Die Aktion was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 literary

Literary magazine

A literary magazine is a periodical devoted to literature in a broad sense. Literary magazines usually publish short stories, poetry and essays along with literary criticism, book reviews, biographical profiles of authors, interviews and letters...

 and political magazine, edited by Franz Pfemfert

Franz Pfemfert

Franz Pfemfert was a German journalist, editor of Die Aktion, literary critic, politician and portrait photographer. Pfemfert occasionally wrote under the pseudonym U. Gaday...

 and published between 1911 and 1932 in Berlin-Wilmersdorf

Wilmersdorf

Wilmersdorf is an inner city locality of Berlin, formerly a borough by itself but since Berlin's 2001 administrative reform a part of the new borough of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf.-History:...

; it promoted literary Expressionism

Expressionism

Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...

 and stood for left-wing policies. To begin with, Die Aktion was published weekly, after 1919 every two weeks, and only sporadically beginning from 1926.

In 1981, Die Aktion was resumed by the Edition Nautilus publishing house. Issues appear irregularly.

Beginnings

Before starting Die Aktion, Pfemfert, beginning in 1904, had been editor of the anarchist

Anarchism

Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...

 magazine Der Kampf

Der Kampf

Der Kampf was a newspaper published in Luxembourg by the Communist Party of Luxembourg between 1920 and 1922....

, edited by Senna Hoy. While there, he came into contact with many modern writers and artists, as well as with political opposition groups. One of his early collaborators was Herwarth Walden

Herwarth Walden

Herwarth Walden was a German Expressionist artist and art expert in many disciplines...

, future editor of Der Sturm

Der Sturm

Der Sturm was a magazine covering the expressionism movement founded in Berlin in 1910 by Herwarth Walden. It ran weekly until monthly in 1914, and became a quarterly in 1924 until it ceased publication in 1932....

.

After leaving his position at Der Kampf, Pfemfert worked for the magazines Das Blaubuch and Demokrat (becoming the latter's co-editor in 1910). In the radical left-wing Demokrat magazine, which he co-edited with Georg Zepler (1859–1925), he published texts by numerous writers who would later become contributors to Die Aktion. In early 1911, the partnership with Zepler came to an end when the latter, without consulting Pfemfert, excluded an article by Kurt Hiller

Kurt Hiller

Kurt Hiller also known as Keith Lurr and Klirr was a German essayist of high stylistic originality and a political journalist from a Jewish family. A socialist, he was deeply influenced by Immanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer, despising the philosophy of G. W. F...

 from the list of scheduled contributions. Consequently, Pfemfert decided that he needed his own magazine.

1911-1914: Expressionism and Internationalism

The first issue of Aktion was published on February 2, 1911, with the subheading Magazine for liberal politics

Social liberalism

Social liberalism is the belief that liberalism should include social justice. It differs from classical liberalism in that it believes the legitimate role of the state includes addressing economic and social issues such as unemployment, health care, and education while simultaneously expanding...

 and literature, later to be changed to Weekly periodical for politics, literature and art in 1912.

Through his contact with Hiller and Hiller's friends in Der Neue Club, who organized evenings of readings with Expressionist

Expressionism

Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...

 artists under the heading "neo-dramatic club", Die Aktion quickly became the leading medium of the new movement. As Pfemfert succeeded in making many writers famous over short periods of time, and formed relations with such publishing houses as Ernst Rowohlt

Ernst Rowohlt

Ernst R. Rowohlt was a German publisher who founded the Rowohlt publishing house in 1908 and headed it and its successors until his death...

 and Samuel Fischer

Samuel von Fischer

Samuel Fischer, later Samuel von Fischer was a Hungarian-born German publisher, the founder of S. Fischer Verlag....

, he received a steady influx of quality contributions (despite the fact that he would not pay any royalties

Royalties

Royalties are usage-based payments made by one party to another for the right to ongoing use of an asset, sometimes an intellectual property...

 to the writers).

From 1913, several special issues were published which were devoted to poetry, including one issue which was devoted solely to the works of Georg Heym

Georg Heym

Georg Heym was a German writer. He is particularly known for his poetry, representative of early Expressionism.- Life :...

