Tucholsky, Kurt

The German author Kurt Tucholsky was born in the Moabit district of Berlin to a wealthy Jewish banking family. Despite having problems at school, he took his baccalaureate in 1907, began to study law in Berlin and Geneva and took his doctor's degree in philosophy in Jena. He then did his military service and was posted to the eastern front. After his experiences in the First World War he became a radical pacifist and a democrat on the left who became deeply involved in pacifist movements, both as a writer and as a participant in the major manifestations against war and militarism that took place in Berlin in the 1920s. He also became a reluctant advocate of the constitution of the Weimar Republic. In 1925, he was elected, together with the publicist Carl von Ossietzky, to the board of the Deutsche Liga für Menschenrechte, and a year later he joined the board of the association Gruppe Revolutionärer Pazifisten.