Kurt Tucholsky was born in this street on the right at number 13, in 1890. There’s a memorial plaque to him. Tucholsky was a journalist and writer, as well as temporary co-editor of the weekly magazine “Die Weltbühne” (The World Stage). During the Weimar Republic, he was one of the best-known and sharpest critics of Prussian militarism and Germans’ blind faith in authority. His views became even stronger during the Nazi era.
Starting in the 1920s, Tucholsky lived most of the time in France. In 1929, he moved to Sweden: “They’re gearing up to travel to the Third Reich”, he wrote about Germany – and he turned out to be right. Tucholsky’s books were among the first burned in public by the Nazis in 1933. That year, they stripped him of his German citizenship. In December 1935, Kurt Tucholsky died of an overdose of sleeping tablets. Even today, it is not clear whether this was suicide or an accident.
