Gustav Landauer

James Horrox (Independent Scholar - Europe)

Ed. by Gerhard P. Knapp, University of Utah
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.4.1: German-language Writing and Culture: Germany, 500-present.
Vol. editors: Gerhard P. Knapp (University of Utah), Jennifer Marston William (Purdue University), Herbert Rowland (Purdue University), Jill E. Twark (East Carolina University)

Dates

Born 7 Apr 1870
Died 2 May 1919
Activity 1903-1919

Places

Born in Germany
Active in Germany

Activities

Primary

Cultural Theorist/ Critic
Essayist
Political Theorist
Political writer

Other

Journalist
Translator

Resources

Landauer's Works

Save to Bookshelf

That Gustav Landauer is remembered by many primarily for the circumstances surrounding his death in the Bavarian revolution of 1918-19 does little justice either to the richness and originality of his thought, or to the sheer multifariousness of his achievements. A committed activist and political theorist

par excellence

, Landauer was also an accomplished journalist, playwright, essayist, lecturer, theatre critic,

gérant

of the anarchist periodical

Der Sozialist

, and a prolific translator, notable for his German editions of Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw and Walt Whitman.

Born in Karlsruhe on April 7th 1870 into a middle-class, assimilated Jewish family, Landauer excelled academically from a young age, developing a keen interest in particular in literature, theatre and the

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

1339 words

Citation: Horrox, James. "Gustav Landauer". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 04 August 2011 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=13004, accessed 23 November 2024.]

View recommended reading for this article