his own distinctive
style only when he became aware of his Jewish identity, with the result that his
“speeches and essays become commentaries, which relate to the canonical texts
of German and European literature in a systematic manner.”12
Even though they differ in their assessment of Landauer’s use of literary and
philosophical references, Lambrechts and Witte concur in their low opinion of his
expository skills – a verdict that neither can nor shall be refuted. But was he really
a complete dilettante before he came to terms with his Jewishness? And when
exactly would that have been? As late as his acquaintance with Martin Buber?
Or, as I suggest, should not Landauer’s early literary works rather be read in a
different context, as examples of texts written by a German Jew who had his roots
in the Landjudentum (rural Jewry), on the threshold between the romantic ideas
10 Hugo von Hofmannsthal, “Ein Brief” (1902), in idem, Sämtliche Werke XXXI. Erfundene Ge-
spräche und Briefe, ed. Ellen Ritter (Frankfurt/Main: Fischer, 1991), 45-55.
11 See Lambrechts, “Schöpferische Prosa,” 222.
12 Bernd Witte, “Zwischen Haskala und Chassidut. Gustav Landauer im Kontext der deutsch-jü-
dischen Literatur- und Geistesgeschichte,” 39, in Gustav Landauer im Gespräch, 25-41.
of the nineteenth century – in particular its affinity to music –,13 and the emerg-
ing twentieth-century urban literary modernism and skepticism of language that
Landauer encountered in Berlin and elsewhere?
Therefore, my critical study of the novella Geschwister focuses on three
aspects: First, Landauer’s language criticism as a critique of society; second, the
intertextual references he weaves into his text in order to allow his protagonists
to communicate when they cannot express in their own words what needs to be
expressed, and to point his readers to what he himself wants to say but cannot;
and, third, his first tentative steps towards the “musicalization” – to adopt
Werner Wolf’s term14 – of his fiction not only as an instrument to overcome the
limitations of language but also as a foretaste of the idea Landauer later devel-
ops in Skepsis and Mystik of humans as swaying, reverberating “Gefühlspunkte”
(speckles of emotion) that communicate without language but in a universe filled
with these sounds.
2 Geschwister
In 1992, Christoph Knüppel published a first overview of some of Landauer’s early
unpublished literary texts, such as the novellas Glück and Geschwister, and the
drama Hilde Hennings, in a thorough biographical study of Landauer’s develop-
ment as a writer and his attempts to publish his texts. Knüppel writes that the
subject of Geschwister is “the sensual love of a pair of siblings that is, in the face of
social conventions, of course, doomed to failure”;15 thereby, he challenged Ruth
Link-Salinger Hyman’s earlier statement that the two were “lovers, not brother
and sister.”16 In the following, I show that they were both – siblings and lovers –
and how Landauer wanted this constellation to be understood.
As mentioned above, Landauer began working on this delicate subject in
May 1890 in Swinemünde.17 He had just finished his drama Hilde Hennings and
13 See Barbara Naumann, Musikalisches Ideen-Instrument. Das Musikalische in Poetik und

Sprachtheorie der Frühromantik (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1990).
14 Werner Wolf, The Musicalization of Fiction. A Study in the Theory and History of Intermedial-
ity. (Amsterdam; Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1999 [=Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und
Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft; 35]).
15 Christoph Knüppel, “Die Politisierung eines Literaten. Gustav Landauer in den Jahren 1888-
1892,” 164, in Gustav Landauer (1870-1919). Eine Bestandsaufnahme zur Rezeption seines Werkes,
ed. Leonhard M. Fiedler et al. (Frankfurt/Main; New York: Campus, 1995), 157-186.
16 Ruth Link-Salinger Hyman, Gustav Landauer. Philosopher of Utopia. With a scholarly bibliog-
raphy ‘Oeuvres Gustav Landauer,’ ed. Arthur Hyman (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1977), 32.
17 Gustav Landauer to Ida Wolf, Swinemünde, 26 April 1890, GLAA 98.
offered it to Paul Schlenther, the influential theatre critic and co-founder of the
well-known Berlin Freie Bühne, in the hope of seeing it staged by this theater.
While in Swinemünde, Landauer first considered writing another drama, and it
is not known when or why he abandoned his original plan in favor of the novella.
On 30 June 1890, he sent a first draft of the story’s conclusion to his friend Ida
Wolf. The complete manuscript, which he finished in August 1890, shows only a
few marginal changes compared to that draft. Over the following years, Landauer
made repeated attempts to find a publisher for the novella. His friend Fritz Mau-
thner, who held a positive view of Geschwister, supported him in this:
I enjoyed it to the end, and I deliberated over whether I should publish this spirited piece or
not. I finally decided not to, because I can’t rule out the possibility of prosecution and I need
to protect my young journal. However, I’m not returning the manuscript to you because I’d
like to suggest something to you: I will look for a publisher for the story and then, when it
has been printed, I shall express my enthusiastic opinion about it.18
In 1895, Landauer wrote Mauthner about his renewed efforts to find a publisher
for the novella. Even after five years – and by then the published author of Der
Todesprediger – he was still convinced that the novella was worthy of being
printed: “Today, I sent Geschwister and Knabenleben to Mr. Langen; I also prom-
ised him Lebenskunst, which I have finally finished.”19 The distinguished pub-
lisher Albert Langen did not accept the manuscript, however.20
Landauer’s Geschwister tells the story of the siblings Franz and Marie whose
relationship is of a closer and more sensual nature than is usual for Geschwister-
liebe, or love between a brother and a sister. After their parents’ death, they are
torn between their unspoken sensvol desires and constraining moral conventions
– not to mention a fear of possible legal consequences. The story opens with Marie
re-reading letters her brother wrote her after he had moved out of their parents’
house while she waits for him to return home for a visit. Recently engaged in
response to Marie’s refusal to live with him as husband and wife and her deci-
sion to become a teacher instead, Franz will be accompanied by his fiancée
Helene and her mother. From the letters the reader learns that Franz does not
love Helene, he does not even respect her. The relationship deteriorates further
during the visit to his parental home, and the engagement is finally broken off
18 Fritz Mauthner to Gustav Landauer, in Gustav Landauer – Fritz Mauthner: Briefwechsel: 1890-
1919, ed. Hanna Delf and Julius H. Schoeps (Munich: Beck, 1994), no. 1a, 3. The editor Hanna
Delf notes that Landauer quotes Mauthner’s letter several times, but that the letter itself is lost.
19 Gustav Landauer to Fritz Mauthner, Bregenz, 30 July 1895, in Landauer – Mauthner Briefwech-
sel, no. 9, 7.
20 Landauer – Mauthner Briefwechsel, 371.
when Franz persuades Marie to live with him in their parents’ house in a relation-
ship that is appropriate for siblings. Franz has found a position as a lawyer while
Marie teaches at a girls’ school. After a night in which they realize they cannot
control their sensual desires, they decide to “go away.”21 The phrase “gehn wir
fort,” or “let’s go away,” not only indicates that they will leave the place where
they grew up, but it is also a euphemism for their intention to commit suicide
together. Landauer gives only a hint that, either in Swinemünde or on their way
to the spa, the siblings commit incest before they die.
3 Incest
Incest is a pervasive leitmotif in certain of Landauer’s literary texts. Few schol-
ars, however, have attempted go beyond Freudian psychoanalytical explanations
or general observations about the ubiquity of the incest motif in literature, and
to analyze the specific role incest plays in Landauer’s literary writings.22 Lorenz
Jäger, for example, explains the motif with Landauer’s anarchism. He claims that
the most common objection to anarchism – namely that it means tyranny or will
inevitably turn into such – is confirmed by the novella Arnold Himmelheber. Not
only does the anarchist Himmelheber live in an incestuous relationship with his
daughter, he also acts as a self-appointed master over life and death as already
implied in his name ‘Himmelheber’ which means either ‘to lift heaven’ or ‘to lift
somebody or something up to heaven’ in the sense of killing somebody. According
to Jäger, Landauer achieves this effect by challenging the incest taboo, the cul-
tural mechanism that guarantees the development from nature to culture.23 Jäger
thus suggests that the incestuous relationship has to be understood literally, with
physical incest and corporeal brutality at its core. This interpretation reduces
Landauer’s individualistic, philosophical anarchism to a version of violent anar-
chism, bent on political assassinations, of the propaganda of the deed.
As an alternative view, I read the incest motif in Geschwister symbolically,
thereby following the lead Landauer himself gives in texts that are related to
21 GLAJ 89, 86-67. Two manuscripts of Geschwister are known to exist. The Ms. in GLAA 45 has to
be considered the first, and the one in GLAJ 89 the final one. “Vorläufiger Entwurf des Schlusses”
and “Widmung an eine Freundin” can be found in GLAA 40, the letter to his brother Fritz Lan-
dauer, in which Landauers gives an interpretation of the novella, in GLAA 73. I always cite Ge-
schwister from the Jerusalem manuscript in GLAJ 89.
22 Cf. Otto Rank, Das Inzest-Motiv in Dichtung und Sage. Grundzüge einer Psychologie des dichte-
rischen Schaffens (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgemeinschaft, 1974), 22.
23 Jäger, “Herr des Lebens,” 8/9.
Geschwister. In 1890, while he was trying to get the novella published, he wrote
in a letter to his brother: “I would maintain on the basis of my own and others’
experience that any representative piece of art is symbolic in the sense that some-
thing particular is represented as a typical example of something general.”24 He
sheds more light on the ‘something general’ that is represented by incest and on
his attempt to redefine the terms ‘brother,’ ‘sister,’ and ‘incest’ in the “Widmung
an eine Freundin” by which he dedicated the novella to his friend Ida Wolf:
It was not the abnormal case of sexual love between two full siblings that intrigued me,
but something very different, much deeper, was on my mind. No other example shows
more clearly how empty and trivial the moral doctrines of the utilitarians, who want to
reduce everything to its usefulness, basically are. How could one refuse sexual inter-
course between brother and sister if their stale doctrine of moral order were right. In this
prohibition, which is generally held to be sacred as no other, there is rather a triumph
of the true divine morality which at least wants to keep out anything sordid, impure,
and bestial from the ideal relations between parents and children, brother and sister.
This, however, is such an elevated, I should say, religious obligation, which, considering
the world as it is now, only exquisite human beings can be obliged to fulfill by dint of their
reason and willpower. For the present, however, it is a mystery to me how the state wants
to interfere in this matter since it does not otherwise concern itself, and for a long time will
not be able to concern itself, with what I call high morality. But are those few exquisite men
and women not all siblings? Do they only fear the filth when they come from one womb?
No, their soul is of such a divine nature, they have rid themselves of the beast so entirely,
that they spend their lives in joyful renunciation and chaste love – without police and state.
Do not be angry with me, dear friend, that I did not allow my pair [...] to become two such
divine creatures. I was not able to represent what I could not find anywhere on earth. Surely,
the high ideal for which they fought lived in their spirit. As children of their time, they did
not achieve it. Stones those men and women may throw, who refrain from touching their
blood brothers and sisters, but who have never reflected upon the noble motive for this
human custom, who do not suspect that this is the point from which the pure brotherly and
sisterly love has to spread so that we rise above the bestial filth and all become siblings.25
Landauer thus acknowledges the extraordinary moral value of the incest prohi-
bition, but he widens the definition of ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ to include the few
men and women who live up to, or at least strive for, a higher, divine morality to
become brothers and sisters in a new sense of the words. Living in chaste rela-
tionships with each other, they obey the incest prohibition even though they
are not related by blood; thereby, they extent the area in which this prohibition
is operative, but they do so out of moral conviction and not because the state
24 Gustav Landauer to Fritz Landauer, GLAA 73.

25 “Widmung an eine Freundin,” GLAA 40. With this letter, Landauer dedicated the novella to
his friend Ida Wolf.
imposes a law onto them. Landauer admits that this is – for the moment – only a
utopian ideal and nothing that is already being practiced, and that those who try
to achieve this ideal are likely to fail. To illustrate why and how they fail, he wrote
the novella Geschwister.
Geschwister is not the first text in which Landauer tackles this complex idea.
Already one of his earliest literary attempts, three versions of an unfinished
drama called Kain that he wrote in 1885, addresses the subject.26 One of the
reasons he failed to complete Kain is that he could not settle on one explana-
tion for the conflict between the brothers Cain and Abel. Two reasons commonly
offered are a dispute about the right path to wisdom or a dispute about personal
property. A third possible cause can be found in Rabbinic Aggadic texts according
to which Cain and Abel had one or more sister(s).27 Some argue that Cain and
Abel were only half-brothers; others reason that, since Adam and Eve were the
first people on earth, their children had sexual intercourse because there were no
other possible partners. Thus, the incest prohibition is turned into its opposite: it
becomes a necessity and moral obligation to unite with one’s brother or sister in
an incestuous relationship. Landauer developed a similar scenario for his time: a
new creation or generation in the beginning of only a few ‘new people’ who were
striving for a new world. As the first generation, these ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ can
be expected to be attracted to each other and to engage in sexual relations – even
if they fight the inclination – because there are no other suitable partners. Giving
in to their urges is considered a failure, but in this exceptional constellation, the
incest prohibition loses its absolute validity just as it did for the children of Adam
and Eve.
4 Literary Intertexts
As mentioned above, a texture of rich intertextual references – implicit and
explicit – characterizes Gustav Landauer’s literary works; this expository strat-
egy was his main instrument to express his langage skepticism without abandon-
ing language. Already the title Geschwister, points to some literary texts of which
26 Kain, 3 sketches, GLAA 36.

27 See V[ictor] Aptowitzer, Kain und Abel in der Agada, den Apokryphen, der hellinistischen,
christlichen und muhammedanischen Literatur (Vienna; Leipzig: Löwit, 1922), 1-28; and more re-
cently Lieve M. Teugels: “The Twin Sisters of Cain and Abel: A Survey of the Rabbinic Sources,”
in Gerard P. Luttikhuizen, Eve’s children: The Biblical Stories Retold and Interpreted in Jewish and
Christian Traditions (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2003), 47-56.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s short drama of the same title is the first.28 Goethe
had a significant influence on Landauer, but, as Gerd Mattenklott has demon-
strated, it is unfortunately impossible completely to reconstruct his reading of
Goethe.29 Goethe’s drama Geschwister, written in 1776, was still popular more
than a century later; in 1887 alone it was staged twenty-four times. It can there-
fore be reasonably expected that Landauer as well as his readers were familiar
with the text. Choosing the identical title was also a way to intentionally mislead
the reader and build up expectations for a conciliatory solution, a revelation à
la Goethe that the brother and sister are not related. While Landauer did not live
up to this expectation, both texts share one important element, the third person
– Helene in Landauer’s story, and Fabrice in Goethe’s – whose entrance prompts
the escalation of the conflict between the siblings.
It is just a short way from Goethe’s Geschwister to Christian Fürchtegott Gel-
lert’s Das Leben der Schwedischen Gräfin G*** ,30 in parts an epistolary novel
like Landauer’s Geschwister. In Goethe’s and Gellert’s texts, the sister’s name is
Marianne, whereas Landauer opted for the shorter but related name Marie. In
1888, the German naturalist writer Hermann Sudermann (1857-1928) published
two novellas in a volume titled Geschwister.31 A keen theatergoer, Landauer was
surely familiar with Suderman’s plays, which premiered in the late 1880s and
early ‘90s in Berlin’s Lessingtheater. Sudermann’s stories do not break with the
incest taboo, but they depict very close brother-sister relationships that end in
disaster when a third person enters the scene as a partner of one of the siblings.
His constellations of three persons that fall short of developing into fully-fledged
ménages-à-trois are remarkably similar to that in Landauer’s novella.
Just by a reference to well-known literary works of the same title, Landauer
prepares his readers for what lies ahead: the story of a love between a brother and
a sister that is more intense than what is usually accepted, escalated by a third
28 Johann Wolfgang Goethe: “Die Geschwister” (1776), in idem, Sämtliche Werke. Briefe, Tagebü-
cher und Gespräche, ed. Hendrik Birus et al. Part I, vol. 5 (Frankfurt/Main: Deutscher Klassiker,
1988), 9-28.
29 See Gerd Mattenklott: “Landauers Goethe-Lektüre,” 58/59, in Gustav Landauer im Gespräch,
55-68. In 1916 Landauer gave his fifth lecture at the ‘Berliner Frauenclub von 1900’ about
“Goethe’s Geschwister and its connection with Charlotte vom Stein;” cf. Rolf Kauffeldt and Mi-
chael Matzigkeit, “Öffentliche Reden und Vorträge Gustav Landauer,” 359, in idem., Gustav Lan-
dauer: Zeit und Geist. Kulturkritische Schriften 1890-1919, (Munich: Boer, 1997), 355-362.
30 Christian Fürchtegott Gellert, “Das Leben der Schwedischen Gräfinn von G***“(1747), in
idem., Gesammelte Schriften. Kritische, kommentierte Ausgabe, ed. Bernd Witte, vol. IV (Berlin;
New York: de Gruyter, 1989), 1-96.
31 Hermann Sudermann, “Geschwister” (1888), in idem, Gesamt-Ausgabe in sechs Bänden, vol.
1 (Stuttgart; Berlin: Cotta, 1919).
person who is the partner of one of the siblings, and presented at least partially
in the form of an epistolary novel.
5 Brotherly letters
Landauer wrote the first part of his novella in the form of letters to avoid offend-
ing his readers’ sensibilities, as he revealed to his brother Fritz: “In this way it is
possible to briefly touch upon, rather than to represent in detail some of those
things that would perhaps have left delicate souls dismayed.”32 But the episto-
lary form has other functions too, namely to mark the story as a love story and
to utilize the difference between the written and the spoken word to hone his
critique of language.
From the very beginning, the letters the brother and sister exchange charac-
terize the story as a love story, though not – if one forgets the title for a moment
– necessarily as a story of a love between siblings that violates convention. Lan-
dauer provides the first clue in the description of the outer attributes of the letters:
Marie keeps the letters in her desk, veiled in rose-colored paper and laced with
blue silk ribbons; though he stops short of adding scent to the letters, this is also a
typical example of Landauer’s use of kitschy stereotypes that earned him the title
of a hack. Moving inwards, the text hints are still in a somewhat exterior layer:
the salutation and closing formulas, which give no evidence of a correspondence
between a brother and a sister. Marie refers to her pen pal as “the beloved writer
of the lovely letters” without speaking of him as her brother.33 The reader learns
only at the end of the first letter, in which Franz assures Marie how unlikely it is
that he will get married in near future, that it is a brother who offers kisses to his
sister. The body of the letter is full of intimations as to why he refuses marriage.
Marie reading the letters is the inception of a form of meta-communication, a
discourse about writing, reading, and speaking that is the essence of the novella:
unable to find words for their own situation, emotions, wishes, and plans, Franz
and Marie make do with uttering references to what others have written or said, to
discussions about norms and expectations of how one should speak and write in
different circumstances, and to gender-specific reading recommendations. Franz
advises Marie to read Shakespeare, lamenting the fact that he does not know a
single woman who loves and understands Shakespeare: “I would warmly recom-
mend Shakespeare to you, but I have not yet met a girl who understands or loves

33 GLAJ 89, 4.
him as passionately as I. And still they say that I should get married!!”34 Marie
picks up this explicit literary reference in the fourth letter as it offers her a safe
way to propose symbolically to her brother. The obstacle to getting married, the
fact that no woman loves and understands Shakespeare as much as Franz does,
has been removed and there is a wife for him: his sister who has not only read
Shakespeare but has found his writing “really striking and deeply felt.”35
On the other hand, literature can also keep the siblings at a distance from
one another, because of, as Franz believes, gender-specific approaches to litera-
ture. He shuns women’s ill-advised reading habits of his time that were shaped by
popular guides that recommend only select texts for women to read. Shakespeare,
for example, is listed only once in eight popular guides.36 Alongside the normative
approach of establishing a canon of suitable reading material for women, these
guides distributed information about male and female reading habits that is not too
far from current research on reading and gender. When reading Shakespeare, Marie
not only understands his texts on a cognitive level, but she is also deeply moved on
an emotional level. This kind of emotional identification with literature prompted
the nineteenth-century warnings of girls reading too much and too empathically
– exactly the way of reading that Landauer champions here. One of his sources on
the subject may have been the journal Über Land und Meer to which his parents
subscribed and to which he submitted in 1885 his first published text, the poem,
“Frühlings Einzug.”37 Amalie Baisch, author of a reading guide for women, also
wrote for Über Land und Meer, where her husband Otto Baisch was editor-in-chief.
In the first letters, Landauer establishes a relationship between Franz and
Marie that reminds one of that in Goethe’s letters to his sister Cornelia; at a closer
glance, however, it echoes even more that in Heinrich von Kleist’s writings to his
fiancée Wilhelmine von Zenge. Kleist, whom Landauer admired as the author with
the most polished language,38 once bought Schiller’s Wallenstein for his fiancée.
34 GLAJ 89, 11.

35 GLAJ 89, 12.
36 See Bildung und Kultur bürgerlicher Frauen 1850-1918. Eine Quellendokumentation aus An-
standsbüchern und Lebenshilfen für Mädchen und Frauen als Beitrag zur weiblichen literarischen
Sozialisation, ed. Günter Häntzschel (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1986 [= Studien und Texte zur Sozial-
geschichte der Literatur; 15]), 377-449.
37 “Tagebuch des jungen Gustav Landauer (1884-1886),” 13 March 1885: “Auch schrieb ich einen
Brief an ‘Über Land und Meer’, worin ich ihnen mein Gedicht ‘Frühlings Einzug’ zur Beurteilung
und falls es ihnen gefiele, zur Veröffentlichung vorlegte.” “... die beste Sensation ist das Ewige ...”
Gustav Landauer – Leben, Werk und Wirkung, ed. Michael Matzigkeit (Düsseldorf: Theatermuse-
um, Dumont-Lindemann-Archiv, 1995), 35.
38 See Gustav Landauer, “Martin Buber,” 168, in Gustav Landauer: Werkausgabe, ed. Gert Mat-
tenklott and Hanna Delf, vol. 3 “Dichter, Ketzer, Außenseiter. Essays und Reden zu Literatur,
Philosophie, Judentum,” ed. Hanna Delf (Berlin: Akademie, 1997), 162-170.
In the letter Kleist sent her together with the book, he explains how reading the
same text will bring them together: “Read him, dear girl, I will read him, too. Then
our souls will also unite in the third element.”39 He also instructs her to identify
with Thekla and to see himself as Max. Whereas Landauer refers with the title of
his novella to other texts that center around incestuous relationships between
brothers and sister and uses Shakespeare to create a bond between Franz and
Marie through shared reading attitudes, his reference to Kleist, which is much
more delicate as it draws a clear parallel between the engaged couple and the sib-
lings, is hidden and less easy to identify. Both Kleist and Landauer’s protagonist
are delighted about women who feel “deeply moved” by reading; Landauer even
uses Kleists’s exact words: “tief empfinden,” or “to feel deeply.” He also adopts
Kleist’s words “inniges Interesse, or “heartfelt interest,” to let Franz express
his surprise about his sister’s interest in literature, just as Kleist was surprised
about his fiancée’s.40 And just as Kleist does in his letters, Landauer’s protago-
nists always offer kisses in closing their letters as a substitute for kissing the real
person. Kleist bought books not only for his fiancée, but also for his sister Ulrike
to whom he gave similar reading advice, though without the sensual undertones.
For Landauer’s Franz, sister and lover are one person, and his advice is not purely
educational as Goethe’s and Kleist’s was for their sisters, but he strives to form
through reading the emotional bond Kleist had with his fiancée.
Withstanding Franz’s open and hidden hints, Marie rejects his proposal to
live together, and in response he changes his writing. Brother and sister realize
that they cannot speak frankly about their feelings. Franz asks his sister not to
stop sending letters, but to limit herself to small talk and to avoid anything too
personal. In that way, they can communicate without saying anything and the
letters themselves, their very materiality, replaces the content – the medium
becomes the message. Now that the content is no longer important, the material-
ity of the letters has to change in order to express changing feelings and moods.
Franz indicates a certain distance by sending a postcard – the only one he sends
his sister in the novella. Marie, too, takes steps to escape the incestuous reading
experience she shares with her brother and enrolls in college to become a teacher,
a professional reader and interpreter of literature. Both actions, Franz’s postcard
and Marie’s professionalization, are similar in that they shun the intimacy of the
sealed letters for something open and public.
39 Heinrich von Kleist to Wilhelmine von Zenge, 16 August 1800, in Heinrich von Kleist, “Briefe,”
517/18, in idem., Werke in zwei Bänden, ed. Helmut Sembdner, vol. 2 (Munich; Vienna: Hanser,
1977), 463-893.
40 GLAJ 89, 12. Heinrich von Kleist to Wilhelmine von Zenge, 21 January 1801, in idem., “Briefe,”
615.
From the tenth letter on, Franz and Marie try to abstain from incestuous refer-
ences and discuss literature in an impersonal, academic fashion, but Marie’s career
choice also sends another, more ambiguous signal to her brother: until the Weimar
Republic, only single women would become teachers in Germany. Thus, Marie’s
decision conveys that she is leaving the close relationship with her brother, but
it is also a signal that she will not marry and will be free for him – parallel to his
announcement in the first letter that he has no intention of getting married.
Feeling rejected by Marie’s course of studies and her new approach to lit-
erature, Franz turns his back on his sister and goes out to dinners, parties, and
the theater. Marie passes her exams and takes up a position as teacher at an all-
girls school. Franz congratulates her, but this is immediately followed by the
announcement of his engagement. If his postcard was already a sign of open
communication and that he has nothing to hide, he goes one step further and
makes his announcement in a telegram. A telegram is not only a more public
medium of communication than a postcard, it also expresses alienation because
a third and fourth party are involved in converting the sender’s written words
into electric signals and reconverting those signals into written text. Marie ‘gets
the message,’ and she responds by sending a telegram with her congratulations.
6 Bridal Letters
The ensuing correspondence can be referred to as ‘bridal letters’ in a two-fold sense:
Franz writes his sister about his fiancée, and yet, it becomes apparent that in writing to
Marie, he is writing to his real bride-to-be. In the first letter that follows the exchange
of telegrams, he tells her about his fiancée Helene, an attractive and very cultured
girl, and he still closes the letter with kisses for his sister. In the following letter, he
explains that nothing will change between them in spite of his engagement. The sub-
sequent letters, however, betray this intention. The letters become more direct, less
implicit than before. Franz admits that ever since his engagement, he thinks of Marie
more often and with greater tenderness, and that Helene pales in comparison with
Marie. Desperate, he asks Marie why they had to be born as brother and sister and
returns to literary allusions. She must save him, just as Iphigenie in Goethe’s Iphige-
nie auf Tauris41 saved her brother: “I catch myself echoing Goethe, Iphigenie!”42 With
this reference, Landauer not only introduces another literary text about a brother-sis-
41 Johann Wolfgang Goethe, “Iphigenie auf Tauris” (1787), in idem., Sämtliche Werke. Briefe,
Tagebücher und Gespräche, ed. Hendrik Birus et al., part I, vol. 5 (Frankfurt/Main: Deutscher
Klassiker 1988), 553-619.
42 GLAJ 89, 29.
ter relationship, he also re-enforces the reference made with the title of the novella.
Goethe played not only Orest in the premiere of Iphigenie auf Tauris in Weimar in 1779
but also the leading male part in Geschwister when it was first performed.
A letter that he writes in his future father-in-law’s house causes a conflict
between Franz and Helene and underlines that the letters to his sisters have
once again become secret love letters. Helene sits in the next room, also writing
a letter to Marie to which Franz wants to add a few words. This would necessitate
a level of public communication, just as the postcard and telegrams had, and so
he refrains. As he finishes his own letter and is about to put it into an envelope,
Helene enters the room and asks to whom he is writing. The letter becomes a
secret love letter when he refuses to confess that his sister is the addressee: “It is
a bit childish, and I might as well have told her right away, but once it had come
this far, I couldn’t have come out with it, not even under torture.”43 Aware that
their correspondence is tiptoeing a fine line, the lawyer Franz is unable to write
as much as his sister’s name on the envelope in the house of his future father-in-
law, a state attorney, and he has to leave the house to address the letter. Landauer
underlines this increasing awareness and the importance of this moment with
the help of a structural hint. It is the only point in the novella where he adds
an author’s comment to the dialogue and the narration, pointing out that, when
Marie re-reads the letter, her face flushes because she realizes that the letters
are in fact bridal letters from her brother and lover. In the following letter, Franz
recounts how he met Helene and was physically attracted to her. He concedes
that it will be a marriage of convenience and not a genuine love-match.
The last letter finally sums up the communication conflict between Franz and
Marie. Landauer uses a reference to Martin Luther and his difficulties in translating
the Bible into German, limited to the words that are used in everyday language:
My dear Marie!
I thank you for your letter. More than that I cannot say. I knew that you would write me
kindly, and still I could not have imagined that you would hit the tone so precisely, a tone
that touches my heart so deeply, gives me strength and elevates me. I vaguely remember a
passage of Luther’s – I do not know whether it is in his letters or Tischreden [after-dinner
speeches] or elsewhere – in which he explains the difficulty of translating the Bible, to find
appropriate words in the German language that immediately evoke a sense of harmony. [...]
He chooses the example of the angels’ salutation to Mary, which would be stiff, if trans-
lated literally from the Greek; he chooses the expression “fair” but then adds that if he had
wanted to be really German he should have said: “Du liebe Marie” [You dear Marie], because
nothing would be better. And this is what has been constantly on my mind for several days:
Du liebe Marie!44
43 GLAJ 89, 32.

