Erich Muhsam was born in Berlin in 1878 into a fairly well-to-do Jewish family. Soon after his family moved to Luebeck in north Germany where his father worked as a pharmacist (in fact the pharmacy is still there).
He hated the school where he was sent, which was known for its authoritarian discipline and its unsparing use of corporal punishment. Erich was often a victim of “the unspeakable flailings which were supposed to beat out of me all my innate feelings” because his rebellious nature often clashed with the school regime. In 1896 he wrote an anonymous piece for the socialist paper Luebecker Volsboten denouncing one of the school’s most brutal teachers. This caused a scandal and Erich was expelled for taking part in socialist activities.
Erich had wanted to be a writer and poet from an early age and he left Luebeck to pursue this aim in Berlin in 1900. He got involved in a group called Neue Gemeinschaft (New Society) which combined socialist ideology with experiments in communal living. Here he met Gustav Landauer who introduced him to anarchist communist ideas. Muehsam contributed to Kampf, the anarchist paper of his friend Senna Hoy, who later died in terrible conditions in a Russian prison.
In 1904 Erich went to Ascona in Italian Switzerland to live in the artists’ colony of Monte Verita (the writer Herman Hesse, the dance theorist Laban, the psychotherapist Otto Gross and many Daddaists and Expressionists lived there at one time or other).
He began writing plays there, the first of which, The Con Men, mixed new political theory with traditional dramatic forms. He also continued contributing to many anarchist papers, which drew the attention of the German authorities. He was considered one of the most dangerous anarchist agitators.
He moved to Munich in 1908 and took part in the cabaret movement. He did not care much for writing cabaret songs, but he achieved much notice because of them.
In 1911 he founded the paper Kain which advocated anarchist communism. He castigated and ridiculed the German state, fighting capital punishment and theatre censorship, and prophetically analysing international affairs. The World War that he had predicted led to the suspension of Kain.
At first Erich publicly supported the war, but by the end of 1914 was persuaded that he had been wrong, saying that, “I will probably have to bear the sin of betraying my ideals for the rest of my life”. He threw himself into anti-war activity taking part in various actions. He supported the strikes that were beginning to break out. As these became more widespread and began to take on a revolutionary nature, Erich was among those arrested and imprisoned in April 1918, and then freed in November.
With the fall of the Kaiser and King Ludwig of Bavaria, Munich burst into revolt. Muehsam and Landauer as well as Ret Marut (later known as the novelist B. Traven) were among those agitating for the setting up of Workers Councils which led on to the founding of the Bavarian Council Republic. This lasted only a week. The Social Democrats, terrified by the thought of revolution, allied with the right. The Freikorps, a reactionary militia organised by the socialist minister Noske and composed of right wing military and students, crushed the Council Republic. Landauer died under the blows of rifle butts and boots.
Muehsam escaped but was later captured and sent to prison for 15 years. In prison, Erich continued with his writing, composing many poems and the play Judas. Released in the amnesty of 1924, he returned to a Munich in the grip of apathy. He joined the Anarchist Communist Federation of Germany (FKAD). He restarted Kain but this failed after a few issues. He then brought out Fanal (The Torch) where he attacked both the Communists and the far right. His openly revolutionary tone and his attempts to stop the rise of the right made him a hate figure among conservatives and Nazis.
He used satire to ridicule the Nazis with short stories and poems. This came to the personal attention of Hitler and Goebbels, arousing their anger. He agitated for the freeing of the revolutionary Max Hoelz and wrote a play, Staatsraeson (For reasons of State) in defence of Sacco and Vanzetti), in 1928.
In 1930 he completed his last play Alle Wetter (All Hang) which called for mass revolution as the only way to stop the seizure of power by the radical Right.
A few hours after Van der Lubbe had set fire to the Reichstag in February 1933, Muehsam was arrested and then spent the last 17 months of his life in the concentration camps of Sonnenburg, Brandenburg and Oranienburg. His teeth were smashed in with rifle butts, his scalp was branded with a swastika from a red-hot iron and he was hospitalised. He was forced to dig his own grave for a mock execution, and his body became a mass of bruises and wounds. His tormentors tried to force him to sing the Nazi song the Horst Wessel Lied. He refused to give in and sang the International. " Thanks to his will power he resisted all attempts to humiliate him" (Augustin Souchy).
