With Psychology of the Rich Aunt, German author Erich Mühsam made his own ironic bid for 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 his inheritance from her when she dies. 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 aura of Capital.

Originally published in German in 1905, Psychology of the Rich Aunt is a caustic tongue-in-cheek portrayal of greed under capitalism in the burgeoning 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.

 

Read more:

 

https://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Rich-Aunt-Twenty-Five-Immortality/

-------------------------------

Introduction 
It was not the urge to bring a new recruit to the army of literary products that inspired this book, but the unavoidable need to add a stone to the building — the best presents from the philosophers and theologians, poets and thinkers of all the ages. The question of the immortality of things and of men, whose answer one might confidently call knowledge as such, is of such decisive importance for the economic, social, psychological, and physical life of the individual and the people, considering in the final analysis that it deals with the [shakespearean] concept of "to be or not to be”. I believed I should not withhold my own biased observations in this field, which seem to at least bring a solution closer to the question of humanity. No less a person than Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, in one of his profound epigrams, made a remarkable contribution to the proof of immortality. He sings of a maiden's hat pin: 

Think how good the air is, how clean 
you must be with this virgin hairpin; 
Since humans cannot decide, 
that any maiden has died inside. 


But if this poet knows how to introduce the inmates of this house to the delicate quality of immortality, I take a tremendous step further, by proving in the present book that there is a whole family of people who are immune to Klappermann's stranglehold: the heirs. The problem is too important, too serious a discussion, for I could stop myself, in long-standing polemics, making my exploration comprehensible to those who, in skepticism and nagging, trap their ears above all unusual, tumultuous cotton wool. Concise and striking as the statement: The heiress is immortal!


Translation for Gus Leonisky by Gunter Ratingaher (103 today)…


Note: Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729 – 1781) was a German writer, philosopher, dramatist, publicist and art critic, and one of the most outstanding representatives of the Enlightenment era. His plays and theoretical writings substantially influenced the development of German literature. He is widely considered by theatre historians to be the first dramaturge in his role at Abel Seyler's Hamburg National Theatre.

One can drink too much, but one never drinks enough.

Let us be lazy in everything, except in loving and drinking, except in being lazy.

Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/gotthold_ephraim_lessing_389365
------------------------------


Aunt Amalia

She was a good woman at heart. Besides, she had a lot — some people said more than a lot — of money and she was at least 25 years older than she told anyone who wanted to know. It would be surprising that Aunt Amalia was not adored by her three nephews, Hans, Ferdinand, and Eberhard — and by her four nieces, Charlotte, Anni, Else, and Paula...
Aunt Amalia had come to her fortune when she became a widow. Her husband, Uncle Theodore, had been a smart furrier, who prepared furs in the summer and kept them till he sold them in winter — providing the elegant bourgeois with new warm fur coats. Once at Christmas, he bought a lot of “Horse-lottery" tickets — and, after he won the first prize, he had the good fortune of buying more winning tickets with the prize money — and died soon after. Aunt Amalia, however, took as much of the money as she needed for his funeral and bought a quarter of the Saxon state lottery tickets with some cash, and deposited the remainder on interest in the bank of Truggold & Co registered GmbH.
The Saxon lottery was also a winner for Aunt Amalia, and she bought more tickets, this time half of those in the Thuringian lottery. This too was drawn in her favour, and so it went on. After all, she played and won 26 of the state lotteries in the German fatherland. Her unprecedented wins soon enabled her to retire on the interest she received on her fortune, which the bank of Truggold & Co registered GmbH paid monthly. She move from the status of an ordinary aunt to that of the Aunt of her three nephews and four nieces.
These seven heirs devised their own inheritance "insurance" by becoming engaged to one another. Hans became engaged to Paula, Ferdinand to Anni, and Eberhard to Else. The eldest niece, Charlotte, remained unmarried. She would take her share of Aunt Amalia's inheritance for herself to become a happy heir like the other nephews and nieces.
One evening, the seven "inheritance shareholders" were together as Charlotte was reading the newspaper under “Local news.” Suddenly she screamed. There was something dreadful: the owner of the bank Truggold & Co registered GmbH, Moses Truggold, had left a deficit of 6 million marks in the bank — and had eloped with a young circus lady. The bank had filed for bankruptcy.
The seven heirs rushed in horror to Aunt Amalia, so that they could save what was left to save. They came too late.
Aunt Amalia was not an inheritance provider anymore. She was sitting on a chair, her upper body bent forward, and on her lap was the newspaper with the sad message of the collapse of Truggold & Co registered GmbH.
When the nephews and nieces hurriedly came forward asking questions, there was no answer. Aunt Amalia was dead. The blow had killed her.
The insurance of the engagements between the nieces and nephews broke up. Charlotte, however, gave up the hope of hereditary inheritance. So she invested, as the immortals did, in the lottery game.

----------------------

Klappermann: The rattle-man, or death in satirical writing, is “klanky” (ridiculous) because it is a scrawny clattering skeleton. The poor thing is handicapped  It was born without any skin nor muscles. It’s missing a leg and an eye, though skeletons don’t have eyes anyway, but Klappermann eye socket was injured in a bad combat so it covers it out of shame with a patch. One can see the “Pirates of the Caribbean” here...
See also:
http://bimshwel.com/?p=1932

A klepperman, klapperman or klapwaker was a night watchman who used a clapper machine  (similar to a rattle), serving in many places as a fire watch, village crier — and also called what time it was. With the clapper machine — a hammer on a short, wooden handle that was swung back and forth like a bell — he made a loud noise in the event of a fire.