() is a German phrase meaning "Work sets you free" or "Work makes one free". The slogan is known for appearing on the entrance of Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps. Origin The expression comes from the title of an 1873 novel by German philologist Lorenz Diefenbach, , in which gamblers and fraudsters find the path to virtue through labour. The phrase was also used in French () by Auguste Forel, a Swiss entomologist, neuroanatomist and psychiatrist, in his () (1920). In 1922, the of Vienna, an ethnic nationalist "protective" organization of Germans within Austria, printed membership stamps with the phrase . The phrase is also evocative of the medieval German principle of ("urban air makes you free"), according to which serfs were liberated after being a city resident for one year and one day. Use by the Nazis In 1933 the first communist prisoners were being rounded up for an indefinite period without charges. They were held in a number of places in Germany. The slogan was first used over the gate of a "wild camp" in the city of Oranienburg, which was set up in an abandoned brewery in March 1933 (it was later rebuilt in 1936 as Sachsenhausen). The slogan was placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps. The slogan's use was implemented by (SS) officer Theodor Eicke at Dachau concentration camp. From Dachau it was copied by Rudolf Höss, who had previously worked there, when he was appointed to create the original camp at Auschwitz, which became known as Auschwitz (or Camp) 1 and whose intended purpose was to incarcerate Polish political detainees. The Auschwitz I sign was made by prisoner-labourers including master blacksmith Jan Liwacz, and features an upside-down B, which has been interpreted as an act of defiance by the prisoners who made it. However, this is very unlikely as it means the guards wouldn't have noticed the letter for five years. Another explanation is a new way of writing that the Nazi party tried to implement during the war. This would explain why the curve on the R is the same size as the top curve on the B. In The Kingdom of Auschwitz, Otto Friedrich wrote about Rudolf Höss, regarding his decision to display the motto so prominently at Auschwitz: In 1938 the Austrian political cabaret writer Jura Soyfer and the composer Herbert Zipper, while prisoners at Dachau,