Anarchism in Germany

The anarchists Gustav Landauer, Silvio Gesell and Erich Mühsam had important leadership positions within the revolutionary councilist structures during the uprising at the late 1910s known as Bavarian Soviet Republic.

The young Wilhelm Weitling, influenced by both Proudhon and Louis Auguste Blanqui, once wrote that "a perfect society has no government, but only an administration, no laws, but only obligations, no punishment, but means of correction."

Most saw in the doctrines of Karl Marx and Ferdinand Lassalle a blueprint for a new egalitarian society and became a fervent supporter of the Social Democracy, as the Marxist movement was known in the day.

[7] Convinced by his own experience of the futility of parliamentary action, Most began to espouse the doctrine of anarchism, which led to his expulsion from the German Social Democratic Party in 1880.

Two semi-fictional writings of his own Die Anarchisten and Der Freiheitsucher contributed to individualist theory, updating egoist themes with respect to the anarchist movement.

[15] In the German uprising known as the Bavarian Soviet Republic the anarchists Gustav Landauer, Silvio Gesell and Erich Mühsam had important leadership positions within the revolutionary councilist structures.

[1] Rudolf Rocker returned to Germany in November 1918 upon an invitation from Fritz Kater to re-build the Free Association of German Trade Unions (FVdG).

The organization became the Free Workers' Union of Germany (FAUD) in 1919 under a new platform written by Rocker—the Prinzipienerklärung des Syndikalismus (Declaration of Syndicalist Principles)—that rejected political parties, nationalization, the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the communist state.

[17] On Gustav Landauer's death during the Munich Soviet Republic uprising, Rocker took over the work of editing the German publications of Kropotkin's writings.

In 1920, the social democratic Defense Minister Gustav Noske started the suppression of the revolutionary left, which led to the imprisonment of Rocker and Fritz Kater.

[22] After World War II, an appeal in the Fraye Arbeter Shtime detailed the plight of German anarchists and called for Americans to support them.

Rocker thought young Germans were all either totally cynical or inclined to fascism and awaited a new generation to grow up before anarchism could bloom once again in the country.