Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862, 2012 marks his 150th death anniversary) is widely known for his essay "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience" (1849). With this work, he established the idea of civil disobedience, which became significant for figures such as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Various movements within the ecology movement and anarchism also regard Thoreau as a hero. As early as 1845, Thoreau withdrew for two years into a self-built wooden cabin. Not least through his writing "Walden; or, Life in the Woods" (1854), he was - as American Nobel laureate Sinclair Lewis put it - one of "the three or four real classics of American literature." A common thread in Thoreau's works is a radical, philosophical critique of civilization and the search for an alternative that does not end with an established religion.