Gustav Landauer Memorial

A modest stone in Munich’s Waldfriedhof remembers Gustav Landauer, the writer and anarchist killed in 1919. The first memorial was raised in 1925 by the Free Workers’ Union and funded by workers’ groups and well-known supporters such as Lida Gustava Heymann, Anita Augspurg and Helene Stöcker. A police ban stopped the planned opening ceremony, yet each May small gatherings still took place at the site.

The original monument stood several metres tall with an inscription quoting Landauer’s call for quiet, daily courage rather than heroic deeds. In 1933 the National Socialists demolished it, erasing one of the few public tributes to his ideas. Decades later, historian Siegbert Wolf organised the placing of a new marker in 2017.

Today two split basalt blocks are held together by tempered glass etched with the same 1925 words. The Waldfriedhof’s quiet paths lead to this simple slab, a place where visitors pause rather than linger. Around it lie other graves, yet the glass panel catches the light and makes the inscription legible even on cloudy days.