Johann Silvio Gesell was a German-Argentine economist, merchant, and the founder of Freiwirtschaft, an economic model for market socialism. In 1900 he founded the magazine Geld-und Bodenreform, but it soon closed for financial reasons. During one of his stays in Argentina, where he lived in a vegetarian commune, Gesell started the magazine Der Physiokrat together with Georg Blumenthal. In 1914, it closed due to censorship.

The Bavarian Soviet Republic, also known as the Munich Soviet Republic, was a short-lived unrecognised socialist state in Bavaria during the German Revolution of 1918–1919. It took the form of a workers' council republic. Its name is also sometimes rendered in English as the Bavarian Council Republic; the German term Räterepublik means a republic of councils or committees, and council or committee is also the meaning of the Russian word soviet. It was established in April 1919 after the demise of Kurt Eisner's government and sought to establish a socialist republic in Bavaria. It was overthrown less than a month later by elements of the German Army and the paramilitary Freikorps. Several individuals involved in its overthrow later joined the Nazi Party, even though Adolf Hitler himself had been, at least publicly, a supporter of the Bavarian Soviet Republic.