As an example of the fate of many young people whose hopes were shattered by the First World War, the short life of Otto Braun (1897-1918) stands out. The posthumous collection of his writings, published a year after the war ended, achieved a circulation of over one hundred thousand copies. Prominent writers of the time, such as André Gide, Rainer Maria Rilke, Thomas Mann, and Gerhart Hauptmann, read his diaries and letters and expressed their enthusiasm for them. Otto Braun was the son of Lily Braun, a prominent socialist and advocate for women's rights in her time, and Heinrich Braun, a politician from the SPD. Otto's early youth was shaped by the intellectual environment of his parents. He soon developed an insatiable thirst for knowledge, declaring at the age of twelve that he had nearly completed his studies in German literature and was learning on his own.