 (who had died young in January 1912). After 1914, the rate of artwork increased — the period is noted for its especially expressive woodcut

Woodcut

Woodcut—occasionally known as xylography—is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with gouges...

s published.

In the first issue, Pfemfert outlined the aim of Die Aktion as follows:

"Die Aktion speaks up for the ideas of the large German left-wing parties, without attaching itself to any particular political party. Die Aktion wants to encourage the impressive thoughts of an ‘Organizing of intelligence’, and to help recapture the brilliance of the long frowned-upon words ‘cultural war’. In the areas of art and literature, Die Aktion is looking to create a counterbalance between the sorry habits of the pseudo-liberal press to simply value new movements from a business standpoint to hush them up."

Until 1914, Pfemfer tried to exercise influence over the Social Democratic Party of Germany

Social Democratic Party of Germany

The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...

 (SPD) with Die Aktion, attempting to support left-wing revolutionaries and anarchist trends within the party. Pfemfert criticized what he saw as mainstream SPD chauvinism

Chauvinism

Chauvinism, in its original and primary meaning, is an exaggerated, bellicose patriotism and a belief in national superiority and glory. It is an eponym of a possibly fictional French soldier Nicolas Chauvin who was credited with many superhuman feats in the Napoleonic wars.By extension it has come...

 and opportunism

Opportunism

-General definition:Opportunism is the conscious policy and practice of taking selfish advantage of circumstances, with little regard for principles. Opportunist actions are expedient actions guided primarily by self-interested motives. The term can be applied to individuals, groups,...

 in his editorials, and demanded the party rethink the issue of labor movement in internationalist

Proletarian internationalism

Proletarian internationalism, sometimes referred to as international socialism, is a Marxist social class concept based on the view that capitalism is now a global system, and therefore the working class must act as a global class if it is to defeat it...

 terms. Pfemfert also used the magazine in campaigns such as the freeing of Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

n sex psychologist Otto Gross

Otto Gross

Otto Gross was an Austrian psychoanalyst. A maverick early disciple of Sigmund Freud, he later became an anarchist and joined the utopian Ascona community.His father Hans Gross was a judge turned pioneering criminologist...

, who had been arrested and committed by his own father.

1914-1918: opposition during the war

Even in 1914, before the outbreak of World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

, Die Aktion had been closed down for the first time (as was so often the case in the German Empire

German Empire

The German Empire refers to Germany during the "Second Reich" period from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871, to 1918, when it became a federal republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of the Emperor, Wilhelm II.The German...

). The magazine was closed down under the pretext that it was a fringe magazine that had published morally objectionable texts. The outbreak of war in 1914 worsened the situation even further, with even stricter censorship

Censorship

thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...

.

Pfemfert therefore decided to immediately publish only those contributions that were purely literary in nature, in order to avoid a complete ban of the magazine. He succeeded against the odds, as Die Aktion never actually stopped the flow of anti-war messages (including virulent articles that had already been featured other magazines, such as "I Cut Time", and a column of letters to the editor which allowed sharp criticism of artists and intellectuals who were supporting the war). Pfemfert also continued to published literary articles with veiled Antimilitaristic

Antimilitarism

Antimilitarism is a doctrine commonly found in the anarchist and, more globally, in the socialist movement, which may both be characterized as internationalist movements. It relies heavily on a critical theory of nationalism and imperialism, and was an explicit goal of the First and Second...

 themes, such as poems from the front (including works by Oskar Kanehl and Wilhelm Klemm, who painted a stark picture of trench warfare

Trench warfare

Trench warfare is a form of occupied fighting lines, consisting largely of trenches, in which troops are largely immune to the enemy's small arms fire and are substantially sheltered from artillery...

). Moreover, several issues were entirely dedicated to literature from "enemy countries

Allies of World War I

The Entente Powers were the countries at war with the Central Powers during World War I. The members of the Triple Entente were the United Kingdom, France, and the Russian Empire; Italy entered the war on their side in 1915...

".

1918-1925: Weekly periodical for revolutionary socialism

Declaring himself disappointed with Expressionism, Pfemfert abandoned his advocacy of the movement (arguing that many writers had become too saturated, and that they only interested in contracts with large publishing houses — which he understood as a betrayal). He felt that the once rebellious phase of expressionism was finally over, and, in reaction, only published political texts in Die Aktion. After the outbreak of the German Revolution

German Revolution

The German Revolution was the politically-driven civil conflict in Germany at the end of World War I, which resulted in the replacement of Germany's imperial government with a republic...

