Wilhelm Herzog (12 January 1884 in Berlin – 4 April 1960 in Munich), alias Julian Sorel, René Kestner and Junius III,[1] was a German publisher, historian of literature and culture, dramatist, encyclopedist, and pacifist.
[2] From 1914 until its closure by the German authorities in 1915 and from 1918 to 1929 he wrote for the Das Forum [de], a journal advocating global peace and campaigning for a party of intellectuals.
[3] As the secretary and right-hand man of Kurt Eisner, Herzog authored the official proclamation of the People's State of Bavaria on 8 November 1918.
[1] His main work was a 4-volume encyclopedia, Große Gestalten der Geschichte (Great Figures of History), conceived in the tradition of Diderot's Encyclopédie.
In his autobiography, published in 1959, he included accounts of his meetings with Vladimir Lenin (to whom he attributed an admiration for Ignatius of Loyola[5]), Thomas Mann, Rainer Maria Rilke, Bertrand Russell, Albert Schweitzer, Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky.