Only a few people know Max Süßheim, the last Jewish member of the state parliament to date. And that despite the fact that he defied Nuremberg’s main Nazi agitator Julius Streicher like no other and put him behind bars for a few weeks. Why this disregard? A reconstruction.
His grandfather was the first Jewish member of the state parliament in Bavaria, he himself would remain the last Jewish member of the state parliament – and still is today. As one of the most prominent political intellectuals in Bavaria during the Weimar period, he stood up to the Nazi pornographer and later “Franconian leader” Julius Streicher like no other – even though he continually sullied, mocked and denigrated him in his Nuremberg Nazi posts. But his name, Max Süßheim, is now a matter for specialists, while his contemporaries Gustav Landauer, Erich Mühsam and Ernst Toller are generally known. Why is that? The historian Kristina Milz from the Munich Institute for Contemporary History has now investigated the question. And comes to at least a sobering result.