, he decided to support Communist

Communism

Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...

 initiatives, and published texts by Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...

 and other Russian

Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic

The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic , commonly referred to as Soviet Russia, Bolshevik Russia, or simply Russia, was the largest, most populous and economically developed republic in the former Soviet Union....

 Bolshevik

Bolshevik

The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....

 leaders.

Even by the end of 1918, Die Aktion had published an appeal by the Spartacist League

Spartacist League

The Spartacus League was a left-wing Marxist revolutionary movement organized in Germany during World War I. The League was named after Spartacus, leader of the largest slave rebellion of the Roman Republic...

, and following the founding of the Communist Party of Germany

Communist Party of Germany

The Communist Party of Germany was a major political party in Germany between 1918 and 1933, and a minor party in West Germany in the postwar period until it was banned in 1956...

 (KPD), Pfemfert made his magazine the party voice. To that end, he gave Die Aktion a new subheading, that of Weekly periodical for revolutionary socialism. When the KPD changed its policies in October 1919, and began to exclude Syndicalists

Syndicalism

Syndicalism is a type of economic system proposed as a replacement for capitalism and an alternative to state socialism, which uses federations of collectivised trade unions or industrial unions...

, Pfemfert tried once again to align Die Aktion with the far left

Far left

Far left, also known as the revolutionary left, radical left and extreme left are terms which refer to the highest degree of leftist positions among left-wing politics...

 opposition. From 1920 however, he supported the Communist Workers Party of Germany

Communist Workers Party of Germany

The Communist Workers Party of Germany was an anti-parliamentarian and council communist party that was active in Germany during the time of the Weimar Republic. It was founded in April 1920 in Heidelberg as a split from the Communist Party of Germany...

 (KAPD), a Council Communist

Council communism

Council communism is a current of libertarian Marxism that emerged out of the November Revolution in the 1920s, characterized by its opposition to state capitalism/state socialism as well as its advocacy of workers' councils as the basis for workers' democracy.Originally affiliated with the...

 organization. In the mid-1920s, he moved closer to the Free Workers' Union of Germany

Free Workers' Union of Germany

The Free Workers' Union of Germany was an anarcho-syndicalist trade union, which existed from the renaming of the Free Association of German Trade Unions on September 15, 1919 to its official disbandment in January 1933 after the Nazis came into power, although many of its members continued to be...

 (FAUD), the Anarcho-Syndicalist

Anarcho-syndicalism

Anarcho-syndicalism is a branch of anarchism which focuses on the labour movement. The word syndicalism comes from the French word syndicat which means trade union , from the Latin word syndicus which in turn comes from the Greek word σύνδικος which means caretaker of an issue...

 of Rudolf Rocker

Rudolf Rocker

Johann Rudolf Rocker was an anarcho-syndicalist writer and activist. A self-professed anarchist without adjectives, Rocker believed that anarchist schools of thought represented "only different methods of economy" and that the first objective for anarchists was "to secure the personal and social...

, and published several of Rocker's texts in his magazine. However, it had become apparent by then that the revolutionary cause had lost its momentum.

1926-1932: End

The unsuccessful outcome of the revolution and the mounting conflict between left-wing parties as the Weimar Republic

Weimar Republic

The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...

 was being established damaged Die Aktion, which lost readers as a result (many others, who were only interested in art, had stopped reading the magazine during the late 1910s); another factor was hyperinflation

Hyperinflation

In economics, hyperinflation is inflation that is very high or out of control. While the real values of the specific economic items generally stay the same in terms of relatively stable foreign currencies, in hyperinflationary conditions the general price level within a specific economy increases...

 before the adoption of the Rentenmark

German rentenmark

The Rentenmark was a currency issued on 15 November 1923 to stop the hyperinflation of 1922 and 1923 in Germany. It was subdivided into 100 Rentenpfennig.-History:...

.

