Ph.D., Cornell University, 1986
DAI, VOL. 47-02A, Page 0628

"In the research of the past decade, Erich Muhsam (1878-1934) has clearly emerged as the most creative and original anarchist writer and revolutionary of the twentieth-century Germany. Because his political platform sought to synthesize traditional anarchist ideology with certain Marxist-Leninist elements, he has received considerable scholarly attention not just in West Germany and the United States, but also East Germany and the Soviet Union. This dissertation aims to define Muhsam’s position between East and West by undertaking an ideological critique of his political and cultural essays.

Muhsam’s intellectual and artistic development up to World War I is traced, emphasizing his bohemian protest against bourgeois convention and his attitudes toward the Social Democracy and women’s emancipation. His artistic esotericism and social isolation are interpreted as concomitants of his Stirnerian individualism. By 1910, his longing for community and affinity with the lumpenproletariat led him to embrace Bakuninist putschism, a development that was strengthened by World War I.

During the November Revolution of 1918 and in the Bavarian Soviet Republic, Muhsam was inspired by the Bolshevik’s success to join the Communist Party and to aim at unifying the revolutionary proletariat. As a political prisoner, he produced artistic work that was likewise influenced by the Russian program of Proletkult. Upon his release from prison, he became involved with Erwin Piscator’s political theatre and experimented with documentarism.

The rise of Nazism led Muhsam to reaffirm his links with the communists and to seek an antifascist united front. Yet his own political and cultural theories showed an unmistakable affinity to Nazi concepts of antiparliamentarism, charismatic leadership, and folk community. Muhsam’s criticism of leftist sectarianism is his most lasting contribution to the progressive political heritage.