Youth and Politics at the End of the Great War: Rudolf Carnap’s Politische Rundbriefe of 1918

AbstractThis essay traces Rudolf Carnap’s intellectual development from a political participant in various groups of the German Youth Movement to a political activist on the left in 1918, and places this development in the context of his experiences as volunteer in World War One on both the eastern and western front as well as his time working for a military institute in Berlin. Carnap’s political turn towards socialism is discussed by presenting, for the first time, the Politische Rundbriefe (Political Circulars) he sent to a group of friends for discussion in 1918. The first four of the nine Rundbriefe consisted of excerpts from Entente newspapers that were critical of the war as well as Carnap’s comments on these clippings. The subsequent circulars dealt with general political topics, such as preserving peace, arbitration, or international law, usually with reference to a specific publication on the subject. As a result of his wartime experiences, Carnap joined the USPD in August 1918 and in December 1918 signed an appeal to the Freideutsche Jugend (Free German Youth) urging the young students to vote for the Social Democrats in the first Reichstag elections.