From 1927, the magazine appeared only sporadically (perhaps six or seven times a year). In 1929 the subheading was changed to Magazine for revolutionary communism, but by then Die Aktion was almost non-existent. In order to save space, texts were eventually printed in smaller and smaller font; in 1929 there were three issues, in 1930 one, in 1931 two, and in August 1932 the very last issue. Alongside economic and political reasons, Pfemfert's worsening health during the late 1920s contributed to the outcome.

Image

Die Aktion was in the quarto format

Fraktur (typeface)

Fraktur is a calligraphic hand and any of several blackletter typefaces derived from this hand. The word derives from the past participle fractus of Latin frangere...

, with double-line spacing. In the beginning, the magazine was in Blackletter

Blackletter

Blackletter, also known as Gothic script, Gothic minuscule, or Textura, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 to well into the 17th century. It continued to be used for the German language until the 20th century. Fraktur is a notable script of this type, and sometimes...

, but was changed to Antiqua in 1912 (more in line with its modernist

Modernism

Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...

 tone).

Most issues were 14 pages long. The magazine was usually headed by Pfemfert's political editorials. Early on, these were printed on the title page, before it was changed to a cover that often featured an Expressionist artwork alongside the magazine's contents.

Circulation and financing

The economic base of Die Aktion was always unstable, despite its initial success among the intelligentsia

Intelligentsia

The intelligentsia is a social class of people engaged in complex, mental and creative labor directed to the development and dissemination of culture, encompassing intellectuals and social groups close to them...

. At its peak, 7,000 copies were sold. The price started at 10 pfennig

Pfennig

The Pfennig , plural Pfennige, is an old German coin or note, which existed from the 9th century until the introduction of the euro in 2002....

, rising to 30 at the outbreak of World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

, then 40, and climbing to 80 pfennig by 1918.

To attract more revenue, a luxury edition was printed on deckle edged paper

Papermaking

Papermaking is the process of making paper, a substance which is used universally today for writing and packaging.In papermaking a dilute suspension of fibres in water is drained through a screen, so that a mat of randomly interwoven fibres is laid down. Water is removed from this mat of fibres by...

 with a circulation of 100 copies, and sold at four-times the usual price. This came about as Pfemfert wanted to remain independent, printing no advertisements, but also to regularly attend events such as balls, readings and lecture evenings. He turned down contributions from third-parties, such as from Paul Cassirer

Paul Cassirer

Paul Cassirer was a German art dealer and editor who played a significant role in the promotion of the work of artists of the Berlin Secession and of French Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, in particular that of Vincent van Gogh and Paul Cézanne.- Starting out :Paul Cassirer started out as...

, who made him such an offer during the war.

From 1916, Aktion books were published on the side, and, in 1917, Pfemfert founded Aktions-Buch-und-Kunsthandlung ("Aktion's book and art dealers"), which was run by Pfemfert’s wife, Alexandra Ramm-Pfemfert. Based in Kaiserallee 222 (today Bundesallee) in Berlin-Wilmersdorf

Wilmersdorf

Wilmersdorf is an inner city locality of Berlin, formerly a borough by itself but since Berlin's 2001 administrative reform a part of the new borough of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf.-History:...

, it also helped to increase revenue.

Editing and editorial office

At the start, Kurt Hiller

Kurt Hiller

Kurt Hiller also known as Keith Lurr and Klirr was a German essayist of high stylistic originality and a political journalist from a Jewish family. A socialist, he was deeply influenced by Immanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer, despising the philosophy of G. W. F...

 and Anarchist Anselm Ruest worked with Pfemfert on the magazine; Ruest left in 1912, and Hiller in 1913. From 1918 to 1929, the poet Oskar Kanehl was Pfemfert's most important collaborator, and Alexandra Ramm-Pfemfert regularly participated in working on the magazine. At least for a short time, there was also a secretary, Lisa Pasedag.

Die Aktion never had an editorial office. The magazine was a one-man-job, and the editorial address matched that of Franz Pfemfert's private address, Nassauische Straße 17 in Berlin-Wilmersdorf. The atmosphere there was described by Franz Jung as

"The man, who sits behind his writing desk with an open door on the fourth floor at the back of Nassauische Strasse, anyone can come in and talk to him without knocking, while he rolls his cigarettes with a little machine. For Pfemfert, anyone who came into his office, be it to bring him something to evaluate or for him to print, was a customer, maybe good or bad."

Art

• Alexander Archipenko
  Alexander Archipenko
  Alexander Porfyrovych Archipenko was a Ukrainian avant-garde artist, sculptor, and graphic artist.-Biography:...
  
  
• Gerd Arntz
  Gerd Arntz
  Gerd Arntz was a German Modernist artist - famous for his black and white woodcuts. A core member of the Cologne Progressives he was also a council communist...
  
  
• André Derain
  André Derain
  André Derain was a French artist, painter, sculptor and co-founder of Fauvism with Henri Matisse.-Early years:...
  
  
• Conrad Felixmüller
  Conrad Felixmüller
  Conrad Felixmüller was a German Expressionist painter. Born in as Conrad Felix Müller, he chose Felixmüller as his nom d'artiste....
  
  
• Lyonel Feininger
  Lyonel Feininger
  Lyonel Charles Feininger was a German-American painter, and a leading exponent of Expressionism. He also worked as a caricaturist and comic strip artist.-Life and work:...
  
  
• George Grosz
  George Grosz
  Georg Ehrenfried Groß was a German artist known especially for his savagely caricatural drawings of Berlin life in the 1920s...
  
  
• Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
  Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
  Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was a German expressionist painter and printmaker and one of the founders of the artists group Die Brücke or "The Bridge", a key group leading to the foundation of Expressionism in 20th century art. He volunteered for army service in the First World War, but soon suffered a...
  
  
• Alfred Kubin
  Alfred Kubin
  Alfred Leopold Isidor Kubin was an Austrian printmaker, illustrator and occasional writer. Kubin is considered an important representative of Symbolism and Expressionism.-Biography:...
  
  
• Wilhelm Lehmbruck
  Wilhelm Lehmbruck
  Wilhelm Lehmbruck was a German sculptor.- Biography :Born in Duisburg, he studied sculpture arts at the academy of arts in Düsseldorf and contributed to an exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris. From 1910–1914 he lived in Paris, where he met Modigliani, Brancusi, and Archipenko...
  
  
• Franz Marc
  Franz Marc
  Franz Marc was a German painter and printmaker, one of the key figures of the German Expressionist movement...
  
  
• Henri Matisse
  Henri Matisse
  Henri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter...
  
  
• Ludwig Meidner
  Ludwig Meidner
  Ludwig Meidner was a German expressionist painter and printmaker born in Bernstadt, Silesia. He was apprenticed to a stonemason, but the apprenticeship was not completed. He studied at the Royal School of Art in Breslau and, from 1906-07 at the Julien and Cormon Academies in Paris where he met...
  
  
• Max Oppenheimer
• Pablo Picasso
  Pablo Picasso
  Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
  
  
• Christian Schad
  Christian Schad
  Christian Schad was a German painter associated with Dada and the New Objectivity movement. Considered as a group, Schad's portraits form an extraordinary record of life in Vienna and Berlin in the years following World War I.- Life :Schad was born in Miesbach, Upper Bavaria, to a prosperous...
  
  
• Egon Schiele
  Egon Schiele
  Egon Schiele was an Austrian painter. A protégé of Gustav Klimt, Schiele was a major figurative painter of the early 20th century. His work is noted for its intensity, and the many self-portraits the artist produced...
  
  
• Karl Schmidt-Rottluff
  Karl Schmidt-Rottluff
  Karl Schmidt-Rottluff was a German expressionist painter and printmaker, and a member of Die Brücke.-Life and work:...
  
  
• Georg Schrimpf
  Georg Schrimpf
  Georg Schrimpf , was a German painter and graphic artist. Along with Otto Dix, George Grosz and Christian Schad, Schrimpf is broadly acknowledged as a main representative of the art trend Neue Sachlichkeit , which developed in the 1920s as a counter-movement to Expressionism and Abstraction...
  
  
• Félix Vallotton
  Félix Vallotton
  Félix Edouard Vallotton was a Swiss painter and printmaker associated with Les Nabis. He was an important figure in the development of the modern woodcut.-Life and work:...
  
  
• Heinrich Vogeler
  Heinrich Vogeler
  Heinrich Vogeler was a German painter, designer, and architect.- Biography :He was born in Bremen, and studied at the academy of arts in Düsseldorf from 1890–95...
  
