There is no greater imaginable danger to the rise of the German proletariat, indeed to the German people in general, than the constitution of a 'Third Reich.' -Kautsky, May 1931
WORKS PICTURED Terrorismus und Kommunismus, cover
Karl Kautsky
WORKS BURNED All works published before May 1933 except Bolschewismus in der Sackgasse (Bolshevism at a Deadlock)
Born in Prague and educated at the University of Vienna, Karl Kautsky (1854-1938) became a leading Marxist and Socialist politician and theoretician in the Austrian Social Democratic movement. He developed contact with Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels while in exile in London during the 1880s. Kautsky moved to Germany in 1890 and authored the theoretical sections of the German Social Democratic Party's "Erfurt Program" of 1891. During World War I, he sided with the more radical Independent Social Democratic Party, when the Social Democrats split over the issue of continued support of the German war effort. Ultimately, he rejected Communism as a solution to working-class issues. In 1933, the Nazis condemned and burned his books together with those of Marx. Kautsky, however, continued to write. After the German annexation of Austria, he moved to the Netherlands. He died in Amsterdam in October 1938.