Farmers are usually considered conservative, and that was the case in the past. And yet two of them helped to overthrow the monarchy in Bavaria. It can’t be – or can it?
In his novel “We Are Prisoners”, Oskar Maria Graf describes how on the afternoon of November 7th, 1918, tens of thousands of women and men gathered for a peace demonstration on Theresienwiese and how the crowd, led by Kurt Eisner, then set off towards the barracks, a “tingling, black wave” that washed away the monarchy that very night. “We marched, hemmed in by a rushing crowd, almost at the front, barely five steps away from Eisner, whom I kept looking at. He was pale and looked dead serious; he said nothing. It almost looked as if it had him A sudden event struck him. Every now and then he stared straight ahead, half afraid and half disturbed. He walked arm in arm with the broad-shouldered, powerfully striding blind farmer leader Gandorfer. This figure moved much more freely, with a rough demeanor, firm, and so on just like a Bavarian farmer goes.”