A Reflection on Mystical Anarchism in the Works of Gustav Landauer^201student, Landauer felt that his desire for “purity, beauty and ful-
filment” found resonance neither in the school curriculum nor
the political scene, but only in the world of “theatre, music and
especially books.” Thus, he argued, “the reason for my opposi-
tion to society, as well as the reason for my continued dreams
and my outrage, was not class identity or even compassion,
but the permanent collision of romantic desire with philistine
limitation.”^11 As a literary Bohemian in Berlin during the early
1890s Landauer received a Marxist education and grew aware
of the divisions between politicians’ words and deeds. He then
joined a radical group called Verein Unabhängiger Sozialisten
(Association of Independent Socialists, short Die Jungen),^12 wrote
for their journal Der Sozialist, of which he would later become
editor, and campaigned against the Social Democratic Party of
Germany (SPD). Yet, Landauer soon grew disillusioned with what
he perceived as a tendency amongst the workers to merely await
a revolution led by political elites, rather than organise in the here
and now. Simultaneously, Landauer distanced himself from fellow
anarchists and socialists, who fought amongst each other instead
of for the common cause. With his program of anarchism-so-
cialism, declaring that “anarchism is the goal.... socialism is the
means...” he alienated both groups alike and began to focus on
consumer-producer cooperatives and the non-industrial sector,
arguing for a return to the countryside and meaningful labour.^13
After a year-long prison term in 1899, during which Landauer
translated parts of German medieval mystic Meister Eckhart’s
sermons into modern German^14 , and edited the linguist Fritz
Mauthner’s Beiträge zu einer Kritik der Sprache (Contributions
to a Critique of Language), Landauer began to formulate ma-
tured, explicitly mystical texts, focussing on the possibility of
retrieving true community through mystical access to the world
and its natural order. Using and developing the theories of
Mauther and, implicitly,^15 Meister Eckhart, these texts include
Durch Absonderung zur Gemeinschaft (Through Separation to
Community, 1900), Anarchische Gedanken über Anarchismus,
(Anarchic Thoughts on Anarchism, 1901), Skepsis und Mystik,
(Scepticism and Mysticism,1903), Revolution (1907) and Aufruf
zum Sozialismus, (Call to Socialism, 1911).