A small round man with a typewriter

Kurt Tucholsky, born 1890 in Berlin, deceased 1935 in Western Sweden, was one of most famous journalists in Weimar Germany. He was a regular contributor to Die Weltbühne. He was also a satirist, cabaret writer, poet, lyricist, novelist, literary critic (one of the most famous of his time, the first to comment on Kafka's work), film and music critic. Left-wing democrat, deeply antimilitarist, he denounces in his work the antidemocratic tendencies of the Germany of his time, being an early warner against the nazis.

The nazis kept a long list of writers to settle scores with, but one in particular inflamed them: Kurt Tucholsky, who happened to be a Jew. In magazine articles and comic poems, he took aim at nationalists, militarists and fat cats in general. He dipped his pen in a distilled venom to ridicule Hitler and his followers. In 1933, his books were burned and banned by the Nazis, who drove him out of his country. But he is not forgotten, he is still today a widely read author in Germany, with sales in the millions.

Another brilliant author, Erich Kästner, called him "a small, fat Berliner, who wanted to stop a catastrophe with his typewriter".

A fragment by Kurt Tucholsky, from 1931:

If someone borrows a book from the library, let’s say by Marx: whom is it he wants to read? He wants to read Marx! Whom does he most certainly not want to read? Herr Posauke. What has Herr Posauke done? Herr Posauke has scribbled all over the book.

Whether one should scribble all over one’s own books is a different question (cf. On Scribbling in Books, Book Margins and Book-Related Artifacts, inaugural dissertation of Dr. Peter Panter, presented to the University of Saarow-Pieskow, dedicated to my dear parents.) You can do what you like with your own books, but how should you treat those of others? The Prussian State Library, to which one should grant the equivalent of the costs of a medium-sized infantry division, to enable it to become a modern library, should defend itself vigorously against those with the bad habit of ranting all over borrowed books, and that’s the only way of putting it.

„Oh, ho!“ „Completely wrong, see Volkmar, p. 564.“ „Idiot!“ „Bravo!“ „No, N. did not reject this theory at all!” “Ignorant !“

What is this all about? First of all, it is cowardly to attack the author: he is not there, and cannot defend himself. Secondly, it puts the next reader completely off his reading: one doesn’t feel like starting at the top left-hand side if something that one doesn’t know is underlined at the bottom right-hand side. The eye becomes nervous, and looks away. /…/ It is like leaving your picnic rubbish in the woods.

From "Panter, Tiger & Co.: Eine neue Auswahl aus seinen Schriften und Gedichten"