  

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Literature

• Ernst Angel
  Ernst Angel
  Ernst Angel was an Austrian born poet, theatre and film critic, screen play author, film director and publisher who later became a psychologist....
  
  
• Hugo Ball
  Hugo Ball
  Hugo Ball was a German author, poet and one of the leading Dada artists.Hugo Ball was born in Pirmasens, Germany and was raised in a middle-class Catholic family. He studied sociology and philosophy at the universities of Munich and Heidelberg...
  
  
• Johannes R. Becher
  Johannes R. Becher
  Johannes Robert Becher was a German politician, novelist, and poet.-Early life:Johannes R. Becher was the son of Judge Heinrich Becher. In 1910 he tried to commit suicide with a friend; only Becher survived. From 1911 he studied medicine and philosophy in Munich and Jena...
  
  
• Gottfried Benn
  Gottfried Benn
  Gottfried Benn was a German essayist, novelist, and expressionist poet. A doctor of medicine, he became an early admirer, and later a critic, of the National Socialist revolution...
  
  
• Ernst Blass
• Franz Blei
  Franz Blei
  Franz Blei was an essayist, playwright and translator from Vienna...
  
  
• Paul Boldt
  Paul Boldt
  Paul Boldt was one of the poets of German Expressionism.Boldt was born in the town of Christefelde an der Weichsel in the countryside of West Prussia, an area which is now a part of Poland. After finishing his secondary education, he studied philology at universities in Munich, Marburg, and Berlin...
  
  
• Georg Brandes
  Georg Brandes
  Georg Morris Cohen Brandes was a Danish critic and scholar who had great influence on Scandinavian and European literature from the 1870s through the turn of the 20th century. He is seen as the theorist behind the "Modern Breakthrough" of Scandinavian culture...
  
  
• Max Brod
  Max Brod
  Max Brod was a German-speaking Czech Jewish, later Israeli, author, composer, and journalist. Although he was a prolific writer in his own right, he is most famous as the friend and biographer of Franz Kafka...
  
  
• Theodor Däubler
  Theodor Däubler
  Theodor Däubler was a poet and cultural critic in the German language. He was born in Trieste, then part of Austro-Hungary and has been described as "Trieste's most important German-speaking writer"....
  
  
• Albert Ehrenstein
  Albert Ehrenstein
  Albert Ehrenstein was an Austrian-born German Expressionist poet. His poetry exemplifies rejection of bourgeois values and fascination with the Orient, particularly with China. He spent most of his life in Berlin, but also travelled widely across Europe, Africa, and the Far East...
  
  
• Carl Einstein
  Carl Einstein
  Carl Einstein , born Karl Einstein, was an influential German Jewish writer, art historian, and critic.Regarded as one of the first critics to appreciate the development of Cubism, as well as for his work on African art and influence on the European avant-garde, Einstein was a friend and colleague...
  
  
• André Gide
  André Gide
  André Paul Guillaume Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide...
  
  
• Claire Goll
  Claire Goll
  Claire Goll was a German-French writer and journalist. She was the spouse of Yvan Goll....
  
  
• Iwan Goll
• Ferdinand Hardekopf
• Max Herrmann-Neisse
• Georg Heym
  Georg Heym
  Georg Heym was a German writer. He is particularly known for his poetry, representative of early Expressionism.- Life :...
  
  
• Kurt Hiller
  Kurt Hiller
  Kurt Hiller also known as Keith Lurr and Klirr was a German essayist of high stylistic originality and a political journalist from a Jewish family. A socialist, he was deeply influenced by Immanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer, despising the philosophy of G. W. F...
  
  
• Jakob van Hoddis
  Jakob van Hoddis
  Jakob van Hoddis was the pen name of a German-Jewish expressionist poet Hans Davidsohn, of which name "Van Hoddis" is an anagram...
  
  
• Richard Huelsenbeck
  Richard Huelsenbeck
  Richard Huelsenbeck was a poet, writer and drummer born in Frankenau, Hessen-Nassau.Carl Wilhelm Richard Hülsenbeck was a medical student on the eve of World War I. He was invalided out of the army and emigrated to Zürich, Switzerland in February 1916, where he fell in with the Cabaret Voltaire...
  
