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The Outlaws

Publication and form

The Outlaws, originally published in German as Die Geächteten, is Ernst von Salomon’s debut novel. Rowohlt Verlag published it in Germany in 1930; Ian F. D. Morrow’s English translation appeared in 1931. The book is usually described as a novel, but its account of the years 1919–1922 draws heavily on Salomon’s own experience. It is therefore often read as autobiographical fiction or a personal political narrative rather than as a detached chronicle. Its title, meaning roughly “the ostracised” or “the outlawed,” evokes both a generation alienated by defeat and the marginal identity its members adopted through political revolt.

Story and historical setting

The narrative begins in the upheaval following Germany’s defeat in the First World War. The old order has collapsed, the new republic faces political and economic instability, and returning soldiers find a country profoundly changed. The young narrator is a military cadet, too young to have fought in the trenches, but he experiences the postwar settlement as a betrayal of the values he believes the soldiers defended. He joins the Freikorps, the paramilitary formations in which many veterans continued to fight after the war. The book recounts Freikorps action on behalf of Baltic Germans and episodes of armed political conflict in Germany, while following the narrator’s developing sense of comradeship, purpose, and allegiance.

The novel also addresses the 1922 assassination of Walther Rathenau, foreign minister of the Weimar Republic. Salomon’s narrator is peripherally involved in the affair; Salomon himself was convicted for his participation and imprisoned. The episode and its aftermath bring questions of responsibility and political commitment to the fore. Rather than offering a neutral account of the assassination or the period, the book presents events through a participant’s highly invested perspective. Its account of the narrator’s political circle is shaped by sympathy and self-justification, a feature readers need to take into account when treating it as historical testimony.

Themes and reception

The central conflict is between a defeated generation’s search for belonging and the political order emerging after the war. Salomon explores nationalism, youth, military discipline, comradeship, revolutionary ideals, and the normalization of political violence. He interweaves action with retrospective reflection, making the book at once a coming-of-age narrative and an argument about the meaning of loyalty, sacrifice, and punishment. Its intimacy gives it value as a record of how a participant understood his world, but that same intimacy limits its perspective: the book should not be mistaken for a balanced history of the Freikorps or the Weimar Republic.

Written only a few years after the events it depicts, The Outlaws is closely bound to Salomon’s own Freikorps experience and imprisonment. It achieved commercial success and has remained a significant, controversial literary document of postwar German nationalism and the radical milieu of the Weimar era. Its lasting interest lies not in resolving the period’s political questions, but in exposing the way personal memory, ideological allegiance, and literary self-portraiture can become inseparable.

About the Author

Ernst von Salomon

Early life and formation

Ernst von Salomon was born in Kiel, Germany, on 25 September 1902, and died on 9 August 1972. A novelist, memoirist, and screenwriter, he came of age during the final years of the German Empire and the First World War. He received cadet-style military education. The war ended while he was still young, too young to have served as an adult frontline soldier, but defeat, revolution, and the collapse of the imperial order decisively shaped his political outlook. The instability and armed conflicts of postwar Germany became the central experiences to which he returned in his writing.

Freikorps and political involvement

After the First World War, Salomon joined the Freikorps, the paramilitary formations in which many veterans continued to fight. He was also associated with Organisation Consul, a radical right-wing group active from 1920 to 1922. Following the 1922 assassination of Walther Rathenau, foreign minister of the Weimar Republic, Salomon was convicted for taking part in the affair and imprisoned. Accounts describe his involvement as peripheral or contributory rather than as that of a principal assassin. His political activity and imprisonment later became central material in his fiction and autobiographical writing. His narratives offer an insider’s view of the milieu, but they also frame its actions through a pronounced nationalist perspective, frequently explaining political violence in terms of comradeship, loyalty, and sacrifice. They are valuable evidence of a participant’s self-understanding, not neutral accounts of the period.

Books, screenwriting, and reputation

Salomon’s debut, Die Geächteten, appeared in 1930 and was translated into English as The Outlaws in 1931. Based on the years 1919–1922, it recounts Freikorps activity, postwar political conflict, and the consequences of the Rathenau assassination. The novel achieved commercial success and established his reputation as a writer associated with the radical nationalist milieu of the Weimar Republic. Among his later major works was Der Fragebogen (The Questionnaire, 1951), an autobiographical novel responding to the extensive questionnaire imposed on adults in postwar West Germany. Its sharp attack on Allied policies became a bestseller and was also translated into English. Salomon additionally worked as a screenwriter, extending a career that moved between fiction, political memoir, and film.

During the Third Reich he remained a recognized writer, and his work was associated with nationalist and Prussian ideas. After the Second World War, The Questionnaire made him a prominent and controversial public figure once again. His reputation has consequently remained divided: readers and critics acknowledge his forceful narrative voice and the documentary interest of his accounts, while also stressing their ideological commitments and self-defensive character. The Outlaws retains particular importance as a literary witness to Freikorps experience and postwar radical nationalism, but its lasting value depends on reading it critically, alongside rather than in place of broader historical accounts.

StoryFlow

Delaney’s Flight into Outlawry from "The Outlaws". This flow traces how a false rape charge drives Del Delaney from an ordinary ranch hand’s life toward outlaw choices, then leaves him free to reconsider his…

Delaney’s Flight into Outlawry

This flow traces how a false rape charge drives Del Delaney from an ordinary ranch hand’s life toward outlaw choices, then leaves him free to reconsider his future.

Kate’s Claim to the Diamond M from "The Outlaws". This flow follows Kate Muldoon’s movement from threatened heir to the acknowledged owner of the Diamond M Ranch and a woman ready to help shape its future.

Kate’s Claim to the Diamond M

This flow follows Kate Muldoon’s movement from threatened heir to the acknowledged owner of the Diamond M Ranch and a woman ready to help shape its future.

The Contest for Roily from "The Outlaws". This flow traces Max Landon’s bid to convert the Diamond M into personal power, and how the community’s resistance ends his rule.

The Contest for Roily

This flow traces Max Landon’s bid to convert the Diamond M into personal power, and how the community’s resistance ends his rule.