Erich Mühsam (1934)

Wed Jul 11, 1934

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Erich Mühsam, murdered by Nazis on this day in 1934, was a Jewish anarchist author who openly condemned Nazism and satirized Hitler before being arrested by the Nazi regime in 1933.

In 1911, Mühsam founded the newspaper, “Kain” as a forum for anarcho-communist politics, stating that it would “be a personal organ for whatever the editor, as a poet, as a citizen of the world, and as a fellow man had on his mind.” The paper opposed capital punishment and government censorship of theater.

After World War I, Mühsam was sentenced to fifteen years in prison for playing a leading role in the Bavarian Revolution. He was freed as part of the same general amnesty for political prisoners under the Weimar Republic that released Adolf Hitler.

As a cabaret performer and writer during this time, he achieved international prominence, promoting works which condemned Nazism and personally satirized Adolf Hitler.

In 1933, Mühsam was arrested, with propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels labeling him as one of “those Jewish subversives.”

While imprisoned, he was brutally tortured, however his spirit remained unbroken. When his captors tried to force him to sing the “Horst-Wessel-Lied” (the Nazi’s anthem), Mühsam sung The Internationale, instead.

According to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Mühsam was murdered in the Oranienburg concentration camp on July 11th, 1934.