Kurt Tucholsky Museum Tour

After taking pills Tucholsky died on December 21st, 1935 at the age of 45 years.

The circumstances of his death are disputed. Was it suicide or was it murder? Or was the overdose accidental?

Tuchosky’s last letters show him as a resigned, lonely, and exhausted man. Due to chronic sinusitis he suffered from headaches and shortness of breath. After seven surgeries on his nose he complained:

“I go as often to a surgery as I go to get my hair cut. […] my life is stolen from me by something that covers me like a grey blanket.”

There are indications that Tucholsky wanted to die in December 1935. On the day of his death he wrote to his second divorcée Mary:

“O – to be afraid … not of the end. I couldn’t care less about that, like I don’t care anymore about anything that happens around me, I have no relation to it anymore. The reason to fight, the bridge, the inner link, the raison d’être are missing.”

This death mask was made from plaster following Tucholsky’s death. Our museum aquired one of the three copies of the death mask from the private property of Tucholsky’s literary executor Michael Hepp.

His face seems to bear an expression, Tucholsky wrote about in his “Suddelbuch” in his last weeks:

“If I would die now, I would say: >That was it?< - And: >I didn’t really understand it.< And: >It was a little noisy.<