44 GLAJ 89, 39.
For the first time in the novella, Landauer indicates here that the story of Franz
and Marie should be more that just the story of a pair of siblings whose love for
each other goes beyond societal norms and that their struggle should be under-
stood symbolically as the emergence of a new generation and a new order – as
new as Luther’s Protestantism – for whom the old laws are no longer applicable
and the old language no longer sufficient. In other words, Landauer finally keeps
to what he had promised his friend Ida Wolf in the “Widmung an eine Freundin”
(see above), namely that he would write about something much deeper than a
case of sexual love between a brother and a sister. Brother and sister long for
some kind of divine transformation which requires a new sacred language with
new words to describe the relation between them in a new, different light – a
language that does not yet exist. Luther did not write a new biblical narrative
when he translated the Bible into German, but he clad the old stories in a new
sound – the sound of another language. Landauer follows a similar path when
he gives a preview of the language he strives for. Marie touched Franz’s heart not
with what she wrote but with the sound of her words that had the right tone to be
in harmony with his heart: phonetics rather than semantics.
Marie suggests that Franz break off his engagement, but he fears a disaster
without Helene as a protective shield between him and his sister. That the shield
is needed becomes clear when he declares his love for his sister by citing Gotthold
Ephraim Lessing’s Nathan der Weise, the text Marie is reading with her students
in school at that time. Landauer seems to follow in Goethe’s steps again; Mari-
anne declared her love to Wilhelm in Geschwister by telling him how, as a young
girl, she had always read and been very moved by stories about love between
relatives.
Landauer (mis)quotes the templar (Tempelherr), whose plain answer when
he learns that his beloved Recha is his sister is: “Sister? Also good!” (“Schwester?
Auch gut!”) 45 Franz criticizes the templar for his dispassionate, cold reply and
45 GLAJ 89, 40. This paragraph on Nathan der Weise can be found in the first manuscript (GLAA
45, 16/17) as well as in the final one (GLAJ 89, 40), but it has been crossed out in the latter one.
One reason could be that Landauer quoted Lessing from memory and later realized his mistake:
“Tempelherr: Ich? Ich ihr Bruder? // Recha: Er mein Bruder? // Sittah: Geschwister! // Saladin:
Sie Geschwister! // Recha (will auf ihn zu): Ah! Mein Bruder! // Tempelherr (tritt zurück): Ihr
Bruder! // Recha (hält an, und wendet sich zu Nathan): Kann nicht sein! – Sein Herz / Weiß
nichts davon! – Wir sind Betrieger! Gott!” (Gotthold Ephraim Lessing: “Nathan der Weise” (1779),
625, in idem., Werke und Briefe in zwölf Bänden, ed. Wilfried Barner et al., vol. 9 Werke 1778-
1780, ed. Klaus Bohnen and Arno Schilson (Frankfurt/Main: Deutscher Klassiker, 1993), 483-627.
On the incest taboo in Lessing’s Nathan see: Ortrud Gutjahr, “Rhetorik des Tabus in Lessings
Nathan der Weise,” in Streitkultur. Strategien des Überzeugens im Werk Lessings, ed. Wolfgang
Mauser and Günter Sasse (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1993), 269-278.
emphasizes that it is precisely the word ‘sister’ that awakens the strongest sensual
feelings in him. With this reference, Franz and Marie leave the level of academic
interpretations of a text – she as a teacher and he as a lawyer – for good and
return to the intimate, incestuous reading that connects them and allows them
to communicate about their feelings. Franz warns her not to share their Nathan
interpretation with her students. 46
With this last letter and Franz’s open declaration of love, Landauer leaves
behind written words and moves to the spoken. In summary, the letters allow
the siblings to be in contact and to express their feelings for each other without
the necessity of using their own words. Not the content of the letters but their
materiality transmits their true content: they are love letters bound in rose-col-
ored paper, letters written in secret, or postcards or even telegrams that mark a
temporary disturbance of the relationship. Words are either appreciated because
of their sounds that speak to the heart, or they are not the siblings’ (or Lan-
dauer’s, for that matter) own words but references to or quotations from other
literature that deals with similar constellations and problems. These literary
works are what Kleist had called the “uniting third element,” and the conflict in
Geschwister arises exactly when Marie moves from this kind of intimate reading
or identification with the text to the professional, distanced analysis of texts that
is expected from her as a teacher. Franz, the lawyer who analyses non-fictional
texts as a profession, has no other medium of communication than to return to
the intimate and incestuous reading. That way, he can tell Marie that she, who
understands and loves Shakespeare just as he does, is the one and only woman
for him. Once he has used Nathan der Weise to declare his love to Marie, it is no
longer necessary to refer to other books by their title. Beyond this point in the
novella, Landauer does not give titles of books or names of authors. All further
books are ‘Blindbände’ or dummies whose empty pages contain the literature of
all times, written in all languages, with their countless stories of incestuous rela-
tionships. Even though he makes it explicit only in the last letter where he refers
to Luther, Landauer employs incest in symbolic terms, as one step towards a new
a-sexual divinity for which a new generation longs without knowing how to reach
that ideal.
46 An overview of how Lessing’s Nathan was taught in German schools between 1830 and 1914
is given in Gotthold Ephraim Lessings ‘Nathan der Weise’ im Kulturraum Schule (1830-1914), ed.
Carsten Gansel and Birka Siwczyk (Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2008).
7 Words: Spoken and Unspoken

The second part of the novella begins with the arrival of Franz, Helene, and her
mother at the house where Franz and Marie grew up. It is no longer an episto-
lary novel, as communication moves from writing to speaking – or rather to not
knowing what to say and how to talk with each other. Having explored supposed
differences in how men and women read, Landauer now shifts his attention to
male and female oral communication, as he explained in a letter to his brother:
Franz and Marie, who are siblings, have closely sided with each other and conducted a most
intimate exchange of ideas since their youth. From early on, they did not avoid transgress-
ing the limit of what is considered modest subject matter for a conversation between a man
and a woman in society because they did not see why men and women shared the same
language if not to communicate precisely that which they could only learn from the other.47
Landauer thus rejects the conventions of his time that were stipulated in the same
books that judged only a small fraction of literature to be suitable for women; they
also sought to restrict women to restrained and polite talk and to prevent them from
speaking at all about certain matters. In Geschwister, the subject is first raised in
one of Franz’s letters where he reminds Marie how he had instructed her to become
one of those rare women who speak their minds freely:
Nevertheless, mother did not like the fact that I treated you like an adult or at least wanted
to make you into one. Sometimes we sat together by the window at dusk and spoke sol-
emnly about things that are usually not spoken about between a man and woman, even a
brother and sister. If it were different, if it had been as I wish, for centuries, human beings
would be greater, freer, nobler, I should say more divine, than they are today.48
Years have passed since Franz and Marie had those uninhibited talks. In the
meantime, Marie the teacher had become not only a professional reader and
interpreter of texts but also a professional speaker. In a sense then, Marie was
a good student of her brother’s; professionally, she uses a direct and objective,
that is, ‘male,’ way of speaking. It could thus be expected that the siblings share
a common language, though Landauer shows in the second part of the novella
that it is a language insufficient not only for Marie and Franz but for the new
generation of people.
Leaving the written word behind, they can no longer resume their strategy
of references to literature and reading, the ‘common third element,’ which is not
suited to oral communication. When Marie welcomes her brother, he answers

48 GLAJ 89, 17.
with a partial quotation from Goethe: “‘You look quite well, Franz,’ she said.
‘Better than –’ she stopped. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said with a strange smile, ‘it is not
written in my face; etc., but unfortunately the continuation of the quote is not
applicable.’”49 Here, they refer to a scene in Goethe’s Faust where Margarete talks
about Mephistopheles and remarks that it is written all over his face “that he does
not want to love a soul.”50 Landauer uses this reference to indicate that, face to
face, the siblings can no longer hint at their feelings through literary intertexts,
but he also reminds the reader that Franz is not a modern Mephistopheles and
that he does indeed want to love a soul: his sister.
Helene and her mother stay at a hotel, and Franz and Marie have the evenings
and nights to themselves which gives them plenty of time to talk, but letters not
only allowed them to hide behind literary references, but also relieved them of
the need to be spontaneous. Talking, however, is spontaneous, and hence it is
not surprising that Franz and Marie spend their days thinking of what they can
say in the evening in an attempt to partially imitate the self-censorship of writing.
Helene, on the other hand, is portrayed as a woman who holds up society’s
norms of gender-specific communication, which makes her unsuitable as a
partner for Franz. In the only sequence of the second part of the novella where
Landauer allows his protagonists to return to writing, Franz breaks off his engage-
ment in a letter to Helene’s father. Franz feels completely unable to talk either to
his fiancée or her father, and he becomes ‘speechless.’ He does not lose his voice
but rather his capacity to form intelligible syntactic structures, or any complex
syntactic structure at all. His sentences are more and more reduced to ellipses:
He had to write to her father before he could explain himself to Helene. Yes, he wanted to
write to him, immediately tomorrow. To write tomorrow immediately. To write. Write imme-
diately. Write – and with this thought, of writing immediately tomorrow, he slowly turned
over on his right side again and fell asleep. The following morning, waking early from a
deep, dreamless sleep, his first thought was: to write.51
His thoughts and sentences are reduced to the core, to ‘write,’ his only way of
communication.
After the engagement has been broken off, Franz stays at their parents’ house
to live with his sister. She spends her days at school, and he has found a new posi-
tion as a lawyer. In the evenings, they make small talk about their days, carefully
49 GLAJ 89, 42.

50 Johann Wolfgang Goethe, “Faust. Erster Teil,” v. 3489/90, in idem., Sämtliche Werke. Briefe,
Tagebücher und Gespräche, ed. Hendrik Birus et al., part I, vol. 7/1 (Frankfurt/Main: Deutscher
Klassiker, 1994), 31-199.
51 GLAJ 89, 76.
avoiding anything too intimate in the fear they might not find the right words
and rather give in to their sensual desires. The tension climaxes on an evening
when Marie plays the piano, thereby renouncing language in favor of the ulti-
mate medium of communication: music. That night, they abstain for the first time
from kissing each other good night because of the erotically charged atmosphere.
The next day, they try to talk about their future, but verbal communication is no
longer possible, and Franz finally kisses Marie passionately. Consequently, they
decide to ‘go away,’ which means not only to leave the town but to depart from
this world and to commit suicide together.
For the finale, Landauer changes the scene, and Franz and Marie travel to
Swinemünde where he, Landauer, had first begun writing the novella. Either on
the way or at the spa, Franz and Marie yield to their desire for each other and
commit incest; an act that Landauer indicates only by now calling them “das
schöne junge Ehepaar,” the fine young married couple.52 They spend a few days
pretending to be on vacation before they commit suicide by drowning. Their
last words express their concern about gossip and the scandal their suicide may
cause. Only in the moment that they die, do they find the mode of communicating
they had always longed for: “She kept her eyes open, she turned her lips to his ear
to whisper to him, then he weakened – her teeth bit firmly into his ear – another
glance – and they sank.”53
Forever united, their bodies joined – though painfully – by Marie’s teeth
and lips dug into her brother’s ear. It is the independent woman, free from the
trammels of speech, the piano-playing Marie, who knows how to speak and read
professionally as well as in more intimate ways, who will now teach her brother
a new, eternal, and utopian way of communication that does not need words or
the conventional language of their time. Franz and Marie are led towards the
silence, away from society, which they had previously sought in nature. Franz
had moved from metropolitan Berlin to the smaller town where he and his sister
grew up. When he needed to think about their situation, he left his parental home
and climbed up a small hill. And Franz and Marie’s last and decisive talk took
place not in their parents’ house but in a park. Though these changes of location
brought them closer to nature, only the radical move to the sea, where they were
alone on the beach and surrounded by the sounds of nature, liberated them.
While the end sees Franz and Marie united, it is also a sign that they did not
succeed in resisting their desire in this world, and that they can become part of
the new generation of ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ who would live in an asexual com-
munity and form the nucleus of a new world which they can enter through death.
52 GLAJ 89, 88.

53 GLAJ 89, 89.
8 Sounds of Silence
Siegbert Wolf has proclaimed Landauer’s novel Der Todesprediger, written two
years after Geschwister, an important precursor to Landauer’s Skepsis und Mystik
in which he presented his thoughts on language.54 I would argue that Geschwister
is an even earlier text that leads to Skepsis und Mystik. Landauer’s early attempts
have in common that they were literary texts rather than essays or theoretical
treatises, and so allowed him to experiment creatively with language and, most
importantly, with the nexus of language and music.
Landauer’s key phrase “die Welt ist ohne Sprache,” “the world is without lan-
guage,” from Skepsis und Mystik55 can indeed be read as a summary of Geschwister.
The siblings’ constant longing for the kind of talk in which they could name their
feelings and ideas, and which would solve all their problems, cannot be fulfilled,
and this steers them towards the silence of nature – not an absolute silence but an
absence of human language. Along the way, they experience music as a medium
much more powerful and adequate than language to express emotions. Here,
the turning point that characterizes the literary form of the novella is marked
by music: it is Marie playing the piano that turns the story around. Listening to
music has brought Franz and Marie a step closer to the longed-for utopian union
as it allows them to communicate without words, but it also makes them aware
that they are about to cross the boundaries that society sets. The next morning,
when they have to return to language, they recognize that this world has no place
for them.
The story’s finale of a silent and eternal union in death as well as the impor-
tance of music are probably inspired by another intertext, Theodor Fontane’s
Geschwisterliebe. Fontane’s novella tells the story of the love-triangle of Clara,
her blind brother Rudolph, and her husband. The siblings enjoy making music
together – he plays the harp, she, the lute and less frequently the piano – but
they do not reach the same level of musical communication as Landauer’s Franz
and Marie, because they prefer vocal music – singing songs and communicating
their feelings with the help of the songs’ lyrics – rather than instrumental music:
“pains would often play with terrible persistence on his heartstrings, without
pouring out onto the strings of the harp.”56 Still confined by the limitations of
54 Siegbert Wolf, Gustav Landauer zur Einführung (Hamburg: Ed. SOAK / Junius, 1988 [=SOAK-
Einführungen; 39]), 41.
55 Gustav Landauer, Skepsis und Mystik. Versuche im Anschluss an Mauthners Sprachkritik
(1903) (Wetzlar: Büchse der Pandora, 1978 [Reprint of the edition Köln: Marcan-Block, 1923]), 6.
56 Theodor Fontane, “Geschwisterliebe,” 56, in Der junge Fontane. Dichtung – Briefe – Publizistik
(Berlin; Weimar: Aufbau, 1969), 23-56.
language, Clara and Rudolph cannot overcome society’s norms, and Clara gets
married only to die shortly afterwards. After her death, her husband befriends her
brother, and when the two men die at around the same time, they finally become
united with Clara in heaven.
Landauer takes the idea one step further and replaces vocal music with
instrumental music when Marie plays the piano. Years later, he will spell out in
Skepsis und Mystik, echoing Schopenhauer, the eminence of music that “once
again is the world.“57 In Landauer’s understanding, that is still heavily influenced
by the Romantics’ thoughts on language and music, it is music that is free of the
limits set by language. It is non-judgmental and it allows one to express all kinds
of feelings and desires. Landauer allows Franz and Marie a foretaste of this com-
municative utopia during the evening of piano playing, but even instrumental
music – composed and played by humans – is not sufficiently free to allow the
siblings to advance a new generation.
From Skepsis und Mystik we understand that Landauer’s choice of intertexts
is not only motivated by the shared topic of incest, but that music is a decisive
criterion: “In rhetoric there is music, melodious sound, the instrument that
teaches us words and concepts; in comparison, in the new poetry that has come
into being since Goethe, Novalis, and Brentano, the words and concepts are the
instrument that lead us to music – to rhythm, to the unutterable that sways us
and lets us vibrate in resonance.”58 Lessing should be added to this list. Following
Shakespeare, he introduced with his Nathan der Weise a new rhythm into German
literature, the blank verse, which Goethe later used in, for example, Iphigenie auf
Tauris and Tasso, two texts Landauer often refers to in his literary writings.
Thus, Landauer “musicalizes” his novella already by quoting ‘rhythmical’
writers such as Goethe, Shakespeare and Lessing, regardless of the subject of their
texts, and not only when he has Marie play the piano. Landauer describes in detail
how, after the recital, the siblings lie in their beds in separate rooms; they both
listen to the tick-tock of a clock, and their hearts beat in time. He creates the image
of embryonic twins that listen to their mother’s heartbeat and are in a state of peace
where verbal communication is not yet necessary. Since their parents’ house can
be but a poor, man-made substitute for a womb, Franz and Marie must leave it to
be reborn as the children of a new Eve for whom the incest taboo will not be valid.
57 Landauer, Skepsis und Mystik, 58.

58 Landauer, Skepsis und Mystik, 53 (“… das in uns einschwingt und uns mitschwingen läßt”).
9 From Geschwister to Skepsis und Mystik

Just as Gustav Landauer fails as a writer, Franz and Marie fail to communicate
before they commit suicide, for language is inherently inadequate and can be
improved but not saved through references to literary works that have a swinging,
swaying rhythm. This method is limited to written communication and cannot
successfully be employed in oral communication, and so remains a feeble crutch.
Over the years, Landauer improved his appeal to intertextual writing strategy
and moved towards an inter-media style, but he never shook off the shackle of
language as later more experimental writers did, though Hubert van den Berg,
for example, sees Landauer’s thoughts on language as a prelude to Dadaism.59
In Skepsis und Mystik Landauer reflects on why references to literature are a step
towards divinity, but not the final one:
More important is the assertion that it is primarily printing which has changed our ways of
thinking; all thought is language; but we have already ceased to think verbally, and rather
think in a bookish manner. [...] All these important improvements of our memory do not,
however, change the decisive fact that all this is nothing but memory.60
‘Thinking in a bookish manner’ includes citations from or allusions to literature,

but Landauer longs to go back further and to return to a pre-lingual, rhythmical
state. In Skepsis und Mystik, he imagines humankind and human history as a
musical score, on which humans – like musical notes – are little Gefühlspunkte
(speckles of emotion) that tinkle and vanish.61 Or, as he writes, “moments in the
community of ancestors, which is eternally alive.”62 In this eternal community,
terms like ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ lose their genealogical meaning and become met-
aphors for the new people. In his texts, Landauer cannot create a detailed image
of this utopian new generation, because he himself is bound to language. Even
when his later attempts at literary writing become more musicalized or even, as
with the melodrama Nach Jahren, filmic or pre-cinematic,63 Landauer cannot
create utopian situations, and his texts usually end in death and catastrophe – a
fact that can be understood with the help of Skepsis und Mystik, where he declares
59 Hubert van den Berg, “Gustav Landauer und Hugo Ball. Anarchismus, Sprachkritik und die
Genese des Lautgedichts,” Hugo-Ball-Almanach (Pirmasens) 19 (1995): 121-81.
60 Landauer, Skepsis und Mystik, 42/43.
63 Corinna R. Kaiser, “Musik und Film im Schweigen. Intermediale Sprachkritik in Gustav Lan-
dauers Melodrama ‘Nach Jahren’ (1900),” The Germanic Review 86 (2011): 37–57.
that the “I kills itself so that the World-I may live.” 64 Or, to put it differently, his
protagonists have to commit suicide, be killed, or at least cut all ties to others and
the world so that they can become a Gefühlspunkt on the large score.
Geschwister is an early, still rather amateurish endeavor to develop these
ideas not in an essay but in a more poetic form, one that is undeniably also rife
with kitsch. The strategy of using literary intertexts as rhythmical-musical ele-
ments, is clear though, and it leads from the intertexts by Goethe, Kleist, Lessing,
and others, to the piano recital and the hearts of the siblings beating in time, and
their drowning in which they finally become Gefühlspunkte and members of an
eternal community. The novella is thus not only an important source for a better
understanding of Landauer’s thoughts on language and – in a second step – on
history and society, but also a contribution to the literary language skepticism of
fin-de-siècle modernism.
64 Landauer, Skepsis und Mystik, 8 (“Das Ich tötet sich, damit Weltich leben kann”).
Hanna Delf von Wolzogen
Gustav Landauer’s Reading of Spinoza
1 Introduction
Gustav Landauer’s essays on Shakespeare can in some respects be seen as his
spiritual legacy and intellectual résumé. His study of Shakespeare – begun only
during the years of World War I – was influenced by his ever-increasing affin-
ity with ideas in Spinoza’s Ethics.1 In Landauer’s Shakespeare commentaries,
Spinoza figures prominently as a sort of interpretative vanishing point on which
the epochal portrait of Shakespeare is sketched. The interesting question is, what
would make someone like Landauer – political rebel, social outsider, and avant-
garde cultural critic, place Spinoza at the very top of his list of philosophers – and
this at the end of the nineteenth century?2 There is no doubt that Landauer, the
anarchist and social revolutionary, was one of many intellectuals who – almost as
an intellectual prerequisite – imbibed Spinoza’s philosophical naturalism. What
is not so readily recognized is that in Landauer’s case, this meant more than the
acceptance of a general intellectual trend; indeed, a closer look at his work sug-
gests that his reading of Spinoza had a singular impact on his own thought.
In biographical terms, there is nothing that directly links Landauer to Spinoza.
Although Kuno Fischer (1824-1907), who authored a historical-philosophical
study of Spinoza that was very influential at the time, was one of Landauer’s
intellectual mentors, there is no indication that he had any influence on Landau-
er’s understanding of Spinoza.3 Fritz Mauthner who, apart from being an influen-
tial theater critic, philosopher of language and author of a book on Spinoza, was
also Landauer’s mentor, commented on Fischer’s book with scorn, noting that its
author had “in an equally painstaking, and equally pathetic fashion now added
Spinoza to the triumphant ranks of his philosophical heroes.”4 Yet Landauer was
clearly intrigued by Spinoza. In fact, apart from Nietzsche – who was eagerly
lapped up by the young Landauer with the former’s initial wave of fame – and
1 Baruch de Spinoza, Ethica, ed. Konrad Blumenstock, vol. 2 of Werke. Lateinisch und Deutsch
(Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1980). The quotations are taken from this edition.
2 On the reception of Spinoza since 1800 see “Jedes Jahrhundert hat seinen eigenen Spinoza.
Ein Gespräch mit Pierre Macherey,” Zeitschrift für Ideengeschichte, no. V/1 (Spring 2011), 5–14
and ibid., 15–28.
3 Kuno Fischer, Spinozas Leben, Werke und Lehre, 4th ed., vol. 2 of Geschichte der neueren Philo-
sophie, Jubilee edition (Heidelberg: 1898).
4 Fritz Mauthner, Spinoza: Ein Umriß seines Lebens und Denkens, rev. and exp. ed. (Dresden:
Reissner, 1921), 24–25.
156 Hanna Delf von Wolzogen
Schopenhauer, no philosopher garnered Landauer’s interest or respect more than

Baruch Spinoza. Spinoza’s works had already begun to exert their influence on
Landauer’s rather dull emotions during his days as a Gymnasium student in Karl-
sruhe. As we are told in his autobiographical essay “Vor fünfundzwanzig Jahren”
(“Twenty-five Years Ago”), this was a period in which “thought and feeling” were
“so linked to one another … that all fervor and longing for love seemed to be
devoted to ideas as to a lover.”5 Spinoza appears to have been one of the early
loves encountered by this newly awakened young mind. Spinoza thus became
a companion of sorts, and his presence is felt in Landauer’s work – especially
in his Skepticism and Mysticism, Revolution, and Call to Socialism – as a kind of
fulcrum for much of Landauer’s own thought. This indebtedness to Spinoza is
reflected, for instance, in his frank and forthright reaction to Ludwig Berndl, who
had expressed his skepticism with regard to some of Landauer’s key hypotheses:
“Since you in any case … hardly know Spinoza at all, you of course cannot be
familiar with the starting point of my conjecture. Because that [starting point] is
the most important thing.”6
Spinoza was on Landauer’s mind even during the weeks of revolution in 1918.
Before setting off for Munich to join Kurt Eisner, he challenged Fritz Mauthner –
his doubting friend from Meersburg – with the curious statement: “Let whatever
is meant to perish, perish and let whatever can be formed, be formed, lend a hand
or get out of the way, we have not studied Spinoza for school, but for life.”7 At this
juncture then, faced with what was probably the most radical political challenge
of his life, Landauer seems to have felt a strong allegiance not only to Mauth-
ner’s language critique, but also to Spinoza’s teaching. Landauer apparently saw
Spinoza as a master of political practice, that is, a master of thought and life. His
esteem for Spinoza is already hinted at in an earlier passage of the letter quoted
above, as Landauer vehemently notes “Let me be a heretic: what in the world
is what you call Germany to you, to us, or to anybody who has an awareness of
infinity and a sense of humor? … Kurt Eisner, a man who previously led a misera-
ble, pure and honorable life as a hungry writer suddenly becomes a key figure in
Germany, simply because he is a man of spirit, this brave Jew, undreamt-of forces
stir the people; … and it’s a matter of sense or illusion or an idea, call it what you
will, whether a fighter or an onlooker, at all events [he is] a philosopher.”
5 Gustav Landauer, “Vor fünfundzwanzig Jahren,” Der Sozialist 5, no. 12 (1913): 89–91; appeared
also in Rechenschaft (Berlin: Cassirer, 1919), 146f.
6 Gustav Landauer to Ludwig Berndl, 3 January 1910, in Gustav Landauer. Sein Lebensgang in
Briefen, ed. M. Buber, I. Britschgi-Schimmer (Frankfurt a. M.: Rütten & Loening, 1929), vol. I, 287.
7 Gustav Landauer to Fritz Mauthner, 28 November 1918, in Gustav Landauer – Fritz Mauthner.
Briefwechsel 1890–1919, ed. H. Delf (Munich: Beck, 1994), 352.
Gustav Landauer’s Reading of Spinoza 157
What he writes about Eisner also applies to Spinoza. In fact the names could be
interchanged, for the Jew from Amsterdam was also reputed to have led a “misera-
ble, pure life” in his capacity as a philosopher and grinder of lenses; a “man of the
spirit” and a “brave Jew” who, after being excommunicated by the Jewish commu-
nity in Amsterdam, still dared to turn down the generous offer of a professorship
in Heidelberg in order to dedicate his whole life to his studies. Also, what could be
a more appropriate way of describing Spinoza’s Ethics, which was published post-
humously, than as a testimony of his lifelong “struggle for justice and reason”? One
should also note that in the Ethics, the discussion of the question of adequate know
ledge moves between “illusion” – this being the Dutch translation of ‘imagination’
– and “idea.” According to Landauer, it is obvious to anyone who understands Spi-
noza’s teaching, that the question of adequate knowledge is pertinent to practical
life, regardless of whether the practical consequences are of a political nature – as
they were for Kurt Eisner – or of a philosophical, contemplative nature – as for Fritz
Mauthner. He reproached Mauthner on the grounds that “those who are aware of
infinity” should be immune to national-chauvinistic ideologies and jingoism. As
Landauer noted shortly after war broke out, “absolutely no esteem should be shown
for the intellectual scions of Spinoza, Goethe or Fichte; nothing (not even the army
postal service) failed as pitifully as did the German spirit during this war.”8
It was around this time that Landauer began his studies of Shakespeare,
in the context of which he developed an anthropological, historical theory of
freedom that explicitly refers to Spinoza’s Ethics. Yet, although his Shakespeare
studies show a marked proximity to Spinoza’s Ethics – indeed, the link takes on
methodological parameters – this was not the first time Landauer had made a
more or less obvious reference to Spinoza. In fact, there are traces and indications
of a much earlier reading acquaintance with the writings of the philosopher.
The first biographical clue leads back as far as Landauer’s childhood in
southern Germany. He was probably already infected with the Spinoza bug as a
youngster in Buttenhausen. This small town in Württemberg was the birthplace
of his father, and most of his relatives from both sides of the family lived there.
Landauer was a frequent visitor to Buttenhausen and exchanged many letters
with his cousins during his student days. This was also the abode of Jakob Stern
(1843-1911), a Spinoza scholar and later, a Social Democrat. He was also the com-
munal rabbi during the period when Landauer had contacts in the town, and
remained in this position until he was suspended by the Orthodox leaders of
the Jewish community for his – in their opinion – heretical views. In one way or
another then, and to varying degrees, socialism, heretical thinking and Spinoza
were very much in the air in the Jewish community of this Swabian town, and
8 Gustav Landauer to Fritz Mauthner, 2 November 1914, ibid., 292f.

it would have been surprising if their effects had not been felt by the sensitive
young Gustav. In any case, we can assume that Jakob Stern’s translation of the
Ethics, first published in the Reclam Universalbibliothek in 1888 and edited by
Stern himself, was also among the first works read by Landauer.9 When Fritz Mau-
thner arranged for Landauer to give private lessons in philosophy to his cousin,
the author and patron Auguste Hauschner (1850-1924), in Berlin, the basic course
Landauer announced to her in the letter he sent was – not surprisingly – “Philos-
ophy in Connection with a Study of Spinoza’s Ethics.”10
2 “Developmental History”
In 1900, Landauer already had a decade of political experience in the imperial city to
his credit. In his capacity as editor of Der Sozialist, this left-wing critic of Social Democ-
racy had quickly advanced to become leader of the anarchist opposition in Berlin and
had even spent time in prison when the newspaper collapsed.11 But even the early
debates in the Der Sozialist, in which Landauer’s anarchist self-image became more
clearly defined, show him to be a Spinoza reader – with a mind of his own.12
In 1895, Landauer wrote a series of articles under the suggestive title “Toward
a Developmental History of the Individual,” in which he criticized the theory
9 See letters from Landauer’s youth: International Institute for Social History, Amster-
dam, Gustav Landauer estate, no. 98–104; see also Juden in Buttenhausen. Ausstellung in der
Bernheim’schen Realschule, Stadt Münsingen, ed. R. Deigendesch, Schriftenreihe des Stadtar-
chivs Münsingen, vol. 3 (Münsingen Stadtverwaltung, 1994) and Juden und ihre Heimat Butten-
hausen. Ein Gedenkbuch zum 200. Jahrestag des Buttenhausener Judenschutzbriefes am 7. 7. 1987,
ed. Günter Randecker (Münsingen Stadtverwaltung, 1987). Manfred Lauermann completed a
study of the non-orthodox Social Democrat and ‘Spinozist’ Jakob Stern (1843-1911). Jakob Stern,
“Sozialist und Spinozist. Eine kleine Skizze zum 150. Geburtstag” in Spinoza in der europäischen
Geistesgeschichte, ed. H. Delf, J. H. Schoeps, M. Walther (Berlin: Hentrich, 1994), 365ff.
10 Gustav Landauer to Auguste Hauschner, 29 March 1900, Briefe an Auguste Hauschner, ed. M.
Beradt and L. Bloch-Zavrel (Berlin: Rowohlt, 1929), 51.
11 Landauer was sentenced to nine months in prison for his involvement in the Ziethen affair.
There are obvious parallels between his endeavour to expose a miscarriage of justice in that case
and the events surrounding the Dreyfus affair, which was unfolding at the same time. See Gustav
Landauer, “Der Dichter als Ankläger,” Der Sozialist 8, new series, no. 6 (1898), in Signatur g.l.:
Gustav Landauer im “Sozialist” (1892–1899), ed. Ruth Link-Salinger (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp,
1986), 361–368.
12 Between 1892 and 1899 Landauer was the journal’s editor. It was subtitled “Organ der Un-
abhängigen Sozialisten,” but after the break with the Social Democratic Party the subtitle was
changed to “Organ für Anarchismus-Sozialismus.” See Ulrich Linse, Organisierter Anarchismus
im deutschen Kaiserreich von 1871 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1969).
of absolute individualistic egoism, and specifically attacked “the confusion in

[Max] Ommerborn’s mind.”13 Landauer was reacting to a series of articles, which
Ommerborn, a disciple of the nihilistic anarchist Max Stirner, had also published
in Der Sozialist. Landauer refuted the theoretical position of boundless individ-
ualistic egoism, to which Stirner’s followers adhered, by expounding his own
theory regarding heredity and the physical and spiritual links that bind previ-
ous and succeeding generations. He maintained that his theory, taken together
with biological findings at the time, proved irrefutably that the term “individ-
ual,” however useful it may be, is bound in an indissoluble union with all other
living creatures (and all of their multifarious characteristics) and with the “chain
of all ancestors reaching into infinity.” As far as Landauer was concerned, the
“high-handedness of the [Stirner] individual” had been exposed and all of the
latter’s misguided “moralistic terms” had been proved to be unfounded once and
for all, because interest in the species is the only precept that asserts itself in the
allegedly free will of the egoistic individual.14 Landauer did not regard this “cap-
tivation and compulsion of the body community” with the pessimism or fatalism
of a Schopenhauer, but rather saw it as a happy and “liberating return to nature.”
He writes: “I am elevated by the knowledge of being part of a whole that comes
from eternity and goes on to eternity, more than everything that is resplendent
with my ego,” adding further on, “how stupid and foolish all oppressors and all
scourges of humanity look compared with Mother Nature, who is always at work,
creating and rejuvenating eternally!”15
The emphasis on humanity and the progressive view of educational motiva-
tion it entails, are thus replaced by a new generic emphasis. This is why, even in his
youth, Landauer rejected the notion of freedom of the will. Unlike Schopenhauer,
who rejected the same notion as part of his criticism of Kant, Landauer couched
his view in the context of a rather offhanded criticism of religion. He considered
belief in freedom of the will to be a borrowing of the dogma of the “freedom and
independence of the immortal soul,” that ancient “Jewish doctrine as revealed to
Moses, the man of God, by God himself in the book of books, the Bible,” rather
than simply an idea taken over by the Christian religion because it had proved to
be “extremely useful … in exonerating the rulers of this world” for thousands of
13 See G. Landauer: “Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte des Individuums” I–V, Der Sozialist 5, new
series, nos. 12, 14, 16 (1895) and 6, new series, nos. 2, 6. (Nov. 2, 1895), no. 14 (Nov. 16, 1895), no.
16 (Nov. 30, 1895) and Der Sozialist 6 new series, no. 2 (Jan. 11, 1896), no. 6 (Febr. 8, 1896), in
Link-Salinger, Signatur g.l., 317–349.
14 Ibid., 326f.
15 Ibid., 332. Following up on discussions of Darwin’s genetic theories (1859) Landauer devel-
oped some singular ideas about sexual morals and human breeding.
years.16 This Jewish-Christian doctrine, to which Landauer attributes a good part

of the “blame for Europe’s departure from nature,” is held up in comparison to
the teachings of the “miraculously profound Buddha.”17 The radical immanence
of the Buddhist doctrine fascinated Landauer to the same extent as the idea of an
all-embracing dependence of the human soul on the body’s physical condition,
on one’s ancestors, and on one’s upbringing. Landauer embraced this idea of
an enormous union of body and spirit, and placed Spinoza in the ancestral line
before Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, almost as a matter of course.
In his attempt to bring this theoretical option (one, which was associated
with political conservatism, at least as far as Schopenhauer and Nietzsche are
concerned) into line with his own, Landauer by no means abandoned his revo-
lutionary anarchistic attitude. His claims were rooted in the conclusion that the
“ego” no longer exists from a psychological point of view, and in this regard he
was influenced by sensualist psychology with which he had become acquainted
through Ernst Mach (1838-1916) and Fritz Mauthner (1849-1923).18 In rejecting
the ego, Landauer held that instead of ego there is only a complex of “desires
and forces” that “sometimes penetrate the sphere of consciousness and are
sometimes at work below the threshold of consciousness.”19 This reference to a
complex of “desires and forces” is not meant in a purely somatic and sensual
sense, but rather is congruent with ideas on the unconscious that were prevalent
at that time; this is evidenced by the fact that Landauer referred to the works of
Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) and Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801-1887).20
Landauer was concerned to demonstrate that the soul is not merely a func-
tion of the brain as the materialists were attempting to prove. He claimed that
both the soul and the brain should be considered as relatively independent com-
plexes in relation to one another. It was in the context of these arguments that
Landauer referred to Spinoza’s theory of the parallelism of attributes.21 Spinoza,
16 Ibid., 334f.
17 Ibid., 336.
18 See their correspondence during the years 1896–1903 in Landauer-Mauthner Briefwechsel,
9–92, and Landauer’s excerpts: The National Library of Israel, Gustav Landauer estate, Ms. Var.
432, no. 59.
19 Ibid., 337.
20 On the reception of Wundt’s psychology at the end of the nineteenth century see Horst
Thomé, Autonomes Ich und ‘Inneres Ausland’: Studien über Realismus, Tiefenpsychologie und
Psychiatrie in deutschen Erzähltexten (1848–1914) (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1993), 169–229. On Spi-
noza and Freud, see Yirmiyahu Yovel, Spinoza and Other Heretics, vol. 1 (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1987).
21 Whereby the attributes of thought and expansion befit all finite modes to the same extent,
contrary to Descartes’s interpretation.
he writes, was “the first person to clearly” realize that “body and soul, brain and
spirit are fundamentally different manifestations of the same thing, with which
we are not familiar, and of which we can have absolutely no idea.”22 Landauer
based his anarchistic psychology on this claim regarding the independence of
desire and emotions, and claimed with Spinoza that “the conscious mind … is
not capable of imposing a despotic power over the unconscious desires.”23 Thus,
with remarkable virtuosity, he devises a psycho-physiological holistic concept
with anthropological, ethical, as well as aesthetic implications.
It is clear in his article “The Developmental History of the Individual” that
Landauer sees no contradiction between his rejection of freedom of the will and
his view that the revolutionary’s mission is to create something new and to inter-
vene in the fortunes of society. But the mere fact of being able to act – even to act
in a political and revolutionary way – is by no means an indication of individual
freedom. In his actions, the individual often remains totally – and unwittingly –
locked in the causal mesh of conflicting interests and desires, and as such is “a
small, lowly, ugly creature.”24 Landauer thus counters the concept of “individ-
ual” with that of “individuality.” It seems that the high ethical standards imposed
on the sage (the one capable of “scientia intuitiva”) in Spinoza’s Ethics, have been
adopted and inflated in Landauer’s revolutionary figure. Indeed, his claim that
“we who call ourselves revolutionaries are certainly capable of thinking up sit-
uations … in which we would even sacrifice our lives for a great cause,” evokes
a somewhat alarming image of the revolutionary martyr, the opposite pole, as it
were, of the pious, God-loving homo religiosus described by Spinoza.25 Yet, Lan-
dauer also emphasizes the non-heroic face of this ideal, and emphasizes that
urges and desires should not be battled and suppressed under new moral laws,
but rather allowed to take effect in a self-recognition process that is relevant to
the revolution and increases individuality.
3 “Anarchic Thoughts”
In 1901 Landauer again entered the fray of anarchist debates, now writing from
London, where he had taken up residence with his second wife, Hedwig Lach-
mann. Spurred by the persecution of anarchists, which resulted from the spate of
political assassinations that had shaken European society in the 1890s, he joined
22 Landauer, “Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte”, 337.

