Bortolotti is released on bail, charged now with immigration violations rather than a breach of the War Measures Act. By mid-January, Goldman returns to raising funds for the Spanish anarchists & continues to raise funds & awareness about Bortolotti's case. [Also during this month her niece & one-time secretary, Stella Ballantine, recovers from a nervous breakdown after nearly two years.]

[1- 30 -1940] -- France: Denis Langlois lives, Etrechy. Lawyer, anarchist & pacifist writer who does prison time for his beliefs ("Le cachot").

[3- 20 -1940] -- France: Célestin Freinet, French militant educator, arrested. Freinet is interned in various camps in the south of France. Eventually released, in May 1944 he joined the maquis FTP of Briançon, & was also active in the "Comité départemental de Libération de Gap."


[4- 1 -1940] -- Canada: Emma Goldman returns home to her Toronto apartment today, after regaining consciousness but not the ability to speak. She will suffer a second hemorrhage on May 6.


[5- 1 -1940] -- US: The second Catholic Worker House in Los Angeles opens. The first was started by George Putnam in the 1930s, but closed when he moved. This new house opened on East 12th Street, in the black ghetto just south of Skid Row, & was run by Jack Wagner. It closed before the end of WWII. Catholic Worker Houses were inspired by christian anarchists, notably Dorothy Day, Peter Maurin & Ammon Hennacy.
[Source: Jeff Dietrich, Reluctant Resister]

[5- 6 -1940] -- Canada: Stella Ballantine & Emma Goldman's brother Morris & his wife Babsie travel to Toronto to join Dorothy Rogers & Arthur Bortolotti at Emma's bedside after she suffers a second hemorrhage on today. On May 14 Red Emma will dance no more...


[5- 14 -1940] -- Canada: Feminist anarchist Emma Goldman (1869-1940) dies in Toronto, age 70, while raising money for anti-Franco forces in Spain. (See also Dec 21).

An outspoken birth control advocate & champion of women's rights.

Tributes & messages of condolence stream in from around the world; her body is taken to the Labor Lyceum in Toronto to allow friends & comrades to pay their last respects; Rev. Salem Bland delivers a eulogy.

Emma wrote, among much other material, My Disillusionment in Russia; Living My Life; Anarchism & Other Essays; The Place of the Individual in Society. See also Vision on Fire: Emma Goldman edited by David Porter. Left fielder for the 1998 Armageddonia Anarchists baseball team.

"If I can't dance I don't want to be part of your revolution."

After growing up in the US, then deported by the government during the Red Scare years, she has been banned from the country (a.k.a. "land of the free"), since 1931, except for a brief visit in 1934. Anti-anarchist laws are still used to prevent certain people from entering the US with their tainted foreign ideas. Her death finally allowed her a visa back into the US, where she was buried in Waldheim Cemetery, close to the Haymarket Martyrs in Chicago, her casket covered by an SIA-FAI flag & bouquets of flowers sent by friends & organizations across the nation.

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Emma Goldman

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See Karl Shapiro's Poem,"Death of Emma Goldman" in full at the Stan Iverson Archives.

The poem "Again at Waldheim" by Kenneth Rexroth, also concerns her death:

"Your stakes were on the turn Of a card whose face you knew you would not see."

In full, see http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/poems/1940s.htm

The Emma Goldman Papers

The Place of the Individual in Society, by Emma Goldman

Patriotism: A Menace to Liberty, by Emma Goldman

Minorities versus Majorities, by Emma Goldman

excerpt from Living My Life, by Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman Svartsjuka

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[Details / context]

[5- 14 -1940] -- Karl Shapiro's early poem, "Death of Emma Goldman," describes that passionate anarchist, "dark conscience of the family" (her own & humanity's), with gentle appreciation. At the same time, it reviles the people who, after her death, called her immoral because she never married her lover, Alexander Berkman:

Triumphant at the final breath, Their senile God, their cops, All the authorities & friends pro tem Passing her pillow, keeping her concerned. But the cowardly obit was already written: Morning would know she was a common slut. — Karl Shapiro, excerpt, "Death of Emma Goldman," From Person, Place, & Thing (1942) (texts: composer) (1985-86) (all from: E.G.: A Musical Portrait of Emma Goldman) op.78 My Marriage (4 min.) (text: Karen Ruoff Kramer & composer) Russia - America - ? (2 min.) by Leonard J. Lehrman, Where Do I Belong? (3 min.); If I Can't Dance (4 min.); Emma (3 min.) http://ljlehrman.artists-in-residence.com/LeonardLehrman_genre.html

[5- 14 -1940] -- US: Richard Kostelanetz, prolific American artist, author, critic & anarchist, lives, New York City. Editor of "Liberty" magazine.

