First Polit-WG 1830: Where the wild things lived

Uschi Obermaier was missing.

It is also not known whether there were drugs or whether the toilet doors were hung.

For this, the Communards had a billiard room and a library.

They populated a stately, two-story country house in the Rue de Ménilmontant, in the middle of a large park lined with fruit trees, with a picturesque view of the rooftops of Paris.

Her home had two bathrooms, 17 beds and 23 hammocks: Welcome to the living experiment of the future, the nucleus of a new society!

“Come to us, be part of our community;

you will be like brothers, like sons of the same family.

The false inequalities, the privilege of childbirth must be eliminated «, was the message of the men around chief guru Barthélemy Jean Prosper Enfantin.

The Frenchman was a banker, socialist - and co-founder of "the very first flat-sharing community," according to the historian Volker Barth in a recently published article for the "Historische Zeitschrift".

A thesis as daring as it is delightful: At first glance, the hairy initiators of the West Berlin Commune 1, founded in 1967, have little in common with the early socialist sect-like community of the Saint-Simonists, which emerged in 1825 after the death of their pioneer Henri de Saint Simon.

And yet a central point connects the two mission-conscious citizen fright movements.

Similar to Dieter Kunzelmann, Rainer Langhans and Co., the Saint-Simonists of the 19th century were of the opinion: Overcoming the hated conditions begins within one's own four walls - the private is political.

Greed for permanent media presence

For this reason, the French rebels already dared a new form of coexistence in order to break up encrusted structures and smoke out the traditional stench.

In addition, leading Saint-Simonists threw private property overboard long before the West Berlin Communards and advocated the emancipation of women, pleaded for more sexual freedom - and repeatedly targeted the judiciary and the police.

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Naked and swinging: back view of the Communards in 1967

Photo: Thomas Hesterberg / SZ Photo

It is true that the Parisian early socialists did not immediately stretch their bare bums into the camera to demonstrate their convictions, as the Berlin rebels did for the legendary nude photo from 1967. However, they too longed for permanent media presence, as the researcher Barth, who died in 2021, emphasized.

In order to reach as many people as possible, the Saint-Simonists gave lectures, hung up posters and approached journalists.

In the end, the French, hungry for publicity, even bought their own newspaper: With their last money they bought the medium »Le Globe«, which had 1,600 subscribers.

In the spring of 1830, the hard core of the Saint-Simonists moved into the second floor of the Hôtel de Gesvres on Rue Monsigny.

Three married couples and four single men, among them Prosper Enfantin and Saint-Armand Bazard as "high priests" of the movement, stood up to try out a new form of private togetherness.

The aim of this living experiment was to "be the image and model of future society," according to the historian Hans-Ulrich Thamer.

»Loud spring breezes and floral scents«

On Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, the Saint-Simonists opened their doors to extended families, but also to friends and interested parties.

Here was debated and edited, sung and preached, feasted and celebrated.

Intellectuals and artists came from all over Europe, such as the German poet Heinrich Heine, the British economist John Stuart Mill and the Austrian composer Franz Liszt.

The German reporter Ludwig Börne was downright ecstatic.

"It was all pleasure and joy," he wrote in a letter dated February 10, 1832 about the Saint-Simonist flat-share:

»It seemed to me as if I had come out of the winter cold of a snow-covered Nordic city into a glass house, where I was greeted by the spring breezes and the scent of flowers (...) A spirit of serene peace floated over this person, a bond of brotherhood embraced them all, and I felt embraced. "

Punch and feminism

The visitor to an evening celebration in the winter of 1932 praised the “young, graceful, pretty” ladies in addition to “swaths of punch” and “harmonious orchestral sounds”: “They danced and romped around in a very worldly way, without one realizing the spiritual aspect of these pleasures the party guest wrote smugly.

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Upper Saint-Simonist: Barthélemy Prosper Enfantin (1796-1864)

Photo: Photo 12 / Universal Images / Getty Images

It is not known how liberal it was among the Saint-Simonists.

In any case, Enfantin, himself a notorious bachelor, rejected monogamy as "against nature" and demanded the sexual permissiveness of women.

