Editing Gustav Landauer (section)

== Life and career ==
Landauer was the second child of [[Jewish]] parents Rosa ({{nee|Neuberger}}) and Herman Landauer.<ref>''Faces of America: How 12 Extraordinary People Discovered Their Pasts'', by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., 2010, p. 10.</ref> He supported anarchism by the 1890s. In those years, he was especially enthusiastic about the individualistic approach of [[Max Stirner]] and [[Friedrich Nietzsche]], but also "cautioned against an apotheosis of the unrestrained individual, potentially leading to the neglect of solidarity".<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Miething|first=Dominique|date=2016-04-02|title=Overcoming the preachers of death: Gustav Landauer's reading of Friedrich Nietzsche|journal=Intellectual History Review|volume=26|issue=2|pages=285–304|doi=10.1080/17496977.2016.1140404|s2cid=170389740|issn=1749-6977}}</ref>

He was good friends with [[Martin Buber]], influencing the latter's philosophy of dialogue.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Jordan|first=Patrick|date=8 June 2020|title=A Life of Dialogue: Martin's Buber's Path to a Believing Humanism|url=https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/life-dialogue|access-date=8 June 2020|website=Commonweal}}</ref> Landauer believed that social change could not be achieved solely through control of the state or economic apparatus, but required a revolution in interpersonal relations.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Mendes-Flohr |first1=Paul |title=Martin Buber: A Life of Faith and Dissent |date=2019 |publisher=Yale University Press |location=New Haven and London |isbn=978-0-300-15304-0 |pages=53, 120–121}}</ref>

He felt that true socialism could arise only in conjunction with this social change, and he wrote, "The community we long for and need, we will find only if we sever ourselves from individuated existence; thus we will at last find, in the innermost core or our hidden being, the most ancient and most universal community: the human race and the cosmos."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Landauer |first1=Gustav |title=Durch Absonderung zur Gemeinschaft |journal=Journal of the Neue Gemeinschaft |date=1901 |issue=2 |page=48}}</ref> He also became a close collaborator with the leader of the People's State of Bavaria, [[Kurt Eisner]], until the latter's assassination, after which Landauer had no official position in the third ''Räterepublik''.{{sfn|Cohen-Skalli|Pisano|2020|pp=216-217,220}}