23 Ibid., 337.
24 Ibid., 336.
25 Ibid., 348.
in the heated debates over the “propaganda by deed” ethos, being waged in anar-
chist papers.26 Noting that he had long shared the basic error of this notion with
the anarchists, he now distanced himself from the idea and dissociated himself
from the political murders, which reminded him of the “cold, deeply ignorant,
hostile logistics” of Robespierre’s goddess of reason. The essay in which Lan-
dauer took this stance, was published in Maximilian Harden’s Zukunft, under
the title “Anarchic Thoughts about Anarchism.”27 Having left the revolutionary
romanticism of the anarchists far behind him, Landauer responded to their run-
of-the-mill dogmas with his very own view of anarchy. Through the layers of
Nietzschean rhetoric, one recognizes the familiar arguments:28
What I call anarchy here, without tying myself to the word itself in any way, is a prevailing
mood … that exists in every person who reflects on worldly and spiritual matters. I mean
the urge to bring himself into the world again, to reform his own nature and subsequently to
shape his surroundings, his world, to the extent that he is capable of doing so. This supreme
moment should arrive for every single person; the moment in which he generates within
himself the original chaos – to use Nietzsche’s language – in which he, like a spectator,
watches the drama of his desires and most urgent inwardness being played out in front
of him, to find out which of the many personalities inside him should be allowed to take
control, what is actually his, what distinguishes him from the traditions and legacies of the
ancestral world, what he should be for the world and what the world should be for him. For
me, an anarchist is someone who has the will to resist playing a double game for his own
benefit, who, in critical situations in his life, kneads himself like a fresh lump of dough
in such a way that he knows how to deal with himself inwardly and is capable of acting
in the way dictated by his most secret being. For me, he who is his own master, who has
identified his desire and accepts it as his identity and way of life, is a human being with no
master, a free spirit and master of his own destiny. The road to heaven is narrow, the road to
a new higher form of human society leads through the dark, overcast gate of our instincts
and the terra abscondita of our souls that is our world. The world can only be shaped from
the inside. The state of anarchy can only be paved in a new world, in a land that has not
been discovered yet. We will find this land and this rich world if we discover a new human
being through chaos and anarchy, through incredible, silent and profound experience; each
within himself.29
26 President Canova of Spain in 1897, Queen Elisabeth of Austria in 1898, the Italian King Um-
berto in 1900, and U.S. President McKinley in 1901, were all murdered by anarchists. About the
debates within anarchist circles see Max Nettlau, Die Blüte der Anarchie (1886-1894): Geschichte
der Anarchie, vol. 4 (Vaduz: Topos, 1981), 177ff.
27 Gustav Landauer, “Anarchische Gedanken über den Anarchismus,” Die Zukunft 37, no. 4
(1901), 134–140. The following quotations are taken from this article, unless otherwise indicated.
28 On Landauer’s early reading of Nietzsche see Hanna Delf, “‘Nietzsche ist für uns Europäer’:
Zu Gustav Landauers früher Nietzsche-Lektüre,” Jüdischer Nietzscheanismus, ed. W. Stegmai-
er and D. Krochmalnik, Monographien zur Nietzsche-Forschung, 36 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1997),
209–227.
29 Landauer, “Anarchische Gedanken,” 137f.
Here anarchy is no longer interpreted as a form of political ideology or interven-

tion, but rather is seen in psychological terms of how one relates to oneself. This
relationship is described as a mystical death, as a rebirth only through oneself,
as an “essential transformation” that touches the “deepest foundation of human
nature” and reveals “what is most ancient and best.” One who has been thus
purified, will experience the world in a new and different way, he will never again
be a stranger in the world; to him, “the world will be like himself and he will
love it as he loves himself.”30 Although the religious imagery of this mystical,
meditative experience is certainly a far cry from Spinoza’s rational discourse,
Landauer’s characterization of “anarchy” as a purifying process of self-recog-
nition, a journey of self-denial through the cavernous depths of the self, does
show certain parallels with the three-stage epistemology in the Ethics. As in Spi-
noza’s “scientia intuitiva,” Landauer’s scheme also culminates in the possibility
of rational knowledge beyond the learning activity of the intellect. The idea that
“true” knowledge does not take place from without, but rather is bound up in the
“knower,” that is, the one who is perceiving, is also found in Spinoza’s thought.
Landauer imagines devotion to the world-ego as entailing a splitting of the ego,
which then becomes a detached and removed entity – a spectator – who observes
with indifference the “drama of his desires” and the “many personalities” that are
within him. Landauer’s adherence to this notion of the necessary path through
the “terra abscondita of the soul,” indicates not so much a borrowing of a page
from Spinoza’s book, but rather an affinity with Spinoza in striving for this kind of
human being. In this respect, he counters the “propaganda by deed” motto with
one of “inner colonization,” explaining that “killing oneself rather than others
… will be the distinguishing characteristic of the human being.” In the same way
that Spinoza’s supreme reason recognizes the divine order of the world, this kind
of self-knowledge implies devotion to, and mystical release from, the ego: “I want
only to say that this freedom must first be born deep inside a human being before
it can reveal itself as an external actuality.”31 Landauer, like Spinoza, believed
that only a few tread the difficult road to self-knowledge; such a goal was there-
fore not a matter for the masses. The key concept for Landauer here is freedom,
which in this context can only be attained by the few and the exceptional. The
anarchists then, were those who were to be entrusted with this “future human-
kind,” the “prototype of progressive humanity.”
30 Ibid.
31 Ibid.
4 Between Eckhart and Spinoza

It should perhaps come as no surprise to discover that, while editing the first
volume of Mauthner’s Critique of Language,32 Landauer showed enthusiasm for
Meister Eckhart, and decided to translate the mystic’s sermons “into our lan-
guage,” (as he notes in the subtitle) – meaning not just from Middle High German
into modern High German, but also from the Christian Middle Ages into the pres-
ent.33 According to Landauer, this medieval mystic’s relevance to the present can
be attributed to the fact that he “is just as much an epistemologist and critic as a
mystic.”34 Quoting from August Jundt’s history of medieval pantheism, Landauer
draws a picture of Eckhart as a figure who combines modern, critical epistemol-
ogy and divine mystical experience with rational, worldly knowledge and divine
mystical experience.35 To use a more up-to-date image, one could also say that
Landauer concocted a kind of epistemological, anthropological, ethical role
model, comprising a post-Kantian (scientific) philosophy, supplemented by an
introspective knowledge of the world according to the model of divine mystical
experience. The Meister Eckhart–Spinoza combination thus stands for the polar-
ity of rationality and mysticism. Referring to Meister Eckhart as “the greatest of
all of these heretical, mystical skeptics,” he suggests in Skepticism and Mysticism
that Eckhart succeeded in achieving a certain harmony between pantheism and
critical epistemology: “He believed that he could create this unknown force from
within himself, mystically immerse himself in it to subsequently speak of it in
metaphors and allegories. He was certain that what we find in ourselves in the
form of emotional experiences is a closer approximation of the true nature of the
world than the world perceived outside.”36 Nature is thus seen as the subject of
scientific knowledge, but at the same time has a hidden nature; this causes us to
search within ourselves, and this striving for knowledge is perhaps more relevant
for a meaningful life.
In the years following Skepticism and Mysticism, Landauer made no substan-
tial theoretical statements that did not contain a reference – albeit sometimes
32 Fritz Mauthner, Beiträge zu einer Kritik der Sprache, vol. 1 (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1901; reprint, ed.
Ludger Lütkehaus, (Wien: Böhlau, 1999).
33 See Meister Eckharts mystische Schriften; in unsere Sprache übertragen von Gustav Land-
auer (Berlin: Schnabel, 1903). Together with Hermann Büttner’s translation, Meister Eckharts
Schriften und Predigten (Jena: Diederichs, 1903), Landauer’s translation – completed in just a few
weeks time – heralds the rise of a new mysticism in modern times.
34 Ibid., 7.
35 August Jundt, Histoire du panthéisme populaire du moyen âge (Strassbourg: Fischbach, 1875).
36 See Gustav Landauer, Skepsis und Mystik. Versuche im Anschluss an Fritz Mauthner‘s Sprach-
kritik (Berlin: Fleischel, 1903), 64f.
veiled – to Spinoza. Spinoza is thus present in Landauer’s thought in a twofold

sense. For one, the new kind of knowledge Landauer explores in Skepticism and
Mysticism, shows unmistakable traces of the supposedly mystical chapter of the
Ethics, in particular with regard to the scientia intuitiva, or third level of knowl-
edge attained by the sage in Spinoza’s rational cosmos. Secondly, Landauer was
guided by an almost genealogical view in regarding the Amsterdam philosopher,
whom he considered to have initiated the ancestral line of a secular, assimi-
lated Judaism, as the “first secular Jew.”37 Spinoza, to whom Fritz Mauthner had
referred as a “godless mystic,” thus enabled Landauer to consider Jewish tradi-
tion in a new light, unfettered by the restrictions of proscribed orthodoxy.38
Landauer affirmed Spinoza’s importance as a Jewish thinker. He took issue
with Rafael Seligmann (1875-1943), who had written an article that not only linked
Spinoza with Nietzschean amorality, but also asserted that Spinoza’s thought
was fundamentally alien to the Jewish spirit – with the exception perhaps of the
mystically tinged fifth volume of the Ethics, which in his view bore some remote
similarity to the Kabbala. Landauer’s response to this rabbinic scholar, whom he
otherwise held in high esteem, was “if you take away Moses, Jesus and Spinoza
from Judaism, then there will be no Jewish people. The Kabbala is just as truly
Jewish as Spinoza … I consider your definition of the Jewish spirit to be com-
pletely unsatisfactory. The Jewish spirit is what you carry inside you as your best,
and not what you despise in others.”39
In a review of Willem Meijer’s essay Nachbildung der im Jahre 1902 noch er
haltenen Briefe des Benedictus Despinosa, which he published in Das literarische
Echo, Landauer offers an emphatic, though not unambiguous comment on
Spinoza: “This is not the place to say who he really was: a spirit with incredible
logic and a profound mystic, a man whose time had not come until the empirical
sciences set about looking for a theoretical foundation for the results that they
achieved for the sake of order and their own understanding, instead of wanting
to establish a theory or philosophy for themselves. He will then stand there like
a rock, against which the many waves will crash, and on which many castaways
may save themselves.”40 Spinoza’s Ethics would appear to have been a rock of
philosophical thought for Landauer himself, steadying him in those stormy war
37 See Yovel, Spinoza and other Heretics.

38 See Mauthner, Spinoza.
39 Gustav Landauer to Rafael Seligmann, 17 September 1910, Lebensgang I, 324f. See Rafael Se-
ligmann, “Spinoza und die Weltanschauung des Judentums,” in Probleme des Judentums (Vien-
na: R. Löwit, 1919), 18ff.
40 Gustav Landauer, Review of Nachbildung der im Jahre 1902 noch erhaltenen Briefe des Bene-
dictus Despinosa, ed. W. Meijer, (The Hague: 1903), Das literarische Echo 7, no. 20 (1905): 1520f.
years. It was certainly not by chance that Spinoza became the interpretative key
for his commentaries on Shakespeare.
5 Landauer, Spinoza and Shakespeare

In his interpretation of Shakespeare, Landauer no longer draws on this or that
specific Spinozan theory or concept – such as the parallelism of attributes or the
scientia intuitiva – but rather taps the emotive theory of the Ethics as a whole;
indeed this emotive appeal – reflected even in the titles of Spinoza’s two chapters,
“Origine, et Natura Affectum” (Of the Origin and Nature of the Affects), and “De
Potentia Intellectus, seu de Libertate Humana” (Of the Power of the Intellect, or of
Human Liberty) – became the theoretical frame of reference for Landauer’s study
of Shakespeare.41 In a letter to the editor of his Shakespeare book42 he writes: “I
consider freedom to be the crucial innovation in my book. Freedom, not in a polit-
ical sense, aimed at achieving a particular state of affairs; nothing is further from
Shakespeare’s mind; but rather freedom in a human, private sense, particularly
with respect to the relationship that has always been a problem for Shakespeare,
that between desire and spirit. Freedom from formulae, conventions of a theoret-
ical or moral nature.”43
The old theme of Landauer’s “Anarchism” essay now becomes dramatized,
so to speak. Landauer seems to have found an adequate mould in which to cast
the images in his mind. A mesh of manifold communication opens up before the
spectator: Shakespeare’s personality provides the typical epochal transparency
on which the discussion of “anthropological” freedom, as well as its historical
and artistic manifestations, are presented in relation to Spinoza and Rembrandt.
Landauer’s interpretation presents an unusual perspective of the alternative
actions available to human beings at the beginning of the modern age. Differ-
ent ways of handling power, acts of violence, and passionate entanglements are
examined within the framework of drama. Shakespeare’s plays are thus read
from the perspective of freedom, and so there is a direct continuation from Lan-
dauer’s social-psychological reflections in his short monograph, Die Revolution.44
41 The third part of the Ethics was first brought to scholarly attention by the physiologist Jo-
hannes Müller (1801–1858), whose writings on Spinoza’s concept of the soul Mauthner of course
also knew.
42 See Gustav Landauer, Shakespeare. Dargestellt in Vorträgen, ed. M. Buber (Frankfurt a.M.:
43 Gustav Landauer to Adolf Neumann, 13 June 1917, Lebensgang II, 181f.
44 Gustav Landauer, Die Revolution (Frankfurt/Main: Rütten & Loening, 1907).
The polarity of desire and spirit, seen as a central conflict between dependence
and freedom in aesthetics and cultural history, constitutes the anthropological
constant for an analysis of the variable nature of the different dramatis personae,
those “individuals as they are in transit, as they are between the ages, as they are
manifold and mixed and unfathomable.”45 The ego and the world seem to coin-
cide here. As Landauer adds in the same letter, “One must be used to searching for
the mystery of the world and its processes in the deepest, innermost part of man:
in keeping with the relationship between man and his ego. I read Shakespeare
and his way of making people see themselves – not only in their relationships to
others but also in their telltale relationships to themselves – in the closest pos-
sible relation to Spinoza’s ethics and, because it works with visualization rather
than abstraction, to Rembrandt’s art.”
Such a concentration of ontological, epistemological and ethically anthropo-
logical perspectives actually does exist in Spinoza’s Ethics.46 It is therefore hardly
surprising that Landauer allows himself to be affected by Spinoza’s impressive
discourse on human passion and the possibility of freedom. A brief outline of
this theory may be useful at this point. Spinoza discusses human actions and
appetites “more geometrico,” by a geometrical method, seeing them in terms of
lines, planes and solid bodies, without attributing to them any value whatsoever
– they are “above and beyond good or evil,” so to speak. Nothing in nature –
or in the nature of the human being – is regarded as an error; everything that
exists must be accepted positively as a necessity, and this applies to the emotions
as well. Like every other creature, the human being strives for self-preservation.
This striving manifests itself in the form of a desire, a yearning, an urge or a will,
depending on the circumstances in which it occurs. Spinoza knows of two fun-
damental emotions from which all others emerge, and both pertain to the aspira-
tion for self-preservation. The first is joy, which is seen as a “transition to greater
completeness,” and the second is sorrow, seen as a transition to a lesser com-
pleteness, whereby the respective emotion marks the transition point. “Love” is
therefore defined as “joy according to the aspect of an outside cause” and “hate”
is defined as “sorrow according to the aspect of an outside cause.”
Spinoza then relates his epistemology to these anthropological findings by
asking himself by which means true – in this case adequate – knowledge can be
obtained under conditions of manifold passionate entanglements; he uses this
as the basis for the development of his theory of the three types of knowledge,
whereby each of these stands in a different relationship to the emotive state of the
human being. Freedom is only perfect and complete “where the effect is achieved
45 Landauer, “Hamlet,” Shakespeare I, 244.

46 Spinoza, Ethica, 256–487.
solely and purely as a consequence of one’s own nature, as this necessity also
constitutes perfect freedom”; this is of course, something that can only be said
of God, and not of human beings, entangled as they are in their complex causal
connections. The freedom that can be attained by humans in their capacity as
both knowing and acting beings – and Spinoza sees no fundamental difference
between the two – is therefore always relatively and gradually different. In Spino-
za’s eyes, man’s supreme freedom consists in his having an adequate knowledge
of his own nature, and this implies his knowing involvement in this necessity.
Freedom is therefore tied to the necessity of one’s own nature. For Spinoza there
are no “should” statements, only inviolable divine laws; there are therefore also
no feelings of guilt or sin.
Within this abstract structure, the term “bondage” is initially only used to
describe the fact that there is “always something more powerful” in the area
of finite modes – or the world – and that man, knowing and acting, will never
be able to become the master of all of the changes, which he, as part of nature,
continuously suffers. This is because he does not exist merely as a result of his
actions. Spinoza draws a distinction in this respect, between passiones (passions)
and actiones (free, adequately recognized actions). The term “slave” is used to
designate someone who follows his passions blindly. A free man, on the other
hand, is one who follows what he has recognized to be right. Spinoza’s concept
of freedom is therefore strictly tied to epistemology. The catalogue of rules for
life that Spinoza has defined for dealing with outside affections should also be
mentioned here, for in some respects they are akin to the detached, inner calm
of Landauer’s chastened mystic. Spinoza, for example, advises anyone who is
overcome by love or hate (whether caused by himself or others), or anyone who
is hurt or finds himself unexpectedly faced with injury or insult, to counter the
resulting anger, hate or fear by continuously practicing contemplation of oneself,
by mobilizing opposite emotions. This is because, basically speaking, anything
that brings joy is good (bringing us closer to the divine nature).
It is understandable that an ethics which eschews “should” statements
would be seen by an anarchist as something most congenial, but this alternative
betokens no lighter burden. Neither Spinoza’s sage nor Landauer’s mystic loner
has an easy load, charged as they are with the task of conveying to others Trieb
and Geist (desire and spirit), and the hope of a future, more humane, humanity.
What interests Landauer in Shakespeare’s personality is not so much “that which
projects outwardly into the world, but that which creates a new world, a new
human being from within, and embodies them in works of art.”47 In Landauer’s
view, this is a matter of life and death, a matter of the emotional survival of the
47 Landauer, “Shakespeares Persönlichkeit,” Shakespeare II, 390.

individual as much as of the species. In his interpretation of Romeo and Juliet, he

writes: “It is the question as to the right of darkness, unconsciousness, irrational-
ity, the unutterable; not only the right of desire, but also its marriage to the most
supreme spirit. The hours of lucidity and purpose will always come, when the
spirit in us that is born of desire and sex, rises up against its fathers and wishes
to be nothing other than a luminous spirit, serene and free of dross. And one day,
perhaps … the hour of the human race will come, when reflection will do away
with sensuality, the spirit will do away with desire, God will do away with the
beast and man will do away with himself.”48
Landauer sees Shakespeare’s artistic strength, and aesthetics in general,
as rooted in the unabashedly positive acceptance of life in the face of immeas
urable horror. Drawing once again on Spinoza, he notes that “the free human
being thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is not a meditation
upon death, but upon life”; it is precisely this kind of “message about overcoming
death,” which marks “the greatest achievement of Shakespeare, the poet.”49 This
implies neither the egoistic enjoyment of desire and passion, nor their conquest
by the spirit, but rather their free association; the godly and the beastly must be
reconciled anew in every new specimen of the species.
In Shakespeare’s tragedies, there are extreme confrontations. For example,
Richard III, Iago and Falstaff are “men … subjugated by both desire and bright
reason,” in whom “the wildly raging heat of the frenzied male can mate with
the piercing cold of the calculating, corrupting intellect,” and “however bright
it was, reason still served the musty darkness.”50 Likewise, Hamlet, the “modern
man”, is a slave – albeit “a slave to thought” – and the consequences are just as
deadly: “Through Hamlet’s experience as a whole, we know that knowing and
doing nothing, thinking and being unable to perform an act of violence, spirit
and conscience are linked to one another by a much more profound association
than the most holy fear of eternity; Hamlet does not talk about this relationship,
however, he lives and dies it.”51
When Landauer attempts to convey an understanding of the figure and
actions of Shylock, he discusses the experience of the Venetian Jew in terms of
an environment that is completely alien and hostile to him, an experience that
Landauer himself, as well as Spinoza, the Jew of Amsterdam, also shared.52 In
48 Landauer, “Romeo und Julia,” Shakespeare, I, 25.

49 Landauer, “Shakespeares Persönlichkeit,” Shakespeare II, 389f.
50 Landauer, “Der Sturm,” Shakespeare, II, 288.
51 Landauer, “Hamlet,” Shakespeare, I, 237.
52 Landauer published his “Merchant of Venice” lecture in Buber’s journal, Der Jude 2, nos. 5-6
(1917): 378-405; and it was intended for a specifically Jewish audience. See Gustav Landauer.
considering Shylock, Landauer understands that just as he was called hateful

by the world around him, he was also compelled to remain in the prison of his
own hatred. He writes “we see him [Shylock] only as one who reacts; as the Jew
dealing with the world that made him what he is. He is nothing more than com-
munication; he is unable to deal with himself alone. If he were capable of doing
so, or if he did so, with his many buried talents, he would be a different person
from the one he appears to be, he would be himself, he would come to his senses.
What is merely the means to an end – money – becomes for him the end, because
the world will not allow him to be himself.”53 Moreover, “he is a man of reason
and desires alone and therefore – to use Spinoza’s distinction – he is an obstinate
slave, bound up within himself, rather than a free man associated with his peers;
inwardly bound but also falling apart inwardly and falling out with himself; this
is because the higher sphere, which first calls for unity and which can make
reason, contemplation, wisdom and the universal spirit out of the intellect, can
turn desire into emotion, feeling and sensitivity, and which transforms avarice
into longing and anger into heroism, this is completely missing … . Old Shylock
is cornered, however, he has been cast out of society, there is no way forward for
him.”54
It was the First World War – and the hitherto unknown degree of material and
spiritual sacrifice it caused – which had a strong impact on Landauer’s reading
of Shakespeare. The horror engendered by that war, strengthened Landauer’s
insight that just as humans had brought their “passions before the altar of the
gods” in the grim myths of the Greeks, Shakespeare’s characters – their passions,
words and actions – held a grim truth that reflected the ominous reality of Lan-
dauer’s own situation. In particular, Landauer’s theory of psychological freedom
reflects his debt to Shakespeare who “has shown man’s restriction and captivity
in a more profound way because he has shown his freedom; because, with him,
we become grimly aware that we are all our own jailers, our own servants and our
own murderers, and because, with him, we perceive all of the cogs of the internal
mechanism that we use to turn our hearts into torture chambers.”55
With, and despite, a growing horror, Landauer himself managed to reach an
attitude of stoic equanimity, having, as he himself notes, “climbed up and beyond
the steps of reason to the intuitive, superior equanimity of the spirit that lives in
Dichter, Ketzer, Außenseiter. Essays und Reden zu Literatur, Philosophie, Judentum, ed. H. Delf
(Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1997), 194ff.
53 Landauer, “Der Kaufmann von Venedig,” Shakespeare I, 58.
54 Ibid., 71.
55 Landauer, “Hamlet,” Shakespeare I, 240f.
freedom.”56 For as he concluded in his essay on Othello, one must strive to reach
“the level of ethics, of peace, where all of man’s actual atrocities to man … can
disturb one no longer. But we are already standing on the ladder leading to that
plateau, when we observe with imperturbability, in ataraxia, how in the world the
chain is unbreakable, and the weave of the depths of the human soul cannot be
torn … and nature is inescapable … . One who is so imperturbable watches, like
Spinoza in the little legend … how the spider catches the fly in its web.”57 Landauer
discerns a certain poetic justice in Shakespeare’s work, particularly, for example
in the final, joyful and peaceful scene of The Tempest, which affords a vision of
what Landauer saw as the epitome of the high plane of human life, a vision in
which “the elementary force of desires and passions, human savagery, violence,
the cry of anger and vengeance, the craving for violence and lust … diminish, and
in their place … the element of play, of serenity, of romantic magic and of a more
profound meaning, of reconciliation or polemics and, at all events, of wisdom
and speech [are allowed] to unfold.”58
56 Landauer, “Der Sturm,” Shakespeare II, 288ff.

57 Landauer, “Othello,” Shakespeare, I, 320.
58 Landauer, “Der Sturm,” Shakespeare II, 286.
Yossef Schwartz
Gustav Landauer and Gerhard Scholem:
Anarchy and Utopia
If one examines the importance of mysticism in Landauer’s thought, two points
are of particular interest.1 The first pertains to the special nature of the study
of mystical phenomena, whether historical or contemporary, undertaken by
German and European scholars at the beginning of the last century. The link
between Judaism and mysticism is important in this context not only because a
significant number of the most prominent scholars pursuing this research were
Jews, but also because the scholarly study of mysticism exerted a crucial influ-
ence on the development and study of Judaism in the twentieth century.2 The
second point concerns the specific tradition to which Landauer himself devoted
his attention, namely, medieval Christian mysticism. As Landauer himself noted,
this is a tradition that begins with Pseudo-Dionysius, ends with Nicholas of Cusa,
and grants pride of place to Meister Eckhart – a unique figure standing above all
others.3 Indeed it is Meister Eckhart who constitutes the almost exclusive focus
of Landauer’s interest in mysticism. By way of introduction to my comments on
Landauer’s thought, I shall begin with a quotation from Scholem’s From Berlin to
Jerusalem:
To be sure, the Marxist doctrines … impressed me far less than the writings of anarchists,
quite a few of which I read in the Berlin municipal library, prompted by the events of the day
… . Their socialism was more meaningful to me than the supposedly scientific kind, which
I never found convincing. Gustav Landauer’s Aufruf zum Sozialismus (A Call to Socialism)
made a profound impression not only on me but on a considerable number of young Zion-
ists as well. The same may be said of the personality of Landauer, who frequently lectured
in those days before Zionist groups, and with whom I had several conversations toward the
end of 1915 and in the following year. By that time I had already attempted to understand the
three substantial volumes of Fritz Mauthner’s Beiträge zu einer Kritik der Sprache (Toward a
1 My interest in Landauer’s interpretation of Eckhart was spurred by Thorsten Hinz, whose dis-
sertation on the connections between mysticism and anarchy in the work of both thinkers –
“Mystik und Anarchie: Meister Eckhardt und seine Bedeutung im Denken Gustav Landauers”
– was submitted to the University of Basel in 1999. The phenomenon he investigates in this im-
portant study has been almost completely neglected in modern research, and I am grateful to
him for sharing his insights with me. The thesis has since appeared in book form as Mystik und
Anarchie: Meister Eckhardt und seine Bedeutung im Denken Gustav Landauers (Berlin: K. Kramer,
2000.) All citations are from the thesis.
2 See M. Löwy, Redemption and Utopia: Libertarian Judaism in Central Europe (Stanford: Stan-
ford University Press, 1992); and Hinz, “Mystik und Anarchie,” 142-153.
3 Skepsis und Mystik (Köln: Marcan-Block, 1923), 46.
Gustav Landauer and Gerhard Scholem: Anarchy and Utopia 173
Critique of Language) to which an older student had directed my attention. Landauer, who
was a great admirer and collaborator of Mauthner (though he made very negative remarks
about the latter’s attitude during the war), encouraged me to read his own observations
and conclusions from Mauthner’s theories which he had presented in his book Skepsis und
Mystik (Skepticism and Mysticism).4
There are several elements in this important passage that are pertinent to the
discussion below. First of all, Scholem notes the well-known anti-scientific and
anti-deterministic nature of Landauer’s anarcho-socialism and describes how
he himself had been fascinated in his youth by that political tendency. I shall
argue that this is a tendency, which although it may have gone through a variety
of changes, nonetheless remained a crucial component of Scholem’s thought.
Another key point concerns Landauer’s relationship with Mauthner, in particular
the direct linkage suggested in this quotation between the ideas of Landauer’s A
Call to Socialism and Skepticism and Mysticism, and those in Mauthner’s Critique
of Language. Scholem similarly indicates that Landauer had some connection –
albeit an uncertain one – with Zionist groups, and that there was also a rela-
tionship between Landauer and the young Scholem himself. Another connection
mentioned at a later point in the autobiography and elsewhere in Scholem’s writ-
ings is that between Landauer and Buber.5
There is, however, a different and more radical connection between Scholem
and Landauer, which, though not explicitly mentioned in the above quotation,
is worthy of discussion. In the description above, Scholem refers to the period of
the First World War, more specifically the years 1915-1916. This period, especially
between 1914-1916, turned out to be a point of departure for many German-Jewish
intellectuals, in which partial similarities and intimate friendships collapsed in
face of the common challenge of a assuming a defined politico-moral position
toward the war. Martin Buber, Gustav Landauer, Rosa Luxemburg, Fritz Mauth-
ner, Constantin Brunner, Franz Rosenzweig, Hermann Cohen, Walter Benjamin,
Ernst Bloch, and Gerhard Scholem – each faced a crucial moment of truth, forced
to take a clear position toward Germany’s Kriegspolitik. Scholem and Landauer
vehemently opposed the war, and refused to take part in what they saw as the
European death industry. Both of them rejected the national idea that called upon
them to fly its flag. One could probably argue that in both cases it was the uto-
pian-messianic vision that fueled their resistance to a society geared to mobilize
for war. It was this passion that would lead Landauer to his death in Munich in
4 Gershom Scholem, From Berlin to Jerusalem: Memories of my Youth, trans. H. Zohn (New York:
Schocken, 1988), 52-53.
5 Ibid., 81.
174 Yossef Schwartz
1919, and Scholem to his voluntary emigration in 1923. Yet this is the point where
all similarity between the two ends – for while Landauer’s refusal to battle was
rooted in his vision of a universal human ideal, Scholem’s rejection of German
patriotism stemmed from his stated commitment to another, alternative or oppos-
ing national “imagined community,” one, which, for the most part, existed only
in his own mind.
For the young Scholem, then, Zionism could be perceived as an immediate
political alternative to central European war-politics but only if it were based on the
profound vision of a messianic utopia. But Scholem’s messianism, for all its sim-
ilarity to the views of Landauer, Walter Benjamin, and others, is strikingly differ-
ent from the universal utopianism of these thinkers, because of its strong national
claims. This difference, which I feel has been all too often neglected in recent dis-
cussions of Scholem’s thought, is one of the main points to be discussed below.
Several scholars have analyzed the Jewish nature and sources of Landauer’s
worldview. I tend to accept Norbert Altenhofer’s claim regarding the essentially
non-Jewish character of Landauer’s thought in general, and of his interpretation
of mysticism in particular, but I shall not enter into this discussion in any detail
here.6 Instead, I shall return to the issues introduced at the beginning of this
paper, and emphasize two particular points. First of all, one can discern in Lan-
dauer’s work an ambition to create a type of political theology, which involves a
secular combination of messianic-mystical or antinomian anarchism. This is the
combination, which, in different guises, is common to some other remarkable
figures of the time, many of whom were Jews. Landauer himself gives his anar-
cho-socialism a Jewish formulation, but only quite rarely and primarily in his
later writings.7 But this is not all – and here I come to the second point, striving
to better understand the exact way in which both Landauer and Scholem turn to
history, especially medieval history, in search of a spiritual model by which to
address the problems of their own day. Understanding medieval culture became
for both a constitutive locus of self-defintion.8 Their historiographical engage-
ment with the nature and scope of medieval culture was a natural choice for a his-
6 N. Altenhofer, “Tradition als Revolution: Gustav Landauers ‘geworden-werdendes Judentum’,”

in Jews and Germans from 1860 to 1933: The Problematic Symbiosis, ed. D. Bronsen (Heidelberg:
Carl Winter, 1979), 173-201; see also Hinz, “Mystik und Anarchie,” 151, n. 1, for his critique of
Michael Löwy.
7 For a thorough discussion of that Jewish formulation see H.-J. Heydorn, introduction to G. Lan-
dauer, Aufruf zum Sozialismus, ed., H.-J. Heydorn (Frankfurt/Main: Europäische Verlagsanstalt,
1967), 23ff.
8 For Scholem’s political theology and its relation to Carl Schmitt, see C. Schmidt, “Das Hören
der Bilder und das Sehen der Stimmen: Zu Gerschom Scholems Deutung der deutsch-jüdischen
Geschichte,” Jüdischer Almanach (Frankfurt/Main: Jüdischer Verlag, 1994).
torian such as Scholem, who dedicated his research to the Jewish Middle Ages. It
would seem to have been a less obvious choice for Landauer, the author of Aufruf
zum Sozialismus. Yet it was, and not only in light of his abiding interest in Meister
Eckhart but also given the manner in which he develops Mauthner’s Sprachkritik
in Skepsis und Mystik, and the theory of revolution he develops in Die Revolution.
As previously noted, Landauer’s interest in mysticism as a phenomenologi-
cal and historical phenomenon relates almost exclusively to Meister Eckhart. It is
Eckhart whom Landauer quotes in his writings although he also refers to a long
list of other philosophical and religious figures.9 In this respect Landauer differs
from Scholem, as well as from Mauthner and Buber, to mention only those think-
ers of whom I spoke earlier. The latter three saw their particular areas of historical
research as a much broader endeavor than did Landauer his. Whereas they sought,
in more or less historical terms, to point to some overall explanatory phenomenon
as the basis for a true analysis and explanation of all of culture, Landauer’s concern
was different. In Die Revolution as well as in his Aufruf zum Sozialismus, Landauer
shows that he was certainly aware of such methods of historical explanation, but
his own genuine interest did not lie in such projects. Landauer treats Eckhart as a
present-day guide or hero, who is deeply involved in the philosophical questions
that Landauer himself explores in his Skepsis und Mystik.
Eckhart also provides a source of insight into the main social problems that
Landauer addresses in his political writings. “Every time is part of eternity,” writes
Landauer in Die Revolution, and this, it would seem, was all the more evident to
Landauer once he had become acquainted with Eckhart’s thought.10 Indeed, by
sharing that same insight with Eckhart, Landauer was able to develop a fruit-
ful “conversation” with his predecessor. This general tendency is most clearly
evident in Landauer’s translation of Eckhart’s writings. In his introduction to the
translation, as well as in his closing remarks, Landauer makes it clear that he
had been seeking the vital and relevant message of Eckhart, and not its scholas-
tic setting, which he felt was a matter for scholars.11 In considering Landauer’s
9 See Skepsis , 47: “The greatest of all these heretical mystical skeptics was our Meister Eckhart,
who with tremendous methods, undertook something of which only traces can be found in Spi-
noza , and which Schelling – Kant’s student and Boehme’s heir – couldn’t seem to manage five
years later, namely bringing pantheism and critical epistemology into harmony.”
10 Die Revolution (Frankfurt/Main: Rütten & Loeining, 1907), 30.
11 “Meister Eckhart is too good for historical acknowledgement; he must rise from the dead as
a living person”; further on he notes: “However, this book has no historical objectives … . My
sole aim is: the living Eckhart. He makes an impact in this volume, by means of his penetrating
skepticism, [as well as] by means of his poetic power, his majestic language, and his generous
and kind nature. All the rest is of interest only to the scholars.” See Landauer, Meister Eckharts
mystische Schriften (Münster/Wetzlar: Büchse der Pandora, 1978), 7 and 149.
176 Yossef Schwartz
stated intention in translating Eckhart, I shall concentrate mainly on those points