In addition, the movement advocated gender equality - early feminism: The age of Saint-Simonism would herald the "complete liberation of women," according to Enfantin in 1829.

This attitude delighted the female supporters, let the press joke and called French law enforcement officers on the scene: the police repeatedly searched the flat-sharing community in the Rue de Monsigny and banned Saint-Simonistic events.

"Cradle of the New World"

Conservative MPs accused the movement of polygamy;

The attitude towards women and free love led to a row between the bon vivant Enfantin and the morally stricter Bazard.

The two leaders of the movement quarreled so violently that Bazard suffered a stroke on August 25, 1831 in the shared flat: he fell, according to an eyewitness, "like a bull, struck by the hand of the sacrificial priest."

Bazard and his comrades-in-arms moved out, Enfantin and supporters stayed behind in the rue de Monsigny.

The living experiment, threatened by financial worries, was about to end.

But then Enfantin's mother died of cholera - and left her offspring a spacious property on Rue Ménilmontant.

The place of his childhood would become the "cradle of the new world", cheered Enfantin.

Immediately after his mother's funeral, he moved to Ménilmontant on April 22, 1832 with the remaining 40 Saint-Simonists to move into the new shared apartment.

Monastic discipline

The Berlin Communards also got tangled up in disputes over direction and power struggles 135 years later, and Fritz Teufel and Co. also moved several times before they settled in an abandoned factory at Moabiter Stephanstraße 60 in the summer of 1968.

Unlike the Saint-Simonists, however, the residents of Commune 1 relied primarily on the "power of fun", extolling sex, hash and Jimi Hendrix.

In Ménilmontant, however, monastic discipline reigned: the new commune was populated exclusively by men;

Gambling and tobacco were banned.

The Communards had to get up at five in the morning, before breakfast they had to toil for two hours.

Another eight hours of work followed, interrupted only by a small meal and an hour of singing.

At 9:30 p.m. sharp, the men around Enfantin had to turn off the light.

Training camp with dress code

"Ménilmontant was the training camp for the Saint-Simonists," says historian Barth.

"It was a matter of steeling the body, opening the mind and living community solidarity." Above all, the press made fun of the progressive division of labor.

For example, on July 8, 1832, the "Figaro" scoffed at "teachers who cook, doctors who scrub the floor, engineers who shine shoes."

As a token of their classless solidarity, all flat-sharing community residents wore white trousers, a red vest and a blue-violet coat.

With bourgeois clothing, you have to "put off the thick bundle of the bourgeoisie that each of us (...) has brought with us," said Enfantin.

The buttons of the vests were attached to the back - to show the collective solidarity when getting dressed in the morning.

Onlookers flocked in droves to watch the publicly staged living spectacle.

However, the police took offense at the bizarre men's residential group: In the summer of 1932, 100 soldiers broke up a meeting.

Five Saint-Simonists, including Enfantin, came to court, accused of having unauthorized political gatherings and of an "attack on public morality and common decency."

Judge kidding

Similar to how Fritz Teufel provoked the judiciary in 1967 by demonstratively remaining in his seat (in order to rise up with the grandiose "If it serves to establish the truth" as required), the Paris rebels also brought the judges before the judge: The Upper Communard Enfantin confidently took on the Judge's seat and wanted to be defended by two Saint-Simonists - women were not yet admitted as lawyers at the time.

In addition, the defendants denied their civilian identity and introduced themselves with "Apostle" and "Disciple of Saint-Simon" instead of their real names.

The judges imposed harsh sentences: Prosper Enfantin, Michel Chevalier and Charles Duveyrier were imprisoned for one year.

Enfantin did not give up: while in custody, he tried to convert his prison cell into a new meeting place, distributed tasks and issued dress codes.

But there was a shortage of disciples - the Saint-Simonist commune was at an end.

The early socialist returned to his capitalist roots and became railroad director.

In 1835 the property in Ménilmontant was sold.

Soon it was forgotten where the wild things once lived.

Until Dieter Kunzelmann stepped on the scene a century and a half later: As Enfantin once did in 1830, the Berlin Communard also relied on living concepts by the French early socialist Charles Fourier.

"You have to uproot yourselves," shouted Kunzelmann - and stepped up to turn the world off its hinges again with Commune 1.