His main field of activity in the decade before the turn of the century was organizing the preservation of folk art and endangered architectural monuments.

Although he was a reserve officer, Kahr did not participate in World War I because the minister to whom he reported did not want to release him from his position working to ensure food security.

[6] Following the failure of the 1920 Kapp Putsch in Berlin, General Arnold von Möhl, after consulting with Kahr, Georg Escherich and Munich Police Chief Ernst Pöhner, demanded that Minister President Hoffmann establish an emergency regime in Bavaria.

A Protestant monarchist and member of the Catholic Bavarian People's Party (BVP),[8] Kahr presided over a middle-class right-wing government and pursued an independent position for Bavaria within the German Reich.

[10] After the enactment in Berlin of the Law for the Protection of the Republic, which increased the punishments for politically motivated acts of violence and banned organizations that opposed the "constitutional republican form of government" as well as their printed matter and meetings,[11] Kahr resigned in protest on 12 September 1921 since the act led to the disbanding of the Civil Guard, which was Kahr's main source of support.

Defunct Defunct On 26 September 1923, following a period of turmoil that included assassinations and political violence, the Bavarian state government of Minister President Eugen von Knilling (BVP) appointed Kahr state commissioner general (Generalstaatskommissar) with dictatorial powers under Article 64 of the Bamberg (Bavarian) Constitution.

In response, Reich President Friedrich Ebert (SPD) instituted a state of emergency throughout Germany and transferred executive power to Minister of Defense Otto Gessler.

Kahr refused to carry out his orders, such as banning the Nazi Party newspaper Völkischer Beobachter,[12] and on 29 September he suspended the enforcement in Bavaria of the Law for the Protection of the Republic.

[13] Beginning in mid-October, Kahr again had several hundred Jewish families who had immigrated from Eastern Europe decades earlier expelled from Bavaria.

[19] On 8 November 1923, while Kahr was delivering a speech to an audience of some 3,000 in the packed hall of Munich's Bürgerbräukeller, the meeting was stormed by Adolf Hitler, Erich Ludendorff, Hermann Göring and other National Socialists.

After a few hours of internal wrangling, Kahr also turned against Hitler and at 2:55 a.m. broadcast a ban on the Nazi Party, Freikorps Oberland and Bund Reichskriegsflagge (Imperial War Flag Society).

[22] Kahr's involvement in the collapse of Hitler's coup attempt cost him the support of right-wing nationalist forces in Bavaria, and he was made a scapegoat for the failure.

[3] Two months later, on 18 January 1924, Minister President von Knilling, under pressure from Berlin, forced Kahr to resign from his post as state commissioner general.

[2][3] On the evening of 30 June 1934, in the course of the Nazi purge known as the Night of the Long Knives, the 71-year-old Kahr was arrested in his Munich apartment by an SS commando.

[27] Soon after Kahr's murder, the legend arose – one that has even made its way into professional literature – that his body had been found mutilated with pickaxes outside in the Dachau Moor shortly after 30 June.

[28] In July 1934 the Chief Public Prosecutor's Office at the Munich II Regional Court began investigations into Kahr's death.