which may illuminate what made this medieval Christian figure so attractive to
the modern Jewish anarchist.
1
In my own research on Meister Eckhart, it has always been Eckhart the philoso-
pher who has interested me.12 By “philosopher” I mean one who served as a pro-
fessor in leading academic institutions of his time and who, in addition to trea-
tises written in German, composed a number of scholastic works in Latin. This
latter Eckhart remained unknown to Landauer, as well as to Scholem and Buber.
They all based their knowledge of German mysticism on a tradition dating back
to Franz von Baader (1765-1841), and including such modern scholars as Pfeiffer
and Quint.13 This tradition was based on Eckhart’s German writings, sermons and
treatises. Eckhart’s Latin writings were first published only in 1886 and Heinrich
Denifle (1844-1905), the scholar who discovered and published them, did his best
to present them as the unoriginal and unappealing fruits of a purely scholastic
mind.14 It was only during the 1930s, and again after the Second World War, that
more serious research on the Latin writings was conducted, and it is especially in
the last generation that the new findings have been widely accepted.15 Together
with the reception of this new image of Eckhart’s philosophy, the question was
raised as to whether and to what extent Eckhart can rightly be described as a
mystic at all. Should Eckhart not be viewed so much as a philosopher standing in
a philosophical tradition, perhaps he should be considered a German Dominican
and a disciple of the Neoplatonic School. Such a view is reflected in the title of a
famous article on Eckhart written by Kurt Flasch (b. 1930), in which the author
12 See Y. Schwartz, “To Thee is silence praise”: Meister Eckhart’s reading in Maimonides’ Guide of
the Perplexed (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2002)) [Hebrew]; and idem, “Meister Eckhart and Moses Mai-
monides: From Judaeo-Arabic Rationalism to Christian Mysticism,” in A Companion to Meister
Eckhart [Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition 36] (Leiden: Brill 2012): 389-414.
13 See I. Degenhart, Studien zum Wandel des Eckhartbildes (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1967), 113ff.
14 H. S. Denifle, “Meister Eckharts lateinische Schriften und die Grundanschauung seiner
Lehre,” Archiv für Literatur- und Kulturgeschichte 2 (1986): 417-532, 436; W. Malte Fues, Mystik als
Erkenntnis? Kritische Studien zur Meister Eckhart Forschung (Bonn: Bouvier, 1981), 74: “Denifle
had made a scholastic out of Eckhart, and a bad scholastic at that.”
15 For a full description of developments in research, see the two bibliographical works by Ni-
klaus Largier: Bibliographie zu Meister Eckhart (Freiburg: Universitätsverlag Freiburg, 1989); and
“Meister Eckhart – Perspektiven der Forschung, 1980-1993,” Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie
114 (1995): 29-98.
attempts to “rescue him from the mystical stream.”16 Some of the arguments
raised in that debate reflect the willingness of scholars to accept a dichotomy in
Eckhart’s personality. These scholars tend to focus, consciously or unconsciously,
on either the Latin or the German writings, depending on which of these support
their basic view of Eckhart’s personality. Landauer would probably have some
difficulty recognizing “his” Eckhart in the scholarship associated with the corpus
of his Latin writings. Yet Landauer’s intuition concerning Eckhart’s personality is
of added interest in the light of the research of the last generation.
One of the most urgent tasks today would seem to be to provide a description
of Eckhart that might encompass the totality of his personality, both as profes-
sor and teacher. This is particularly pertinent given the growing unwillingness
among scholars to credit the “traditional” view of a dichotomy in Eckhart’s per-
sonality. Moreover, it was Eckhart himself who made the distinction between the
Lebemeister and the Lesemeister (“master of living” and “master of learning”)
options, and decided in favor of the first.17 Naturally, he himself – like so many
other medieval thinkers charged with the same “offense” – could never have
conceived of such a dichotomy having any bearing on his own personality and
work. The present-day opinio communis is that Eckhart was persecuted by Church
authorities not so much for his opinions as for the way in which he chose to for-
mulate them, namely, in popular German sermons.18 In his sermons, Eckhart was
preaching to a different kind of audience from that accustomed to hearing his
typical abstract theological speculations in the universities. In considering Eck-
hart’s preaching activity, then, we are in a sense dealing with the very transfor-
mation of academic, elitist formulations and their transmission in the popular
arena – a process defined by the sermon.
I shall argue that in Eckhart one finds a unique combination of mysticism
and messianism, one that shows itself in his unique and sovereign reception of
Arab rationalism, and especially in his encounter with Maimonides’ Guide for
16 K. Flasch, “Meister Eckhart: Versuch, ihn aus dem mystischen Strom zu retten,” in Gnosis
und Mystik in der Geschichte der Philosophie, ed. Peter Koslowski (Zürich: Artemis, 1992), (Zürich:
1992), 94-110; see also R. Imbach, “Intellectus in deum ascensus: Philosophische Bemerkungen
zu einer Veröffentlichung über Grundfragen der Mystik,” Freiburger Zeitschrift für Theologie und
Philosophie 23 (1976): 198-209, 198. A thorough critique of that attitude can be found in A. M.
Haas, Mystik als Aussage (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1996), 346ff.
17 See in Landauer’s translation, for instance: “The speaker is Meister Eckhart: One lebemeis-
ter would be needed more than a thousand lesemeister; but no one can learn and live without
God.” Landauer, Meister Eckhart, 135; for the original text see F. Pfeiffer (ed.), Deutsche Mystiker
des vierzehnten Jahrhunderts, vol. 2, Meister Eckhart (1857; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1914), 599; see also Hinz, “Mystik und Anarchie,” 74.
18 See K. Ruh, Geschichte der abendländischen Mystik, vol. III (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1996), 248ff.
178 Yossef Schwartz
the Perplexed.19 In the process of internalizing and radicalizing the Maimonidean

teachings, Eckhart undertook a translation of the most elitist and esoteric ideas
into popular language, and did so by turning the traditional messianic idea into
an individual principle. The original phenomenon of revelation and the apoca-
lyptic messianic interpretation become stages on the path of the individual – of
every individual – to self-fulfillment.20 All of this, as well as many other repre-
sentations of similar phenomena during the same period as Eckhart’s, including
widespread popular social movements such as the Beguines, The Heresy of the
Free Spirit, or the later Devotio Moderna, and outstanding figures like Dante (1265-
1321) or Marguerite Porete (c. 1250-1310), are all closely and historically linked
with a certain development toward a modern sense of individuality during the
late Middle Ages. Landauer was sensitive enough to make this very point at a very
early stage, when he criticized in Die Revolution21 the improper habit of too many
scholars “of regarding everything that was undeniably alive or of transitional
value in the Middle Ages, as a predecessor of the Renaissance.”22
On the one hand, Landauer obviously believed that he could find some idea
in medieval discourse which had much in common with his own notions of the
individual and society; on the other hand, he did not conceive of this idea as an
19 See M. Idel, Messianic Mystics (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1998), 58-100; on the basic sim-
ilarity of Eckhart and the Jewish Kabbalist Abraham Abulafia in their interpretation of Maimon-
ides, see G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (1941; New York: Schocken, 1973), 126; M.
Idel, Maïmonide et la mystique juive (Paris: Cerf, 1991), 85-86.
20 That does not prevent them of course from claiming to be the faithful followers of Maimon-
ides precisely with regard to that issue. Such a claim is tenable; indeed, Maimonides himself
suggests that a specific kind of individual may experience a spiritual process of redemption.
Such redemption, however, is reserved for a very small minority.
21 Revolution, 35.
22 A note that might be considered also with regard to two other outstanding Jewish-German
scholars writing on related topics and at very much the same time. The first is Martin Buber, who
shared with Landauer an intuitive affinity to German mysticism as well as a personal friendship.
In 1904 he submitted his dissertation to the University of Vienna under the title “Beiträge zur
Geschichte des Individuationsproblems,” in which he analyzes the aspect of individuation in the
ideas of Nicholas of Cusa and Jakob Böhme. A parallel concern can be seen in Ernst Cassirer’s
analysis of Nicholas of Cusa in his Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft
der neueren Zeit, vol. 1 (1906; repr., Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1994), 21-61.
Buber’s analysis differs in many details from that of Cassirer, although he too sees in Cusa – in
a formulation, which is quite similar to that of Cassirer – “the first modern thinker,” (see above,
9). It is worth noting, however, that all three, in emphasizing the negative element of the early
German philosophical tradition, might have been influenced by Hermann Cohen who strives
to peg Cusa as a pioneer of modern thought in many of his writings. See in particular, A. S.
Bruckstein, Hermann Cohen’s “Ethics of Maimonides”: Translation and Commentary (Syracuse:
Syracuse Univ. Press, 2000).
early manifestation of modern thought but rather as an idea with its own medie-
val setting. What was it then that made religious figures such as Eckhart believe
they could translate the most sublime metaphysical and religious contents into
the language of the masses? If one follows Landauer’s line of thought, one might
argue that they were able to do so, because they knew that all levels of society
were united in one basic common desire, namely the desire for religious redemp-
tion. According to Landauer’s interpretation, the medieval scene presents us with
a teleological unity. In contrast to the situation of the Odysseus-seaman in the
famous narrative of Adorno and Horkheimer, Landauer presents a scenario in
which the seaman and navigator consciously share the same target.23 What they
hold in common is the spiritual goal of human perfection: “And what united all
these variously differentiated forms and bound them together at the apex into a
higher unity, a pyramid whose point was not power and was not invisible in the
clouds, was the spirit streaming out of the characters and souls of the individ-
ual men and women into all these structures, drawing strength from them and
streaming back into the individuals.“24 Working on the basis of this same atti-
tude, both the Christian and the Jew radicalized, each in his own cultural idiom,
the same teaching of a common teacher, namely, Maimonides.25
23 M. Horkheimer and T. Adorno, Dialektik der Aufklärung (1944; Frankfurt/Main: Fischer, 1969),
65ff.; and contrary to the Marxist denial of those small and fragile elements in favor of the goods
necessary for existence, as outlined by Walter Benjamin: “The class struggle, which is always
present to a historian influenced by Marx, is a fight for the crude and material things without
which no refined and spiritual things could exist. Nevertheless, it is not in the form of the spoils
that fall to the victor that the latter make their presence felt in the class struggle. They manifest
themselves in this struggle as courage, humor, cunning and fortitude.” Benjamin, “Theses on the
Philosophy of History,” in idem., Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, trans., Harry Zohn, ed.
with an intro. by Hannah Arendt (New York: Schocken, 1969), 253-264, 254-5. It is important to
note that when criticizing Marx, both Landauer and Benjamin are actually speaking about their
contemporaries, the Social Democrats in Germany.
24 Revolution, 44; two years earlier Landauer translated Peter Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid (Gegen-
seitige Hilfe in der Entwicklung), which develops a similar evaluation of medieval culture. Landau-
er emphasizes the role of Geist lying above all inter-differentiation in medieval society in a much
stronger sense than does Kropotkin. See also E. Lunn, Prophet of Community: The Romantic Social-
ism of Gustav Landauer (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1973), 176-178; For the differences in the
evaluation of that basically similar phenomenon, see Hinz, “Mystik und Anarchie,” 137.
25 There are even some remarks in the writings of both thinkers, which suggest that they under-
stand that spiritual religious atmosphere as transcending the limits and boundaries of particular
religious phenomena. In this context, one might explain Eckhart’s work on the writings of Mai-
monides as well as his famous claim regarding the basic similarity of the teachings of Aristotle,
Moses and Jesus. Also, see Meister Eckhart, Expositio sancti evangelii secundum Iohannem, n.
185, LW III, ed. K. Christ and J. Koch (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1936), 155, 5-7: “Idem ergo est
quod docet Moyses, Christus et philosophus, solum quantum ad modum differens, scilicet ut
180 Yossef Schwartz
It is almost universally agreed among Maimonides scholars that Maimonides

himself held a Platonic, dichotomous, elitist position; both in his capacity as a
religious leader and in his political and philosophical roles, he was substantially
different and distant from the larger community.26 But Maimonides also accepted
such a dichotomy out of a basic assumption that there is a certain unity under-
lying the social stratification of his community. He accepted it as his mission to
make his own religious personality the only possible bridge that might connect
the different realms of the political, the philosophical and the religious. Here
is the crucial difference between Maimonides and Spinoza; the latter may have
held the same metaphysical views but he belonged to a completely different soci-
ety.27 This is precisely the process described by Landauer in the first part of his
Die Revolution, a process that leads from this medieval harmony to the reality of
the ongoing revolution. This is a reality within which brilliant individuals like
Spinoza lived in total isolation from their community: “The age of individualism
approached in a twofold sense: the age of the great individuals and that of the
atomized and abandoned masses.”28
In Meister Eckhart we see the desire to move that bridge from the realm of the
Platonic philosopher-king to that of the individual religious personality stand-
ing autonomously before God. Redemption thus becomes private, immediate and
something for which one is always prepared. Such a phenomenon might be – and
indeed often is – regarded in terms of religious anarchism. In such a process,
simple individuals nurture their specific concern, both for their own personal
redemption, as well as for that of society in general; they are no longer willing to
relinquish their religious-political sovereignty to political and religious leaders.
As they come to be legislators of and for themselves, they develop a kind of com-
munal framework, which maintains their personal autonomy while enabling
them to satisfy their sense of communal responsibility. This leaves us with the
credibile, probabile sive verisimile et veritas”; one can see this tendency in Abulafia in his free
usage of Christian and Islamic notions and symbols, as well as in his treatment of the phenom-
enon of the plurality of religions. See, for instance, in his commentary on The Guide for the Per-
plexed, “The life of the Soul,” MS Munich, heb. 408, fol. 43b; and in “Secrets of the Torah,” MS
Paris, heb. 226/3, fol. 132b-136a.
26 A thesis that was most strongly suggested by Leo Strauss; see his Persecution and the Art of
Writing (1952; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 12ff.; and see Y. Schwartz, “Friedrich
Niewöhners mittelalterliche Aufklärer,” in: Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann, Georg Tamer, eds.,
Kritische Religionsphilosophie. Eine Gedenkschrift für Friedrich Niewöhner (Berlin/New York: De
Gruyter 2010): 25–34.
27 However, if we accept the interpretation of Leo Strauss, Spinoza shares principally the same
political ideas as Maimonides; see L. Strauss, “How to study Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Trea-
tise,” in Persecution and the Art of Writing, 142-201, esp. 177ff.
28 Revolution, 50.
medieval “community of communities” which spreads that inspiration among

all its members. Eckhart represents that populist tendency much more than do
the others whom Landauer mentions as belonging to the same tradition, namely,
Pseudo-Dionysius, John Scotus Erigena and Nicholas of Cusa. In this respect,
Eckhart was a faithful member of his Dominican order, a community that was
established in response to the earliest manifestations of the needs of the urban
and proletarian community in Europe; they sought to inspire the new cities with
that one spirit, enabling the development of a certain diversity without its neg-
ative implications of atomization and the loss of identity. Other late medieval
mystics, such as Abraham Abulafia (1240-after 1291), and Ramon Llull (ca. 1232-
ca. 1315), on the other hand, never belonged to any religious or political estab-
lishment. They fashioned themselves into a one-man mission, aiming for the
same goal, namely, a messianic redemption through knowledge, such as would
be sought by individuals but have a collective effect, spreading through all the
world and all of humanity.29
2
This personal, internalized move suggests exactly the kind of messianism that
Scholem defines as Christian. In his article “Toward an Understanding of the
Messianic Idea in Judaism”30 Scholem writes:
Any discussion of the problems relating to Messianism is a delicate matter, for it is here
that the essential conflict between Judaism and Christianity has developed and continues
to exist … . A totally different concept of redemption determines the attitude to Messianism
in Judaism and in Christianity; what appears to the one as a proud indication of its under-
standing and a positive achievement of its message is most unequivocally belittled and dis-
puted by the other. Judaism, in all of its forms and manifestations, has always maintained
a concept of redemption as an event, which takes place publicly, on the stage of history
and within the community. It is an occurrence which takes place in the visible world and
which cannot be conceived apart from such a visible appearance. In contrast, Christianity
conceives of redemption as an event in the spiritual and unseen realm, an event which is
reflected in the soul, in the private world of each individual, and which effects an inner
transformation which need not correspond to anything outside.31
29 See Idel, Messianic Mystics, 97ff.

30 Found in G. Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism and other Essays on Jewish Spirituality
(New York: Schocken, 1971), 1-36, 1.
31 For a critique of Scholem’s view, see Idel, Messianic Mystics,18ff.
182 Yossef Schwartz
A closer look at Scholem’s own messianic idea and its political implications is
in order. For now it is important to note that the kind of private redemption pro-
moted by the Jewish thinker Abulafia and the Christian theologian Eckhart is
defined by Scholem as an interior Christian redemptive vision, one that is totally
opposed to Jewish belief. Scholem and Landauer would agree on this point. Lan-
dauer never tired of emphasizing the Christian nature of the European medieval
community of which he spoke.
The difference between Landauer and Scholem lies in the fact that Landauer
would have had no difficulty placing Maimonides or Abulafia within that frame-
work – just as he had no hesitation about placing himself in it. For Landauer,
Judaism then and now, was no more than one particular community within that
“community of communities,” sharing the same human and social ideas. He for-
mulates these ideas most clearly in a later article, in which he reveals the Jewish
character of his messianic vision: “On the basis of one’s nationality, one works
for a cause that certainly has different ramifications and names, but which, in
all its diversity, is the cause of humanity, which is to become reality.”32 He then
announces that “like a wild cry to the world and like a voice that is hardly whis-
pering within us, a voice that we cannot ignore tells us that the Jews can only be
redeemed together with humanity and that to wait for the messiah, dispersed and
in exile or to be the messiah of the peoples is one and the same thing.”33
Indeed, the only way to prevent such a common spiritual ideal from resulting
in tyranny or in the foundation of a new religious establishment is to preserve
its inner nature within each individual. Landauer’s claim is certainly not indi-
vidualistic. What one finds within oneself, one’s innermost nature, as it were, is
God or – taken as a synonym for the Divine – the world. At a later point, one then
finds community; and it is through community, which is prior to the individual
and superior to secondary notions, such as the state and the Church,34 that the
realistically understood universal notion of “man” is conveyed to its members.35
As previously noted, there was no way Landauer could have known that the
purported dichotomy in Eckhart’s thought would be the subject of crucial debate
several decades later. Nor could he have known that Eckhart would be “discov-
ered” to be the medieval Christian thinker who, more than anyone before or after
him, had allowed himself to be influenced by Maimonides. Joseph Koch was the
32 G. Landauer, “Sind das Ketzergedanken?,” first published in 1913, is quoted here from WM
1921,123.
33 Ibid., 125.
34 Landauer writes “there have never been isolated individuals at all, society is older than
man.” Revolution, 48.
35 Skepsis , 13ff.
first, in 1928, to determine Eckhart’s intellectual debt to Maimonides.36 I believe,

however, that Landauer would have readily accepted such a “discovery,” since
it reaffirmed his own “universal” intuition. For the purposes of our discussion,
there are two theoretical aspects with regard to Eckhart that are of particular sig-
nificance. The first relates to the definition of anarchism, which in the medieval
context involves the demand to abandon the Platonic-Arabic political ideal – and
this was the demand that lay behind Maimonides’ ideology – and advocates in its
stead, a full transfer of responsibility to the audience as a community of individu-
als. In this respect Eckhart, like many others, prepared the way for Luther, though
Luther and Spinoza were, as Landauer rightly notes, already living in a totally
different framework, namely, that of revolution.37 It is clear to see how such an
ideal is totally consonant with Landauer’s political thought. Landauer did not
hesitate to point out the connection between the different fields of his intellectual
interest. In Skepticism and Mysticism, Revolution and A Call to Socialism, as well
as on many other occasions, he identified his political, historical and philosoph-
ical program. In a letter to Fritz Mauthner he writes “the critique of language is
certainly an inseparable part of what I call anarchism and socialism.”38
Scholem’s intellectual endeavor shows an opposite tendency to that indi-
cated by Landauer in the above passage. Scholem’s whole life’s work reflects
an overarching concern to establish the boundary between public affairs, or the
political realm, and the scientific realm of historiographical research. It is against
the background of this “scientific” self-image that Scholem’s insistence on the
non-messianic and non-mystical character of Zionism has to be interpreted. At
the same time, it is easy to see that for Landauer, the very justification of Judaism
and Zionism – as far as the latter can be justified in terms of Landauer’s system –
lies precisely in their non-messianic, non-mystical character.
36 J. Koch, “Meister Eckhart und die jüdische Religionsphilosophie des Mittelalters”, in Kleine
Schriften, (Roma: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1973), vol. 1: 349-365; earlier, in 1908, a key arti-
cle was published by J. Gutmann describing in detail the “influence of Maimonides on the Latin
West.” Not a word was devoted to Eckhart in this study. See Jacob Gutmann, “Der Einfluss der
maimonidischen Philosophie auf das christliche Abendland,” in Moses ben Maimon: Sein Leben,
seine Werke und sein Einfluss, vol. 1, ed. W. Bacher, M. Brann, and D. Simonsen (Leipzig: G. Fock,
1908; repr. Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1971), 135-230.
37 Revolution, 50.
38 This quotation is taken from T. Regehly, “Die Welt ist ohne Sprache: Bemerkungen zur
Sprachkritik Gustav Landauers, ihren Voraussetzungen und Konsequenzen,” in Gustav Land-
auer (1870-1919) ), Eine Bestandsaufnahme zur Rezeption, eds. L. M. Fiedler, R. Heuer, A. Taeger-
Altenhofer (Frankfurt/Main: Campus, 1995), 219-245, 219.
184 Yossef Schwartz
3
Scholem’s critics would argue that in his work he hides behind the mask of the
historian, so that although in fact a most apologetic thinker, he is perceived as an
“objective” scholar. Such criticism might be too extreme, but the apologetic stance
adopted by Scholem’s followers seems even less justifiable. I refer here in partic-
ular to a series of articles written by Joseph Dan of the Hebrew University, which
touch upon this issue and argue that Scholem was engaged in historiography and
had no historiosophy of his own whatsoever.39 Taking up the issue of historio-
sophical concerns, it should be noted that Landauer had much more in common
with Scholem than is commonly assumed. Both speak of a universal revolution-
ary mechanism in which social, messianic and private, mystical motivations are
inseparably involved. Both speak about the one concrete and relevant example of
that universal phenomenon, namely, secularization in the West. Landauer makes
this point clearly in his Revolution, and makes reference to “only one revolution,”
which began “with the so-called period of the Reformation.”40 The stages of that
revolution, then, included the initial religious crisis, the secularization process,
the Peasants’ War, the English Revolution, the Thirty Years War, the American
War of Independence, and finally the French Revolution. This last event – span-
ning a period from 1789-1871 – which Landauer declared to be a general European
development, marked the peak of the “revolutionary” process, though certainly
not its fulfillment. The latter still lay ahead, totally dependent on the willingness
and spirit of those who are part of humanity. As is well known, Landauer opposed
any deterministic or scientific reading of history, such as Marxism, and especially
any interpretation based on a belief in an inevitable revolutionary process. As
far as he was concerned, nothing was inevitable in that ongoing revolutionary
process: “We find ourselves at present in a short interval and, whether we regard
the point at which we stand, as a turning point, a decision, or as a place of great
weakness and weariness depends entirely on our nature, on our will, on our inner
power.”41
Scholem, for his part, delineates a process beginning in thirteenth-century
Europe, reaching its first peak in the early sixteenth century, developing through
Sabbatianism and Frankism to the Jewish Enlightenment, and culminating in
39 J. Dan, Gershom Scholem and the Mystical Dimension of Jewish History (New York: SUNY
Press, 1987); and J. Dan, “Gershom Scholem – Mystiker oder Geschichtsschreiber des Mysti-
schen?,” in Gershom Scholem zwischen den Disziplinen, ed. P. Schäfer and G. Smith (Frankfurt/
Main: Suhrkamp, 1995), 32-69.
40 Landauer, Revolution, 25.
41 Ibid., 26.
antinomian Zionism as the messianic secular revival of Judaism. An entire group

of Scholem’s students and disciples have done their best to represent Scholem
as a historiographer who systematically differentiated between his own political
personality and Zionist ideology on the one hand, and the mystical and messi-
anic ideas he investigated, on the other. Again I must note that such a descrip-
tion of Scholem’s scholarly endeavor, though maintained by several scholars,
nonetheless remains a matter of some debate.42 A more serious discussion of this
problematic issue – and one that is highly pertinent to the present discussion –
is found in David Biale’s article “Scholem und der moderne Nationalismus.”43
Biale’s argument, relying as it does on a different evaluation of Landauer’s con-
tribution to Scholem’s anarchism, can be taken almost as a mirror image of the
argument presented here.44 According to Biale, Landauer’s political anarchism
inspired Scholem, and this in turn shaped the latter’s distinctive Zionist attitude
and, more specifically, his formulation of an anti-nationalist ethos or “anarchis-
tic Zionism.”45 The Jewish immigration to Palestine was accordingly envisioned
as a stage leading to the establishment of a Landauerian type of anarchic commu-
nity.46 From such a perspective there would seem to be almost no discontinuity
in principle between the Zionist pacifism of the young Scholem during the First
World War and his political activity in Palestine several years later. As Biale notes,
“his Zionism was not directed toward a Jewish state, but toward the creation of a
new community of Jews. He perhaps oriented his view of the political structure of
this community toward Gustav Landauer’s anarchism.”47 Biale goes on to argue
that Scholem struggled to establish a pluralistic and non-essentialist notion of
Judaism and that, during all his scholarly years, he opposed any attempt to use
messianic or mystical language within the political framework.
42 See for example H. Bloom, “The Strong Light of the Canonical,” in Gershom Scholem, ed. H.
Bloom (New York: Chelsea House, 1987), 55-77, esp. 62ff., 70ff. Bloom writes, “we may wonder
why Scholem worked so much of his life under the evasive mask of the dispassionate and schol-
arly historian … . The enigma of Scholem is that he was himself anything but a mystical messi-
ah.” Bloom, 67. The most political statement is to be found paradoxically in Arthur Hertzberg’s
apologetical article, entitled “Gershom Scholem as Zionist and Believer,” in the same volume,
189-205.
43 David Biale, “Scholem und der moderne Nationalismus,” in Zwischen den Disziplinen, 257-274.
44 Ibid., 259-60, 263.
45 He writes “my thesis is that, to the extent that his history of the Kabbalah creates a ‘count-
er-history’ of Judaism, his [Scholem’s] historiographical writings and political reflections also
constitute a kind of ‘counter-nationalism’ within Zionism, which even now, at the end of this
century is still quite remarkable.” “Biale, “Scholem und der moderne Nationalismus,” 259.
46 Ibid., 260.
47 Ibid., 263.
186 Yossef Schwartz
My disagreement with Biale’s analysis relates to almost every part of it. The
passage quoted at the beginning of this article, in which Scholem gives an account
of his early encounter with Landauer, reflects a genuine fascination on the part of
the young Scholem with socialist and socio-anarchist views. My claim, however,
is that Scholem consciously gave up that political vision and that this shift was
shaped by, and reflected in, his attitude toward Judaism and Jewish nationalism,
with all these tendencies reaching their climax in his private act of emigration.
It was precisely because of his own messianic national belief that Scholem was
so sensitive to the misuse of that same messianic idea by his political oppo-
nents, whether in the neo-Orthodox group around Isaac Breuer (1883-1946), in
the Zionist Revisionists’ camp or in the religious-nationalist Gush Emunim move-
ment. Biale is correct in asserting that Scholem’s attempt to combine secular
Zionism as a national movement with the vitality of religious symbolism led him
to a certain “ambivalence.”48 However, his further claim that such ambivalence
characterizes all modern nationalism seems to be an unjustified generalization.
Indeed, Biale’s inclusion of this general claim at this specific point in the article
functions as a bold attempt to sidestep a prominent difficulty in his argument.
In any case, one can hardly imagine in what way exactly, Landauer’s universal
anarchist position could inspire such an attempt to reformulate the Jewish ethos
in rhetoric taken from the arsenal of “modern nationalism.” I shall limit myself
here to a few quotations from Scholem’s article from 1963, “Reflections on the
Possibility of Jewish Mysticism in Our Time.”49 The article, based on a lecture
given in Jerusalem, raises the question of whether a new Kabbalah is possible. In
addressing this issue, Scholem makes the following claim:
Anyone attempting today to bring matters of inspiration and mystical cognition within the
range of public understanding, without seeing himself, with a clear conscience, as being
connected in an unqualified way with the great principle of Torah from heaven ... is a reli-
gious anarchist … . All of us today may to a great extent be considered anarchists regarding
religious matters, and it should be stated openly … . It follows from all this that, if we inquire
about manifestations of mystical impulses in Judaism today, we find ourselves confronting
a reality of Jewish religious anarchy. It is this problem which confronts the present genera-
tion, which asks whether there is any hope of creating public forms of fundamentally mystic
inspiration even in the absence of any positive dogmatic basis.50
48 Ibid., 266: “Scholem’s ambivalent attempt to create a Jewish nationalism that would be sec-
ular even though it is nurtured by religious symbols, is characteristic of the whole of modern
nationalism.”
49 In Scholem, On the Possibility of Jewish Mysticism in Our Time & Other Essays, ed. A. Shapira,
trans., J. Chipman (Philadelphia and Jerusalem: Jewish Publication Society, 1997), 6-19.
50 Ibid., 14-16.
In his answer, Scholem begins by pointing out three fundamental elements of the
religious situation of his generation. First, he observes that, “we have no clear
knowledge as to whether mystical experience can in our generation assume a
crystallized form obligating any sort of community.” Secondly, he claims that this
must be connected to the analysis of the matter of secularization. A third and
related claim is that “during this generation most of the creative energies of our
people have been invested in other and different forms of building than those
established in the earlier tradition.” Coming now to his answer, Scholem asks
rhetorically, “who knows where the boundaries of holiness lie.” It is no coinci-
dence that he chooses to mention Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (1865-1935) at this
point, as he reflects “perhaps mysticism will be revealed, not in the traditional
garb of holiness, but as Rav Kook saw it, in his daring words, as somehow seeking
to restore things to their traditional perception.”51 We are not dealing here with
mysticism as a form of anarchism, but with the familiar dialectic between tradi-
tion and anarchism, seen as the only form of religious activity capable of estab-
lishing the normative tradition of the future.
But in order to demonstrate the role of the messianic idea in Scholem’s polit-
ical theology, one must better understand its immediate political function. For
this purpose, one must consider Scholem’s critique of other Jewish responses to
the problem of Jewish existence in a European, and especially German, reality.
Scholem was critical of the Wissenschaft des Judentums scholars, but was also
vehemently opposed to the middle-class, nationalist sentiments typical of his
own family. His criticism was also directed at the various socialist experiments of
the day and at those contemporary German Zionists who were hesitant to fulfill
their own calling. His attack on the idea of the German-Jewish dialogue or symbi-
osis is well known, although here too, I am not sure to what extent he was reveal-
ing his true underlying motivations. His critical comments are addressed both
against the cultural function served by the ‘science of Judaism’ among German
Jewry, as well as against some of its main historiographical assumptions. The
hidden argument is of a purely political nature, and is linked to the Zionist claim
against diaspora Judaism in general.
If one reads a very early article Scholem published in Der Jude in 1917,52 one
discerns the basic, underlying motivation of his work, which certainly underwent
a series of modifications thereafter, yet in my opinion remained essentially the
same: “The demand can essentially be expressed in, and developed from, one
51 Ibid., 17.
52 Gerhard Scholem, “Jüdische Jugendbewegung,” Der Jude 1 (1916-1917): 822-825; also in:
Scholem, On Jews and Judaism in Crisis; Selected Essays, trans. W. J. Dannhauser (New York:
Schocken, 1976), 49-53.
188 Yossef Schwartz
word: wholeness.”53 He further explains that this is “our way, that is to say: to
move ourselves toward Zion as wholeness and in wholeness.”54 Toward the end
of this article, Scholem claims the following:
If our youth were not so completely bent on preserving its many-sidedness – it suffices to
point to the relevant problem of “German Jewishness” (Deutschjudentum) – we would be
further along; if syntheses were not always sought but dogmas erected, if there were not
always reconciliation but battle, if in the hour of danger alliances were not always formed
with the others – the others in and around us – than a great strength would rise as the tide,
and the rising tide might be followed by the breakthrough of the movement. The rippling
away of our creeks in all directions will never turn into a roaring waterfall.”55
Toward the end of this essay, Scholem claims that “one is not permitted to call
oneself a Zionist if one wants to stand both here and there, in Berlin and in Zion.
We, however, will know where we have to stand if our cry is to be heard.56 How far
that call is from the words of Landauer in his essay “Sind das Ketzergedanken?”
(“Are These Heretical Thoughts?”) is clear enough.57 But one should also take
note of the common role of the religious impulse and tradition in their secular
and antinomian versions – “Zionism is the border-case of Torah in human exis-
tence” – in that great national project as conceived by Scholem.58 Years later, in
1931, Scholem writes: “As long as we do not rebuild the ruins of the nation in a
national organism in the Land of Israel, there is no place to think of the renewal
of Judaism.”59
4
Alongside Landauer’s religious anarchism, we see the role of skepticism, of sys-
tematic negation and of the critique of language as essential components lying
at the heart of mystical as well as social developments. According to Landauer,
53 Ibid., 51.
54 Ibid., 52.
55 Ibid., 53.
56 Ibid.
57 Landauer, “Ketzergedanken” (see note 34, above).
58 The concluding remark of the unpublished “Esoteric Zionism,” in G. Scholem Explications
and Implications: Writings on Jewish Heritage and Renaissance (Hebrew), vol. II (Tel Aviv: Am
Oved, 1989), 54.
59 “What are we arguing about?,” Sheifotenu, 6 (1931) [Hebrew]; reprinted in Scholem, Explica-
tions and Implications, 74-82, 76.
negation is an essential component of the revolutionary mind. True systematic

