Ret Marut and Der Ziegelbrenner collection
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Finding Aid
by James Goldwasser
"The man who called himself Ret Marut -- the shadowy anarchist editor and fugitive member of the Munich Räterepublik -- walked out of a London jail on February 15, 1924 and disappeared. That he went on to Mexico and became B. Traven, reclusive, enigmatic author of powerful proletarian novels, is now accepted as fact. The identification of Traven with Marut was first suggested by his own anarchist comrade, the poet Erich Mühsam, who recognized the voice of his old friend in the Traven novels. Rolf Recknagel (B. Traven: Beiträge zur Biografie. Leipzig, 1971) compiled most of what is known about Marut from available records and accounts by some of those who knew the man. The rest of the little we know about Ret Marut comes from the work he himself produced: a handful of stories in German newspapers, two pseudonymous books, and thirteen issues of Der Ziegelbrenner ("The Brickburner"), the vehemently individual-anarchist magazine which Marut, together with his companion and partner Irene Mermet, flung in the face of the German establishment -- and censors -- between September, 1917 and December, 1921. ... This archive is the only known substantial collection of original Marut material."
--- James Goldwasser, from the Introduction to his catalogue: B. Traven: Archive of Ret Marut & Der Ziegelbrenner, 1901-1923
