I can hardly help feeling depressed." It was the former Reichstag member Heinrich Georg Ritzel who brought Braun back into social and political life. He established contact with the Bavarian Social Democrat Wilhelm Hoegner and the former Reich Chancellor Joseph Wirth. Together they drew up plans for a possible postwar order, but Braun's attempt to have the Allies reinstate the previous democratic Prussian government failed because they had decided to abolish Prussia. Ritzel arranged modest financial support from the Swiss Workers' Relief Agency so that Braun at least no longer had to beg. Post-war Although he had been one of the most powerful men of the Weimar Republic, Braun largely disappeared from public memory after World War II. His ideas about post-war politics failed to attract interest. Neither his political views nor what he symbolized fit into the changed situation in Germany. The old Free State of Prussia was divided between the Federal Republic of Germany, the German Democratic Republic, Poland and the Soviet Union, and the idea of a genuinely democratic and republican socialism increasingly contradicted both the West's and the East's Cold War political ideas. In the Soviet Occupation Zone and the later East Germany, both as a Social Democrat and as a Prussian, he was too close to what was called revanchism to be appreciated. In West Germany, Konrad Adenauer, Braun's longtime domestic political adversary and a staunch opponent of both Prussianism and socialism, dominated the government for many years. In addition, Braun's commitment to the Weimar Republic was long overshadowed by his ultimate political failure and general passivity during the Prussian coup d'état. Otto Braun died in Locarno, Switzerland on 15 December 1955. It was not until the 1970s that historians began to take an interest in Otto Braun again. Hagen Schulze wrote a comprehensive biography of him in 1977 (see Further Reading). References Further reading Craig, Gordon. The End of Prussia (1984) Glees, Anthony. "Albert C. Grzesinski and the politics of Prussia, 1926-1930." English Historical Review 89.353 (1974): 814-834. online Muncy, Lysbeth W. "The Junkers and the Prussian Administration from 1918 to 1939." Review of Politics 9.4 (1947): 482-501. online Orlow, Dietrich. Weimar Prussia, 1918-1925: The Unlikely Rock of Democracy (1986). Orlow, Dietrich. Weimar Prussia, 1925-1933: The Illusion of Strength (1991). excerpt Schulze, Hagen, and Philip G. Dwyer. "Democratic Prussia in Weimar Germany, 1919–33." in Modern Prussian History 1830–1947 (Routledge, 2014) pp. 211–229. Schulze, Hagen.