Albert Hartlieb

Hartlieb in 1053

**Albert Philip Hartlieb** was a Fengelian military officer, nationalist, socialist revolutionary, propagandist, philosopher, and Precursorist. After much of the socialists fled Fengelia following the Revolution, Hartlieb remained in northern Fengelia, distributing propaganda underground before he was arrested in 1055 and killed the next year

## Biography

### Early life

Hartlieb was born in the industrial city of Dorstadt in 1020. His father was a trade union leader who served in the Landtag of the Duchy of Angil-Dorstadt as an SDF deputy after the SDF was unbanned, and Hartlieb grew up influenced by socialist thought. In 1040, he entered the University of Dorstadt and studied politics and Precursology, which was massively popular at the time due to breakthroughs in archaeological discoveries regarding the Precursor Civilizations. Hartlieb also became radicalized by the theories of Josua Kollmann, prominent Precursologist and nationalist

### Career

After graduating from university, Hartlieb found employment at a leftist newspaper publisher. However, in 1048, when the Sixth Fengelo-Aulmierrese War broke out, the publisher refused to publish pro-war propaganda and recruitment advertisements, and was shut down by the authorities. Hartlieb therefore joined the military, and entered the frontlines as an officer in 1050. In 1052, Hartlieb was transferred to Halsenburg and served as a member of the military's propaganda department. During this time, an associate of his father, Franz Altenburg, established contact with him. Hartlieb secretly published pro-socialist propaganda for the VDP, even though he himself was not against the war. He would occasionally also publish his own theories, combining VDP and SDF socialism with Kollmann's nationalist, Precursorist theories

### Revolution and Death

As the Fengelian Revolution broke out and Friederich II fled Fengelia, the VDP launched revolutions across Fengelia. Hartlieb was invited to be the head of the revolutionaries' propaganda department, and also organized militias. When Altenburg and the VDP's other leaders relocated to Vinchen, Hartlieb went into hiding and continued distributing propaganda underground. The police managed to track him down and arrest him in 1055, and Hartlieb was jailed in Brandenstein Prison. The next year, he was murdered by another innmate, who was not identified.

## Ideology and legacy

Hartlieb's ideology was a convoluted mess that managed to survive in some fringe circles of far-left and far-right. It was leftist in nature, but also opposed internationalist socialism and opposed the rejection of Fengelian nationalism, instead embracing Kollmann's nationalist theories that the Vengels are a pure, supreme race descended from the Precursor civilization of **Thül**. Though it supported the VDP's ideas of overthrowing the Fengelian monarchy, it supported the creation of a one-party dictatorship in its place, an idea that many of the VDP's socialists had entertained at one point or the other.

Hartlieb's legacy in the VDP was also controversial. Some saw him as a martyr for the revolution, though many were also understandably put off by his fringe theories. Nowadays, with advents in the knowledge of psychology and mental illness, some have deduced from Hartlieb's writings that he may not have been fully there, perhaps owing to 2 years of brutal warfare in the trenches