A short biography of Paul Schreyer, German anarchist who opposed the First World War
Paul Schreyer was born on 21st September 1887 in Zahna, in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. A member of the Hamburg Anarchist Federation, he was editor of its weekly paper Kampf (1912-1914).
He emigrated at the outbreak of the War to Switzerland to escape his conscription as a soldier. In December 1914 his leaflet Die Sozialdemokratie und der Krieg (Social democracy and War) attacking the complicity of the Social Democrats with the war, was published in Copenhagen and distributed in Germany. The German government began to put pressure on the Swiss government. which finally delivered him unlawfully to the Germans . He was thrown into jail for desertion. The appalling prison conditions ruined his health ; he died at the end of the First World War, some time after 26th April 1918 in the Spandau prison fortress.
Information from www.syndikalismusforschung.info/Vaterland-Streik.pdf byFolkert Morhof
NICK HEATH