[5- 17 -1940] -- US: Emma Goldman is buried in Waldheim Cemetery, Chicago, close to the Haymarket Martyrs, her casket covered by an SIA-FAI flag & bouquets of flowers sent by friends & organizations across the nation.

Now in Waldheim where the rain Has fallen careless & unthinking For all an evil century’s youth, Where now the banks of dark roses lie, What memory lasts, Emma, of you, Or of the intrepid comrades of your grave, Of Piotr, of “mutual aid,” Against the iron clad flame throwing Course of time?                          Your stakes were on the turn Of a card whose face you knew you would not see. — Kenneth Rexroth, excerpt, "Again at Waldheim"

[5- 31 -1940] -- A memorial meeting for Emma Goldman is held at New York's Town Hall, presided over by Leonard Abbott; films of Goldman in Spain, Canada, & of her funeral are shown; speakers include Norman Thomas, Rudolf Rocker, Roger Baldwin, Harry Kelly, Carlo Tresca, Eliot White, Rose Pesotta labor organizer & anarchist in the ILGWU, Martin Gudell, Dorothy Rogers, & Harry Weinberger.anarchist feminist

[7- 5 -1940] -- Carl Einstein (1885-1940) dies, a suicide to prevent capture by the Nazis, Lestelle-Bétharram (Basses-Pyrenées), France (or July 3?).

Poet, writer, art historian & an anarchist combatant in the Spanish Revolution.

Nephew of the famous physicist, Albert Einstein.

alt; Karl Einstein

A plaque in the Boel-Bezing cemetery (Atlantic Pyrenees) remarks on his fight for freedom in Spain:

"Where the Column advances, one collectivizes.

The land is given to the community, the agricultural proletarians, slaves of caciques which they were, metamorphose themselves as free men.

One passes from agrarian feudalism to free Communism."

— Extract from his funeral speech for Durruti

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Last Escape, Exile & Murder:

Nelly Sachs escapes to Sweden, Gertrud Kolmar is murdered in an extermination camp.

Theodor W. Adorno, Bertolt Brecht, Hermann Broch, Alfred Döblin, Lion Feuchtwanger, Max Horkheimer, Heinrich & Thomas Mann, Arnold Schoenberg, Franz Werfel escape to the US.

Walter Benjamin commits suicide at the Spanish border.

Suicides: Carl Einstein, Walter Hasenclever, Ernst Toller, Kurt Tucholsky, Ernst Weiß, Stefan Zweig.

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See the Carl Einstein page in the Antiauthoritarian Encyclopedia ,
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/EinsteinCarl.htm

[7- 21 -1940] -- Spain: César Terron Abad (1915-1940) dies, à Villar de Otero (province of Léon). Militant syndicalist & anarchist guérillero. Previously involved in the anarchist insurgency of 1933 (December 9), taking over the city of Fabero & proclaiming Libertarian Communism. Captain of the 210e battalion (of the 192e brigade), during the Spanish Revolution, distinguished in the battle of Mazuco. With the loss of Asturies in October 1937, César Terron forms a group of about 30 guerrillas who continue badgering & combating the fascists. Today they are attacked & Cesar Terron takes a bullet in the head.

[8- 16 -1940] -- Raphael Friedeberg (1863-1940), legendary German anarchist & medical doctor, dies. Die Straße Settled in Acona sanitarium community (GERMANS IN THE TREETOPS, WAY UP HIGH) in 1904 (14.3.1863 - 16.8.1940)

[9- 19 -1940] -- US: A Journalist 'discovers' Jay Fox, the "sole surviving anarchist" farming at Home Colony, Washington.

[10- 25 -1940] -- Morocco: In one of his last letters from a refugee camp in Casablanca Pierre RamusPierre Ramus today writes to an American comrade, "In a time where so many without a higher ideal must live & die, I suffer with my ideals & am ready to die with them."
Austrian writer, militant pacifist & anarchist, Ramus died in 1942 fleeing from Nazi-occupied Europe, aboard a ship to Veracruz, Mexico.

