With Psychology of the Rich Aunt, German author Erich Mühsam made his
ironic bid for authorial immortality by announcing his discovery that
immortality in fact exists--specifically in the person of the Rich Aunt.
Through 25 case studies, arranged alphabetically (from Aunt Amalia to
Aunt Zerlinde), Mühsam argues his case: the Rich Aunt is able to live
forever provided she has a nephew waiting for her demise and for his
inheritance. The corollary revealed in these tales, of course, is that a
Rich Aunt's eternal rest is directly tied to her nephew's deprivation of
said inheritance. The pathways to an immortal's demise can thus be the
result of anything from the vagrancies of sexual proclivities or the
stock market to the unforeseen expenses of literary ambitions. The Rich
Aunt emerges as the enduring fly in the ointment of Church, Family and
State, the undoing of fate personified and the transformation of
morality into mortality under the aegis of Capital.
Originally published in German in 1905, Psychology of the Rich Aunt is
a caustically tongue-in-cheek portrayal of greed under capitalism in the
bourgeois epoch.
Erich Mühsam (1878-1934) was a German-Jewish anarchist writer, poet,
playwright, cabaret songwriter and a fierce satirist of the Nazi party.
He played a key role in the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic,
championed the rights of women and homosexuals, advocated for free love
and vegetarianism, and opposed capitalism and war. He was brutally
murdered in the Oranienburg concentration camp.
