Landauer was the second child of Jewish parents Rosa (née Neuberger) and Herman Landauer.[5] He supported anarchism by the 1890s. In those years, he was especially enthusiastic about the individualistic approach of Max Stirner and Friedrich Nietzsche, but also "cautioned against an apotheosis of the unrestrained individual, potentially leading to the neglect of solidarity".[6]
He was good friends with Martin Buber, influencing the latter's philosophy of dialogue.[7] Landauer believed that social change could not be achieved solely through control of the state or economic apparatus, but required a revolution in interpersonal relations.[8]
He felt that true socialism could arise only in conjunction with this social change, and he wrote, "The community we long for and need, we will find only if we sever ourselves from individuated existence; thus we will at last find, in the innermost core or our hidden being, the most ancient and most universal community: the human race and the cosmos."[9] He also became a close collaborator with the leader of the People's State of Bavaria, Kurt Eisner, until the latter's assassination, after which Landauer had no official position in the third Räterepublik.[10]
Death
Landauer was murdered on 2 May 1919. He was being taken to Stadelheim Prison, along with three other members of the Starnberg workers' soviets. Two officers suddenly called upon Freikorps soldiers in his escort to kill him, and they immediately beat and shot him to death. His last words reportedly were:"Kill me! Show me that you are men!"[11]
Descendants
Landauer's second wife Hedwig Lachmann died in 1918, but his three daughters, Charlotte, Gudula, and Brigitte survived.[12]
One of Landauer's grandchildren, with wife and author Hedwig Lachmann, was Mike Nichols, the American television, stage and film director, writer, and producer.[13]
Legacy
Soon after his death, Landauer was almost completely forgotten by European socialists and anarchists though his heroic example and thinking enjoyed a revival, thanks to Martin Buber, in Zionist and kibbutznik circles.[14] In Philip Kerr's novel Prussian Blue, Hitler is imagined to be one of the Freikorps militants who murdered Landauer, and gloated as a photo was taken at the scene.[15]
In 2002, a street in Munich was named after him.[16]
Gustav Landauer. Gesammelte Schriften Essays Und Reden Zu Literatur, Philosophie, Judentum. (translated title: Collected Writings Essays and Speeches of Literature, Philosophy and Judaica). (Wiley-VCH, 1996) ISBN3-05-002993-5
Gustav Landauer. Anarchism in Germany and Other Essays. eds. Stephen Bender and Gabriel Kuhn. Barbary Coast Collective.
Gustav Landauer. Revolution and Other Writings: A Political Reader, ed. & trans. Gabriel Kuhn; PM Press, 2010. ISBN978-1-60486-054-2
^Mendes-Flohr, Paul (2019). Martin Buber: A Life of Faith and Dissent. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. pp. 53, 120–121. ISBN978-0-300-15304-0.
^Landauer, Gustav (1901). "Durch Absonderung zur Gemeinschaft". Journal of the Neue Gemeinschaft (2): 48.
Buber, Martin (1949). Paths in Utopia. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Esper, Thomas (1961). The Anarchism of Gustav Landauer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hyman, Ruth Link-Salinger (1977). Gustav Landauer: Philosopher of Utopia. Hackett Publishing Company. ISBN0-915144-27-1.
Löwy, Michael (1992). Redemption & Utopia: Jewish Libertarian Thought in Central Europe, a Study in Elective Affinity. Translated by Hope Heaney. Stanford University Press. ISBN978-080471776-2.
Lunn, Eugene (1973). Prophet of Community: The Romantic Socialism of Gustav Landauer. Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company. ISBN0-520-02207-6.
Maurer, Charles B. (1971). Call to Revolution: The Mystical Anarchism of Gustav Landauer. Wayne State University Press. ISBN0-8143-1441-4.
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