[11- 12 -1940] -- France: Jacky Toublet lives (1940-2002). French anarcho-syndicalist, militant, son of Julien Toublet, director of the weekly Le Monde Libertaire.

[11- 14 -1940] -- France: Jacques Mesnil (pseudonym of Jean-Jacques Dwelshauvers; 1872-1940) dies, Montmaur-en-Diois. Militant anarchist, journalist, historian & art critic. Met his partner Clara Koetlitz, in Florence, where they lived for 10 years & shared a passion for Renaissance & art history. Mesnil contributed to the Italian, Belgian & French anarchist press, & wrote Le Mouvement anarchiste, le Mariage libre, Esprit révolutionnaire et syndicaliste, Frans Masereel, as well as several works on the Florentine Renaissance, Botticelli, Raphaël, etc.

As the Germans invaded western Europe, Mesnil fled, ultimately to a monastery in France were, in the words of Fritz Saxl, "he died a refugee in a monastery on a bed of straw." Whether he took his own life or died naturally was never clear.
http://www.dictionaryofarthistorians.org/dwelshauversj.htm

[11- 29 -1940] -- Spain: Miguel Abós (or Arbós) Serena (1889-1940) dies (28th or 29th?). Anarcho-syndicalist, militant de la CNT de Saragossa & Barcelona. Captured by the fascists during the revolution of 1936, he refused their request to collaborate & was imprisoned. Eventually escaping, he slipped into France where he was interned in the concentration camps of Barcarés & Septfonds where he died.


[1- 19 -1941] -- France: Paul Reclus (son of Elie, nephew of Élisée) dies.
Anarchist militant, engineer & professor.
[Details / context]

[2- 6 -1941] -- France: Maximilien Luce, 82, dies. French painter & engraver. Important artist in Pointillism & social realism. A reader of Jean Grave's "La révolte," & eventually his friend. In 1887, Pissaro, Seurat & Signac inducted him into their group of neo-impressionists.

Luce produced many drawings for anarchist newspapers such as "Le père Peinard," "La révolte," "L'en dehors."

During the repression of 1894 Luce was imprisoned as a "dangerous anarchist" whose drawings were judged "inciting people to revolt".

[Details / context]

[2- 15 -1941] -- France: Henri Portier lives (d.2007) Anarcho-syndicaliste, pacifiste, antimilitariste, & historien du mouvement Freinet.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/gallery/galleryindex.htm#HenriPortier

[3- 17 -1941] -- France: Jules Sellenet, known as Francis Boudoux (1881-1941), dies. French militant, antimilitarist & anarcho-syndicalist.

Member of "l'Association Internationale Antimilitariste," he was arrested numerous times for his antiwar activities & also for offences "related to industrial disputes." Boudoux also fought in Spain with the Durruti Column.

[Details / context]

[8- 6 -1941] --

In Slumberpuzzleland Alice Becker-Ho

Alice Becker-Ho, also known as Alice Debord, lives, Shanghai. is the author of Les Princes du Jargon (1993), as well as numerous works of poetry. Becker became involved in the Situationist International in 1963 & began a long lasting relationship with Guy Debord, they married August 5, 1972. Together they published "Le Jeu de la Guerre" [The Game of War] in 1987, an expanded edition of which was republished by éditions Gallimard, in 2006. She was Debord's partner until his death in 1994. http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/chronology/chronology.html | [Situationist Resources]

[12- 7 -1941] -- England: Charles Radcliffe lives. Cultural critic, political activist & theorist, anarchist, renowned for his association with the Situationist movement in the 1960s. Editor of the magazine "Heatwave", which was closely associated with the Chicago magazine "Rebel Worker", which included the surrealists Penelope & Franklin Rosemont, & Bernard Marszalek... The critic Jon Savage says that one piece alone by Radcliffe "laid the foundation for the next 20 years of sub-cultural theory."


[12- 25 -1941] --

Georges Durupt (1880-1941), French anarchiste, dies. [Details / context]

[2- 8 -1942] -- France: Lucien Barbedette (1890-1942) dies, Luxeuil-the-Baths. French professor & anarchist who wrote for many newspapers & reviews: "L'en Dehors," "La voix libertaire," "Terre libre," "Le semeur," "Le combat syndicaliste." He also participated in Sébastien Faure's Anarchist Encyclopedia.

"La violence appelle la violence; les révolutions sont les contre-parties fatales de l'oppression légalement organisée."

