Kurt Tucholsky was an important and widely-read author, poet, satirist, and editor of small literary forms during the Weimar Republic. He was a prolific writer of satires, cabaret songs, and poems that bespoke the specific scenes of Berlin and Germany between the World Wars. Today he is widely known for two playful, erotic romances, Rheinsberg and Schloß Gripsholm, both of which he wrote after romantic weekend escapes with lovers. Tucholsky called for a radical renewal of German culture and society in his articles for the Weltbühne and the Vossische Zeitung, always adjusting his tone and argument with an eye to his audiences. After his military service in the First World War, Tucholsky became a powerful voice for bourgeois, left-wing humanism, and an active, antimilitarist, anti-fascist, anti-dogmatist, and enemy of demagogues. His use of transparent pseudonyms offered no protection against political and legal persecution, and his constant travels led him to live in Berlin, Paris, Denmark, and Sweden, where he settled and died of a narcotic overdose in a hospital in 1935.