This first edition follows the manuscripts and printed newspaper articles held in the State Library of Saxony – Saxon State and University Library Dresden (SLUB).
The “Revolution” text is based on the handwritten original from 1942 as well as the typed copy from Hadwig Klemperer, which was created in the course of producing Curriculum vitae. Erinnerungen 1881–1918 (2 volumes, Rütten & Loening, Berlin, 1989).
The text of the newspaper reports from the Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten has been taken from the newspapers published on February 11, 1919 (“Politics and the Bohemian World”), February 12, 1919 (evening edition; “Two Munich Ceremonies”), February 24, 1919 (evening edition; “Munich After Eisner’s Assassination”), April 11, 1919 (“The Events at the University of Munich”), and April 10, 1919 (evening edition; “The Third Revolution in Bavaria”).
The text that Victor Klemperer referred to as his “Revolutionary Diary” (including “Munich Tragicomedy”) is based on his handwritten original from 1919–20. It comprises additional articles written for the Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten that Klemperer assumed would not reach the newspaper in time.
All texts from 1919 have been reproduced in full. To avoid unnecessary repetitions, the text from 1942 was abridged in certain places (identified by […] and an explanation of the abridgement in the notes), where Klemperer had taken passages straight from the reports of 1919. The reports and memoirs have been interleaved, but no changes have been made to the sequence of the texts themselves.
The orthography and punctuation of the German texts followed the old German spelling rules (as in Curriculum vitae), and obvious errors and incorrect or variable spellings have been silently corrected. Text that was underlined or emphasized in another way has been printed in italics.