[3- 7 -1942] -- US: IWW founder, anarchist labor organizer Lucy Parsons dies, Chicago, Illinois. Aka Lucy Ella Gonzales Parsons, she often went by Lucy Gonzales & denying her African American roots.

[3- 12 -1942] -- Spain: Juan Montseny (aka Federico Urales) dies (1864-1942). Teacher, novelist, publisher, anarchist militant, companion of Teresa Mañé (Soledad Gustavo) & father of Federica Montseny.
[Details / context]

[3- 13 -1942] -- France: George Mathias Paraf-Javal (1858-1942) dies, Montluçon. Intransigent individualist.

A founder of "Ligue Antimilitariste" &, with Émile Armand, the anarchist colony at Vaux (1902-07, with 400 members [See Armand's, "A Visit to L'Anarchie", at the Stan Iverson Archives]). Paraf-Javal wrote for "Libertaire," & authored numerous booklets, such as Les faux droits de l'homme et les vrais (1907), as well as math & physics texts (published in Spanish for Francisco Ferrer's Escuela Moderna).

[More regarding Armand]

[4- 8 -1942] -- André Girard (known as Max Buhr) (1860-1942) dies. Anarchist militant & trade unionist. See the Anarchist Encyclopedia,
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/GirardAndre.htm

[5- 11 -1942] -- France: Georges Yvetot (1868-1942) dies, Paris. Typesetter & corrector, anarchist, syndicalist, anti-patriot, pacifist.

[5- 20 -1942] -- Pierre Ramus (aka Rudolf Grossman), fleeing from Nazi-occupied Europe, boards ship for Veracruz, Mexico. Austrian writer, pacifist & prolific anarchist propagandist, he dies enroute on May 27th, from a heart attack. In one of his last letters, from a refugee camp in Casablanca, Ramus wrote, "In a time where so many without a higher ideal must live & die, I suffer with my ideals & am ready to die with them."

[5- 27 -1942] -- Pierre Ramus (aka Rudolf Grossman) (1882-1942) dies, fleeing from Nazi-occupied Europe.

Austrian writer, pacifist & propagandist. Wrote for Johann Most's newspaper & organized the German FKAD (Federation of Anarchist Communists of Germany) parallel to Rudolf Rocker's FAUD. Fleeing Nazi-occupied Europe, he had boarded a ship on the 20th, enroute to Veracruz, Mexico.

[6- 8 -1942] -- José Pellicer-Gandia (1912-1942) executed. Spanish anarchist, member of Durruti's famed "Iron Column" during the Spanish Revolution of 1936.

After the defeat of the Republicans Pellicer was arrested & condemned to death by a fascist military tribunal.
... show details

Ximo QUEIROL: The Iron Column was organised on the basis of groups, groups of 10, & 10 such groups made up one centuria. The group leader was appointed by you so he was your group leader. & then a centuria delegate was appointed by the 10 groups that made up your centuria. http://recollectionbooks.com/siml/library/utopia.htm

[6- 15 -1942] -- Russia: Revolutionary anarchist Vera Nikolaevna Figner, who plotted to explode the Tsar & later directed the Kropotkin Museum, dies in Moscow at age 89.

[Details / context]

[6- 21 -1942] -- Spain: Agustín Remiro Manero (1904-1942) killed during an attempted prison escape. Remiro, a Spanish anarchist, joined the Durruti Column in July 1936, commanding a battalion of machine-guns.

Interned like thousands of other Spanish refugees in the camps in southern France, Agustin Remiro returned to Spain to continue fighting against the fascists. Captured & condemned to death.

[6- 27 -1942] -- US: FBI announces capture of eight Nazi saboteurs who had been put ashore from a submarine on New York's Long Island.

http://www.sonic.net/~books/new.html

[7- 14 -1942] -- France: Sébastien Faure (1858-1942) dies.

Studied to be a Jesuit priest; was a candidate for the Marxist Workers Party, but under the influence of Peter Kropotkin, Élisée Reclus, & Joseph Tortelier he moved towards anarchism. Closely associated with Louise Michel, he became a major figure in his own right, & one of the best-known anarchists in the country.

Faure wrote for numerous papers & journals, & along with books he wrote, he initiated the important four volume l'Encyclopédie Anarchiste.

[Details / context]

See also our own modest effort, the online Anti-authoritarian Encyclopedia.

