Paul Mattick's review of Arthur Holitscher's Der Narrenbaedeker. Published in "Der Proletarier, 9th Issue, August 1925"
Notes from Paris and London as subtitles. The Holitscher-Baedeker1 tells us that Masereel lives on Montmartre in Paris and has a witty conversation with the rebel Holitscher about the dullness of humanity. In May 24, he takes us to the Federated Wall, where the Parisian proletariat is gathering to give old Communist fighters the opportunity to shout “Vive la Commune” once again. This awakens the echo - Lenin -! A bus journey with megaphonic commentary takes us into the shattered area and later to the tomb of the unknown soldier. Thanks to this Baedeker, you can feel Paris from the café house and see the division of Paris by the Seine from a bird's eye view. Everything is beautifully explained, and you will often find a humanistic idea aesthetically expressed alongside maps and city plans. “Narrenbaedeker”2 is not quite right, rather “Querschnittbaedeker”,3 but S. Fischer4 will set the record straight. The airplane guide with price table takes us across the Channel to London. Here it throws us onto the omnibus, from where you can see the city at its best. The Baedeker raves, while giving us the opportunity to listen to an old, mystical lady who has been to India and is said to be even greater than Mahatma Gandhi. Our Baedeker becomes angry and cannot understand why so much money and work is being spent on the doll's houses at the World's Fair; the Labour government needed it so badly for its socialization plan. He is shamefully annoyed by Marx's neglected grave, cannot help but reproach a living grandson of Karl Marx and dreams of the grave on the Kremlin wall in Moscow. (“Why, the workers have him in their hearts and minds, and Russia, which accepts his method of historical materialism everywhere but in its own country, probably has the least right to Karl Marx's grave.”) The Baedeker goes on and on. He does not forget to mention a book that is available in all bookshops called “Leben eines Rebellen” (Life of a Rebel). It is also published by the editor of the Baedeker, the collector of old illustrated newspapers, which have long provided the pictures to accompany the words of the Baedeker. If you are Arthur Holitscher, if you call yourself a rebel, if you brought the most brilliant picture of Russia before the NEP period, if you stand up for communism, then you have to leave the platitude to the writers, the Schmoks. One must know more to say or be quiet. The proletariat, because who else does a rebel, a communist, write for, cares little about the fare from Paris to London. Nor does the proletariat need poetically perceived politics. It is supposed to create facts, so it only needs to hear facts, essentials. It renounces the phrase, it wants and needs the language of Jack London. Anyone who cannot speak this language is not believed by the proletariat to be a rebel. But I understand that people want to travel, even rebels, and the Baedeker spoke of solvent publishers.
PM — Cologne
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