There is an organism called man, and he is the important thing. And the goal is his freedom. Groups are something secondary; the state is something secondary. The important thing is not that the state should live--it is that the individual should live. -"Blick in ferne Zukunft" (Glance to the distant future), 1930
WORKS PICTURED Träumereien am preuĂischen Kaminen, 1920 cover
Kurt Tucholsky
WORKS BURNED All works published before May 1933
German satirist Kurt Tucholsky (1890-1935) relentlessly attacked the Nazis during their rise to power. In one poem he scorned what he saw as the do-nothing attitude of the German public as the danger drew closer. "Cuddle the Nazis," he wrote, "even if they stick a knife in your ribs." Conscripted into the German armed forces, Tucholsky had served at the front for most of World War I and later became a dedicated pacifist and socialist. His satire attacked injustice, privilege, and militarism. He expressed his unsparing wit in short vignettes, newspaper articles, poems, and popular cabaret songs. In 1924 he moved to France and in 1929 to Sweden. In 1933, his works were consigned to the flames with a "fire oath" against "impudence and presumption." After Hitler's rise to power and the book burnings, Tucholsky fell silent. Two years later, he committed suicide in his home in Sweden.
