Mühsam – Anarchist in Anführungsstrichen

A delightful comic page: Erich Mühsam, penniless poet, socialist agitator, timid bohemian (1878–1934) vainly in search of himself, or rather, in search of his works in the bookshops of Munich: six panels coloured blue, yellow, black and finally grey. Mühsam is a caricature with a long nose and a pointy beard, reminiscent of the figures of French comic artist Joann Sfar. But Mühsam is drawn by Jan Bachmann, a native of Basel born in 1986, who discovered the art of drawing while studying at the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin. Bachmann’s album Mühsam – Anarchist in Anführungsstrichen is a vital study of life down to the last penny, with faces like landscapes and landscapes like expressive explosions. The poet murdered by the Nazis is rediscovered as the comic hero that, in Mühsam’s own drawings, he always was.