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Abstract: The article deals with the essays of the Austrian expressionist, activist, journalist and publisher Robert Muller (1887-1924) . The essays of Muller reflect his socio-political thinking. The author used his essays as test ground for consideration and approbation of his literary and socio-theoretical ideas. From the point of view of thematisation of the war and the following rethinking of this phenomenon influenced by the real war experience, one can mark out four phases. The first (pre-war) phase estimates the war positively as a way of progressive renewal of the human type. The second (war) phase shifts the stress of positive estimation upon the necessity of the war for realization of political ideas of “Germanization”. The third (war) phase is characterized by the refusal to estimate the phenomenon of the war and includes some subjective components, which are made as emotionless as possible in pursuit of objectivity. In the fourth (post-war) phase, the phenomenon of the war switches to the sphere of personal feelings and emotions. From a material object the person becomes a subject that suffers all the hardships and miseries of the war personally. The estimation of the war changes its polarity. The phases in question stand out as stages of the inner world transformation of the person that goes to war as a soldier and comes back as a pacifist.