[7- 20 -1942] -- Morocco: Italian militant anarchist Paolo Antonini dies. Fought in the Spanish Revolution, escaping to Morocco in 1939 following the defeat. He & several anarchists friends seized a trawler in an effort to get to Gibraltar, but the act of piracy fails & Antonini arrested. He dies in prison in Casablanca, victim of the ill treatments of his French jailers.

[7- 24 -1942] -- Spain: Juan Peiro Belis (1887-1942) dies, executed by the fascists, in Valencia.

A Spanish anarcho-syndicalist, Peiro became Minister of Industry in the Republican government in the late 30s.

... show details

His brief participation in the government during the Spanish Revolution was anathema to anarchists of principle. Collaborationists ('pajaros carpinteros', woodpeckers), they argued, undermined the Revolution (turning it into simply a "civil" war), did nothing to prevent defeat by the fascists nor the treason of the Stalinists who murdered the anarchists & other "renegades."

In 1939 Peiro, like most Spaniards fearing for their lives, took refuge in France, but he was handed over to the fascists by Pétain & shot today for refusing to collaborate with the Franco government. (His son, José Peiro, devoted a book to him.)

http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/02ref.htm#18/1887
http://www.ephemanar.net/fevrier18.html

[8- 3 -1942] -- Russia: Francesco Ghezzi (1893-1942), Italian anarcho-syndicalist, dies.

A victim of the Stalin's Great Purge, Ghezzi perished in the Siberian Vorkuta concentration camp. He had been hospitalized, beaten, tortured, now a mere skeleton, dying. First arrested in 1929, during Stalin's consolidation of power. An international campaign for his release got him out of prison, but he was not allowed to leave Russia. He was arrested again in 1937 (at the same time fellow Italian anarchist Otello Gaggi disappears in the Gulag).

[11- 16 -1942] -- Australia: The murder of the Italian-Australian anarchist Fransesco Fantin in an internment camp at the hands of fascists.

Fantin's murder effectively changed Government policy on internment of those who could prove they were antifascist.

Fantin's life & his death, 60 years later, has inspired a play, radioplay, & a musical performance composed to accompany an exhibition of photographs of Fantin.

[Details / context]

[11- 17 -1942] -- US: Hobo organizer, anarchist & cultural drop-out Ben Reitman dies.

Dr. Ben Reitman crusaded, was beaten, tarred, feathered, jailed, & run out of town for his efforts on behalf of the rights of women to control their own bodies; & "his lifetime efforts to educate & improve the health of hoboes," of which he had been & at heart remained one, "addressed conditions of the homeless that are with us today."

Mecca Reitman Carpenter's book, No Regrets: Dr. Ben Reitman & the Women Who Loved Him, is a careful & loving biographical memoir of her father, the colorful & controversial subject of two other recent studies (Roger Bruns, The Damndest Radical: The Life & World of Ben Reitman, Chicago's Celebrated Social Reformer, Hobo King, & Whorehouse Physician [1987] & Suzanne Poirier Chicago's War on Syphilis, 1937-1940 [1995]).
http://www.infoshop.org/texts/no_regrets.html

[1- 9 -1943] -- Giovanni Rossi (aka Cardias) dies, aged 87. Italian veterinarian, teacher, collectivist anarchist, a founder of Cittadella Colony &, in Brazil, the Cecilia Colony. See the Anarchist Encyclopedia page,
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/RossiGiovanni.htm


[1- 11 -1943] -- US: Assassination of anarchist militant Carlo Tresca, New York City.

Murdered by an unknown assailant. Gentle & courtly in person, Tresca was an outspoken foe of Fascism in Germany & Italy & of Communism in the Soviet Union. The FBI accumulated a mere 1,358 pages on this outstanding citizen, they revealed on February 25, 2000, under the Freedom of Information Act.

Coppola describes his opera as "a presentation of the circumstances & the characters involved in a dramatic tragedy." In Sacco & Vanzetti, the characters in the prologue are Carlo Tresca, a Protestant Minister, a Roman Catholic Priest & a congregation of worshipers. Carlo Tresca was a leader of the Italian Anarchist Movement in America. His ghost functions as the narrator throughout the entire opera, introducing & commenting on characters & situations as they arise... We are shown the suspicion, hatred, & fear of those already in America toward those newly arrived. This darkness of humanity stands in contrast to the seeming piety of the religious faithful. Those 40 years have not changed anything. Tresca forewarns us that they will be no different in the 1920s & beyond, saying (in French), "The more things change, the more they stay the same."