negation of the “topia” is a necessary stage on the way to the “utopia.”60 The
same principle holds for the search for truth. The revolutionary impetus cannot,
as it were, derive from an absolute and true understanding of history and of
humankind. It can only base itself on an ongoing negation of all truth as well as
of all existing social phenomena: “Truth, however, is a completely negative word,
it is the very negation in itself, and therefore it is indeed the subject and aim of
all science, whose lasting results are always of a negative nature.”61 Behind this
claim lies a true messianic ideal, one that Walter Benjamin, in the final paragraph
of his fragments on history, referred to as a typical Jewish expectation.62 That
which is the fulfillment of that truth, as well as of reality, is something “totally
different”: Everything is different: This is the formula of all our truth … . What is
behind our reality? Something different! What is the world in itself? Different!”63
If one examines Landauer’s special relationship toward Eckhart’s teaching
it is important to note that his understanding of that teaching is more scholarly
than one might expect. Eckhart’s skepticism is one that characterizes Christian
Neoplatonism already and especially in its earliest Eastern Orthodox manifesta-
tions.64 In the fourteenth century this skepticism develops in Eckhart – as well
as in his contemporary William Ockham – into a radical critique of language. In
both cases it has to do with a nominalistic and univocal tendency. In Ockham, it
assumes the arbitrariness of the divine will against the absoluteness of the con-
crete objects of perception. For Eckhart, it is the absolute and immanent divine
presence, the true being of any creature, which stands alone against the plural-
ity of the things in the world as non-beings. Both Ockham and Eckhart agree
on, albeit from two different poles, the denial of the Thomistic form of analogy,
maybe the most meaningful medieval experiment to save language within a reli-
gious framework.65 In that sense one can no longer accept the simplistic distinc-
tion between “realists” and “nominalists” suggested by Landauer. Eckhart is not
a realist in the trivial sense of the word. It is precisely this special position – which
could be termed “transcendental nominalism” – that makes him so attractive to
60 Revolution, 12.
61 Skepsis 1923, 45.
62 Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” 264: “This does not imply, however, that
for the Jews the future turned into homogeneous, empty time. For every second of time was the
strait gate through which the Messiah might enter.”
63 Skepsis 1923, 46.
64 A. H. Armstrong, “The Escape of the One,” Studia Patristica 13 (1957): 77-89.
65 On Ockham’s direct critique of Eckhart see William of Ockham, Tractatus contra Benedictum,
L. 4, C. 4, in Opera politica, vol. III, ed., H. S. Offler (Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press, 1956),
251,20-252,8.
190 Yossef Schwartz
modern, and especially to idealistic, philosophy. This position has to do with his
formulation of the uniqueness of the individual experience of religious ascent at
the very moment of breaking through into the most universal and transcendent
realm. That mystical moment cannot be understood without the negative specu-
lative move that precedes it.
The special kind of mysticism that emerges from that consciousness in the
case of Eckhart is not a Platonic one. It is not a call for the elimination of the self,
but rather a call to replace mythical revelation with a new framework in which
the individual personality finds those mythical elements within itself. The mysti-
cal ideal thus no longer pertains to the one historical event in which God became
incarnate in Herod’s day and was crucified in Pontius Pilate’s day. Rather, Eckhart
formulates an alternative myth of divine birth within the soul of the believer. The
same process can be discerned in the thought of Abraham Abulafia – who in that
respect also holds opinions nigh identical to those of Eckhart – when he turns
messianic ideas into a personal individual mission. In this way there appears an
all-idealistic process of creation of the entire cosmos through the ego. Only thus,
out of the pure idealistic paradox, can this very “anarchism” toward which Lan-
dauer strives, finally emerge.
It might be appropriate to conclude this paper with the words of Eckhart that
Landauer took as the epigraph for his Skepticism and Mysticism: “Therefore, I am
the cause of my self according to my eternal essence and my temporal essence
… . At my birth, everything was born, and I was the cause of myself and of all
things, and had I so desired, neither I nor anything else would exist, and if I did
not exist, then neither would God. It is not necessary to understand this.”66 One
can see why these words would hold such an appeal for the anarchist Landauer.
In a similar vein, one can understand why the political theologian and religious
anarchist Scholem devoted so much attention to the understanding of the messi-
anic phenomenon. Both thinkers employ medieval material as a vehicle for their
own exigent political concerns. In so doing, they represent the two poles of an
intellectual endeavor, in which messianic and mystical energy is rehabilitated in
the context of modern political thought.
66 Skepsis 1923, 1; The quotation is taken from Eckhart’s famous Sermon 52, which is supposed
to have been written under the direct influence of another significant heretical figure of the time,
namely, Marguerite Porete, who was executed in 1310. See M. Lichtmann, “Marguerite Porete and
Meister Eckhart,” in Meister Eckhart and the Beguine Mystics, ed. B. McGinn (New York: Contin-
uum, 1994), 65-86.
Wolf von Wolzogen
Ina Britschgi-Schimmer:
Co-Editor of Gustav Landauer’s Letters
1 Introduction
Ina Britschgi-Schimmer is a little-known, but nonetheless important figure in the
context of German-Jewish intellectual life in the first half of the twentieth centu-
ry.1 A self-proclaimed devotee of practical science, she was one of the early social
scientists in Germany and showed an indefatigable devotion and practical ability
both in her innovative research and later in her pioneering work in Palestine,
where she took up residence in 1933. Although Ina Britschgi-Schimmer’s name is
familiar to those who have done research on Gustav Landauer and Martin Buber,
the significance of her work in this area – especially in editing, together with
Buber, Landauer’s letters – has not been widely acknowledged.
Born in Vienna on 23 September 1881, Ina (originally Regina) was the second
child of Hermann (Hersch) Schimmer and Cäcilie, née Csarna. She was an
excellent student and the only one among her parents’ five children to pursue
an academic career. After completing high school, however, she first worked
with several large transport companies in Vienna, Hamburg and Berlin. It was
in Berlin that she took the most important step for her future career when she
joined the then newly founded Jüdischer Verlag at the beginning of 1903. This
publishing house, established in the wake of the 5th Zionist Congress (1901) by
Chaim Weizmann, Martin Buber, Berthold Feiwel, Davis Trietsch and E. M. Lilien,
sought to promote Jewish literature and art among the Jews of Western Europe.
In addition to administrative tasks, Ina was responsible for editorial work and
was involved in plans for Buber’s and Weizmann’s project of a journal entitled
Der Jude, a kind of European review with a programmatic approach to the study
of Judaism, not as “an entity of the past confined to strict formula but [as] a living
national tradition in all its breadth and depth, in its variety, in all its forms and
declarations.”2 For a number of reasons – mainly financial – the project did not
get off the ground at that time; it was only more than a decade later, in 1916, that
the journal was finally launched. Ina Schimmer had left the publishing house at
the end of 1903, and in the following years pursued studies in Berlin and then in
1 See H. Delf, “Ina Britschgi-Schimmer – Social Scientist,” in Jüdische Frauen im 19. und 20.
Jahrhundert: Lexikon zu Leben und Werk, ed. H. Delf, J. Dick, M. Sassenberg (Hamburg: Rowohlt,
1993), 81f.
2 See H. Kohn, Martin Buber: Sein Werk und seine Zeit (Wiesbaden: Fourier, 1979), 297.
192 Wolf von Wolzogen
Zürich, where she received a Ph.D. in political science in 1915 and also met her
future husband, Dr. Josef Britschgi.
For a time she was in charge of administration in the editorial department
of the Hebrew weekly, Ha’olam issued by Misrad Zioni, the Zionist organization
in Berlin, but a year later she moved together with her department to London. In
the following years she concentrated on literary and academic work, publishing
articles for German newspapers, and completing her book, Lassalle’s letzte Tage.
This important work, which draws on previously unpublished correspondence
from the last years of Ferdinand Lassalle’s life, was published in 1925.3
2 The Task of Co-Editing Landauer’s Letters

In the same year, she also began what was to be a lengthy and intense period
of collaboration with Martin Buber on an edition of Gustav Landauer’s letters,
which was eventually published in 1929 in two volumes as Gustav Landauer:
Sein Lebensgang in Briefen.4 As Buber explained in the foreword to the work, the
process involved the rather arbitrary selection of letters – a difficult task, given
the scarcity of source material – and their ordering in a way that would illustrate
the different phases of Landauer’s life and establish a link between his private
and public domains. According to Buber, every letter could be considered a sig-
nificant document in its own right as well as a personal statement concerning
Landauer. He explains how Fritz Mauthner and Ludwig Berndl, for example, both
endeavored to present a general idea of the course of Landauer’s life and the
relationships that affected it, on the basis of a few spontaneous personal mes-
sages and the odd comment expressed by Landauer at different points in his life.
Whereas only a small number of letters were missing in the case of Mauthner,
Berndl witheld most of his correspondence from publication.
Working on his own, Buber would not have been able to carry out the
time-consuming search for letters and at the same time deal with the task of cor-
responding with former acquaintances of Landauer’s and their heirs. Buber had
originally planned to work jointly with Hans Lindau (1875-1963), his old friend
from student days and from the period when he was head librarian at the Berlin
National Library. Following his conversion from Protestantism to Catholicism in
1924, Lindau abandoned the project. Buber, nonetheless expressly acknowledged
Lindau in the book for his extraordinary commitment to the project in its prepara-
3 I. Britschgi-Schimmer, Lassalle’s letzte Tage (Berlin: Axel-Junker, 1925), 29.

4 See Lebensgang I/ II.
Ina Britschgi-Schimmer: Co-Editor of Gustav Landauer’s Letters 193
tory stage, even though he had had basic objections to some aspects of the work
(particularly during the early stages, which spanned several years).
Buber also mentions Ina Britschgi-Schimmer’s tireless work, particularly in
preparing the notes to the text, which were “intended primarily to provide addi-
tional information about the biographical connections cited in the letters them-
selves.”5 What Buber fails to mention, however, is that it was Ina Britschgi-Schim-
mer who conducted the painstaking and intensive search for the letters, and
capably coped with the many unpleasant conflicts of interest that arose between
the editors and their correspondents. Her correspondence with Martin Buber also
indicates that she occasionally even spent her own money to finance the copying
and transcribing of letters. She is mentioned in the foreword alongside Max Kron
stein, Landauer’s son-in-law, who had originally intended to collaborate on the
project but later decided – due to fundamental differences of opinion – to publish
a separate volume on Landauer’s early correspondence, the so-called Jugend-
band, which never came to pass; Ludwig Berndl, who also planned to publish
his correspondence with Landauer in a separate edition, is also mentioned in the
foreword.6 Ultimately, Ina Britschgi-Schimmer expected that her dedication to
the task would be formally acknowledged and assumed that she would be men-
tioned as the co-editor of the volumes. Thus she was deeply disappointed that
Buber decided otherwise when the book finally went to print. Given the interest
and import of Landauer’s correspondence, it is worth taking a closer look at the
circumstances surrounding the gradual process of editing this work, and at the
repeated delays and postponements that preceded its eventual publication.
Ina Britschgi-Schimmer’s involvement in the project began at a point when
no essential editorial decisions had as yet been made. She had only taken up
the memorandum for the project from her predecessors. An enormous amount
of time and effort was involved in obtaining the addresses of people who had
long since moved elsewhere and establishing contacts with relatives and exec-
utors of the estates of Landauer’s erstwhile correspondents to convince them of
the project’s importance. Ludwig Berndl, for example, was willing to grant only
limited permission to print letters because of his own plans for an edition of cor-
respondence. Franz Werfel informed Britschgi-Schimmer that the suitcase which
most probably held his Landauer letters had been lost, and Ernst Toller made the
rather macabre suggestion that she “address inquiries to the authorities who had
5 See Gustav Mayer, Erinnerungen: Vom Journalisten zum Historiker der deutschen Arbeiterbe-
wegung. Bibliothek des deutschen Judentums, ed., Julius H. Schoeps (Zürich: G. Olms, 1993), 328.
6 The Berndl letters are located in the Institute for Social History, Amsterdam. See GLAA, no.
112. Another copy of the letters is located in the Gustav Landauer collection in the Leo Baeck
Institute, New York.
confiscated them,” stressing their scholarly import, if she wanted to recover the
letters.7 Ina Britschgi-Schimmer was reminded again – and rather ungraciously –
of her role as a “staff worker” when Kurt Hiller (1885-1972) – whom Landauer had
put in his place in no uncertain terms during the days of the revolution – reacted
with great indignation to the form of inquiry related to the project. Hiller, like
every other contributor, had received a formal letter of inquiry, without Martin
Buber’s personal signature, and was affronted that he had been approached by
mere “dwarves.”8
In September 1926, the material prepared by Britschgi-Schimmer was sent
to Buber. This included material from Erich Mühsam, Constantin Brunner, and
Landauer’s daughter Gudula, who, Britschgi-Schimmer notes, had been surpris-
ingly uncooperative at first, but had finally gotten around to taking out some of
her father’s material from a cupboard in Karlsruhe. Britschgi-Schimmer informed
Buber that letters from only a few people – Margarete Faas-Hardegger, Kropot-
kin, Fritz Mauthner and Kurt Hiller – were still outstanding. As it turned out,
Hiller, who had eventually been convinced that an edition of correspondence
was a sound idea, failed to respond to repeated inquiries, and in the end, the
edition was published without his correspondence with Landauer. At the time,
Britschgi-Schimmer was also still waiting for Constantin Brunner’s permission
to print his material. This delay caused some concern in view of the fact that
Brunner had expressed his wish that the letters from 1911 – a “period of con-
flict” in his relationship with Landauer – be omitted.9 On 3 November 1926, Ina
Britschgi-Schimmer wrote to Buber about the problem, offering her understand-
ing of the whole conflict: “I recall that Landauer later turned away from Brunner,
which anyone would have a right to do. The manner in which he called the fact [of
his reservations regarding Brunner’s concept of das Geistige or “spiritual elite”],
to Brunner’s attention, as if this antipathy had existed from the outset, seems
rather strange, as his letters to Brunner in the early years clearly express admira-
tion for Brunner as a person and for his accomplishments. Brunner is only right
in pointing this out by citing a number of passages in support of his position.”10
Since Brunner was also of the opinion that the matter should not be stirred up
again, Britschgi-Schimmer felt it would be better not to raise the issue, especially
7 See Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem, Ina Britschgi-Schimmer File A 110, 11: Ina
Britschgi-Schmmer to Martin Buber, 13 February, 1926. Hereafter: CZA; IBS to MB.
8 See CZA, IBS File A 110, 8: IBS to MB, 14 November 1925.
9 See CZA, File IBS A 110, 8: IBS TO MB, 9 October 1926.
10 See CZA, File IBS A 110, File 8. This section – on the task of co-editing Landauer’s correspon-
dence – is based in part on the correspondence between Martin Buber and Ina Britschgi-Schim-
mer, found in CZA, IBS File A 110, 7, 8, 10 and from 1925 to 1929; specific references are given only
when passages are directly quoted.
since the forty-seven-page hand-written letter from Brunner to Landauer that

attempted to summarize the whole conflict, was bound to confuse rather than
enlighten the readers! She thought Buber should have the last word, however,
and that he should write a few lines to “calm the rather mistrustful gentleman.”11
In editing the correspondence between Landauer and Fritz Mauthner, Ina
Britschgi-Schimmer faced the fundamental problem associated with every
edition of letters – that of selection: “The wonderful friendship between these
two people, which spans a period of 25 years, is so beautiful and intense, the
intellectual bonds between them so strong, that one almost regrets putting aside
most of the letters that have to be excluded. It is worth considering the possibility
of publishing a special edition of the Mauthner-Landauer correspondence at a
later date.”12 Ina Britschgi-Schimmer also offered some specific suggestions for
such an edition. The total number of letters had reached nearly four hundred at
this point. Although she had originally proposed the year 1900 as the beginning
date for the selected correspondence, she now had second thoughts; since she
had found “a number of exceedingly beautiful, mature letters from the period
before 1900,” in particular some relating to Fritz Mauthner and Hedwig Lach-
mann, she now tended to favor the year 1895.13 Buber criticized her for changing
her mind, since he was inclined to set 1899 as the beginning date. She also sug-
gested providing a translation of Latin passages, or at least a Latin transcription
of the many passages quoted directly from original Greek sources, as an aid to
present and future readers, because one should “anticipate a working-class read-
ership as well.”14 In this connection she recalled the specific criticism that had
been directed at her Lassalle book, in which passages quoted in French were not
translated. Buber agreed to the idea in one of his customary marginal notes. She
also sought further clarification regarding the professional designation for the
contributors, as the use of the term “writer” or “author” alone struck her as too
unconventional and subjective. The numbering system employed for the letters
was also based upon her suggestion. She was thus meticulous in all phases and
aspects of the preparation.
While reading through the galley proofs for the second volume she discov-
ered that the publishers, Rütten & Loening, had deleted a paragraph that neither
she nor Buber had specified for omission. She wrote, justifiably, to ask whether
the publisher “[had] the right to delete passages he finds inappropriate for politi-

12 See CZA, IBS File A 110, 8: IBS to MB, 17 October 1925. The extant correspondence between
Mauthner and Landauer was edited and published only in 1994! See Mauthner, Briefe.
13 See CZA, IBS File A 110, 8: IBS to MB, 17 October 1925 and elsewhere.
14 See CZA, IBS File A 110, 8: IBS to MB, 22 January 1926.
cal reasons.” The bone of contention was a letter from Landauer to Hedwig Lach-
mann, in which Landauer wrote “I know for a fact that practically every pimp in
Berlin, nearly every member of the criminal class who has somehow managed
to escape imprisonment, has gone to war; I know of horrible, indescribable
things in Lower Bavaria; I know of [dreadful] deeds by Prussian militiamen and
I mention all of this truly not as an accusation against any one of them but as an
accusation against the primitive state into which your capacity and will for judg-
ment and justice have fallen.”15 Buber authorized some of the deletions on legal
grounds: “On the basis of the expert report presented to me in the original, I have
reduced the number of intended deletions (which were actually more far-reach-
ing) to those passages [the legal scholar Hugo] Sinzheimer thought might provide
grounds for legal action against the publisher.”16
Ina Britschgi-Schimmer found Gustav Landauer a fascinating personality.
She asked, through Buber’s mediation, that Landauer send her a copy of his
Eckhart translation, and for many years weighed the possibility of writing a thesis
on Landauer or even his biography. When Professor Julius Goldstein from Darm-
stadt, publisher of the journal Der Morgen, suggested that she write an article on
Ferdinand Lassalle, she replied that instead she thought of an idea for a project
much closer to heart: “It occurred to me that I should do something on Landauer,
perhaps on his attitude toward Judaism. What do you think? Maybe I could find
some things in the letters as well that would make it possible to refer to the
edition of letters.” As was his habit in relaying comments to Britschgi-Schimmer,
Buber wrote a reply in the margin of her letter to Goldstein, a copy of which she
had sent him, and then returned it to her. He remarked “that is a good idea. Once
you compile the material, I can provide you with some supplementary remarks,
if need be.”17 Three months later, Ina Britschgi-Schimmer requested Buber’s
assistance once again for her article on Landauer’s attitude toward Judaism. The
point of departure for her reflections was a pair of essays by Landauer, “Sind das
Ketzergedanken?” and “Ostjuden und Deutsches Reich.”18 She also mentioned
that “in the letters to Mauthner there are several passages on the Jewish question,
which generated a lively debate between the two men.”19 Buber finally responded,
noting with some reservation, that his suggestions, which included some familiar
items, were rather exiguous. His selection, listed below, nonetheless, reveals a
great deal about his assessment of Landauer’s Jewishness:
15 See CZA, IBS File A 110, 8: IBS to MB, 5 September 1928.

16 See CZA, IBS File A 110, 8: IBS to MB, 13 September 1928.
17 See CZA, IBS File A 110, 11: IBS to MB, 14 July 1925.
18 See WA III.
19 See CZA, IBS File A 110, 8: IBS to MB, 17 October 1925.
1) Sind das Ketzergedanken?; 2) Zum Beiliss-Prozeß; also in Der Sozialist the brief preface to
the Kiev issue; 3) the article “Ostjuden und Deutsches Reich” [“Eastern European Jews and
the German Empire”] in the first volume of Der Jude (was initially suppressed by the military
censorship bureau, but I printed it in full [illegible]); 4) The article on me; 5) The discussion
of the “Baalschem” in Literarisches Echo;. 6) In Shakespeare the essay on the Merchant of
Venice; 7) Strindberg’s Historische Miniaturen, and 8) the related note in the preview issue of
Juden (Vol. II); 9) The remark “Christian and Jewish” in the first volume of Der Jude; 10) The
remark “a serious case” in the second volume of Juden. There was an excerpt-style review by
[Hugo] Bergmann of L.’s lecture “Judentum und Sozialismus” [“Judaism and Socialism”] in
Selbstwehr; perhaps I can find it. There must also be printed reviews of other lectures as well.
Other literature: 1) the Landauer issue of Arbeit, which also contains my brief address (in my
long lecture, which is printed in the Landauer “Masken” issue, there is also a passage on L’s
Jewishness), 2) [Ernst] Simon’s essay “Der werdende Mensch und der werdende Jude” [“The
‘Becoming’ Man and the ‘Becoming’ Jew”].20
With regard to the question of Landauer’s ‘Jewishness,’ Ina Britschgi-Schimmer

distinguished between “being” and “desire” (Wesenheit and Wollen), especially in
the context of her meetings with Gustav Landauer. She eventually came to know
Landauer personally and repeatedly asked him questions about his Judaism. Her
wish to understand this aspect of his life more profoundly is also reflected in the
letter she sent to Martin Buber in the early phase of her editorial work on Landau-
er’s letters. She writes, “I often thought of L(andauer) when he was in [the Berlin
suburb of] Hermsdorf, and I intended to write an essay about him. That was the
only time I often met him … . At the time, I never perceived in him any strong
solidarity with Judaism, neither in terms of his work nor in his personality. This
also applies to the period during which he founded [the journal] Der Sozialist … .
I have often asked myself whether it was you who later awakened the Jew in him,
making it very exciting for him to be a Jew. As a result, he started to participate
actively in Jewish events.”21 Buber conceded, albeit with some reservations, that
he had had an influence upon Landauer’s attitude toward Judaism and on Lan-
dauer’s own developing sense of Jewishness: “You are surely correct in assuming
that there was some influence from me. And this influence began to have a forma-
tive effect on Landauer’s attitude toward Judaism at the point at which my own
had matured and stabilized – that is, beginning around 1909, and from then, on
in line with my own development.”22
Shortly before completing the editing of the volumes, Ina Britschgi-Schimmer
wrote to one Dr. Lewin, stating that her soul had been “relieved of a heavy burden
… . Only the corrections for the index remained to be done. It will probably be
20 Parentheses and translation mine. See CZA, IBS File A 110, 11: MB to IBS, 19 November 1925.
21 See Martin Buber Archive, The National Library of Israel, Jerusalem, Mss. Varia 350/684; CZA,
IBS File A 110, 11: IBS to MB, 21 November 1925.
22 See CZA, IBS File A 110, 7: MB to IBS, 14 December 1925.
published in November and December [1928].” She then adds that she is “cur-
rently working on an article on Gustav Landauer’s contribution to the Munich
Revolution and the Soviet Republic.”23 Indeed, included among her unpublished
works is an 18-page manuscript, revised by Martin Buber.24 In places, her writing
is reminiscent of Landauer’s own fiery style. She mentions that, in keeping with
the true “spirit of the revolution [of 1918-19], which calls not only for freedom
but also for love, community and fraternity,” Landauer had been “alert and had
worked actively, with an unflagging and self-sacrificing dedication on behalf of
the people.”25 In her quest for historical and human authenticity in illustrating
the last phase of Landauer’s life, Ina Britschgi-Schimmer did not rely on archives,
but rather on the letters, which she regarded as an “authentic source” of infor-
mation. In carefully tracing the specific measures implemented by the Bavarian
Republic under Kurt Eisner, she discussed not only the emotionalism and utopian
quality of the revolution, but also the lack of consistency with regard to histori-
cal events. She gave a detailed explanation of Landauer’s concept of a federal
German republic, which he hoped would give rise to a “new spirit” that would
transcend the old party system, and she defended Landauer’s idea of a republic
governed by commissioners, against critics who argued that Landauer wanted to
establish a dictatorship. “Landauer’s aim,” she wrote, “is true democracy. In his
passionate life’s credo, A Call to Socialism, he defines the bond, the community,
as the fundamental form of the true creative communal life, the germ cell from
which everything grows.”26
According to Ina Britschgi-Schimmer, Landauer became a member of a
Council Republic as a people’s delegate – thus acting in contradiction to the
principle that had guided his entire life, according to which inner transformation
must always precede outward actions – because he recognized the necessity of
“adhering to one’s own ideas while, at the same time, adapting to the current
situation … these are the words of a person who, observing the declining for-
tunes of his cause with sorrow and despair, comes to the conclusion that he must
force himself to act in the interest of that cause.”27 Whenever Britschgi-Schimmer
refers to a change of attitude in Landauer, one can discern a common ground
23 See CZA, IBS File A 110, 18: 3 November 1928.

24 See “Gustav Landauer’s Weg durch die Münchener Revolution: Eine Darstellung von Ina
Britschgi-Schimmer,” Ms. CZA, IBS File A 110, 12.
25 Ibid. 1.
26 Ibid. 8.
27 Ibid., 12f. Britschgi-Schimmer’s point of view is in line with what Martin Buber had already
described from a “male” perspective in his eulogy “Landauer und die Revolution” in 1919. See
Literaten an der Wand: Die Münchener Räterepublik und die Schriftsteller, ed. Hansjörg Viesel
(Frankfurt/Main: Büchergilde Gutenberg, 1980), 318.
between the two. In her view, he had reached a stage in his life, where he was
no longer satisfied with words but wanted to see things done.28 Was this one of
the guiding maxims of Landauer’s life that Ina Britschgi-Schimmer adopted for
herself as well? She certainly describes Landauer’s last decision – to join the
Bavarian Revolution – in a sympathetic tone, noting that “the time [had] come
when he no longer needed to be cautious but to act for the sake … of the renewal
of humanity.”29
It is not surprising that Ina Britschgi-Schimmer took it upon herself to do
something about the problematic fact that there was at the time no useful biog-
raphy of Landauer. After all, she had abundant material in her own desk drawer.
She sent Buber a draft of a lecture on Landauer, which she had planned to read
in Gustav Mayer’s seminar at the University of Berlin. Explaining to Buber that “it
never came about, because I was helping Mayer prepare the last volume of Las-
salle’s unpublished works, and then proceeded to do my own book on Lassalle,”
she now asked Buber whether she should publish her lecture – after expanding
the individual sections – perhaps even before the release of the letters.30 In yet
another of his notes in the margin of her letter, Buber expressed support for her
plan, advising her to expand it. However, the piece was never published. Con-
trary to her expectations, work on the letters went on for another two years. At
the beginning of 1927, Ina Britschgi-Schimmer wanted to send Buber a list of cor-
respondents, and inform him of the number of letters, before putting them into
chronological order. By this time there were 468 letters and, taking into account
the anticipated letters of Margarete Faas-Hardegger and Hedwig Lachmann, the
total was approaching the five-hundred mark. (In the end, the published corre-
spondence contained no less than 594 letters.) Ina now envisaged a two-volume
publication, comprising some two hundred letters in the first volume, and some
three hundred in the second, with the dividing line drawn at 1914. “In the period
before 1915,” she explains, “there are long philosophical discussions with Mauth-
ner and Berndl, literary ones with Bab, Hauschner, etc. The most numerous and
significant letters date from the years 1915 and 1918/19.”31
Martin Buber and his wife made an extended visit to Palestine from March
to May 1927, and this gave Ina Britschgi-Schimmer an opportunity to work even
more intensively on the volumes, especially on the index and footnotes, and also
to put an end to the incessant quarrels with Max Kronstein. In this regard she
suggested that Buber “send back the miscellaneous material, which could only
28 Britschgi-Schimmer, “Gustav Landauers Weg,” 13.

29 Ibid., 17.
30 CZA, IBS File A 110, 8: IBS to MB, 27 January 1927.
31 CZA, IBS File A 110, 8: IBS to MB, 27 January 1927, and elsewhere.
be used in that way, on loan. This would be preferable to either sending [him]
all of the letters from the Munich period at that time or the corrections later. I do
not want [Kronstein] to be entering things into the corrections at the last moment
that I may not be able to look over. I would rather have the notes finished before
the manuscript is set.”32 The conflict with Kronstein was to escalate further. On
27 June 1927, she informed Buber, with an almost audible sigh of relief, that the
manuscript had finally been sent to the publisher. With a hint of uncertainty she
then asks: “What now? For I have derived a great deal of enjoyment from this
work. And, because I have you to thank for that and because it has given me a
sense of sharing something with you in this work, I wish to take this opportunity
to shake your hand.” Although everything appeared to be finished and she had
“gone over the entire manuscript again in the process of entering the numbers
and pages during the last few days – a backbreaking job – and compared ques-
tionable points with the original,” she promised to give Buber her post-office
address in Switzerland, where she was to vacation, should any queries arise.33
Yet her struggle was not over, and she was once again plagued by concerns about
the printing of the letters, noting that “if they are to appear in the spring, we shall
have to begin typesetting very soon.”
As time passed, this was the least of her problems. In particular, she was
embarrassed to bring up the matter of the publishing credit. She informed Buber
that after receiving his response to her inquiry regarding this matter, in which he
stated that “the title page would read: ‘Edited by Martin Buber in collaboration
with Ina Britschgi-Schimmer,’”(Unter Mitwirkung von Ina Britschgi-Schimmer, her-
ausgegeben von Martin Buber) she was “very depressed.” She explains her posi-
tion in frank terms:
I have the feeling that, on the basis of this phrasing, only your esteemed name will be men-
tioned in the public announcements and reviews etc., and hardly anyone will take notice of
my ‘collaboration.’ I don’t know whether you are aware of this, or [of the fact] that the very
benefit to me from the publication of the letters, which you envisioned at the time – namely,
that my name would become better known – would be nullified as a result. The formulation
I had in mind, and one that seems best suited to this purpose, was simply ‘edited by Martin
Buber and Ina Britschgi-Schimmer.’ I have asked myself whether there isn’t also an objective
justification for proposing equality between us with respect to this work. Because this is and
must remain the only criterion. Under no circumstances would I seek to take advantage of
your benevolence toward me for personal gain in literary matters. I think I can answer the
question in the affirmative without risk of exposing myself to the accusation of presumptu-
ousness and self-deception. You know me well enough to understand that there is nothing of
the kind [involved]. I do not even wish to mention the arduous work of collecting [the material],
32 CZA, IBS File A 110, 8: IBS to MB, 10 March 1927.

