1919, writing as “Antibavaricus”
The two-column reports were written by Victor Klemperer in Munich as the revolution was taking place, between February 1919 and January 1920, under the pseudonym of “A.B. correspondent” (= Antibavaricus) for the Leipzig newspaper Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten. The majority of these articles are published here for the first time. The newspaper was only able to print one out of three dispatches; in the tumult of the revolution, the others either arrived too late or never reached their destination at all.
1942, looking back on the revolution
The texts set normally were written in 1942 as part of Klemperer’s memoirs. They were not included in the collection Curriculum vitae: Erinnerungen 1881–1918 (1989) because they were originally intended to be part of a longer chapter called “Privatdozent” (“Lecturer”), one which remained unfinished after Klemperer was abruptly forced to stop writing in 1942 – when the danger that the Gestapo might discover the manuscript had grown too great. These texts have never been published before.