Despite these tortures Erich remained intransigent to the end. Finally he was tortured and murdered on the night of 9th July 1934. After beatings, a Stormtrooper leader administered a lethal injection and then a suicide by hanging was faked.
Never in my life have I learnt
To submit to anyone
Here I am locked up,
Far from my home,
My wife, my workshop.
And even if they kill me,
If I must die,
To give up is to lie!
…
But if the chains broke
Then I would breathe in sunshine
At the top of my lungs- Tyranny!
And I would cry to the people: be free!
Forget to submit yourselves!
To give up is to lie!
From Muhsam’s poem The Prisoner
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Anarchist Federation Biography of German Anarchist Erich Muhsam from AF publication Organise in 2006
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Mühsam, Erich: His life, his work, his martyrdom - Augustin Souchy
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Just pulled the trigger on my Steam sale purchase. Got 10 games for 50 bucks so my brain is giving me the good chemical because of the round numbers
Grim Dawn is an Excellent choice.
Almost 10 years later and Crate is still churning out banger updates
That’s good news, I haven’t played it yet but it looks great. I’m glad to hear it’s still being supported and held in high regard. Do you have a favourite build in the game?
The Mastery system allows you to take a pair of skill trees to make a bunch of cool combos. For your first character you should just play around with whatever looks interesting, because alot of builds are fully activated by gear bonuses. You’ll probably have a decent collection of purple gear by the time you finish the initial story and you can use that to determine what you want to do next.
I recommend maybe some kind of pet build to start, so maybe build your first character as something like a conjurer (Shaman & Occultist) or Cabalist (Necromancer & Occultist.) You can search around online for some of MayaGD’s pet builds to help you out, but like I said your first play-through will really be more about learning the game and building a gear collection to make other more interesting builds possible later.
As far as a favorite builds go one I keep coming back to but haven’t made work out very well yet is a Deciever (Occultist & Inquisitor) built for guns and curses
I never will support giving steam money for games you could pirate but you got some good picks there.
Morrowind was hands down the best game ever made for years after it came out.
KC:D is a good game too with really good fighting mechanics but it is essential to play with a controller (but keep your kb/mouse handy for easy lock picking)
I never will support giving steam money for games you could pirate
I only buy games when they are around 80% off. I have been pirating games my entire life since I couldn’t afford them. Now I can finally afford them so it feels good being able to slowly curate my own library of games. I still think piracy is awesome tho
I agree about Morrowind, it’s one of my favourite games of all time.
Btw why do you suggest a controller for KC:D? I haven’t played it yet but it looks like a keyboard+mouse game from what I’ve seen. I usually play most games with KB+M unless it’s a game that was meant to be played with a controller. I like being able to aim precisely, even if I’m swinging a sword
When you are fighting you lock on targets and the right stick (the mouse) switches from controlling where you look to controlling weapon swing direction and parrying as well as feints but a double tap switches targets. A joystick gives a constant input of direction but if the mouse stops moving the input stops. So if you want to keep your guard up in a direction you have to keep moving the mouse in that direction and a lift to keep the direction makes you switch targets. Its basically unplayable with a mouse.
It really is a unique sword play system that I would love to see more of. Reading your opponent and faking them out can make the difference between survival and death or even walking away untouched. You can eventually get good enough equipment so that you will win a fight 1 on 1 almost every time even if you suck. If you are good enough you can beat almost anyone with nothing but a stick. Every extra enemy makes the fight exponentially harder. 5 guys with comparable equipment will kick your ass if you don’t get the jump on them.
The AI is pretty good. Enemies will flee depending on how impresive your equipment is or if you wound them. Sometimes they’ll even circle back to the fight. You’ll be looting a camp after a hard fight and bam! You get smashed in the back of the head by a guy you thought you killed but he just ran away.
Fighting at night in the woods is chaotic. Sometimes you have no clue where you are when you finish. You have to wander around till you find a dead guy and think “ok I was retreating at this point and there were 2 guys to this guys left so I need to go that way” and you end up stumbling around for another 2 hours till the sun comes up and your like “how the fuck did I get here” or “Oh the camp was just over there.”