The German Robin Hood: Soldier, revolutionary, political prisoner: the extraordinary life of Max Hoelz

The thrilling and action-packed story of Max Hoelz. He was dubbed "the German Robin Hood" in England; to his enemies in Germany he was better known as "the Dictator of the Vogtland". Max Hoelz was a worker, engineer, soldier - and an irresistible womanizer - who became one of the most fascinating and charismatic figures during the working class insurrections in Germany that followed the First World War. From the 'White Cross' to the Red Flag was the title of his autobiography, which appeared in 1929. It follows Hoelz's progress from simple farmhand through Germany to London, his efforts to educate himself, and the breathtaking action and horrors he experienced as a cavalry messenger and front-line soldier. He returns from the fighting to lead his local unemployed workers' committee, before taking up the armed struggle and a life on the run from the authorities. As leader of the Red Army in Central Germany during the Kapp putsch of 1920 and again during the March Action a year later, Hoelz robs from the rich to give to the poor - but runs foul of the Communist Party bureaucracy in the process. Framed for a murder he did not commit, Hoelz is sentenced to life imprisonment and begins a new struggle against the cruel regimes of M nster, Gross-Strehlitz and Sonnenburg prisons. Finally amnestied, he is greeted as a hero by the workers of Berlin, but is beaten up by Nazi thugs in an election campaign. He flees to the Soviet Union, where he is at first feted but then accused of being at the centre of a Trotskyist conspiracy and murdered. Hoelz's autobiography recreates the optimism of the workers' movement during the tough years of struggle in Weimar Germany. This book also includes Hoelz's Indictment against Bourgeois Society, his speech to the Moabit Special Court in Berlin on 22 June 1922, and an introduction by the translator, Ed Walker.