33 CZA, IBS File A 110, 8: IBS to MB, 27 June 1927.
since that is a rather more technical aspect. But who, better than you, is able to judge the
amount of time, effort and care required in editing the notes alone, which are then read
easily and as a matter of course by the reader. Nonetheless, I did not wish to let my sub-
jective feeling be my only guide, and sought to hear a more objective assessment instead.
Since Prof. [Gustav] Mayer has more experience with [such] editions than anyone else in my
circle of acquaintances, I asked for his opinion, having described to him my contribution
to the work. He said that he was now in the best possible position to answer my inquiry.
He had just been commissioned by the Social Democratic Party to edit an edition together
with a young Russian. Although the latter was to be responsible only for the comparison
of texts and he – Mayer – would be writing all of the notes, the entry on the title page
of the book would read ‘edited by Gustav Mayer and … .’ He also said that he considered
such wording appropriate for the Landauer letters and offered to write to you about the
matter, since he had something he wanted to relate to you anyway. I turned down the offer,
however, because I prefer to discuss these things with you directly. So, now I have told you
what is on my mind. For I cannot but honestly admit that I would find it hard after two years
of work not to be acknowledged as the co-editor – if not in the book itself, at least in the
public announcements concerning it. And whether I am mentioned or not is not without
consequence with respect to my future work opportunities. What I do not know is what you
think of my work and whether you believe it is deserving of equal mention. If you see things
differently, then please let me know. Sincerely yours, Ina.34
Buber’s answer was prompt:
You appear to assume that this is a matter of my own intentions and my own arbitrary
wishes alone. This is not the case. I am bound by Landauer’s last instruction (see the entry
in all of the books from his literary estate edited by me) [that I] assume sole responsibility
for the edition. And that is why, although I value your contribution to the project highly
(your share of the work was much greater than mine, but I alone remain responsible for
every letter selected and for every deleted sentence), I cannot mention you on the title page
in the way you wish. I will ensure, however, that your involvement is suitably accentuated
in the press releases, so that your name will surely be mentioned in every review. And it
goes without saying that you will not be left unnamed in any official announcement. In this
way, your well-earned right to be mentioned will be honored to the extent justified by the
facts of the matter.35
After Buber wrote the foreword, Britschgi-Schimmer once again raised the issue of
the title page and publication formalities, stating that she preferred the wording
“with … ” in lieu of “in collaboration with … ,” and adding, “if that does not
suit your wishes, then it can remain as it is.” She concluded by saying that she
was very happy to know that the book would soon be issued. Buber’s response
the following day indicates little willingness to accommodate her concerns: “As I

explained to you in my earlier letter,” he says, “the question of the title page is not
in the least a matter of ‘my wishes,’ but rather of an obligation and responsibility
that have been imposed upon me personally. I was convinced that you under-
stood this at the time, and I am surprised to learn that you did not. You are surely
aware of how seriously I take language, particularly at my present age. It is not
for me to grant or deny any wish of yours in this matter. Please also have a look
at the back of the title pages in the books I have edited from Landauer’s literary
estate. To ensure that the facts are clear this time, I have added two words to the
preface, so that the passage at the bottom of p. IX now reads: ‘in accordance with
Landauer’s last instruction to me.’”36
It was at this time – and no doubt in reaction to Buber’s response – that
Britschgi-Schimmer decided to abandon her fervently outlined plans for a Lan-
dauer biography, a work for which she had already begun preparing a detailed
draft. It seems that in the light of the power wielded by men – and particularly in
the shadow of Landauer – her faith in her own talent had faltered.
3 The Reception of the Edition of Gustav

Landauer’s Correspondence
In their announcement for the forthcoming publication of Gustav Landauer. His
Life in Letters, edited by Ina Britschgi-Schimmer and Martin Buber – here the
two appear as co-editors – the publishers Rütten & Loening, set the tone for the
reception of the work:
Nowhere do we catch a glimpse of world events during the first two decades of this century
in such a vital, intensely personal reflection as in this document of a magnificent [repre-
sentative of] humanity. Landauer strengthened and tested his basically solitary spirit in a
fertile exchange with friends such as Fritz Mauthner, Constantin Brunner and Martin Buber
and in correspondence with some of the outstanding minds of his time, including Julius
Bab, Alfred Mombert, Ludwig Berndl, Richard Dehmel, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Frederik
van Eeden and Margarete Susman. In his correspondence with his wife and children, and
especially with his life companion Hedwig Lachmann, we witness how Landauer matures
and flourishes as a human being. Gustav Landauer predicted the outbreak of war and, as it
drew near, struggled against it: not as a member of a political group, but as an individual
and a solitary figure, and not by means of programmatic slogans but by exposing and
revealing hidden realities. He foresaw the revolution and, although passionately devoted
to the humanitarian revolution, he [himself] – as an individual and a solitary thinker –
36 See CZA, IBS File A 110, 7: MB to IBS, 6 November 1928.

submitted it to relentless, clear- and far-sighted criticism. He joined it, fully aware of the
sacrifice involved, although he steadfastly adhered to his own critical stance.37
Even though ten years had passed since his brutal murder, the appearance of
Landauer’s Life in Letters had a powerful impact on friends and foes alike. In
addition to all the well-known men referred to in the letters, many of the women
with whom he corresponded are also mentioned for the first time in this volume.
In the Chemnitz Volksstimme Landauer was referred to as “a preacher of socialism
who had no understanding of the conditions underlying the class struggle [and
no knowledge of] the true spirit of the proletariat.”38 Even those who dismissed
Landauer as either a left-wing renegade or a utopian, referred to the militant
aspects of his life. In a letter to the poet Emmy Hennings (1885-1948), printed in
the Kölnische Zeitung, Hermann Hesse noted that the letters reveal “poor Lan-
dauer” as a “noble and knowing person who nevertheless ran blindly into the
machinery of hell that was the revolution.”39 Gustav Mayer, however, referred to
Landauer as “a man of the word, not of violence,” a writer and speaker called
upon by Kurt Eisner “to serve as a spokesman for the reformation of souls.”40
Other commentators, viewing Landauer from the distance afforded by the
passage of time, saw him in a more nuanced light, suggesting that he both was,
and was not, a politician: “We do not begin to sense the intellectual energy that
radiated from this restless man until we read his correspondence … [He was] a
fighter possessed by the intellect and, above all, a human being.”41 The com-
ments of Chemnitz Volksstimme editor Eduard Weckerle, reflected the political
correctness of the time: “A man possessed by a forward-looking, stormy élan and
global spirit. Such a man must inevitably be tempted to overestimate the mind
and to underestimate the power of matter.”42 Leo Hirsch (1903-1943), who wrote
reviews for a number of newspapers, emphatically reaffirmed Landauer’s vitality
and vision: “Landauer foresaw and predicted the war … as it had to and did come
about, and even his best friends failed to understand him”; he then adds with an
almost Landauerian flourish “his life was lived consciously and deliberately, [it
37 See CZA, IBS File A 110, 10: “Reviews of Gustav Landauer: His Life in Letters, edited by Ina
Britschgi-Schimmer and Martin Buber, Frankfurt/Main, Rütten & Loening, autumn, 1928.” Pub-
lisher’s leaflet announcing forthcoming new volumes.
38 Chemnitz Volkstimme, 2 May 1929.
39 Kölnische Zeitung, 22 December 1928.
40 Frankfurter Zeitung, 12 May 1929.
41 Kölner Tageblatt, 2 May 1929.
42 Chemnitz Volkstimme, 2 May 1929
was] led in harmony and ended tragically. True to himself yet unselfish, obedient
to natural destiny in an almost humble devotion to justice.”43
In Landauer’s view, socialism was a “way of life: a life that must be lived to
the full, and well and with reason, and the revolution one must begin in one-
self.”44 His correspondence bears witness to just such a life. Although editions
of correspondence are assessed on the basis of different criteria today, Grete
Schaeder, editor of the three-volume edition of Buber’s letters, referred to Ina
Britschgi-Schimmer’s editorial work, especially her notes, as exemplary. There
can be no doubt that Ina Britschgi-Schimmer’s notes, based on conversations
and first-hand information, will remain an important source for future scholars
of Landuer’s legacy. Citing Landauer’s Life in Letters in her own introduction,
Schaeder suggests that the correspondence may well be regarded – in a signifi-
cant sense – as a form of biography, or even as a substitute for it.45
Ina Britschgi-Schimmer’s fear that she might not receive any recognition for
her labors in editing the Landauer letters appear to have been confirmed, for in
the thirty-five reviews found in the Britschgi-Schimmer collection of the Central
Zionist Archives in Jerusalem, she is hardly mentioned at all – and if so, only
indirectly.46 Upon her death in Jerusalem on 14 July 1949, an obituary appeared in
the news bulletin of the Association of Immigrants from Central Europe, in which
she was aptly remembered as an individual full of hope and optimism – striving
for her ideals in a pure way, unwilling to make any compromise with the brutal
powers that were unfolding, driven by a strong will, accompanied by a sense of
realism that accepts truths that other people find hard to recognize, showing a
commitment that is rare in others.47 Her edition of Gustav Landauer’s letters was
but one of Ina Britschgi-Schimmer’s achievements, but it is one of the important
reasons that her name warrants more than a footnote in the documents of Ger-
man-Jewish intellectual history.
43 Berliner Tageblatt, 8 March 1929.

44 G. Landauer, “Anarchische Gedanken über Anarchismus,” Die Zukunft 37, no. 4 (1901): 134-140.
45 See M. Buber, Briefwechsel aus sieben Jahrzehnten, ed. Grete Schaeder, 3 vols. (Heidelberg:
Lambert-Schneider, 1972-1975), vol. 1: 21.
46 See CZA, IBS File A 110, 10.
47 See the bulletin of Irgun Olej Merkas Europa, 29 July 1949.
Chaim Seeligmann
Gustav Landauer and his Judaism
Gustav Landauer has been a somewhat forgotten figure in Israel, despite the fact
that two books on him appeared in Hebrew in the 1930s, one edited by Ya’akov
Sandbank, the other by Israel Cohen. After a long hiatus in work related to the
anarchist thinker, Yad Tabenkin, the research institute of the United Kibbutz
Movement, published translations of some of his writings, previously unavail-
able in Hebrew. These appeared along with texts by Bernard Lazare and Erich
Mühsam, which likewise appeared in Hebrew for the first time.1
This essay focuses on Landauer’s Jewish identity and also deals briefly with
his impact on the Kibbutz Movement. I shall first sketch the Jewish elements in
Gustav Landauer’s life – which is not a simple task. His Jewish self-awareness
seems to have developed over a long period of time, but in contrast to the other
researchers, I see this not as evidence of some kind of discontinuity, but rather
as an indication that Landauer became conscious of his Jewish identity in a slow
process over time.
Landauer grew up at a time when liberal Judaism was prevalent in Germany
and highly pervasive in his native city of Karlsruhe. Liberal Judaism in that period
was already in the process of becoming denominational, in other words, it began
to align itself with religious perspectives on life similar to those found in other
faiths. This denominational liberal Judaism comprised many elements, which
essentially reflected general, even universal, perspectives on existence and belief,
and hence dispensed with all the national elements of traditional religion. This
was in marked contrast to the other trends in German Judaism, such as neo-Or-
thodoxy. Prayers were recited in Hebrew but a majority of the congregation were
unable to understand their content. Many considered themselves to be Germans
of the Jewish faith, or Germans living in a certain phase of that faith, and there
was a rather limited emphasis on the normative rules and obligations. Of course,
1 C. Seligmann, and Y. Goren, eds., Lazare, Landauer, Mühsam: Jewish Anarchists (Ramat Efal:
Yad Tabenkin Research Center, 1997); idem, eds., Gustav Landauer: About Him and By Him
(Ramat Efal: Yad Tabenkin Research Center, 2009). Both these volumes are in Hebrew. The ref-
erence to the two earlier Hebrew volumes on Landauer are: A collection of essays on Landauer
edited by Ya’akov Sandbank, Gustav Landauer. Twenty Years since His Assassination (Tel Aviv:
The Hebrew Workers Federation in Eretz Yisrael, 1939) and Israel Cohen’s Hebrew translation
of Aufruf zum Sozialismus and Die Revolution – these translations appeared in one volume pub-
lished in Tel Aviv by Am Oved in 1951. Also see the Hebrew memorial volume by Shmuel Hugo
Bergmann and Hans Kohn, In Memory of Gustav Landauer (Tel Aviv: Ha-Poel Ha-Tzair, 1929).
(Paul Mendes-Flohr‘s note)
206 Chaim Seeligmann
these brief introductory comments present a rather sweeping and general picture
of what was in fact a very nuanced form of Judaism.
Urbanization played an important role in this regard. Urban Jews were more
amenable to assimilation than were Jews in rural areas, who placed far more
emphasis on tradition. In the case of Gustav Landauer, there appears to have been
precious little in the way of normative Jewish observance in his parental home
life. One exception relates to the death of his father. At the time, Landauer was
in prison – or the cloister as he called it – and not for the first time. He received
a seven-day furlough to sit shivah with his family, in keeping with the Jewish
custom of mourning. There is no evidence in his writings to indicate whether he
remained at home for the entire period, but we do know that the prison adminis-
tration added on the seven days at the end of his sentence.
Although the liberal Judaism of Landauer’s milieu was greatly susceptible to
the threat of assimilation – and the danger of being absorbed into the surround-
ing society – it was actually a form of Judaism which allowed the individual to
preserve his or her own inner Jewish essence (jüdische Substanz). For Landauer,
as for many others, however, the process of identifying positively with Judaism
was a lengthy one. The evidence for this can be found in a series of texts and
articles in which Landauer either addresses or comments on Jewish problems,
or deals with his own Jewishness. In a lecture he gave at the Neo-Philological
Association of the University of Heidelberg, which was the first university he
attended, he refers to Jesus of Nazareth, to the Essenes, to Lessing’s Nathan der
Weise and to tolerance in the three monotheistic faiths. He also makes a host of
other observations that point to his knowledge in the sphere of Judaism and its
relationship to Christianity. That paper, entitled “Religion,” was unfortunately
never published. Also, in the preface to Landauer’s novel, Ein Knabenleben, pub-
lished posthumously in 1928, Max Kronstein (husband of Landauer’s daughter
Charlotte) mentions that while studying in Berlin, Landauer attended the lectures
of the philosopher Chaim Heymann Steinthal (1823-1899). It is hard to imagine
that those lectures did not touch on Jewish topics.
In his early work, Landauer often dealt with religious questions, for example
in his article “Die religiöse Jugenderziehung” (“The Religious Education of
Youth”), published in the journal Freie Bühne in 1891.2 In this article one has to
read between the lines to discern any reference to Judaism, however, in a letter
sent to his friend Ida Wolf in Berlin on 15 July 1891, he clearly addresses the prob-
lems of faith, doubt and religion and refers to his own situation: “I was never
truly drawn to the standpoint of Jewish (or Christian) clergy, even in my earliest
years. I owe this to my upbringing, which was devoid of religious faith as much
2 G. Landauer, “Die Religiöse Jugenderziehung,” Freie Bühne für modernes Leben (11 February 1891).
Gustav Landauer and his Judaism 207
as possible. I do not by any means have a religion, yet surely more so than most
Orthodox Jews, but it is my own.”3 Here he seems to be confronting his Judaism
or at least his awareness of belonging to the Jewish people. He uses the term
‘religious faith’ and also refers to those in his native Karlsruhe who were strictly
Orthodox, forming a congregation that existed outside of the larger liberal com-
munity (Gemeinde).
In 1898, Gustav Landauer published an article in the journal Die Zukunft,
edited by Maximilian Harden, entitled “Der Dichter als Ankläger” (“The Poet as
Accuser”). Without going into too much detail, I shall show how Landauer, as
he himself stated, “writes first, as a Jew, second, as a German and third, as an
anti-politician.”4 In my opinion, this statement is another indication of his acute
awareness of Jewish issues at the time. Indeed, it would be impossible to over-
look the significance of this period, in which the Dreyfus affair commanded much
attention, especially among Jewish thinkers. In another article, “In Sachen Juden-
tum” (“Of Things Jewish”), which appeared in 1901 in the Viennese periodical
Die Zeit, he criticizes Helmut von Gerlach’s essay on anti-Semitism in Germany,
which had appeared in an earlier issue. Landauer writes: “In the last issue of Die
Zeit, Herr von Gerlach gives an objective report on the current attitudes of Germa-
ny’s non-Jewish majority toward the Jewish minority. [In it] he neglected to form
any arguments of his own. I must confess that from the standpoint of culture,
as well that of my Jewish qualities (!) I find it offensive when a modern person
allows himself to report on such hateful hostilities without taking a stand.”5 It is
not possible here to discuss the article in its entirety, but it is interesting to note
that in it Landauer deals with the role of laws governing food, with the place of
marriage and with the question of race in the shared life of modern society; nat-
urally enough he adopts a modern position, but without neglecting the Jewish
background to the issues.
These then are some of the literary sources and incidents from Landauer’s
youth that bear on his Jewish identity. Even though there are not a great number
of statements to be found regarding Judaism or the fact of his being Jewish, it still
appears justified to at least conclude that a certain jüdische Substanz – which,
in my opinion was also present in liberal Judaism – played a role in this process.
In subsequent years, it was to play an even larger role, particularly during the
several years of friendship between Gustav Landauer and Martin Buber. The two
met in the Neue Gemeinschaft (New Community), which the Hart brothers had
3 G. Landauer to Ida Wolf, 15 July 1891. Cited in Ruth Link-Salinger (Hyman), Gustav Landauer:
Philosopher of Utopia (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1977), 31, fn. 33.
4 G. Landauer, “Der Dichter als Ankläger,” Der Sozialist (5 February 1898).
5 G. Landauer, “In Sachen Judentum,” Die Zeit (23 February 1901).
founded, and the encounter was definitely decisive for Landauer’s profound rela-
tionship with Judaism. From the time of their first acquaintance onward, he and
Buber had a close – albeit often fairly strained – relationship, and a strong bond
developed. However, it was not unusual for Landauer to experience tensions
with close friends, and there was even friction between him and Fritz Mauthner.
Landauer, whose attitude toward Judaism was of a decidedly Western European
nature, became acquainted with Hasidism thanks to Buber, and experienced the
fascination that was to attract other Jews with a similar Western European orienta-
tion, several years later. Buber introduced him to this movement and its meaning,
and Landauer was captivated by it. Landauer read the legends of Rabbi Nachman
of Bratzlav relatively early and, later, the stories of the Baal Shem, about which
he published an article in Das literarische Echo in 1910.6 It should be mentioned
here that he harbored many doubts about the article up until its publication. One
should also mention the letter Buber wrote to his wife Paula Winkler in December
1906, in which he tells her, “by the way, Landauer read from the Nachman [book]
at [Constantin] Brunner’s suggestion and wrote to me, saying that it had caused
him “deepest joy, … was startling, astonishing, but also splendid.’”7
The correspondence between Landauer and Constantin Brunner (1862-1937)
is still available to the public only in part, and many of the letters they exchanged
are still not known to most scholars. Among the letters published in Buber’s first
edition of Landauer’s correspondence is a letter from Landauer to Brunner, which
is relevant to our subject. It should be mentioned that Brunner’s knowledge on
Jewish subjects was not negligible. In one of the letters from 1909, Landauer takes
issue with the views of Eugen Dühring, a well-known anti-Semite, arguing that
Dühring’s prejudices notwithstanding, his writings on socialism were of worth
and import. Confronting Brunner, who had apparently challenged Dühring, he
writes: “Rest assured that I haven’t the slightest intention of forgetting even for a
moment the pleasure [afforded by] my Judaism.” He adds, “my Judaism demands
that I hold in disdain stock-market Jews, which there are, and the newspapers of
stock-market Jews, which there also are, and to call them what they are.”8 This
is without a doubt, a strong remark, especially for those times. But it does say
something about how Landauer understood his Judaism.
With regard to Landauer’s friend Fritz Mauthner, it must be noted from the
outset that it is not possible here to delve adequately into the extensive correspon-
dence between the two. I will only comment briefly on the Jewish “moments”
6 G. Landauer, “Die Legende des Baalschem,” Das literarische Echo 13, no. 2 (1910).
7 M. Buber, Briefwechsel aus sieben Jahrzehnten, ed. Grete Schaeder (Heidelberg: Lambert-
Schneider, 1972-1975) vol. 1, 252.
8 G. Landauer to C. Brunner, Lebensgang I, 261.
in this relationship, such as, for instance, when Landauer wished Mauthner a
“happy [Jewish] new year,” in one of his earliest letters.9 It is also worth noting
the fact that Landauer went to great lengths to find for Mauthner the writings of
Solomon Maimon, the Jewish scholar of Kant. In the figure of Solomon Maimon,
one sees a rather remarkable phenomenon: a young Jewish scholar, emerging
from the context of Hasidic Judaism, who regards German culture of the time as a
stellar example of the Enlightenment. It is not clear why Mauthner, who was far
removed from Jewish questions, was so keen to have the Maimon book, perhaps it
had something to do with his family’s Frankist roots. Nevertheless, Landauer did
find it for him. In another incident, which took place in 1906, Landauer defended
Mauthner in response to an article in Ost und West, a Zionist journal, in which
Mauthner was described as an apostate and anti-Semite.
In a letter to Mauthner written on 18 May 1906, Landauer notes, “I haven’t
seen Ost und West for over a year; Dr. Buber sometimes had an article in it in
earlier years. If the journal has not changed its direction over the years, it is the
organ of the Young Zionists who affirm their Judaism from a national-individ-
ual perspective and do not emphasize the religious aspects. For these and other
social reasons, they want to engage in establishing a Jewish colony. So it appeals
to me.”10 Landauer’s statement is interesting because it says something about
himself and his position on Zionist settlement in Palestine. It can be under-
stood as a national, Jewish or perhaps even a Zionist position, and in this way
expresses something about his Judaism. Let us not forget that it was Landauer
who demanded that Mauthner actively defend himself against the hostile propa-
ganda. It is also important to note that Landauer generally took the Jewish stand-
point in many discussions he had with Mauthner concerning Jewish questions,
but Mauthner, who was clearly the more assimilated of the two, also admits to
having an occasional Jewish line of thought.
It appears that even Landauer’s friendship with Erich Mühsam was not
without its Jewish concerns. One should note that Mühsam grew up in a relatively
Orthodox family in Lübeck and surely knew more about normative Judaism than
did Landauer. But in his few Jewish writings, for example, in the “Song of Gol-
gotha,” which deals with Jewish questions and with Zionism, Mühsam displays
a knowledge of Jewish subjects, with which his dear friend Landauer was surely
also familiar.
We now come to Landauer’s relationship with Hedwig Lachmann, his second
wife and the daughter of the cantor of a small Jewish community in Krumbach
in southern Germany. Hedwig Lachmann’s parents were conservative Jews. Her
9 G. Landauer to Fritz Mauthner, 11 September 1899, Mauthner Briefe, 25.

10 G. Landauer to Fritz Mauthner, 18 May, 1906, ibid., 129.
father was a cantor and collected Jewish prayer melodies in that area of Germany.
We may assume that Hedwig Lachmann at least brought with her Jewish experi-
ences from her childhood. It appears that her brothers, especially Norbert, were
particularly uncompromising in this regard. Landauer, for his part, saw Hedwig
not only as the talented poet and translator from many languages, but also as his
wife, “my Jewess,” and this influenced him greatly.11
It is not possible here to analyze Landauer’s A Call to Socialism on which
there exist a number of unparalleled and extensive studies. Suffice it to say that
the complexity of the ideas underlying this great “call” appears to be due in part
to Landauer’s spiritual disposition, or what I have referred to above as his jüdische
Substanz, in particular his affinity to questions of redemption and messianic
thinking. These were the years in which Landauer took a stand on a great number
of Jewish questions and in which his Judaism or his Jewish identity, as described
above, was expressed more forcefully and profoundly. Hanna Delf von Wolzogen’s
book, Gustav Landauer: Dichter, Ketzer, Außenseiter (“Poet, Heretic, Outsider”),
introduces us to Landauer’s multi-faceted Jewish thinking in all its guises.12 One
example is his rather harsh debate with his friend Julius Bab on Jewish poetry, in
which he made a case for the proven poetic ability of the Jews, in contrast to Bab
who rejected the argument.13 The article was published in Freistatt. Alljüdische
Revue in 1913. Another key article is his “Sind das Ketzergedanken?” (“Are these
Heretical Thoughts?”) which he wrote in 1913 for inclusion in a book entitled Vom
Judentum (On Judaism), edited by Bar Kochba, the Zionist student association
of Prague.14 Buber had solicited Landauer’s contribution to this volume, which
had considerable resonance. Landauer’s publications and lectures of that period
include his discussion on “Judentum und Sozialismus,” which he presented on
different occasions, such as at the opening of the Jüdisches Volksheim in Berlin,
founded by Siegfried Lehmann who was later a key figure in the children’s village
at Ben Shemen in Israel. The meetings at the Jüdisches Volksheim, where Lan-
dauer held seven lectures on socialism, appear to have been decisive for him.
There he met young Jews, including many from Eastern Europe; we know from
various later reports that his lectures where enthusiastically received. At one
point, Landauer also asked his daughter Charlotte in a letter of May 1916 to pay a
visit to the Jüdisches Volksheim.15
11 “Ich dank Dir, Hedwig, Frau, Jüdin Meine.” See Lebensgang II, 61.
12 WA III.
13 See J. Bab, “Assimilation,” Die Freistatt: Alljüdische Revue, 1 (1913-14): 171-176; and G. Landau-
er, “Zur Poesie der Juden,” Die Freistatt, 22 (1913-14), 321-324.
14 G. Landauer, “Sind das Ketzergedanken?,” (1913; repr. in WM 1921).
15 G. Landauer to Charlotte Landauer, 19 May 1916, Lebensgang II, 136-137.
Martin Buber, about whom Landauer had also written articles at the time,
began editing the well-known journal Der Jude. In various issues of the journal,
Landauer published articles, which especially affirm his sense of Jewish belong-
ing and identity: “Eastern European Jews and the German State”; “A Serious Case
and Unusual History”; “Christian and Christian, Jewish and Jewish”; and “The
Merchant of Venice.” The latter warrants special attention, not only from a Jewish
perspective, but also from a critical literary perspective, for it is an important
scholarly contribution to studies on Shakespeare.16
In the last years of his life and in the wake of Hedwig Lachmann’s untimely
death in February 1918, Landauer’s publications on topics pertaining to Judaism
began to wane. It is, however, important to mention his exchange with the well-
known Zionist Nachum Goldmann (1895-1977) and his plans to take part in a
meeting of socialist Zionist intellectuals. In the end he did not participate, pos-
sibly because of the general political situation in Germany, although the spe-
cific reasons are unknown. This was the short and tragic period in which he
was drawn into the center of the political upheaval and revolutionary fervor in
Munich, which was also the scene of his tragic death.
In closing, a few short remarks on Landauer and the Kibbutz Movement are
in order. It would be difficult to imagine the development of the Kibbutz Move-
ment without the influence of the various youth movements, and more specif-
ically the Zionist Youth Movement. It is not possible to give a uniform descrip-
tion of all the movements involved, because of the radical differences between
them. However, the best source for understanding Landauer’s importance for the
Zionist Youth Movement are the pamphlets and brochures which were published
by these movements. For example, in Germany, Brit Olam’s Der junge Jude, or in
Latvia, the Hashomer Hatzair Nezach, as well as Gordonia and Hashomer Hatzair,
all printed works by Landauer. A Call to Socialism was widely printed, but texts
such as Die Revolution, published in the series edited by Martin Buber, “Die
Gesellschaft,” also received attention. These texts, not to mention the articles on
the settlements and on the Sozialistische Bund (Socialist League), definitely had
a great formative influence. In the Jewish workers movements in Germany, par-
ticularly in Hapoel Hatzair and its publications such as Die Arbeit, or in Joseph
Hayim Brenner’s Adama, we find references to Landauer. In this context, Martin
Buber and Hugo Bergmann were particularly active in promoting his legacy. Lan-
dauer’s letters, which were edited by Buber, and published in the two-volume
collection Gustav Landauer: Sein Lebensgang in Briefen (His Life in Letters), were
read by a German-speaking public. Nevertheless, we should not exaggerate Lan-
16 See Shakespeare. Dargestellt in Vorträgen, ed,. Martin Buber (Frankfurt/Main: Rütten & Loe-
ning, 1920).
dauer’s influence on the Kibbutz Movement. As time passed, far less attention
was given to his life and work than had been in the early years of the movement.
Yet in more recent years, the movement – perhaps as a result of having distanced
itself from the Marxist Zionist conception of Ber Borochov (1881-1917) which was
so dominant in previous years – seemed to undergo a general return to a human-
istic socialism and a more libertarian conception of society, which in turn led
to a certain Landauer revival. Martin Buber’s Paths in Utopia, which devotes an
important chapter to Landauer, also contributed to this renewed interest.17
In conclusion, the facts presented here in the form of statements or articles
by Landauer on questions or aspects of Judaism, provide evidence for my hypoth-
esis regarding Landauer’s positive Jewish orientation, based on what I refer to as
“jüdische Substanz” or an inner Jewish essence. It is true that this development
was slow in the early period, but the Jewish content of his writing became more
pronounced during the years 1913-1917. In the final analysis, it is clear that Gustav
Landauer saw himself as a Jew and lent expression to his Judaism on many occa-
sions. Nevertheless, a number of questions remain – I would not be the first to
ask, for example, whether Landauer knew Hebrew. One also wonders whether
Landauer – who showed such a close affinity to the medieval Christian mystic
Meister Eckhart – had a substantial knowledge of Jewish mysticism, or whether
his deep interest in mysticism arose from a perspective which took note of the
anarchist – or at least antinomian – current in mystical thought. Ultimately, it
seems justified to say that Gustav Landauer considered himself – as he consid-
ered Moses, Jesus and Spinoza – to be a true son of the Jewish people.
Translated from the German by Eric Jacobson
17 M. Buber, Paths in Utopia, trans. R. F. C. Hull, 2nd ed. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1960).
Ernst Simon
Der werdende Mensch und der werdende
Jude: Gustav Landauer’s Development
as a Human Being and Jew1
In reverent gratitude to the living memory of
Rabbi Dr. N. A. Nobel2
1
For danger is the gateway of deep reality, and
reality is the highest prize of life and God’s
eternal birth.
Martin Buber in Daniel 3
Both as a calling and as a theme of writing, politics today has lost much of the
prestige it enjoyed a hundred and fifty, even fifty years ago. The vicissitudes of
imperial, wartime, and reformist Germany have together contributed to a situ-
ation in which an individual given to higher aspirations, while firmly believing
himself able to develop his “talent” (or rather talents) in the “flow of the world,”
nonetheless deems “tranquility” (Stille) essential for the cultivation of his “char-
acter.” But the platitude, so deeply indicative of our time, about politics corrupt-
ing character, denotes the very opposite of the verse from Tasso, which we have
just invoked.4 However, alongside this transformation in valuation is another of
opposite tendency in practice: the pursuit of politics, the unrestrained devotion
to its ties and temptations, has, contrary to the age wherein it was esteemed,
1 Ernst Simon, “Der werdende Mensch und der werdende Jude.” Der Jude 6, (May 1922): 458-475.
Trans. by Carl Ebert. We should like to thank Uriel Simon for permission to republish his father’s
essay. For an alternative translation, under the title “The Maturing of Man and the Maturing of
the Jew,” see A. A. Cohen, ed. The Jew: Essays from Martin Buber’s “Der Jude,” 1916-1918, trans. by
Joachim Neugroschel (University, Alabama: Univ. of Alabama Press, 1980), 130-146. Notes intro-
duced by an asterisk are by Ernst Simon, all other enumerated notes are by Paul Mendes-Flohr.
2 Nehemia Anton Nobel (1871-1922) was a learned and charismatic Orthodox rabbi, who exer-
cised a profound influence on young German Jewish intellectuals.
3 *M. Buber, Daniel. Gespräche von Verwirklichung (Leipzig: Insel, 1913).
4 The allusion is to Torquato Tasso, a verse play by J. W. Goethe, which traces the emerging
conflict between the poet Tasso and the statesman Antonio, signifying the spiritual and moral
tension between the artist and practical individual devoted to action.
214 Ernst Simon
risen immensely. Both these phenomena stand in such a relationship to one

another that the politician of today cedes to the demands of so-called reality, and
observes the crumbling of his character in perfect resignation; he knows his fate
and cynically admits that, after all, he cannot change it. Tacitly or openly, lying is
granted him as a tool of his trade, just as the poet is granted “poetic license,” the
lawyer the duty to “defend his client under any circumstances,” the merchant tax
evasion, and the burglar the use of the picklock. In those cases and amid those
circles which have accommodated themselves to the trades under discussion, the
verdict regarding the individual is secondary to what he “otherwise” (i.e., outside
his métier) does and is. For those who find themselves unable to accept this, there
is no recourse but to reject this corrupt world, [withdrawing] into solitude or to
the literary café. Nevertheless, in such times of transition, there repeatedly appear
solitary and tragic men, considered utopians by their contemporaries. They want
to confirm their “character,” their existence and its meaning, not in sheltered sol-
itude, but in perilous activity. They are cognizant of the hopelessness of their
struggle at present, but believe in its triumph in the world of true reality, which
they are helping to build. They pursue politics with the “non-political” means of
truth, although, and because, they know just as well as the cynics that this does
not work. Their call for socialism, for a true state, for a genuine community, has
borne various names in the history of mankind, and produced various effects.
The succession of these men and their deeds betokens die werdende Menschheit
(‘becoming’ humanity) – and Gustav Landauer’s life and death stands before us
as their (for the time being) latest representative.
2
God finds no room in someone who is full of
Him.
Buber in Baal Shem5
Plato and Jesus, Solon’s seisachtheia [releasing the Athenians from the onerous
burden of debt], and the similarly conceived remission in the Jubilee Year of
ancient Israel – these comprise Landauer’s lineage, insofar as he was the scion of
mankind. And, as a scion of his time, which he surely was, he also had mentors
of diverse casts, but always of exceptional stature.
5 *M. Buber, Legende des Baalschem (Frankfurt/Main: Rütten & Loening, 1908).
Der werdende Mensch und der werdende Jude 215
In his first theoretical work, Skepsis und Mystik (“Skepticism and Mysti-
cism”),6 he aims to elaborate Fritz Mauthner’s “critique of language,”7 in the for-
mulation of which he had already taken part. The young and vehemently consis-
tent thinker undertakes a kind of epistemological Bolshevism, seeking the way
to a new edifice by means of total destruction. As already in Mauthner, the word
is shown to be the omnipotent master of our thought and life, and for this very
reason is exposed in all its nullity. The constancy of substance and material is
drawn into the endless ebb and flow of events, and for this very reason is raised
to new meaning: the point of confluence and evening out of counter-currents.
Belief in God, the creator, and in the world he wrought, succumbs to a form of
atheism which seeks to prove that this representation is our representation, that
is to say, the work of man, an idol – which, for this very reason, affords the cre-
ative ego the possibility of creating God and the world anew, or (as Landauer pre-
ferred to express it) to be God and the world. It is thus that the deepest skepticism
engenders the highest mysticism. We can recognize in this world-view the traces
of Plato’s poetry of ideas, Meister Eckhart’s God-intimacy (Gottinnigkeit), the
pantheism (Naturbeseelung) of Spinoza and Goethe, and Fichte’s ego-pride (Ich-
Stolz) in a singular and meaningful transfiguration, whereby ego-pride is tem-
pered by the skeptical knowledge of the (alas!) so dubious nature of this word:
I – the God-intimacy of its circumscribed compass released by the expanse of
an all-embracing love of nature and the world, so that every element is changed
and transformed by every other, and absorbed into something new and whole.
Thus Landauer’s world-view possesses the self-enclosure of a system of philos-
ophy – not, however, in such a way that his edifice stands complete before us
as in Hegel’s Encyclopedia or in Hermann Cohen’s great œuvre,8 but rather in
the systematic concern for unity (Einheitsbezug), which reigns in Landauer’s
writings and actions. This basic attitude pulses and breathes through all his arti-
cles, lectures, and criticism; indeed, it forms their very essence. His Aufruf zum
Sozialismus (“A Call to Socialism”),9 Die Revolution,10 as well as his earlier collec-
6 *Skepsis, 1903.
7 Fritz Mauthner (1849-1923) pioneered the philosophical critique of ordinary language. A rad-
ical nominalist, he characterized as “word superstition” the assumption that reality can be
known through language and the corresponding belief that all words refer to something real. The
philosopher’s task is to show that what we commonly regard as substance, as things in them-
selves, are social conventions. Ordinary speech then has a pragmatic, but no epistemic value.
8 *H. Cohen, Die Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums, 1st ed. (Leipzig: G. Fock,
1919). Mendes-Flohr: In the subsequent editions of this posthumously published work the defi-
nite article “Die” was dropped as a misunderstanding of Cohen’s intention.
9 *Aufruf, 1911.
10 *Revolution.
216 Ernst Simon
tion of essays, Rechenschaft (“An Accounting”),11 and to no less a degree his new
and highly significant Der werdende Mensch (“The Becoming Man”),12 invariably
show the entire man; it is invariably Gustav Landauer. His ego is never full of
the overflowing sense of his own existence; it is always imbued with God, the
world, and one’s brethren on earth. And it is at this point that another lineage
enters, one represented by the great names of Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin,
and Tolstoy. The misleading word influence should also be eschewed when Lan-
dauer’s relationship to these anarchists is considered. It is better to think of
the palpable and cogent image of lineage, just as every person discovers within
himself characteristics and impulses of long-dead ancestors, whose direct influ-
ence he cannot experience. So it is, in essence, with Landauer’s totally original
thought. What he wrote about Walt Whitman also applies to himself: “Although
Whitman read much, he was by no means merely a reader (Leser) and compiler
(Zusammenleser); he took into himself only what was already there.” And this is
how it should be construed, when we find tenets of his precursors in Landauer’s
social teachings (as in his philosophical position).
First of all, he held three basic notions in common with Proudhon, whom,
in grateful acknowledgement, he customarily called the “greatest socialist”:
hostility toward the State and its principle of murderous mechanization, which
stifles life and misuses it for such virulent purposes as war and exploitation;
the conception of Money, which evolved from a useful means of exchange into
a detrimental end in itself, and via baneful embryonic segmentation begot the
abhorrent monster of taxation; but also its positive counterpoise – the idea of
the co-operative, of free and mutual aid, not, however, in the limited form of the
barter bank, which was feasible in Proudhon’s time, but not in ours.
Landauer’s desire to abolish the Bodensperre (“land enclosure”), to employ
Franz Oppenheimer’s expression [for private property], reminds one of Bakunin’s
communism; his principle, which he happily defined in both theory and practice
as “reciprocal action” (not a trite term for him), recalls Kropotkin’s “mutual aid”;
and his sharp repudiation of violence, his protest against using unholy means
to a holy end, his religious will to shatter the vicious cycle of cause and effect,
utopia and topia [i.e., unromantic reality], revolution and restoration, in order to
finally start afresh, and break new ground – is reminiscent of Tolstoy. And so he
becomes the fiercest – and sometimes unjust – opponent of all attempts to sci-
entifically foreordain the fate of men and nations, and thereby preclude the pos-
sibility in principle of such a new “ground-breaking.” Marx’s economic concep-
11 *Rechenschaft (Berlin: E. Fleischel, 1903).

