Otto Weidt was born in Rostock in 1883, and grew up in poverty. In 1888 his family moved to Berlin, where Otto Weidt completed his basic schooling and trained as a painter and gilder.
In 1903 Otto Weidt traveled widely, making initial contact to anarchist circles in Hamburg. On his return to Berlin, he became an editor for the newspaper Der Anarchist, and was heavily involved in political activities for several years. Anarchist groupings were under observation by the Political Police, and Otto Weidt was among those observed. He was charged several times, and sentenced to a month’s imprisonment in 1907 for alleged contact to Russian anarchist circles. Otto Weidt turned away from organized anarchism around 1910. Nonetheless, he maintained his personal convictions for his entire life, referring to himself as an “individualist anarchist.”
In 1913 Otto Weidt married Berlin-born Martha Koniezcny, with whom he had two sons. They divorced after three years. During the First World War, the convinced pacifist Weidt managed to evade armed service as a result of an ear complaint. He was deployed as a nurse in a field hospital in Küstrin, far away from the front. After his release from military service, he remarried and set up his own business as a paper-hanger and decorator in Berlin.
ANARCHISM
Anarchism is a political and social movement that came about during the 19th century. Its ideal is a society in which people live together without hierarchies. Berlin was a stronghold of German anarchism during the early 20th century. Various tendencies shared the main concerns of anti-militarism and anti-parliamentarism and called for a revolutionary general strike, but were extremely disunited. At the beginning of the First World War, anarchism lost significance as a political movement.