Nevertheless, between 1881 and 1884 - years during which, in parts of Germany, Bismarck's "Anti-Socialist Laws" were applied with particular enthusiasm - he was faced with a succession of court cases and excluded from a number of cities and towns, on account of his political record.

[3] While still in Breslau, his involvement as an executive member of the city's "Business association" ("Kaufmännischer Verein") at the age of just 18 indicated a certain level of political consciousness and organisational commitment.

In Berlin Kayser again demonstrated his appetite for further education, attending public lectures on "National Economics" presented by socialist economists as disparate as Eugen Dühring and Adolph Wagner.

[2] Kayser also worked, jointly with Carl Hirsch co-editor with the "Demokratische Zeitung" (newspaper) between 1871 and the publication's collapse in July 1873.

[9][10] Nevertheless, the political establishment during the Bislarck era remained deeply concerned by the rise of socialism, and while Kayser remained active as a journalists through the mid-1970s, by the time the Leipzig version of "Vorwärts" had been placed under a ban by the authorities in October 1878, most of the papers for which he wrote had either suffered, or else were undergoing, the same fate, falling foul of the Anti-Socialist Laws.

[6][9] In April 1880 he co-founded "Max Kayser & Cie.", a Tobacco and cigar business in Dresden, in which he remained active as co-owner, jointly with his brother-in-law and political ally August Kaden,[15] till the brutal onset of his final illness in 1887.

Between 1881 and 1884, as one of the more prominent SAP members of the "Reichstag", Kayser found himself excluded from many German towns and cities on political grounds between 1881 and 1884.

[21][22] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels together produced a "circular letter", addressed to the Social Democratic parliamentary leadership in which, at characteristic length, they railed against "Max Kayser's conduct in the Reichstag".

[17] Kayser was sharply critical of the Liberals, asserting that they displayed a woeful absence of understanding when it came to Social issues and policy, concerning the working and living conditions of the so-called proletariat, urban industrial workers.

As the security services looked on, more than 3,000 mourners accompanied his coffin on its slow progress along the Lohestraße to Breslau's Jewish cemetery.