Max Tobler, the forgotten friend of the workers' doctor Fritz Brupbacher, was once a popular leftist figure of integration. In the mid-1920s, he wrote what is perhaps the most multifaceted account of the abstinent youth movement of the turn of the century in his autobiography, published here for the first time, providing an unconventional portrayal of his time.

The son of a merchant family from St. Gallen recounts how his break from his strict father within the abstinent youth movement turned into a rebellion against the society of fathers. The movement, founded in 1890 at the local gymnasium, spread rapidly. At the universities, its supporters – Tobler as an aspiring zoologist – distanced themselves from the fraternity students and, alongside students from Eastern Europe, committed to the fight for a freer and fairer society. In 1902, Tobler traveled to England to evaluate his uncertain life plans: naturalist in India, writer, or activist in the workers' movement? Disgusted by the male-dominated world of the Empire, he chose the latter. His text ends abruptly here, with a postscript from the editor filling the gap.

Tobler played an important role in the social upheaval and strikes of the 1900s, among other things as a journalist, and emerged as a consistent opponent of the war during World War I as a doctor and husband of the physician Minna Christinger. In the 1920s, he stood out as an unusual thinker who commented on the history of the left, gender, and (anti-)colonialism, at a time when others had already quietly distanced themselves from criticism and dissent.