12 *Edited by Martin Buber in accordance with Landauer’s will and published by Kiepenheuer,
Potsdam, 1921.
tion of history, Freud’s materialistic psychology, and Hegel’s dialectic ascent – as

shackles on the free act of the revolutionary man – were all equally repugnant to
him. Higher development and progress, socialism and world peace – these will
surely not arise, if we, as men, fail to bring them about at this very moment and in
this very place. The rebirth of the world will issue from the rebirth of the “I.” Lan-
dauer’s mystical desire to “find the cosmos incarnate in himself,” is also the basis
of his social philosophy, which, beginning with the smallest cell, the commune
(Gemeinde), in which “love dwells,” spreads outwards organically in ever wider
circles, seeking to construct the community of a free people on free soil. “Neither
the moral Philistine nor the Übermensch is the aim of the cosmos” – but rather, so
we may continue, the free citizen. This conviction already obtains in Skepticism
and Mysticism, and reveals the common source of Landauer’s philosophical and
economic ideas.
3
To love one’s fellow men means to feel their
need and to bear their suffering.
Rabbi Moshe Leib in Buber’s Great Maggid13
How can the ‘idea’ and the ‘world’ find one another and jointly beget ‘reality’? –
this is Landauer’s key question. Reality is a problem for him. He does not accept it
with the naive realism of someone who has faith in the word, nor does he discard
it with the naive idealism of the philosophy professor; it is rather that he wrestles
with it in thought and deed. Neither surfeit nor lassitude, neither complacency
nor aversion are, in his view, attitudes worthy of the true man; it is rather that
the will to change and the strength to persevere are indispensable. That “which
transpires in the lengthy course between the ‘I’ and God, between the rapacious
drive and servitude, is life.” Life – but not suffering! And if he cited Strindberg’s
confession, “I am condemned to suffering,” with deep empathy, we are entitled
to say that Gustav Landauer himself was condemned to ‘life.’ He bears his fate
with joy, well-being, and natural vigor. A handsome figure, he peers into the
world through clear eyes, and no illusion saddens his gaze or lightens the deed.
He foresees that this war must come, and he knows and prophesies that Social
Democracy will not be able to prevent it, but, indeed, will abet it, and even that
13 *M. Buber, Der grosse Maggid und seine Nachfolge (Frankfurt/Main: Rütten & Loening, 1922). Cf.
Buber, Tales of the Hasidim. The Later Masters, trans. Olga Marx (New York: Schocken, 1948), 86.
218 Ernst Simon
the Revolution will only be powerful in the negative, and will then go to wrack
on the urgently needed provisional government, because it resorted to the falsest
means: terror. That he is keenly cognizant of this can be seen with ruthless clarity
in his writings. And so this great man, deemed a compromiser by visionaries, a
visionary by compromisers, was, in actuality, one of those rare individuals whose
vision is unclouded. This is what gives these individuals that uncanny assured-
ness of a dream, or, as Landauer preferred to say, of a ‘delusion’ (Wahn).
Just as mysticism arose out of skepticism, and the community evolved out of
the “I,” so the antitheses are likewise bound up in a unity on this most central
ground: the ‘will to delusion’ arises from knowledge of the world. It is the true
motive of all action: God, nation, humanity are at one and the same time delu-
sion and reality, just as in Strindberg’s Dream Play (whose ‘concrete fantasy’ Lan-
dauer admired), life takes form only from dream and drive in tandem. In order to
fully comprehend the selfsame notion of Landauer’s ‘delusion,’ Mauthner’s ‘con-
scious illusion,’ Hölderlin’s ‘myth,’ Buber’s ‘legend,’ Strindberg’s ‘dream,’ as well
as Ibsen’s ‘life-lie’ (on a deeper level, being pragmatic), one should not imagine
something vague or fanciful, but rather a reality concealed in the midst of life.
Landauer, who dubs the reality of nation (Volk) [translated here as ‘nation’
or ‘people,’ depending on the context] “a genuine delusion,” and for whom rev-
olution possesses “the harried tempo of a dream,” expresses the concreteness he
has in mind in the following terms: “Fantasy, the ideal of delusion … is life itself.
How could we live, if we did not dream?” And, as in his language critique, where
words considered as elements of logic are only ‘metaphors,’ and thereby become
‘symbols,’ so the ethical will of the “language critic of praxis” forges the realities
of dream and delusion for the sphere of action. The truth to which we sacrifice
ourselves becomes the delusion. Still, we should sacrifice ourselves, knowing in
so doing that this transformation is taking place. So it was that he offered up his
life to truth, to delusion, to reality – to revolution.
In philosophical discourse, “pre-established harmony” denotes the state
which can only be fully attained in the fairy tale (Märchen), in which all things
accord with one another. Good is always triumphant, and evil is always pun-
ished. After the baneful fairy, Sleeping Beauty finds another, who blesses her.
The beggar couple in Rabbi Nachman’s tale find seven beggar friends, who had
once favored them with kindness, and who now, one after the other, grace each
of the seven days of the wedding as a “new face.”14 For the law prescribes that
new guests have to be present, if all seven blessings are to be spoken. Thus the
tale and the law seek the same result. In real life, however, this situation does
not exist, any more than does its opposite, “pre-established disharmony,” in
14 *M. Buber, Die Geschichten des Rabbi Nachman (Frankfurt/Main: Rütten & Loening, 1906).
which everything is out of joint, and which places us in the realm of ‘tragedy.
Our life runs between harmony and disharmony, between delusion and the world,
between fairy tale and tragedy. In their aura (but not necessarily in their issue),
times pregnant with meaning approach the placid world of the fairy tale; times
devoid of meaning resemble tragedy, in which heaven and earth are rent apart.
Philosophers who are content with their age (e.g., Aristotle, Leibniz, and Hegel)
cast their systems in the reassuring form of pre-established harmony; those who
are discontent choose utopia, parable, fairy tale, delusion.
This observation should help to clarify two points. First of all, the extent
to which these men of delusion act axiomatically. They literally tread with the
“self-assurance of sleep-walkers,” and their existence is balanced and symmet-
rical like a work of art in the classical tradition of form, until – and this is the
second point! – they succeed in forging an active ‘force’ out of their ‘nature,’
until, that is, they are obliged to actualize their delusion. At this moment they are
displaced from the realm of fairy tale to that of tragedy. Nevertheless, here, too,
they preserve the Apollonian aura of their inner self-assurance, and it is precisely
this trait that accords their life its lucid sanctity, and their death its placid joy.
They ‘know’ of the world’s unhappiness, they are alert to it, but do not ‘believe’
in it. For a yearning resides in them, and it repeatedly drives them out into the
sphere of trial and temptation; it is the yearning for a world commensurate with
themselves. What is hard for them to bear is the self-imposed solitude. How hard
it was for Landauer is shown by his interpretations of Goethe as a politician and
of the poet Hölderlin in Der werdende Mensch (“The Becoming Man”). Here, too,
the more vividly and truly he discusses such great men, he is speaking wholly
about himself.
And this is the bliss and fatality, the office and defeat of all those fairy-tale
people in the realm of tragedy: they seek the reciprocal action, the equipoise, the
unity between dream and instinct, between delusion and the world. It is not com-
promise they seek – compromise, in which both elements are stripped of their
essentials in order to become capable of union. Nor is it synthesis, in which their
essentials are extinguished, neutralized in the process of fusing together. It is
rather that unity of a higher order, for which not even Landauer can think of a
better term than ‘reciprocal action,’ in which both elements, remaining intact,
forge reality in an endless process of give and take. Landauer is so completely
possessed by this fundamental precept of his theory and practice that he even
views Shakespeare wholly in its light: the conflict and recurrent reconcilia-
tion between “instinct and spirit,” which he discovers in him ever anew (in his
two-volume work, Shakespeare, posthumously published by Martin Buber in the
publishing house of Rütten & Loening, Frankfurt a. M., 1920), and which sig-
nifies, on the plane of poetry, nothing other than Landauer’s own constructive
220 Ernst Simon
political endeavors on the plane of life. The final act of the “Merchant of Venice,”
in which all the contradictions are bound up in a cheerful play arising from the
depths [of despair], is hardly to be distinguished from the ideal which induced
him to inject his Socialist League (Sozialistischer Bund) directly into the tragic
reality of our days.
It is this will to unity which explains the singularity of Landauer’s style, in
which incompatible notions, such as “hopelessly joyous,” are placed abruptly
side by side, in order to show that their association delimits their respective mean-
ings. When he writes of Whitman that he unites, “like Proudhon, with whom he
is intellectually akin in many things, the conservative and revolutionary spirit,
idealism and socialism”; when he avers that in the Jubilee Year ancient Israel
possessed “sedition as its constitution”; when he represents Tolstoy and Rous-
seau as “a unity of rationalism and ardent mysticism”; when he concedes true
artistic freedom only to the “play of necessity”; when he deems “apathy imbued
with action” the most important property of revolutionary enterprise – we sense
ever more forcefully and vividly behind these biographical depictions and politi-
cal maxims the great dual-unity (Zwei-Einheit) of his humanity. He was a “gentle
hero,” as Shakespeare called Brutus – Brutus, in whom Landauer saw more than
a model, a reflection of his own self, his true brother. But he was too high-minded
to love just his correlates: Cassius, noble and driven, Caesar, conscious of his
greatness, even Shylock, ruinous and smoldering … them, too, he dubbed man
and brother. He belonged to that rare breed of those who know the nature of men
and yet love them. His love for humanity is not self-deception; his recognition
does not become hardness; it is rather that knowledge and love grow together in
him, as they grew together in the spirit of the Hebrew language, which has the
same word for these deepest antitheses (tiefste Gegensätze) of human conduct.15
For Gustav Landauer was a Jew.
4
They had hastened the end, and were burnt up
in its breath.
Buber in his introduction to the Great Maggid
In his book, Der werdende Mensch, (“The Becoming Man”) all of Gustav Landau-
er’s key essays “Concerning Life and Letters” are brought together. It includes his
15 In biblical Hebrew the word for erotic love and knowledge is identical, da’at.
national Jewish and likewise German confession, which, written for the Zionist
collection, Concerning Judaism, bore the title: “Are These Heretical Thoughts?”16
In fact, they are heretical thoughts, but of a fertile and liberating nature. And they
offer us an opportunity to consider Landauer’s position on Judaism incisively and
critically within the framework of his overall philosophy.
Landauer was early aware of his blood[-tie], even when he wrote Skepticism
and Mysticism. “A man’s race and his racial community are his innermost and
most secret essence.” Thus he was a national Jew from the moment of his earliest
self-scrutiny, when he probingly scanned the foundations of his own being. But
for him “nation” was no more a criterion of exclusivity than any other concept.
He deemed himself bound to the German nation no less than to the Jewish, to the
elect nation of the “spiritual” just as much as to that of a “becoming mankind,”
to the nation of individuals as much as to that of the proletariat. His definition of
“nation” is extremely broad, as can be inferred from the above examples. Literally
it reads as follows: “Nation is the particular way in which collective humanity
and the discrete individual express themselves in a society which has coalesced
on the basis of shared history.”*17 The simplest criterion of this commonality for
him is language, whose special forms of expression he examines with a mind
honed by his language-critical approach. Thus there arises for him the possibil-
ity of being a Frenchman, if he “can wholly understand a French turn of phrase
without having to translate it.” On the other hand, he also feels himself akin to
those who “in foreign nations belong as individuals to Walt Whitman’s nation
(Volk).”18 By this he means not Americans per se, but Walt Whitman Americans.
A common language is merely the simplest and clearest, but by no means
the only form by which a sense of community can be expressed. There is another
which exists within different language domains, and thus Landauer – in this very
study – expressly recognizes the Jewish people, despite being divided by lan-
guage, as a people (Volk).
Thus we confront here an exceptional expansion of the concept of “nation,”
one which, by the laws of logic, entails the contraction of its contents. Not land,
not language, not race, but rather a common mode of expression based upon a
common history (which can also be the history of the world proletariat) forms the
foundation of a nation. But shared experiences of this kind in the past and present
16 “Sind das Ketzergedanken?” Vom Judentum, ed. Jüdischer Studentenverein Bar Kochba,
Prague (Leipzig: K. Wolf, 1913), 250-57. For an abridged translation, see P. Mendes-Flohr and J.
Reinharz, The Jew in the Modern World. A Documentary History, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford Univ.
Press, 2011), 27-28.
17 *From his essay, “The Problem of Nation,” in Der werdende Mensch.
18 The reference is to Walt Whitman’s epic poem “Song of Myself.”
222 Ernst Simon
can link the man of culture with diverse circles, and therein resides the possibil-
ity for Landauer of belonging to diverse “nations” simultaneously, above all the
German and the Jewish. “My German-ness [Deutschtum] and my Judaism are by
no means detrimental to one another, and in much they are mutually beneficial.”
He refused to hear of an Either/Or, and believed himself capable of abiding by an
“And,” one which, here too (in the sense of our prior observation), was not to be
construed as an idle compromise (that of assimilation), nor as a vague synthesis
(some sort of East-West cultural mélange), but rather as clear reciprocal action
between two clear components. “I have never felt the need to simplify myself, or
to unify myself by means of self-abnegation; I accept the complexity that I am,
and hope to be an even more multifarious unity than I am now aware of.”
It is self-evident that the Jewish component in this complex had its clearly
delineated task; and, to be sure, it is the “office” of the Jewish people “to stead-
fastly await, in exile and dispersion, the coming of the Messiah, and to be the
Messiah of the nations.” This theory of mission coincides very closely with the
well-known doctrine of liberalism (i.e., liberal Judaim), and has to be exactingly
distinguished from it. It was not Gustav Landauer’s intention to pave the way to a
‘becoming’ mankind via the abstract dissemination of Judaism’s “ethical postu-
lates,” but rather by founding the Socialist League, by furthering just communi-
ties of men in Germany and throughout the world, including Palestine. The ethos
of his messianic campaign is enormously different from that of liberalism. But
– and it is imperative to add this – this enormous difference is just one of degree.
It is from this Jewish perspective that Landauer undertakes his deeply con-
cerned, yet severe criticism of the Renaissance movement of the Jewish people
– Zionism.19 It was with uncanny acumen that he recognized its point of weak-
ness, which was then (1913) hardly as patent as today: the danger of vacuous
nationalism, which, spinning around itself like a whirring wheel, is yet lacking
the connecting drive-belt, and hence the possibility of moving something else,
something concrete, the machine, the actual people. “Nation is a readiness or
disposition which grows stale and empty and rackety, if it occurs without any
attachment to objective reality, to tasks and projects, if it is other than their source
and temper.”
We can affirm that the two thousand years of the Diaspora, replete, as they
were, with the creation and elaboration of the Talmud, were possessed of a high
culture. But not of movement! And we have to admit that Zionism often gives the
impression of wishing to jettison the entire cultural ballast of the past, and to be
nothing other than movement, and yet to represent the entire people. Culture
19 Cf. Michael Brenner, The Renaissance of Jewish Culture in Weimar Germany (New Haven: Yale
Univ. Press, 1996), ch. 1.
without movement is dead, and movement without culture is empty, and Gustav
Landauer believed that Zionism, together with the Jewish people, was prone to
this latter danger. Still, it was not himself that he wanted to move, but others; he
wanted to act, and not to wait; he wanted a passionate present, the here and now,
and could not content himself with the vain promise of future work and fulfill-
ment. But an empty movement, such as he deemed Zionism to be, has no present,
but only a distant goal; it finds no resistance in the objective world which abrades
and constrains and renders it fearsome, but only self-promotion, the propulsion
of itself as a movement. For this reason it demands that its recruits renounce their
present and aspire to be nothing other than “a bridge for coming generations, a
preparation, seed and fertilizer.” However, “no-one who feels a calling within
himself … is capable of living in suspension.” “To be a nation means to have an
office” – and to fulfill this office with one’s own strength during the brief term of
one’s human life. Landauer’s ‘today’ was socialism, his ‘here’ was German soil
and the German language – and so Zion possessed no reality for him, nor was
Hebrew the expression of his Jewish soul.
It is conceivable that his point of view represents the most ingenious and yet
most human conception which has even been set in opposition to Zionism. Nev-
ertheless, in abiding reverence for Landauer’s high intellect and even higher life,
we shall yet attempt to refute his ideas in terms of his own approach.
In the realm of fairy tale, of delusion, of pre-established harmony, the choice
of the right way occurs only once, and never again – just as in the world of tragedy.
But life, which runs between these two extremes, is the realm of decision, or of
degree. Landauer knew this very well, and once even stated explicitly that dif-
ferences of degree are what is truly decisive in life. But it exceeds the strength
of a man to encroach upon the land of tragedy from two sides simultaneously,
and to expose his ‘fairy-tale’ security to this double danger. And because he built
while searching for ‘becoming’ mankind, and searched while building, it escaped
him that Judaism today is not delusion, but world, not reality, but becoming. On
account of the ‘becoming’ man, he forgot the ‘becoming’ Jew, or was unable to per-
ceive him, and demanded perfection of things and men in the process of develop-
ment. Thus, the caricature of the Zionist movement displaced its authentic image;
he failed to appreciate sufficiently its stern corporeality, which is embodied in the
incipient reconstruction of the land; he did not perceive the fair actuality which
blossoms from the self-discovery of the scions of the nation who have already
set off; he did not understand sufficiently that the same was underway here as
in his Socialist League: to rebuild the world on a small and modest scale, from
the cell up, but to begin today, and “not hasten Redemption.” The decision to
undertake the long trek and the will to active perseverance were so vivid to him in
his socialist endeavor, and so totally absorbed by it, that he asked the impossible
224 Ernst Simon
of Zionism. He was most disturbed by the ‘self-consciousness’ of Jewish national

sentiment, by the convulsive manner in which it sought to convince itself and
others of something which was, after all, self-evident. “Seek not, and ye shall
find”20– it was something of this sort he might have cried to the yearning Jew.
“Seek not – and ye shall then have all ye seek.”21 It follows directly from this atti-
tude that – despite “Beilis”22 and Shylock! – he did not see Judaism in its tragic
discord, and he posed a challenge to it which is doubtless valid for the ultimate
questions, for God, but not for the penultimate ones, which stir us as men, if we
are Zionists or socialists. “Socialism, which stands so very high for me, does not
stand so high that I bind it to the absolute; likewise, the verbal expression for
world-feeling (Weltgefühl) does not stand so high for me that I make the desire for
the way of life (Lebensordnung) of men, for socialism, dependent upon concord
in these options of expression.” Landauer affirms this in his essay “God and
Socialism,” and we can let his statement here testify against himself.23 Zionism
is the desire for the way of life of Jews – and thus is exempt from this metaphysi-
cal inquiry, just as much as socialism is. This does not mean, in either case (nor
does Landauer so intend it), that no connection exists between the two; on the
contrary, the penultimate is impossible without the ultimate: the world without
God, becoming without delusion. But other criteria apply to action! Here there is
decision and choice, consciousness and will, overcoming and strength – not only
marveling and nature, matter-of-factness and charming play, as in God’s realm
of fairy tale. “If socialism were contingent upon a consensus of men concerning
the purpose of human life, then it would be a sorry state of affairs. Compared
to these bold questions and incomparably bolder answers, socialism is a very
unassuming business.” “This is rather socialism’s greatness, that it leads us away
from verbal constructions to the construction of reality. That it unites men in the
clear perception of what needs to be done in order to address the moment, men
who in word and delusion are not agreed and do not care to be.” Let us substitute
Zionism for socialism, and Landauer provides the answer for himself.
The fear, too, of being just a bridge is voided by this observation. Landauer
himself maintained that every period is “one of decay and simultaneously one of
preparation and renewal.” It is merely the Hegelian notion that we find intolera-
20 Cf. Matthew 7:7.

21 Simon is referring to the rabbinic caveat not to undertake acts to hasten the end of days, i.e.,
Jews should wait with patient faith for the Redemption.
22 The reference is to the Beilis Trial. In July 1911 the Ukrainian Jew Menachem Mendel Beilis
(1874-1934) was accused of killing a Christian child in order to draw his blood for ritual purposes.
The trial of Beilis, which took place in Kiev, commanded international attention and condemna-
tion as a regression to medieval bigotry. Beilis was ultimately acquitted.
23 “Gott und der Sozialismus.” Der Sozialist, 15 June 1911.
ble – that certain periods, namely, are more transitional than others, and hence
merely a step toward an epoch of a higher order. In reality, however, every period
is simultaneously the manure and the blossom, just as a man is simultaneously
son and father. It is exactly in this sense that we Zionists feel the entire immedi-
acy of being Jews and men: the sons of fathers and the fathers of sons simultane-
ously … finally, after thousands of years, capable of truly being both. It was just so
that Landauer felt himself a member of ‘becoming’ mankind, and the herald and
precursor of all its members who would follow in his wake. In the ever-flowing
stream of humanity, the individual of course finds not his place of repose, but
rather his place of action – and it is precisely as such that his task grants him the
longed-for sense of being present and the active awareness of the here and now.
And so we can apply Landauer’s saying concerning socialism to ourselves, and
believe together with him: “Those who live after us will thank us, even if it is not
for them, but for ourselves, our own souls, that we live. For it is thereby that we
live for them.”
If Gustav Landauer had seen Zionism as it must be seen, as an affair of the
in-between realm we call life, which is inhabited by figures from both fairy tale
and tragedy, but not controlled by them, his theory of the nation would have been
clearer and more distinctly limned. How could it remain hidden from him that a
difference of degree exists between the sublime manner of “being a Frenchman”
by linguistic empathy and the cultural circumstances which defined him as a
German – and, moreover, that his being German had to accommodate itself to the
historical and biological potency which made him a Jew in all thought and deed?
He never posed himself the question concerning the primacy of his belonging to
his own or a foreign nation, and therefore he answered it amiss – that is to say, in
favor of his German-ness.
By the same token, he neglected to pose himself the question concerning
the primacy of the task confronting the Jewish people today. His theory of mission
is premature. Many Zionists hope eventually to supplant and realize the liberal
notion of world happiness by means of national work for humanity in Eretz-Israel,
and each of our practical steps should derive its meaning and benediction from
this final goal. But it is precisely for this reason that these practical steps have
to be taken, just as Landauer was not prepared to await the state of the future,
but, proceeding from the Socialist League, sought to establish the Kingdom of
God by degrees. It proves necessary to repeat ad nauseam that basically the same
applies here, since Landauer’s lofty image is readily exploited by those of tepid
and torpid disposition, the bourgeois idealists and idle dreamers, to shroud their
own weakness. The simplistic demand for “All or Nothing” is costly and danger-
ous for the one who draws the inference of “All” and dies. The bourgeois, by con-
trast, experiences this demand as a psychological (seelisch) safety-valve, just as
226 Ernst Simon
charity and social legislation are the capitalist’s economic safety-valve. The bour-
geois cites them gladly to the revolutionary, but he himself draws the inference
of “Nothing”! And thus we must ponder this gruesome fact over and over: that
on 2 May 1919, Gustav Landauer was assassinated in Munich by white beasts.24
5
To him who dies in defeat, the abyss speaks its
merciless word.
Buber’s eulogy for Landauer, The Holy Way.25
“And then they slew him!”

This announcement, appearing under Landauer’s picture in the socialist weekly
Freie Welt causes us pain anew every time we think of his death. But before we
venture to interpret his end on the basis of his life and work, and even trace it
back to a noble fallacy, it is necessary to yield once again to the feeling of sadness
and rage in our hearts.
But then we are permitted to honor Gustav Landauer’s death with the tribute
of objectivity and inquire as to its meaning. He died amidst a foreign people, and
on the soil of a foreign spirit and substance. He brought his Jewish passion and
his Jewish pace of life and change to bear upon slower and more ponderous men.
And it is upon this schism that his task came to grief.
When Landauer speaks of Hölderlin’s deep yearning for harmony with his
surroundings and his dread of the terrible loneliness that afflicts one who is
misunderstood, he is presaging the contours of his own destiny. And so we may
aver that Friedrich Hölderlin’s madness and Gustav Landauer’s death belong to
the same matrix – that both betoken the martyrdom of a burning will that was
unable to abide and persevere. But what is truly painful about Landauer’s end,
even more so than the dimming of the most brilliant of all German Hellenes, is
this: that his destiny was fallacy and not fulfillment, that it was not tragic, albeit
so sad. We certainly do not mean to claim that he would have found complete
fulfillment within the context of the Jewish people, but we nevertheless believe
24 The allusion is to the so-called “White Troops,” dispatched by the federal government in
Berlin to suppress the Räterrepublik established in April 1919, and in which Landauer served as
the commissioner for “Enlightenment and Public Instruction.”
25 M. Buber, Der heilige Weg. Ein Wort an die Jugend und die Völker (Frankfurt/Main: Rütten &
Loening, 1919). This booklet was dedicated to the memory of Gustav Landauer.
that the deepest understanding and the most far-reaching of possibilities would
have been his portion.
And there is something else that renders his death so terrible: Gustav Lan-
dauer died because he failed to see Zionism in its living substance, because he
challenged it plainly to be a realm of fairy tale and delusion. For once he made
things too easy for himself – and for this single error he died. The bourgeois who
compromises with, or dodges “reality” lengthens his days and lightens his office;
the hero, however, who bears the godly onus in this world, falls through such
mistakes. It is here that his sad end is elevated to the sphere of tragedy, where it
otherwise does not belong.
In his Great Maggid,26 Martin Buber relates the following wonderful story of
Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk, who was the last to plant Hasidism on the
soil of the Holy Land:
At the time when Rabbi Menachem resided in the Land of Israel, it happened that, without
being noticed, a foolish man climbed the Mount of Olives, and blew the shofar from its
summit. The news quickly spread among the people in tumult that this was the horn-
blast that heralded the Redemption. When the tidings came to Rabbi Menachem’s ears, he
opened the window, gazed out into the world, and said: “There’s nothing new outside.”
It was in like manner that Gustav Landauer felt obliged to address Zionism. But
it was with respect to his own cause, socialism, that he experienced this before
his end.
Gustav Landauer erred. He had to. But Goethe’s saying in the Aufgeregten
(“The Aroused”), which he himself once invoked, also applies to himself: “One
can go astray on the right path, and follow the false one rightly.”
6
One always wishes to bring together every-
thing one loves in the same manner.
Landauer in Skepticism and Mysticism
Martin Buber once summed up the essentials of his religious demand, whereby
it was requisite “to mould the Absolute from the substance of the earth, to sculpt
God’s face from the slab of the world.” It is with these words that Gustav Landau-
er’s faith can also be defined.
26 Buber, Der grosse Maggid und seine Nachfolge.