Carlo Tresca edited a number of papers which stood up for workers rights & denounced the hypocrisy & corruption of those in power. One of his favorite targets was the clergy, whom he attacked relentlessly. Tresca was a skilled labor agitator, leading strikes & urging workers to stand up for their rights. Served on the famed John Dewey Commission, which declared Trotsky "not guilty" of the charges presented at the Moscow Purge Trials. Once Tresca took such positions, the Communists conducted a campaign of character assassination aimed at destroying his influence in the antifascist movements. See Gallagher's All the Right Enemies.

See also H. L. Mencken article on Tresca, http://www.theothersideofkim.com/index.php/forums/viewthread/11610/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_Tresca
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAtresca.htm

[3- 5 -1943] -- Tunisia: Bernard Baissat lives, Nabeul.

French journalist, pacifist & libertarian filmmaker. Professor of Italian & French Letters, in 1967 he becomes an alternative journalist, an "historian with camera"...

[Details / context]

[3- 7 -1943] -- [March 7] Spain:

José García Hernández «Alcubillero», a member of the guerrilla group of Juan Nieto Martínez («Cuco»), is killed at Collado del Cortijo Las Cruces, district de Gergal (Almeria), along with Juan Membrive Membrive (not, as Guardia Civil F. Aguado Sanchez claims, with Sebastian Romero Magaña «El Marranica»).

Source: Dictionnaire des guérilleros et resistants antifranquistas.

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[3- 27 -1943] -- [March 27]

néo-malthusien Le 27 mars 1943, naissance de Francis Ronsin à Paris. Historien du mouvement néo-malthusien. Source: Ephéméride Anarchiste

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Use your back button to return to your last page

or visit March 27

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[3- 29 -1943] -- Spain: Nine members of the "Juventudes libertarias" (anarchist youths) an underground group opposing the fascist military takeover, are arrested & garroted at the "Modelo" prison. They are just a few of the tens of thousands who met, or will meet, a similar fate in the early years of the Franco dictatorship.

Joaquin Pallarés Tomás & others of the Pallarés action group are executed.

The Pallarés group was one of the very first anti-Franco urban guerrilla groups, starting its operations almost as soon as the civil war ended in 1939. In addition to guerrilla activity, they did remarkable work on the reorganisation of the Libertarian Youth of Catalonia.

Captured by the police erlier this month & tortured; within days, Joaquin Pallarés is executed (today) alongside Fransisco Alvarez, Fernando Ruiz, Francisco Atares, José Serra, Benito Santi, Juan Aquilla, Arguelles & Tresols; other members of the group — Vincente Iglesias, Jos Urrea, Manuel Gracia, Rafael Olalde & Hilaria Foldevilla — have their lives spared.

[4- 5 -1943] -- England: Peter Miller (1943-1999), labor activist, militant anarchist, dies of cancer. Trotskyite until he met Albert Meltzer. Involved with Anarchist Black Cross (ABC), Leicester Secular Society; wrote for "Black Flag," "Freedom," "Cienfugos Press Anarchist Review," "Anarchy Magazine" & editor, in the 1970s, of the anarchist cultural zine "Z Review."


[5- 10 -1943] -- France: Régis Messac, a teacher, union organizer, resistance member, novelist & poet (30 books in all), pacifist & anarchist, is arrested during the German occupation & sent to the concentration camps — from which he does not return.

[Details / context]

[6- 24 -1943] -- México: Otto Rühle (1874-1943) dies. German Left communist of the Spartacist League (anti-Leninist, it included Liebknecht, Luxemburg, Mehring, et al. Council Communists have much in common with libertarian communism & most strains of anarchism).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_communism

[7- 8 -1943] -- Spain: Esteban Pallarols Xirgu (aka Riera), dies, shot in Barcelona.

Militant Spanish anarcho-trade unionist. Involved in clandestine activities & first secretary on the national Committee of the CNT. One among so many, famous or anonymous, victim of pro-Franco fascist repression.
Ephéméride anarchiste, 8 juillet

[7- 19 -1943] -- France: During WWII, an anarchist congress meets clandestinely near Toulouse (19-20th), at the farm of Alphonse & Paule Tricheux, to assess the political situation & attempt to reorganize the anarchist movement. Among those attending are André Arru, Voline, Maurice & Charles Laisant, etc.

http://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/bulletin/issues/kslb31.htm#arru

[8- 3 -1943] -- André Arru, an anarchist organizer in the French underground during WWII, is arrested.

