Karl Ludwig Krause
German, 1870 - 1936
Origin and early life
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His father, Karl Ludwig Krause (* 1849 in Tilsit; † 1921 in Kiel) was a master builder, his mother, Sarah Emma Krause, née Werbalowski (* 1849; † 1926 in Schleswig), was a baptized Jew. He and his family went to Libau in Russia in 1880 and stayed there until 1887. He then completed a commercial apprenticeship and spent a number of years primarily abroad. From 1896 he lived in Munich, where he worked as an art dealer. In 1904 he opened his own art shop in Munich at Barer Str. 40a, where he mainly sold pictures by the Secessionists and the artist group Die Scholle . He married Margarete Deronco in 1906, and his sons Edwin and Heinz were born in 1906 and 1907 respectively.
Opposition to German war policy
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Krause was very Francophile and spent a lot of time in France and Italy. He was very confused about the outbreak of the First World War and was particularly critical of the occupation of neutral Belgium by the German Empire. In 1916 he decided to leave Germany and settled in Geneva to write down his thoughts. In January 1917 he published a book entitled "What is the German people dying for?", which was very critical of the war policy of the Reich government in Berlin. [ 1 ] This book was banned in Germany, but an English translation was published in the USA in 1918. [ 2 ]
In the spring of 1917 he published a book under the pseudonym Heinrich Sieger entitled Bavaria and Peace. He predicted that the German Empire and its allies would not be able to win the war and in this book he recommended a change from the Hohenzollerns to the Wittelsbachs . The Hohenzollern dynasty was to be deposed and a constitutional empire of the Wittelsbachs introduced. This Germany was to seek a close alliance with France. Karl Ludwig Krause saw Germany as primarily responsible for the war and welcomed the USA's entry into the war. He placed great hopes in the USPD politician Karl Liebknecht (who was assassinated in 1919) and in the American President Woodrow Wilson . He was also one of the first to advocate the idea of a European federation. In a paper published in 1918 he spoke out in favor of European unification and the relativization of nation states.
At the beginning of 1918, Karl Ludwig Krause began working as an editor for the weekly newspaper Die Freie Zeitung in Bern. This was a newspaper by German exiles under the leadership of the diplomat Dr. Hans Schlieben , who had been German consul in Bern until 1914, but then broke with the policy of the Reich. Together with other opposition members, Schlieben first published this newspaper in April 1917. He received support from the French and British governments and, from the end of 1917, especially from the government in Washington. Other authors included the writers Dr. Richard Grelling , Dr. Edward Stilgebauer , Hugo Ball (the friend and later biographer of Hermann Hesse ), Hermann Fernau and Salomon Grumbach . The later Tübingen philosopher Ernst Bloch was also among the staff.
Karl Ludwig Krause wrote over 32 articles for the Freie Zeitung from January 1918 to autumn 1919 and also wrote another critical book in 1918, which was published by Die Freie Presse in Bern (“The Double Bottom”). In January 1919 he wrote a draft for a new German constitution. In the same year he also worked for the American Committee on Public Information (a kind of propaganda agency of the US government), which had a branch in Bern and was headed by the well-known suffragette Vira B. Whitehouse . In this capacity he published a book of speeches by the American President Woodrow Wilson in 1919.
His journalistic activities were viewed extremely critically by the Reich government and he was charged with high treason in absentia, which meant that his assets in Germany were confiscated and he fell into financial distress.
Exile and death
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After the war, Karl Ludwig Krause returned to Munich in August 1919 and worked as an art dealer again until 1933. After the Nazis seized power, he emigrated to France, where he last stayed in Toulon. He was temporarily supported by the German pacifist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Ludwig Quidde . Quidde was himself in exile in Geneva and had only limited resources. However, he founded an aid organization to support impoverished emigrants. In an article published in the magazine "Die Friedenswarte" in 1938, Ludwig Quidde reported on the plight of many German emigrants and described in particular the situation and fate of Karl Ludwig Krause. By then, Krause had already taken his own life: on February 4, 1936, he committed suicide in Toulon out of despair after receiving an expulsion order from the French state.https://de-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Karl_Ludwig_Krause; accessed 9/27/2024
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Last Updated10/12/24
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