In 1900, Ludwig Thoma began writing for the magazine Simplicissimus after a brief stint as a lawyer and became a feared satirist. His poems, plays, and novels made him famous during his lifetime. However, this rise was bought with self-discipline and a significant adjustment to literary life. The First World War revealed the fractures in his life: a longing for authority and national greatness, hostility towards women, social democrats, and Jews. After 1918, these sentiments took on a more inciting tone, although traces of them can already be found in earlier stages of his life. Did a scoffer turn into a petty bourgeois, as Kurt Tucholsky disappointedly called him?.