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Gustav Landauer

Gustav Landauer (; 7 April 1870 – 2 May 1919) was a German anarchist theorist and revolutionary. He was a leading theorist of anarchism in Germany in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A committed pacifist, Landauer is known for his synthesis of anarcho-socialism with a communitarian and mystical philosophy drawn from German Romanticism. His work emphasized the creation of decentralized, cooperative communities () as the foundation for a free society, which he believed would emerge from the will and spiritual renewal of individuals rather than from class struggle or historical materialism.

Influenced by figures such as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Peter Kropotkin, and Friedrich Nietzsche, Landauer broke with the Social Democratic Party in the early 1890s and became a prominent voice in German anarchism as the editor of the journal . He argued that the state is not an external institution to be overthrown, but a social relationship that exists through human obedience; it could therefore be overcome by people creating new, non-authoritarian relationships. His major works, including (''Skepticism and Mysticism'', 1903), (''Revolution'', 1907), and (''Call to Socialism'', 1911), articulated this philosophy and laid the groundwork for his attempt to establish socialist settlements through the (Socialist Bund), a federation of autonomous communities he founded in 1908.

An outspoken opponent of World War I, Landauer advocated a humanitarian and cosmopolitan form of cultural nationalism rooted in the ideas of Johann Gottfried Herder. Following the German Revolution of 1918–1919, he joined the revolutionary government in Bavaria. He served as Commissioner for Enlightenment and Public Instruction in the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic proclaimed in April 1919. After the republic was crushed by Freikorps troops, Landauer was arrested on 1 May 1919 and murdered by soldiers the following day in Munich's Stadelheim Prison. His ideas had a significant influence on the German youth movement, Expressionist writers, and thinkers such as Martin Buber. Provided by Wikipedia