228 Ernst Simon
So we see that these two men, bound by deep friendship throughout their
lives, were in accord in the depths of their being. Buber, whose systematic expo-
sitions in Daniel and in his discourses concerning Judaism are complemented
(not by chance, but in a highly meaningful way) by historical and field research
in the realm of Hasidism, is also a philosopher within the Hasidic world. But
Gustav Landauer’s mental make-up is likewise to be understood on this basis.
For (admittedly unbeknown to himself) he, too, was a Hasid.
The methodological foundation of his philosophy is language critique, which
in Hasidic thinking means taking the word in earnest, being accountable toward
it. It is easy to perceive that language critique and letter-based mysticism con-
tradict one another only on first impression, that, in actuality, they are different
forms of the same impulse, namely, to construct the world-ego (Welt-Ich) from the
word-ego (Wort-Ich). Freedom vis-à-vis the word, which language critique affords
us, is not to be construed in the main as freedom from the word, but equally and
even more so as freedom toward and in the word, the freedom of interpretation
and of that mysticism which springs from skepticism. Now whether, in Buber’s
Great Maggid, the Rebbe of Rymanow judges the abuse of the word to be the equiv-
alent of murder, or whether Landauer seeks to prove that the humanity of modern
writers is prone to puppet-like frivolity by dint of their “seraphic” style – in both
cases it is the same thing. In the positive sense as well: just as a Hasidic tradition
justifies its pantheism, its Spinozist deus sive natura, in that the numerical value
of Hebrew letters for ha-teva (nature) and elohim (God) is identical, so Landauer
once derived the Middle Ages in its entirety from the verbal radical “fro,” which
first of all means Lord (Fronleichnam), and then produces the appropriate mood,
that of joy (Freude), whilst imposing its opposite, forced labor (Fronarbeit), on
the serfs, and finally in its ultimate meaning, frouwe (mistress, woman), it also
added Minnedienst (love service, i.e., courtly love) to the emblems for church,
feudalism, joy, and labor. In respect to Mauthner’s studies, too, we suspect that
this taking of the word in earnest represents an archaic Jewish impulse, albeit
unrecognized – as reflected in Amos’ admonitions and Jeremiah’s visions – and
which becomes determinative for the Kabbala and Hasidism.
The above example of Landauer’s method appears in an essay in the Becom-
ing Man which bears the title Arbeitselig (“Laborious,” literally “Labor-Blest”).
Its theme is the fulfillment of the double entendre hidden in the title, one more
familiar to us in the common word mühselig (“toilsome,” literally “toil-blest”).
The joy, the blessedness of labor and toil, is what Landauer seeks to awaken in
us throughout his enterprise, in order to bridge the fateful cleft between trade
and leisure, and to involve the entire man in all of his activities. One can clearly
see here the similarity to the Hasidic outlook, which likewise accounted joy the
highest duty and the sole possibility of true God-intimacy (Gottinnigkeit). With
the same animosity and lack of recognition with which Landauer and his ideo-
logically orthodox (gesetzestreu) opponents, the Marxists, struggled against one
another, so it was with the Hasids and the rabbinically conservative Mitnagdim.
Two different spheres, but the same human discord exactly.
It is also from this vantage-point that Landauer’s rejection of asceticism and
his distrust of every form of “return to nature” should be understood. In spite of
his reverence for Rousseau, technology and civilization per se were not for him
emblems and manifestations of evil, as they were for “the greatest of the Swiss”;
they became so only when they were raised to an end in themselves, thereby for-
feiting their function as intermediaries. So it was that in his essay, “The Message
of the Titanic,” he actually intones a paean to the latest achievement of wireless
telegraphy, which, by dint of its ability to link lands and peoples, seems to him,
“one of the many signs that mankind is in a state of becoming.” In his essay on
Rousseau he expresses himself similarly concerning the possibility of exploiting
the invention of the railway in a manner that will serve to further culture. In this
attitude we once again recognize that Hasidic trait, according to which man’s evil
drive and, indeed, worldliness (Irdischkeit) in general do not warrant destruction,
but, on the contrary, should be elevated to the heights of the divine.
By this reasoning, Abraham is higher than the three angels, for, as a man, he
has the possibility, of which the couriers of God are deprived, to transform the
bestial function of eating into a sacrament – not by means of abnegation, but
rather by consummation. The salvation of man resides in himself, and he can
realize it at any time and anywhere – irrespective of technology, environment,
and circumstances. Everything is useful to him who uses it and does not enslave
himself to the world’s base principle. As master, he will also have a true servant
in the evil instinct.
Even the Hasidic notion of the transmigration of the soul is found in the same
form exactly in a dialogue bearing the title “Bairam and Schlichting,” which was
written in 1911 and published in the book Rechenschaft. It is a parley of the dead
(surely inspired by Mauthner), in which the advocates of the heavenly Areop-
agus – Proudhon and Mazzini, in the present case – dispute with one another
in the Elysian Fields concerning the admission of the two candidates. Bairam
is an Armenian insurgent, who was executed because, out of national antipa-
thy, he shot Colonel Schlichting, a German in the service of the Turks. Proud-
hon finds many good reasons to justify Bairam’s admission, Mazzini likewise to
justify Schlichting’s, until the supreme tribunal pronounces both to be right and
wrong. They are sentenced to return to earth in altered form, in order to “pursue
the battle they began,” until it is finally fought out. This judicial presentation
(with which Landauer is not, perhaps, merely playing) coincides exactly with the
Hasidic stance, as is plain to us from many stories of “Baal Shem” and the “Great
230 Ernst Simon
Maggid.” The idea that the transmigration of the soul has to proceed until the
final stage of purification, is certainly also inherent in other religious outlooks.
Here, however, a specifically Jewish component is involved, one which we hinted
at earlier in considering the distinction between “ultimate” and “penultimate”
things. In the Jewish conception, it is only the sins of the “ultimate” sphere, those
which transpire between God and Man, which the Creator can forgive on his
own behalf on the Day of Atonement. The crimes of life which have transpired
in the “penultimate” sphere (i.e., between man and man) can only be forgiven
by one man to another. And only then, after men have spoken their redeeming
word, can the Holy One speak his. It is only this construction which fully reveals
the meaning of Landauer’s social mysticism, a mysticism whose actualization,
according to Buber, God concedes not within a man, but between men.
At this point it should be borne in mind that we do not aim to derive Gustav
Landauer’s mature thinking from “models” or “influences,” even less so are we
seeking to establish “priorities.” And therefore it does not constitute an objection
if many of the ideas alluded to above can also be identified in other forms of mys-
ticism (the German and Indian, for instance), and they had their effect on Lan-
dauer. The particular admixture in which these elements assembled in his spirit
corresponds exactly to the complex of Hasidism, which likewise reveals points
of contact with many different systems, without being educed from them. And
while a relationship of dependence between Landauer’s faith and Jewish mys-
ticism should by no means be averred, it is certain that the same hidden stream
of common blood nourished both manifestations of the divine in the world and
brought both to light. We wish to make Gustav Landauer’s religious genius as
vivid as possible in its singularity and wholeness, and in this endeavor we also
find the two main tenets of his teachings akin to Jewish mysticism – in his con-
ception of tsimtsum and hashpa’ah, the clarification of which has been greatly
enhanced by Buber’s introduction to the Great Maggid.
Tsimtsum means concentration, focusing, contraction. It approximates the
concept in the philosophy of German Idealism (especially in Schelling) that beto-
kens the negative stance of God, his self-abnegation, self-enclosure vis-à-vis the
“other,” his self-contraction vis-à-vis the world. This is the act of creation: God
set the world free. The world derives from the heavenly sphere, but no longer
resides in it; instead, it runs its course according to the logic (so hateful to Lan-
dauer) of the causality of natural law; it “breaks the vessels” of the divine (which
engender from the source) in its midst, and thereby incurs the Fall of Man. The
divine abides in the world, even now; but the Shechina (the Divine Presence) no
longer possesses a dwelling-place, neither with the creator in seclusion, nor with
the creatures in dispersion. And it is here that the free act of the individual (so
well-loved by Landauer) enters the picture: by means of ichud, the act of unifica-
tion, which is neither compromise nor synthesis, but the living reciprocal action
of living men and – above all – of living streams in the heart of the single, the
unified man – the tsaddik. The righteous man who redeems himself contributes
to the redemption of God, to the reunification of the Shechina with the creator.
Hashpa’ah, by contrast, means emancipation, emanation; it betokens the
stance of the ‘warranting’ (gewährend) God, who creates and recreates the world
ever anew, and inundates it with the streams of his glory. The “waves of God”
break on the “finality of sensory things,” thus again in our own ego, and we find
our way to them and thereby to God himself when we split through the earthly
shell which surrounds our and the world’s kernel. Thus tsimtsum and hashpa’ah
are not antitheses, but are rather to be construed (as our mentor Nobel taught) as
the breathing in, breathing out of the divine soul, as the systole and diastole of
the divine heart: two phases of the same action.
The God of tsimtsum, who created once, and God of hashpa’ah, who eternally
creates anew, the transcendent and the immanent God, are thus united within
our souls. And thus we can experience contraction and emanation as interior
processes, and warrant them by choice as the bearing of our mundane reality
(Erden-Wirklichkeit). With this step we find ourselves in the middle of Landauer’s
world – Landauer, who characteristically experiences joy and suffering only, but
also always in the ego. Strength and Nature is how he terms these antitheses;
Strength is his tsimtsum, Nature is his hashpa’ah – their Reciprocal Action is his
ichud. In his wonderful lecture on Friedrich Hölderlin, he states that the strength
Nietzsche derived from the overcoming of self granted him the momentum of
flight, whereas Hölderlin’s nature was borne of itself by virtue of its own buoy-
ancy. Landauer favors hashpa’ah over tsimtsum; the way in which the beams of the
Supreme Spirit (Genius) glide down to the astonished world is for him the “love-
life of matter-of-factness”; the withdrawal, the reconvening of the beams, such
as the Baal Shem once undertook before an arduous task, entails for Landauer
too much that is conscious, convulsive, and arrogant. But the final unification is
also being prepared here: just as, in Hölderlin’s “Rhein,” it is precisely restraint
that impels the river to productive labor; just as a reveler becomes a founder of
cities and a citizen (a bourgeois – not, however, a Philistine, a petit bourgeois)
– it is therein that one discovers the overarching unity of life, which forms the
intermediate realm (Zwischen-Reich) of man from the tsimtsum of tragedy and the
hashpa’ah of fairy tale.
This cleft between Strength and Nature stays open only so long as man leads
a split existence. But just as man is bound to God in his breathing in and breath-
232 Ernst Simon
ing out, so too is he in his innermost being, “whose achieved unity,” in Buber’s
fine phrase, “has the purity and reticent strength of the elemental.”27
7
Gustav Landauer is dead. Were it not for the terrible circumstances of his death,
Jewish youth would not be able to look up to him, the eternally ‘becoming’ man,
with the total commitment and devotion that is possible today. It is thus incum-
bent upon us to refrain from self-reproach, and to honor instead the governance
of the Invisible One, who mends the small rents in ripping open the last and
deepest rent [an allusion to Landauer’s violent end].
For fog already threatens to shroud and distort his vivid image. Those who
are well-disposed to him, see in Gustav Landauer the paradigm of the “patient
sufferer,” those who fear him, by contrast, the “impractical dreamer.”
He was not a pure fool, a Dostoevskian idiot, an “idealist.” He was a man of
the peaceful struggle, the goal-oriented and conscious life, of deeply deliberate
and meaningful action. Not a saint, but one of the righteous. It is so important
to realize this because men all too readily distance themselves from their few
great individuals by [crowning them with] a halo, so that they may be exempt
from emulating them, in order to rank them as [representing] a fundamentally
different kind of human existence, one which is unattainable. Saints are the idle
excuses of the conscience, the righteous man its spur.
The goal of the righteous is to establish the sacred in the midst of life.
That was Gustav Landauer’s doctrine and deed.
That is the hallowed law of Judaism.
May it prove to be the path of its youth!
Translated from the German by Carl Ebert
27 In his introduction to Reden und Gleichnisse des Tschuang-Tse (Leipzig: Insel, 1910). Cf.
Buber, Chinese Tales: Zhuangzi. Sayings and Parables, and Chinese Ghost and Love Stories, intro.
by Irene Eber (Atlantic Heights, N.J.: Humanity Books, 1991).
Brigitte Hausberger
My Father, Gustav Landauer
[Brigitte Hausberger was the youngest of three daughters of the noted German anarchist
Gustav Landauer (1870-1919). Born near Berlin in 1906, she was educated mostly at home
by tutors. Her mother, the poet and translator Hedwig Lachmann, died of influenza in Feb-
ruary 1918, and her father was murdered by soldiers in Munich on 2 May 1919, during the
Bavarian Revolution. Brigitte married Dr. Igor Peschkowsky in the late 1920s (he later changed
his family name to Nicholas, after his father, Nicolai), and they had two sons, Mike Nichols,
the theater and film director, and Robert Nichols, a physician. Brigitte left Germany in 1940
and settled in New York. After her husband died, she married Dr. Franz Hausberger, who had
come to the United States after the war and was a research physician in Philadelphia, where
Brigitte, who had a Ph.D., assisted him in his laboratory. In her home hung beautiful portraits
of her father and mother, painted in the early part of the century. Brigitte had some books and
photographs, but she had sold her father’s library. His correspondence and papers are housed
in the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam and in the Martin Buber Archive
at the National Library of Israel, in Jerusalem.]
I was born in Hermsdorf, a suburb of Berlin, in 1906. My mother, Hedwig Lach-

mann, was Father’s second wife and the daughter of a cantor; that’s why he calls
her “Jüdin” [Jewess] in some of his letters. My sister Gudula was born in 1902.
Charlotte (“Lotte”), Father’s daughter by his first wife, also lived with us. Father
dominated our home both spiritually and physically. He was six feet five inches
tall and Mother five feet two. What a sight! When they walked together, people
would turn and look. Then there was his fur hat, which made him even taller. But
apart from his height, it was his constant seriousness that made me, as a child,
regard him with awe. He was very strict, and his height made him all the more
forbidding.
Father slapped me three times during my childhood. The first time was when I
yelled “scheisse” [shit] at a playmate, a boy, who had spit at me. Father was on the
balcony and heard me. He ran down and slapped me, then gave the little spitter
quite a scolding. I got the second slap once when we were having beetroot soup
for dinner. I didn’t like it and said, “It tastes like sand mixed with soap.” Father
did not allow any criticism of food. Food that was prepared had to be eaten. We
had to finish it all. Gudula and I were not even allowed to take the film off boiled
milk, but we found a way to do it without his knowing. The third slap occurred
somewhat later. In the meantime another lesson in behavior took place in Krum-
bach, where we spent the summers. It was in 1918, the year my mother died. A
man used to come to the house selling mushrooms. he had a terrible stammer:
“P-p-p-pilze,” he would say. When he left, I mimicked him and said that it took
him half an hour to say Pilze. Father was greatly annoyed. Instead of laughing
234 Brigitte Hausberger
at my talent for mimicry, he put me on his knee, took his watch from his vest
pocket, and told me to repeat Pilze with a stutter for half an hour. I kept it up for
ten minutes before I had to stop. I then burst into tears. Father let me down from
his knee, patted my head, and said nothing. But the lesson has remained with me
to this day. Whenever I hear or read of an exaggeration, I recall the word Pilze.
But Father did not slap me that time. The third slap came when I was amusing
my sister Gudula by imitating the Catholic prayers that I heard people recite in the
street over their rosaries. I copied their sing-song intonation. Father came in and
slapped me for making fun of these people, pious people. Such punishments do
not conform with present-day pedagogy, but they did teach me not to use vulgar
language, not to refuse any dish at the table, and not to make fun of any religion.
In our own house we celebrated Christmas every year and had a large tree,
the biggest that Father could find, decorated with shiny ornaments. Father played
Santa Claus and would read us a Märchen of [Clemens] Brentano. And Easter was
also a big event. We would go to the woods and hide Easter eggs, and afterwards
would all go on an egg hunt. Once I found a golden necklace in an egg left in our
house. There was a note with it: “Dear child, Give this to your mother. The Easter
Bunny.” I still have the necklace!
Those were the things he did, thoughtful things. We lived in a Jewish neigh-
borhood in Hermsdorf, and I played with Jewish children, but we were the only
ones who celebrated Christmas and Easter. We were known as freireligiöse or “dis-
sidents.” At school I was the only child who sat alone while the others studied
religion and recited their prayers. But I attended school only briefly, and Gudula
had no formal schooling at all. Instead, Father hired private tutors for us and also
taught us a lot himself. In our home, as a rule, silence reigned. Mother, a poet
and translator, was occupied with her writing, and we had to be quiet because
she was at work. Yet I can recall how much I enjoyed cuddling against her arms,
which were so soft. She was a very quiet person, and it was Father who helped us
with our education. Father worked very late at night, but before he went to bed he
would come into my room, put me on the “potty,” then back to sleep. He did that,
not Mother. I was at that time no more than three years old, yet how vividly I can
recall every sweet moment of motherly and fatherly affection.
There wasn’t the family “togetherness” that one finds so often today: We met
at meals, but otherwise did little together as a family. Father and Mother were
working, and we had to be quiet. Our main meal was at midday, with a light
supper in the evening: blueberries and milk I especially liked! Father, by the way,
was a good swimmer and an even better ice-skater. In winter we went ice-skating
on Sunday mornings, which we all liked very much. He smoked a lot – cigarettes,
Russian cigarettes, with large mouthpieces. In the attic in Krumbach where he
worked we found a large trunk filled with these mouthpieces.
My Father, Gustav Landauer 235
Every Sunday we had guests, such as the Bubers, Richard and Paula Dehmel,
Julius Bab and his family, and other literary and artistic friends.1 We would play
with their children and dance and laugh together. The evenings would often
become musicals, with Mother at the piano. But we had no anarchist guests.
Father met his anarchist friends away from home, which was far from downtown
Berlin, and he spoke very little to us children about anarchism, though once
he painted for us a picture of an ideal socialist village, founded on mutual aid,
without money but with comradely affection, and where each would work freely
and peacefully at his own preferred craft.
Father revered Kropotkin and called him “my great friend.” And one day a
man in a tattered suit came to our house, and the maid told father that a “beggar”
was at the door. Father came down and exclaimed, “Aber, es ist der Mühsam!”
It was the anarchist writer Erich Mühsam, whom I liked very much.2 That was
around 1915. One time when Father visited Willy Spohr he took me along, in 1912
or 1913.3 We went for a rowboat ride, and they argued about the coming war, so
much so that they didn’t see a big boat in our path until I warned them, and we
got out of the way at the last moment.
Speaking of the war, Bernhard Meyer, a wealthy furrier, told me that Father
often said to him, “Herr Meyer, war is coming. Leave Germany.” So they went to
Switzerland and missed the horrors of the war. Herr Meyer said. “He had the fore-
sight to send us out of Germany.” We ourselves were on a train, coming back from
our summer vacation, when the war broke out. During the summer we used to
visit both my grandmothers, at Karlsruhe and at Krumbach. Now we were return-
ing from Krumbach to Berlin. In the same car were some English tourists. Mother,
who spoke and translated a number of foreign languages, conversed with these
tourists in English. The train was stopped at Weimar. Mobilization had begun. I
remember the hostility of the other passengers toward the English, who had sud-
denly become our “enemies,” and toward my mother who was speaking affably
with them. Mother began to weep quietly.
That year we stopped exchanging gifts for Christmas. We still had a tree and
candles and spent time together. But no gifts. Father didn’t want to celebrate in
1 Philosopher and theologian, Martin Buber, the poet Richard Dehmel, and drama critic Julius
Bab, were all friends of Landauer’s. Buber (1878-1965) included a chapter on Landauer in his
Paths in Utopia (1958).
2 Erich Mühsam (1878-1934), writer and poet, editor of Kain and Fanal, and one of Germany’s
leading anarchists, along with Landauer and Rocker. A member of the Revolutionary Workers’
Council during the Bavarian Revolution of 1918-1919, he was later murdered in a Nazi concentra-
tion camp.
3 Wilhelm Spohr (1868-1859), a German writer and translator, was a longtime friend of Landau-
er’s and a collaborator on Der Sozialist.
236 Brigitte Hausberger
wartime, when people were suffering and dying. A nephew of Father’s, Walter
Landauer, had been mobilized into the army. When he came home on furlough
we went to meet him at the station. His train was late by several hours. It was cold
and drafty in the station. Mother began to cough. That was the year of the great
influenza epidemic, and Mother became very ill. Father did not leave her bedside
through the whole week that she was sick. She died in our home in February 1918.
Father did not allow me to look at my mother’s body. “I want you,” he said,
“to remember your mother just as you remember her now.” Many people came
to pay their last respects. I overheard Father telling one of the mourners that I
was his “only sunshine in those dark days.” I took that literally and would not
allow myself to show my grief. I was what he wanted me to be – sunshine. I tried
so hard to be gay that my aunt scolded me: “Your mother just died, yet you are
laughing.” I bottled up my grief, and did so forever after. Nor did Father take me
to the funeral. Gudula went – she was sixteen – but I stayed home alone.
Mother’s death was a severe blow to my father. For he was bound to her in
spirit, as he so eloquently expressed it in a famous letter to her. I recall how in
1915, in the very midst of the war, my mother composed an anti-militarist poem
called “With the Defeated,” some lines and phrases of which Father helped her
to polish. Father was so inspired by this poem that in a letter to her he wrote, “I
thank you, Hedwig, you Jewish daughter and my dear wife.” That poem appeared
later in the German paper Der Jude, and I learned to recite it by heart and remem-
ber it to this day.
I recall, too, how the First World War ended. My father plunged himself at
once into the thick of the revolution in Germany, especially in Munich. In those
stormy days and nights he was seldom at home. Yet however busy or far away
he was, in his letters he never ceased to concern himself with his children, and
especially with me, his beloved youngest daughter. In his letters he would remind
me to get plenty of fresh air, not to neglect my arithmetic and French, of which he
himself supplied readings and examples in his letters.
That summer, the summer of 1918, Kurt Eisner’s children were with us in
Krumbach. Father, who was then in Munich, sent us a telegram instructing us to
take our valuables and go to Uncle Hugo in Merseburg, on Lake Constance.4 That
was our last communication from him. Uncle Hugo (Father’s brother) owned a
chain of department stores and had a big house there, at the village of Deisendorf
above Merseburg. He picked us up in a horse and buggy and brought us to the
house. There I had a traumatic experience which has remained with me all my
4 Kurt Eisner (1867-1919), German socialist who took part with Landauer and Mühsam in the
Bavarian Revolution, became the first republican premier of Bavaria. He was assassinated on his
way to present his resignation to the Bavarian parliament.
My Father, Gustav Landauer 237
life. Hugo’s wife was standing at the top of the stairs. “My God”, she said. “So
much luggage! How long are you going to stay?” Even now I prefer to stay in a
motel when visiting my son.
Not long after that, Uncle Hugo gave us a task. He had an old vineyard on a
hill that was full of stones. He gave us – myself, his children, and the Eisner chil-
dren – the job of picking up the stones and carting them away. I still remember
how much it hurt to go barefoot on the freshly cut grass. While we were doing
this, Uncle Hugo called me aside and quietly told me that German soldiers in
Munich had murdered my father. I stood there bewildered. After standing there
for a few minutes, I returned to gather stones with the other children. I did not tell
them anything. Only at noon, during lunch, did Uncle Hugo tell the other children
about my father’s death. I suppressed my feelings. Later I found an abandoned
corner in the woods where no one could see me, and there, hidden from every-
body, I made two small graves [she begins to cry, then says, “Well, I didn’t sup-
press them completely, obviously.”], two mounds of earth such as I had seen in
the Catholic cemetery in Hermsdorf. On the two graves I put flowers and made a
cross from branches for each grave. No one knew anything of this. But for several
days I stole away to my secret graves and placed fresh flowers there.
That fall the Eisner children went back to their mother, and we three Landauer
children went to our grandmother in Karlsruhe. Life for the first time became a
little normal. Lotte went to the conservatory, met Dr. Max Kronstein, and married
him. They had a daughter. Lotte became pregnant again and quite ill. A doctor in
Karlsruhe operated on her gall bladder in her apartment, then he and Max Kron
stein drank to the successful operation – from which she never woke up. That
was around 1926. Gudula, who became a professional musician, survived Hitler
and the Holocaust and came to New York after the war. She was killed by a bus on
Central Park West in 1948.
Philadelphia, 28 October 1976

Index
Abulafia, Abraham 181, 182, 190 Dadaism 153
Arnold Himmelheber 8, 121, 122, 123, 124, Damaschke, Adolf 53
125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 132, 133, 137 Dehmel, Richard 76, 110, 117, 118, 119, 202,
Aufruf zum Sozialismus vii, 59, 83, 95, 172, 235
175, 215 Der Dichter als Ankläger 207
Avrich, Paul 7 Der gelbe Stein 121, 122, 132, 133
Der Kinderdieb 132
Bab, Julius 116, 117, 199, 202, 210, 235 Der Sozialist vii, 76, 108, 109, 122, 158, 159,
Bavarian Revolution 4, 8, 14, 17, 25, 58, 233 197
Benjamin, Walter 67, 69, 70, 89, 90, 173, Der Todesprediger 56, 121, 122, 132, 133, 151
174, 189 Despoix, Philippe 8, 9, 121, 133
Ben Maimon, Moses (Maimonides) 10, 177, Diederichs, Eugen 94
179, 180, 182, 183 Die Gesellschaft vii, 67, 211
Berndl, Ludwig 156, 192, 193, 199, 202 Dreyfus Affair 69, 111, 207
Bernstein, Eduard 47 Dühring, Eugen 48, 51, 208
Biale, David 82, 185, 186 Dumont-Lindemann, Louise 94, 95, 101, 102
Bildungskultur 8
Bismarck, Otto von 45, 46, 47, 48, 96 Eastern European Jews and the German State
Bloch, Ernst 12, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 67, 100, 211
173 Eckhart, Meister vii, 10, 65, 71, 122, 164, 172,
Blüher, Hans 88 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182,
Böhme, Jakob 65 183, 189, 190, 196, 212, 215
Bölsche, Wilhelm 107, 108 Eisner, Kurt 4, 17, 25, 26, 37, 38, 55, 57, 59,
Britschgi-Schimmer, Ina vii, 11, 191, 193, 194, 60, 78, 79, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100,
195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 156, 157, 198, 203, 236, 237
204 Eltzbacher, Paul 109
Brunner, Constantin 70, 173, 194, 195, 202, Engels, Friedrich 67
208
Buber, Martin vii, 4, 5, 7, 10, 11, 28, 29, 37, Faas-Hardegger, Margarete 55, 194
38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 56, 64, 65, 66, Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 76, 157, 215
67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, Fischer, Kuno 155
78, 79, 80, 81, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 96, Fontane, Theodor 151
100, 111, 123, 129, 130, 134, 173, 175, French Revolution 53, 58, 92, 99, 101, 103,
176, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 122, 184
198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 204, 207, 208, Freud, Sigmund 124, 128, 217
209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 217, 218, Friedländer, Benedict 51
219, 220, 226, 227, 228, 230, 232, 233
George, Henry 51
Carey, Henry Charles 51 Geschwister 9, 132, 133, 135, 136, 137, 138,
Cohen, Hermann 4, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 34, 139, 140, 145, 146, 147, 148, 151, 153, 154
35, 77, 90, 173, 205, 215 Glück 135
Communism 85 Gnosticism 18, 20
Communists 4, 27, 78, 85
Cultural Socialism 2
Index 239
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 6, 69, 105, 127, 153, 154, 156, 158, 162, 164, 165, 166,
140, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 149, 152, 172, 173, 175, 183, 188, 190, 196, 197,
154, 157, 215, 219, 227 206, 207, 210, 211, 215, 216, 217, 219,
Günther, Christiane 6 220, 221, 227, 228, 229
Gutkind, Erich 75 Lange, Rudolf 49, 50
Lasker-Schüler, Else 65
Halevi, Judah 35 Lazare, Bernard 69, 205
Hart Brothers 64, 111, 114, 115 Lebendig tot 122, 132, 133
Hasidic 71, 129, 130, 209, 228, 229 Lebenskunst 122, 132, 136
Hasidism 130, 208, 227, 228, 230 Lehmann, Siegfried 74, 90, 210
Hausberger, Brigitte 12, 233 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 146, 152, 206
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 21, 32, 215, Leviné, Eugen 17
217, 219, 224 Liebknecht, Karl 100
Hertzka, Theodor 51 Lindau, Hans 192
Herzl, Theodor 69 Lipp, Dr. Franze 95
Hilde Hennings 135 Lunn, Eugene 77
Hofmannsthal, Hugo von 110, 118, 119, 124, Luther, Martin 145, 146, 147, 183
128, 134, 202
Hölderlin, Johann Christian Friedrich 72, 88, Mach, Ernst 160
218, 219, 226, 231 Macht und Mächte vii, 121, 122
Mannheim, Karl 67, 69, 99
“In Sachen Judentum” 207 Marxism 2, 21, 51, 62, 68, 78, 84, 85, 172,
184, 229
Jewish Mysticism / Kabbalah 7, 43, 83, 90, Marx, Karl 42, 80, 99, 216
130, 186, 212, 230 Matzigkeit, Michael 6
Joël, Ernst 88, 89 Mauthner, Fritz vii, 8, 9, 56, 65, 76, 79, 83,
Judaism (Liberal) 11, 23, 33, 34, 205 88, 95, 122, 125, 136, 155, 156, 157, 158,
Judaism (Orthodox) 33, 70 160, 165, 172, 173, 183, 192, 194, 195,
Judaism (Reform) 23 202, 208, 215, 218
Mayer, Gustav 199, 201, 203
Kafka, Franz 27, 99 Mehring, Franz 108
Kain 139 Meister Eckharts mystische Schriften vii, 122
Kantianism 4, 21, 24, 25, 164 Messianism 14, 23, 28, 35, 36, 43, 87, 97,
Kant, Immanuel 24, 95, 159, 209 181, 222
Kautsky, Karl 47 Michels, Robert 51
Kohn, Hans 65, 71 Mombert, Alfred 110, 118, 119, 120, 202
Kronstein, Max 193, 199, 206, 237 Most, Johannes 47
Kropotkin, Peter 84, 194, 216, 235 Mühsam, Erich 17, 55, 65, 78, 112, 113, 194,
205, 209, 235
Lachmann, Hedwig 56, 119, 120, 121, 125,
126, 127, 129, 161, 195, 196, 199, 202, Neue Gemeinschaft vii, 52, 64, 66, 107, 110,
209, 210, 211, 233 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 120, 207
Landauer, Gustav (Works by) 2, 8, 9, 10, 48, Nietzsche, Friedrich 8, 48, 54, 124, 127, 162,
55, 56, 58, 59, 61, 62, 67, 69, 73, 74, 83, 165
86, 87, 89, 90, 91, 95, 109, 112, 121, 122,
128, 131, 132, 133, 135, 136, 137, 138, Ommerborn, Max 159
139, 140, 145, 146, 147, 148, 151, 152,
240 Index
Proudhon, Pierre Joseph 84 Social Democrats 45, 47, 48, 49, 51, 59, 60,
Przywara, Erich 27 68, 78, 84, 85, 98
Socialism 1, 5, 57, 59, 68, 73, 75, 78, 83, 89,
Räterepublik 4, 10, 59, 79 90, 156, 172, 173, 183, 197, 198, 210, 211,
Rechenschaft 216, 229 215, 224
Reclus, Elisée 84 Socialist League 49, 50, 211, 220, 222, 223,
Reinsdorf, August 47 225
Revolutionary Workers Council 4 Spinoza, Baruch 9, 10, 69, 90, 131, 155, 156,
Richert, Heinrich 21 157, 158, 160, 161, 163, 164, 165, 166,
Rosenzweig, Franz 6, 13, 14, 29, 30, 31, 32, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 180, 183, 212, 215
33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 39, 40 Spohr, Wilhelm 113
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 64, 220, 229 Stern, Jakob 157, 158
Stirner, Max 48, 159
Schaeder, Grete 77, 204 Strauss, Ludwig 37, 79
Schelling, Friedrich von 230 Susman, Margarete 95, 100, 202
Schlenther, Paul 136
Schmitz, Oskar 28 Toller, Ernst 17, 95, 98, 99, 193
Scholem, Gershom 7, 8, 10, 32, 33, 34, 36, Tolstoy, Leo 48, 50, 216, 220
41, 42, 67, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, Tönnies, Ferdinand 66, 115
90, 91, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 181, 182, Tsur, Muki 85
183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 190 Tyrius, Maximus 3
Scholem, Werner 84, 85, 86, 135
Schönberg, Arnold 118 Von Gerlach, Helmut 71
Schopenhauer, Arthur 117, 122, 152, 156, 159, Von Kleist, Heinrich 88, 142, 143, 147, 154
160 “Vor fünfundzwanzig Jahren” 156
Second Revolution 4
Seligmann, Rafael 90, 165 Weber, Max 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 64, 70, 74
Shakespeare, William vii, 6, 8, 10, 61, 96, Weidner, Albert 109, 111, 113
103, 121, 126, 141, 142, 143, 147, 152, Weimar Republic 37, 144
155, 157, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 197, Whitman, Walt 57, 122, 216, 221
211, 219, 220 Wille, Bruno 107, 108
Shedletzky, Itta 13, 85 Wolf, Ida 132, 136, 138, 146, 206
Simon, Ernst 11, 12, 34, 197, 213
Zionism 1, 2, 10, 12, 27, 28, 31, 32, 33, 34,
Simon, Uriel 7
35, 36, 37, 39, 72, 73, 74, 75, 78, 83, 84,
Skepsis und Mystik 9, 10, 83, 122, 132, 133,
85, 86, 88, 89, 90, 91, 127, 130, 172, 173,
151, 152, 153, 173, 175, 215
174, 183, 185, 186, 187, 188, 191, 192,
Social Democratic Party 45, 46, 47, 49, 50, 51,
204, 209, 210, 211, 212, 221, 222, 223,
83, 84, 85, 98, 201
224, 225, 227
Contributors
Gertrude Cepl-Kaufmann: Professor of Modern German Literature, Heinrich Heine University,
Düsseldorf.
Anthony David: Freelance writer and scholar, Jerusalem.
Hanna Delf von Wolzogen: Director of the Theodor Fontane Archive, Potsdam.
Brigitte Hausberger (1906-1985): Daughter of Gustav Landauer.
Philippe Despoix: Professor of Comparative Literature, University of Montreal.
Corinna R. Kaiser: Director of the Postgraduate Training Program of the Faculty of Arts and
Humanities, Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf.
Ulrich Linse: Professor emeritus of Modern and Contemporary History, University of Applied
Sciences, Munich.
Michael Löwy: Emeritus Research Director at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS),
Paris.
Anya Mali: Researcher, National Institute for Testing and Evaluation, Jerusalem.
Paul Mendes-Flohr: Dorothy Grant Maclear Professor of Modern Jewish History and Thought,
Divinity School, University of Chicago; Professor emeritus, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Yossef Schwartz: Director of the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and
Ideas, Tel Aviv University.
Chaim Seeligmann (1912-2009): German-born Israeli educator and historian, Senior

Researcher at Yad Tabenkin and founding member of Kibbutz Givat Brenner.
Ernst A. Simon (1899-1988): German-born Professor of Education, The Hebrew University of

Jerusalem.
Martin Treml: Senior Research Faculty, Center for Cultural and Literary Studies, Berlin.
Wolf von Wolzogen: Director emeritus of Education and Public Affairs, Historical Museum,
Frankfurt.

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Gustav Landauer: Anarchist and Jew

Edited by Paul Mendes-Flohr and Anya Mali

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

© 2015 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/München/Boston

Hanna Delf von Wolzogen

Wolf von Wolzogen

In February 1912, the forty-two-year-old Gustav Landauer (1870-1919) addressed

5 Cited, without source, by Link-Salinger, Gustav Landauer, 60.

participated in the revolution, despite the likelihood that circumstances would

He further discerns a striking parallel between Landauer’s conception of revolu-

24 Buber edited the following volumes: Shakespeare. Dargestellt in Vorträgen (Frankfurt/Main:

correspondence surely presented the most daunting challenge. Landauer’s corre-

Jerusalem, July 2014

In the midst of the Bavarian Revolution of 1918-1919, a group of students at the

If meaning were to be found, it was in pianissimo, in the purely personal and

of course, such considerations could not compromise what they regarded as a

with the most fundamental theological presuppositions of Judaism.27 There is

a moral attribute of “mankind”34– were unique to the modern period. But he

34 Hans Erich Bödeker, “Menschheit, Humanität, Humanismus,” in Geschichtliche Grundbegrif-

powerful meaning of the categorical imperative is expressed in this [proposition]; it

of socialism.53 Further, Eisner’s Jewish comrades were apparently unfamiliar with

59 Der Jude, Sonderheft 5: “Antisemitismus und jüdisches Volkstum” (1925): 17-33.

67 Rosenzweig, Star of Redemption, 328-331.

71 Rosenzweig, Star of Redemption, 298.

at the university, and especially as he was writing his doctoral dissertation on

the alleged commandment of historical passivity [opposed] the deepest impulses of

In his appraisal of Rosenzweig’s conception of messianism, Scholem seems to

Significantly, Rosenzweig in his later years became increasingly and self-con-

103 Buber to Ludwig Strauss, 22 February 1919, in Buber, Briefswechsel, vol. 2, 29.

107 See WM; and Beginnen.

revolutionary decisiveness in the Social Democratic Party, thereby reflecting the

29 Bock, Syndikalismus und Linkskommunismus, 20.

legitimize himself (Strategie der Selbstautorisierung) that was not supported by

57 Landauer, Der Todesprediger, 109.

66 Else Eisner to Ina Britschgi-Schimmer of 28 March 1927, BAB, SAPMO, NY 4060/111.

necessary in order to systematically educate adults and children to moral and

86 Despoix, Ethiken, 99-107, quotation 101.

as “a revisionist anarchism with watered-down bourgeois tendencies.”94 Party

94 Linse, Organisierter Anarchismus, 285.

Menschengemeinschaft, or human community, there was of course the state, that

Buber and Landauer also shared a radical criticism – inspired by both

14 Landauer’s preface to Aufruf, x.

dauer refused to believe in a “celestial and other-worldly God”; following Feuer-

29 WM, 1921, 30, 35.

34 G. Landauer, “Zum Beilis-Prozess,” in WM 1921, 133.

3 War and Revolution

39 WM 1921, 128.

cannot believe it.”41 Apparently there was a personal exchange of explanations,

41 Buber, Briefewechsel I, 381.

despised – in the common struggle against the counterrevolutionary forces; his

52 Buber, Briefwechsel, I, 67.

Yet in his approach to the historiography of Jewish mysticism and in his

words contain a veiled reference to Landauer’s critical comment on Zionist party

15 G. Landauer, “Sind das Ketzergedanken”, in WA III, 170-174, 265f., 171.

Neither Scholem nor Landauer could be said to be brimming with enthusiasm

Scholem and Benjamin, whereas Landauer could be thought of as another Buber,

38 Scholem, Walter Benjamin, 29.