Gregor Gog’s life was one that spanned a time of social transformations, revolutions and human catastrophes in Europe.

Born in Schwerin an der Wartke (now Skwierzyna, Western Poland) in 1891 and raised in modest circumstances, Gog had a life marked by upheavals and changes of direction, from a short period of fame through suffering and hardships to his early death in the Soviet hinterland in 1945.

Young Gog just wanted to see the world. At 19, too old to be hired on merchant ships, he went into the German navy and, in 1914, involuntarily became a participant in World War I. This was the beginning of his political journey.

Now, Gog’s political biography is being brought to life in a comic that resurrects an almost forgotten part of social history and traces back to the roots of street papers.

“Gog met with anarchy-minded sailors late in the First World War and visited an illegally organized reading circle there,” said Patrick Spät, author of the comic book, “King of the Vagabonds,” which was recently published by Avant. “From there, he was – put simply – an anarchist.”

Gog faced the military courts several times after being charged with incitement to mutiny and the spread of antimilitaristic propaganda. He was also admitted to so-called madhouses and suffered kidney disease as a result of his imprisonment, but he was released in 1917 after being deemed to be, in the language of the day, “permanently war unusable.” In 1918, he took part in the Kiel Mutiny, an uprising of the High Seas Fleet that led to the German Revolution and, subsequently, the collapse of the German Empire and establishment of the Weimar Republic. He then moved to the Swabian town of Bath Urach. His home, Kommune am Grünen Weg (“Commune on the Green Path”) became a magnet for anarchists, communists, artists, proto-hippies, life reformers and itinerant preachers.

Shelter for everyone

The comic, “King of the Vagabonds,” shows Gog and his wife, Anni Geiger-Gog, living with the poet and council republican Erich Mühsam, the miracle preacher and so-called “father of alternative movements” Gusto Gräser, and the late East German hymn poet and culture minister Johannes R. Becher in a kind of libertarian paradise. Gog eventually left because of his preference for travel and practical politics over the neo-Christian doctrines of salvation. On the way he met the painter Hans Tombrock and the dancer and poet Jo Mihaly, both of whom were from Dortmund. The “Tippelschwester,” Jo Mihaly, with her adopted Roma name, went on to write many poems for Gog’s magazine, Der Kunde (The Customer). Her books were later banned and burned by the Nazis.

Hans Tombrock later marched on Dortmund in 1920 with the Red Ruhr Army in the fight against the Kapp-Putsch, the attempted coup of March 13, 1920, which sought to overthrow the Weimar Republic and to establish autocratic rule in Germany. He was imprisoned until 1924 as a result. After that, Tombrock spent his life on the move and lived off the proceeds from selling his drawings. Like Michaly and Gog, he managed to escape to Switzerland in 1933. Later, during his exile in Sweden, he met Bertolt Brecht and worked with him. After World War II, he founded The School of Fine and Applied Arts in Dortmund before moving to East Germany in 1949. Like those of Gog and many of the participants in the Vagabond movement, Tombrock’s literary estate is held at the Fritz-Hüser-Institute in Dortmund.

“I really like Tombrock’s work,” said Bea Davies, who illustrated “King of the Vagabonds.” “His drawings are very black and raw in their composition. I’ve been working with a brush pen that makes very fine and very accurate lines, but they are also rather raw and not so controlled. Perhaps it’s not reflected in my work, but I was very inspired by him.”

Patrick Spät and Bea Davies are the author and illustrator of the comic “King of the Vagabonds.” Photo courtesy of Berthold Leibinger Foundation, Fritz Huser Institute

Strike for life

In the anthology “Era of Vagabonds,” published by the Hüser Institute, the authors describe Gog’s wanderings as embodying “a swing between reflection and resistance, unemployment and (the) refusal to work, between uprooting and departure, isolation and freedom.” For many, radicalization occurred as a result of the poverty experienced in the so-called Golden Twenties. As a result of the global economic crisis, the number of homeless people increased from 70,000 to 450,000 in Germany.

“The fact that something like the rediscovery of the Weimar Republic is happening (in popular culture) was another motivating factor for us to make this comic,” Spät said. “We appreciate productions like (the neo-noir TV series) “Babylon Berlin” a lot, but the focus is often on this bourgeois luster and glamour of life, which is really great, exciting and progressive. But what often falls off the table is the massive social misery that prevailed in Germany and Europe. To show it — to literally show it, because we were producing a comic — was very important to us.”

In 1927, Gog founded the International Brotherhood of Vagabonds.

“The attitude of the Brotherhood was: We expect nothing more from the state,” Spät said. “We do not want help, which is not offered anyway, and, if it is, it involves reprisals. We are organizing ourselves (in order to achieve) self-help. Shortly thereafter, Gog became the editor-in-chief of Der Kunde.

“This ‘street paper’ provided life and survival tips (to its Brotherhood readers) and recommended art exhibitions and meeting places because physical encounters mattered significantly when it came to organizing themselves,” Spät said.

STREET PAPERS: Street Roots is part of a global movement

And indeed, the Brotherhood’s evening meetings started to grow, and the first International Vagabond Congress was organized in Stuttgart in 1929. The authorities reacted in panic, and the media response was hostile on an international scale. Despite this, around 600 participants made it through the police barriers. The event was a great success and another popularity boost for Gog, the so-called King of Vagabonds. Gog even starred in a silent film with his friend Tombrock.

The effects of barbarism

What followed then is perhaps the most dramatic split in Gog’s life. On a trip to the Soviet Union in July 1930, the anti-authoritarian, anarchist Gog became a Communist Party member who, through his now fundamentally changed newspaper, sought “to transform the vagabonds into a reserve army of the fighting proletariat.” Many of Gog’s previous travel companions turned away in disappointment and irritation.

Soon after the National Socialists appeared on the German political scene, Gog had sensed what a Nazi takeover would mean. A few weeks after the Nazis came to power, he was arrested, sent to a concentration camp and tortured. Luckily, he managed to escape to Switzerland on Christmas Eve, 1933.

In his diary, he wrote: “The country road lost itself in the jungle of fascist barbarism … . Concentration camps, forced labor and beatings: the German Bourgeoisie has always wanted this for us.”

Gog arrived in the Soviet Union via Paris; he was critically ill and living in increasingly difficult conditions. He survived a suicide attempt in 1945 but died two weeks later in Tashkent, then part of the Soviet Union and now the capital of Uzbekistan.

“We have left the years of suffering out of the comic. For us, the foreground was the Brotherhood and Gog’s transformation into a Communist,” Spät said. “We included the story of the escape from the Nazis to Switzerland because that was important to us. Homeless people, vagabonds and so-called tramps have, until today, been largely ignored as victims of the Nazis.”

And what else is left of Gog?

“Despite all of his contradictions, Gog was a good person with a clear view of the world,” Davies said. “Speaking from today’s perspective, I do not see his courage in our communities. Current society is so informed, but still so silent. That’s how I see it. Gog’s approach for the government to ‘go whistle’ seems extreme. But if I look at the governments of the world, I think we would be better if we did things ourselves.”

Spät admires Gog for another reason.

“Gog, for a time, successfully managed to bring together and organize the homeless, vagabonds and the excluded,” he said. “That deserves admiration.”

Translated from German by Fernanda Janeiro. Courtesy of bodo / INSP.ngo

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