  
• Heinrich Eduard Jacob
  Heinrich Eduard Jacob
  Heinrich Eduard Jacob was a German and American journalist and author. Born to a Jewish family in Berlin and raised partly in Vienna, Jacob worked for two decades as a journalist and biographer before the rise to power of the Nazi Party...
  
  
• Franz Jung
• Oskar Kanehl
• Hermann Kasack
  Hermann Kasack
  Hermann Robert Richard Eugen Kasack was a German writer. He is best known for his novel Die Stadt hinter dem Strom . Kasack was a pioneer of using the medium broadcast for literature...
  
  

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• Wilhelm Klemm
• Arthur Kronfeld
  Arthur Kronfeld
  Arthur Kronfeld was a German Psychiatrist.-1933 - 1941: Suppression and exile :...
  
  
• Else Lasker-Schüler
  Else Lasker-Schüler
  Else Lasker-Schüler was a Jewish German poet and playwright famous for her bohemian lifestyle in Berlin. She was one of the few women affiliated with the Expressionist movement. Lasker-Schüler fled Nazi Germany and lived out the rest of her life in Jerusalem.-Biography:Schüler was born in...
  
  
• Hans Leybold
  Hans Leybold
  Hans Leybold was a German poet and nihilist, whose small body of work was a major inspiration behind much of the Dada movement, in particular the works of his close friend Hugo Ball...
  
  
• Alfred Lichtenstein
  Alfred Lichtenstein (writer)
  Alfred Lichtenstein was a German expressionist writer.Lichtenstein grew up in Berlin as the son of a manufacturer. He finished a study of law in Erlangen...
  
  
• Heinrich Mann
  Heinrich Mann
  Luiz Heinrich Mann was a German novelist who wrote works with strong social themes. His attacks on the authoritarian and increasingly militaristic nature of pre-World War II German society led to his exile in 1933.-Life and work:Born in Lübeck as the oldest child of Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann...
  
  
• Charles Péguy
  Charles Péguy
  Charles Péguy was a noted French poet, essayist, and editor. His two main philosophies were socialism and nationalism, but by 1908 at the latest, after years of uneasy agnosticism, he had become a devout but non-practicing Roman Catholic.From that time, Catholicism strongly influenced his...
  
  
• Ernst Stadler
  Ernst Stadler
  Ernst Stadler was a German Expressionist poet. He was born in Colmar, Alsace-Lorraine and educated in Strasbourg and Oxford; in 1906 he was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Magdalen College, Oxford....
  
  
• Theodor Lessing
  Theodor Lessing
  Theodor Lessing was a German Jewish philosopher.He is known for opposing the rise of Hindenburg as president of the Weimar Republic and for his classic on Jewish self-hatred , a book which he wrote in 1930, three years before Hitler came to power, in which he tried to explain the phenomenon of...
  
  
• Franz Mehring
  Franz Mehring
  Franz Erdmann Mehring , was a German publicist, politician and historian.-Early years:Franz Mehring was born 27 February 1846 in Schlawe, Pomerania, the son of a bourgeois family.-Political career:...
  
  
• Erich Mühsam
  Erich Mühsam
  Erich Mühsam was a German-Jewish anarchist essayist, poet and playwright. He emerged at the end of World War I as one of the leading agitators for a federated Bavarian Soviet Republic....
  
  
• Mynona
• Karl Otten
• Erwin Piscator
  Erwin Piscator
  Erwin Friedrich Maximilian Piscator was a German theatre director and producer and, with Bertolt Brecht, the foremost exponent of epic theatre, a form that emphasizes the socio-political content of drama, rather than its emotional manipulation of the audience or on the production's formal...
  
  
• Ludwig Rubiner
• René Schickele
  René Schickele
  René Schickele was a German-French writer, essayist and translator.-Biography:Schickele was born in Obernai, Alsace, the son of a German vineyard owner and police officer and a French mother. He studied literature, history, science and philosophy...
  
  
• Paul Scheerbart
  Paul Scheerbart
  Paul Karl Wilhelm Scheerbart was an author of fantastic literature and drawings. He was also published under the pseudonym Kuno Küfer and is best known for the book Glasarchitektur ....
  
