Call to Revolution, the Mystical Anarchism of Gustav Landauer. by Charles B. Maurer Review by: Guy Stern MLN, Vol.

88, No. 3, German Issue (Apr., 1973), pp. 636-638 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2907393 . Accessed: 16/06/2013 22:39
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Charles B. Maurer, Call to Revolution, the Mystical Anarchism of Gustav Landauer. (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1971) 218 pp. $9.50.

TODAY'S advocates of communal living, continuous education for the working-man, ethnic identity without chauvinism, and anarchism without bloodshed will find an often overlooked precursor in Gustav Landauer (1870-1919), a German "anarcho-socialist," political philosopher, occasional writer of fiction, and reluctant ten-day cabinet minister during the Bavarian revolution in 1919. For these and other reasons Charles B. Maurer's book, the first one to make Landauer's life and thought known, in extenso, to the English-speaking world, is both timely and "relevant." It is also an exceptionally clear intellectual biography of an author who, by his own concession, was speaking above the heads of the crowd he wished to influence and whose diverse and scattered writings, ranging from essays on social revolution and pacifism to literary criticism and theater reviews, appeared to contemporaries to be Maurer accomplishes what emanating from "six people in one." Landauer never took the time to undertake: he shows how Landauer, no matter how wide his reach or how protean his attitudes, never wavered from his own epistemology and from his efforts of bringing about an envisioned loosely structured society which his basic philosophy suggested to him. Maurer's method is admirably suited to his task. He emphasizes the intellectual development of his subject more than the outer biography, though the vicissitudes and catastrophies of Landauer's insecure and foreshortened life are not neglected. Maurer acquaints us with Landauer's constant poverty and dependence on Maecenas, when his income from freelance writing proved inadequate, with his unconventional household in which, for a time, two women shared his life, with his near-isolation after the untimely death of his wife, with his bouts with the police and the censor, and finally with his martyrdom in Stadelheim Prison at the hands of a military unit turned lynch-mob. But what receives far greater attention (and wisely so) is, first, the evolution of his philosophy and then its logical application to his championship of a variety of causes among which his striving for the destruction of the institutionalized state, by peaceful means, and the building of a socialistic society of cooperating individuals were preemiment. In Chapter iii this method shows up in its most paradigmatic form. Here Maurer treats Landauer's encounter with the writings of his long-time friend Fritz Mauthner and the consequences of this encounter. It begins with an extensive excursion on Mauthner's most important work, Sprachkritik. Mauthner was led, by his epistemological scepticism, to the recognition that the sense data we receive from our "Zufallssinne" transmit a false reality to us and that words or concepts, even our

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own consciousness, are invalid tools for grasping the world around us. He ultimately came to the conclusion that the answer to this inadequacy of human perception is a life of action: " Only through action do we understand the world of reality...." Building on Mauthner's scepticism and his advocacy of a vita activa, Landauer "took refuge in the one bit of knowledge he could not deny-his own existence-and used this as the starting point for his new vision of the world. This was his unique contribution: a synthesis of the metaphysical impasse Mauthner's language theory had created and the social theory Proudhon, Kropotkin, and others had worked out before him.... The sum of these values was Geist, which could exert its influence upon human life... only if there Between the third chapter was a [socialist] society susceptible to it..." and the admirable summation of the last one (from which the above quotation is taken) Maurer traces the effect of these insights upon Landauer's life-long struggle with the orthodox Marxists, the defenders of the institutionalized state, the war-mongers, and the political, not social post-war revolutionaries. Maurer recognizes Landauer's applied philosophy even in his treatments of literary greats, such as Shakespeare, Goethe, and Whitman. For Landauer reasoned that artists, working with their own symbols, act as interpreters of the distorted sense data and hence are better guides than the scientists, among others, to a truer concept of reality. The success of a history of ideas such as the present one rests in good part on the historian's ability to retain a proper perspective on his audience and subject. Measured by both standards Call to Revolution deserves high praise. Even an occasional flaw-Maurer may underestimate his audience when he sets a rather elementary historical stage for his subject's entrance during the Second Empire-is redeemed by his masterful, concise, and highly necessary unravelling of the complex sequel of events during the faction-ridden Bavarian revolution. And as to retaining perspective on his subject Maurer makes no extravagant claims for Landauer: " His impact was small, but the nobility of his intentions and the philosophic grandeur of his dreams for a better world deserve to be remembered," he writes. In fact, if anything, Maurer may err here on the side of understatement when he claims that the last fifty years have all but obscured his writings and personality. Beyond the "accounts of modern German cultural history" in which Landauer frequently appears (and to which Maurer draws attention), he is also mentioned in standard reference works and surfaces in several recent autobiographies, such as those by Kurt Hiller and the late Franz Schoenberner. Historical studies, for example those by George L. Mosse, Sol Liptzin, and Margarete Susman accord him more than passing mention. Laudauer's relationship to Judaism emerges from frequent references in the Yearbooks of the Leo-Baeck Institute, which also published

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Paul Breines' full-length article on him in 1967. In 1970, the centenary of his birth, some belated tributes appeared in the journal Emuna and various German newspapers. Lastly-and most importantly-in 1969 a selection of his writings appeared in the Hegner Verlag, Cologne, edited by Heinz-Joachim Heydorn under the title Zwang und Befreiung, together with a bibliography and a most serviceable introduction by the editor. A year earlier Heydorn had republished and introduced Landauer's Aufruf zum Sozialismus. Maurer does not mention the above commentaries and republications, but do they not indicate that Landauer's submerged importance may some day surface more fully? If any single work can help accomplish this end, it is Maurer's monograph. Written originally as a dissertation at Northwestern's German Department, it also serves to reemphasize a point often made and often forgotten: that the essayist, at least if he is of the stature of a Landauer, is a legitimate object for reseacch by our profession. (Helmut Rehder implied as much in a recent article on the essay in the Lessing-Yearbook and Ludwig Rohner in his introduction to his anthology Deutsche Essays.) While Landauer did write prose fiction of some merit (a philosophical novel and some shorter narratives)-all explicated by Maurer-his forte was the essay. It is commendable that Erich Heller suggested the topic. Perhaps-and this may be a mere cavil-the close relationship between essayists and the writers of belleslettres could have been further illuminated by a more extensive treatment of Landauer's impact on the literary figures of his time. Maurer does include the effect of Landaur's writings on Richard Dehmel, Ernst Toller, Martin Buber (who edited much of it for publication after Landauer's death), and on Georg Kaiser (who may well owe his envisioned communes in Gas I to Landauer). Maurer also cites an appreciation by Hermann Hesse and the fictionalization of Laudauer in Tankred Dorst's Toller. But, I suspect, there are other facts yet to be unearthed. Alfred Doblin, for example, wrote a curiously allegorical obituary to Laudauer; when Ernst Toller and Margarete TurnowskyPinner were writing an appeal for peace as spokesmen for a student group at Heidelberg, they borrowed freely from Landauer's Aufruf zum Sozialismus. It would, therefore, be a valuable contribution if Mr. Maurer would follow his book with an article on "Landauer und die Dichter. " In making this suggestion this reviewer is, of course, providing additional testimony about the keen interest this most excellent book has aroused. The Universityof Cincinnati GUY STERN

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