Child of Hallertau, freedom fighter and poet's wife: Zenzl Mühsam is remembered today by a street name in Munich.
Elsewhere, they are not that far along yet.
Haslach
- While a street in Munich was recently named after her, nothing in her place of birth near Au in the Hallertau reminds of the woman who, together with her husband, took part in the battles of the Munich Soviet Republic. Kreszentia "Zenzl" Mühsam is also admired because she was able to save the estate of her husband, the anarchist and poet Erich Mühsam, for posterity despite the most severe adversities.
As one of a total of five children of the innkeepers and hop farmers Kreszentia and August Elfinger, Zenzl was born on July 24th, 1884 in Haslach near Au into poor conditions.
Not much is known about her childhood: her schooling, as was often the case in the country back then, was not the best.
Around 1900 Zenzl, she is 16 years old, was transferred to Munich and had a child two years later.
Philosophical world view
During this time, however, she also made her first excursions into literature, which for the young woman from the simplest of backgrounds was probably an initial spark and approach to the philosophical world view of the Schwabing artist scene. In a letter from 1920, Zenzl wrote about the discovery of books: “How was it all hidden from people?” In Schwabing she met the writer and political activist Erich Mühsam, whom she finally married in 1915. According to the memories of the Danish author Martin Andersen Nexö, their shared apartment quickly became a meeting place for revolutionary circles - the country's political changes were already clearly in the air. So it is not surprisingthat the Mühsam couple took part in the Munich November Revolution in 1918.
Imprisonment for proclamation of the Soviet republic
But that was not enough for Erich Mühsam: in 1919, together with Ernst Toller and Gustav Landauer, he proclaimed the first Munich soviet republic - which ultimately brought him 15 years of imprisonment.
Zenzl fled to her old home, but was not welcome at home and found shelter in the nearby Tegernbach near Rudelzhausen.
There she even toyed with the idea of emigrating to Denmark.
In the actually safe Tegernbach itself, she wrote in a letter to Nexö, she did not want to stay: Even the "Holledauer Rapporteur" (today Hallertauer Zeitung), according to Zenzl "a provincial paper", would already be writing about her husband's arrest.
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A street in Munich-Neuperlach was named after Zenzl Mühsam in 2020.
© Erich Mühsam Society
However, the trip did not go to Denmark, instead she campaigned for the improvement of prison conditions and became the “mother of political prisoners”.
At the same time, Soviet Russia became a political ideal for Zenzl, which is why the Haslach woman wrote to Lenin for help.
She smuggled her husband's correspondence and writings out of prison, which she had brought to Russia, as well as her volume of poetry “Burning Earth”.
Object of hate of the National Socialists
In 1924 Erich was released due to an amnesia, but was one of the first prisoners after Adolf Hitler's seizure of power - as an anarchist, Jew and opponent of the war he was an exposed object of hate of the National Socialists. Shortly before Erich Mühsam's murder in 1934, Zenzl forced a visit to the Oranienburg concentration camp. “Mobilize abroad, we are all in danger!” Are said to have been the last words that Erich whispered to his Zenzl in the concentration camp. Zenzl was persuaded to move to Russia - also with the promise that her husband's literary estate could be published there. But things turned out differently: some years of Erich Mühsam's diaries disappeared and Zenzl was arrested for counterrevolutionary activities and Trotskyist connections. This misery lasted a total of 19 years:Short-term releases were repeatedly followed by arrests, torture and exile in the Gulag. In 1954, when Zenzl was now 70 years old, she was allowed to travel to what was then the GDR. There she continued to fight for the complete publication of Erich's estate and at the same time came under the sights of the GDR State Security.
The former inn is still standing
Kreszentia Mühsam finally died in 1962 at the age of 77.
In the meantime, the renowned Berliner Verbrecher Verlag has published the diaries of the author and anarchist Mühsam, but the editions from 1916-1919 are still considered lost.
While in Munich, next to a street, a hall in the Seidlvilla was named after the freedom fighter Zenzl Mühsam, neither in Haslach nor in Au are there any apparent ambitions to bring about a belated appreciation or remembrance - even though the former restaurant is still standing.
Richard Lorenz
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