  
• Walter Serner
  Walter Serner
  Walter Serner was a German-language writer and essayist. His manifesto Letzte Lockerung was an important text of Dadaism....
  
  
• Carl Sternheim
  Carl Sternheim
  Carl Sternheim was a German playwright and short story writer. One of the major exponents of German Expressionism, he especially satirized the moral sensibilities of the emerging German middle class during the Wilhelmine period.-Biography:Born in Leipzig to a Jewish banker and his Protestant wife...
  
  
• Ernst Toller
  Ernst Toller
  Ernst Toller was a left-wing German playwright, best known for his Expressionist plays and serving as President of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic, for six days.- Biography :...
  
  
• Frank Wedekind
  Frank Wedekind
  Benjamin Franklin Wedekind , usually known as Frank Wedekind, was a German playwright...
  
  
• Franz Werfel
  Franz Werfel
  Franz Werfel was an Austrian-Bohemian novelist, playwright, and poet.- Biography :Born in Prague , Werfel was the first of three children of a wealthy manufacturer of gloves and leather goods. His mother, Albine Kussi, was the daughter of a mill owner...
  
  
• Alfred Wolfenstein
• Carl Zuckmayer
  Carl Zuckmayer
  Carl Zuckmayer was a German writer and playwright.-Biography:Born in Nackenheim in Rheinhessen, he was four years old when his family moved to Mainz. With the outbreak of World War I, he finished school with a facilitated "emergency"-Abitur and volunteered for military service...
  
  

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Politics

• Mikhail Bakunin
  Mikhail Bakunin
  Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin was a well-known Russian revolutionary and theorist of collectivist anarchism. He has also often been called the father of anarchist theory in general. Bakunin grew up near Moscow, where he moved to study philosophy and began to read the French Encyclopedists,...
  
  
• Alexander Bogdanov
  Alexander Bogdanov
  Alexander Aleksandrovich Bogdanov –7 April 1928, Moscow) was a Russian physician, philosopher, science fiction writer, and revolutionary of Belarusian ethnicity....
  
  
• Peter Kropotkin
  Peter Kropotkin
  Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin was a Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, economist, geographer, author and one of the world's foremost anarcho-communists. Kropotkin advocated a communist society free from central government and based on voluntary associations between...
  
  
• Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya
  Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya
  Nadezhda Konstantinovna "Nadya" Krupskaya was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary and politician. She married the Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin in 1898. She was deputy minister of Education in 1929–1939, Doctor of Education....
  
  
• Vladimir Lenin
  Vladimir Lenin
  Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
  
  
• Karl Liebknecht
  Karl Liebknecht
  was a German socialist and a co-founder with Rosa Luxemburg of the Spartacist League and the Communist Party of Germany. He is best known for his opposition to World War I in the Reichstag and his role in the Spartacist uprising of 1919...
  
  
• Anatoliy Vasilievich Lunacharsky
  Anatoliy Vasilievich Lunacharsky
  Anatoly Vasilyevich Lunacharsky was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and the first Soviet People's Commissar of Enlightenment responsible for culture and education. He was active as an art critic and journalist throughout his career.-Life and career:...
  
  
• Rosa Luxemburg
  Rosa Luxemburg
  Rosa Luxemburg was a Marxist theorist, philosopher, economist and activist of Polish Jewish descent who became a naturalized German citizen...
  
  
• Rudolf Rocker
  Rudolf Rocker
  Johann Rudolf Rocker was an anarcho-syndicalist writer and activist. A self-professed anarchist without adjectives, Rocker believed that anarchist schools of thought represented "only different methods of economy" and that the first objective for anarchists was "to secure the personal and social...
  
  
• Otto Rühle
  Otto Rühle
  Otto Rühle was a German Marxist active in opposition to both the First and Second World Wars, and a founder with along with Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, Franz Mehring and others of the group and magazine Internationale, which posed a revolutionary internationalism against a world of warring...
  
  
• Leon Trotsky
  Leon Trotsky
  Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
  
  

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External links

• Oliver Pfohlmann: Die Aktion 1911 - 1932
• Bibliografische Angaben
• DIE AKTION, Edition Nautilus, Hamburg