The walls were stained with blood — the blood of fleas squashed on a daily basis...

We were ... moved to the political wing with the Gaullists & communists...& when the National Liberation Movement orchestrated a breakout in March 1944, the communists refused to open our cell on the grounds that "we were not patriots." On the night of 24-25 April 1944, the Franc Tireurs et Partisans (FTP) resistance group organised an escape with assistance from inside the prison. This time we were included.

[ More on the arrests ]

[8- 24 -1943] -- England: Simone Weil dies, Ashford, Kent. Seven people attend her funeral. Mystic & anarchist sympathizer.

[9- 12 -1943] -- Italy: Popular uprising against the Nazis, in Piombino, a steel town with a great libertarian tradition & a tradition above all of revolutionary syndicalism. Among the anarchists in the uprising is Adriano Vanni, a Maremma partisan also on the local CLN (National Liberation Committee, a body made up of a spectrum of anti-fascist parties) stands out.


[10- 2 -1943] -- Machine Gun Franklin Rosemont loaded this a.m., armed & dangerous. Author, poet, editor, major figure of the Surrealist movement in the US, Black Swan Press, director of the Chicago publishing house, Charles H. Kerr & Co. Companion of artist Penelope Rosemont.



[10- 17 -1943] -- France: André Respaut (1898-1973) arrested & tortured before being sent to Buchenwald, where he was known for his courage & generosity — saving several deportees from death.

From 1939 to 1943, he was active in the resistance & the group "Combat." A lifelong anarchist, he worked with an association of deportees, & wrote the books Buchenwald terre maudite (1946), Sociologie fédéraliste libertaire (1961).

André was released on April 11, 1945 by the Americans.

[12- 5 -1943] -- France: National Plenem of the Regionals of the CNT in Exile in France is held today, in Marseilles.

Originally arranged for 5 December 1943 in St Henri, it is held in the end in La Fare (Marseilles) amidst the greatest difficulty (the Nazi repression).

[12- 5 -1943] -- France: National Plenum of the Regionals of the CNT in Exile held in Marseilles.

Originally planned to be held at St Henri, it is held in La Fare (Marseilles) amid the greatest difficulty (the Nazi repression). Those attending included Juanel, Acracio Bartolomé, Sanclemente, Merino, Francisco García (Marseilles), Buenacasa (Free Zone), Germán & Berruezo (Cantal department), Señer (Toulouse), Paulino Malsand (Bordeaux) Cruz & the Béziers committee.

[1- 23 -1944] -- Yikes?: Norwegian printmaker/painter Edvard Munch (1863-1944), screams no more. One of the hordes of smiley-faced-Scandinavians. Refused any contact with Nazi invaders or collaborators. One of his last works, in 1943, was a lithograph of his old anarchist friend, Hans Jaeger (1854-1910). Left all the work in his possession to the city of Oslo: 1,000 paintings, 15,400 prints, 4500 water colors & drawings, six sculptures.

Illness, insanity & death are the black angels that kept watch over my cradle & accompanied me all my life.

— Edvard Munch

[Details / context]

[1- 29 -1944] -- France: Death of the anarchist Gérard Duverge, aka Fred Durtain, aka Chevalier, following his arrest & torture yesterday by the Gestapo.


[1- 29 -1944] -- Germany: The bricklayer, Wilhelm Schmitz dies in prison; the circumstances of his death have never been properly clarified.

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Militants in Germany were being arrested & killed by the Nazi's. Michael Delissen from Munchengladbach was beaten to death by the Gestapo in December 1936. Anton Rosinke from Dusseldorf was murdered in February 1937.

Arrests in 1937 brought the number of members of the outlawed FAUD (anarcho-syndicalist Free Union of German Workers) in Gestapo clutches to 89.

It took a year to build the case against them. These male & female comrades were charged with "preparing acts of high treason" & were brought before the courts in January & February of 1938.

The Duisburg lathe-operator, Emil Mahnert, according to the testimony of four other inmates, was hurled from two storys up by a police torturer. Ernst Holtznagel was dispatched to the notorious 999 punishment battalion, where he was killed.

[Details / context]

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[2- 2 -1944] -- Italy: Salvatore Cassia lives, (1944-2002). Electronics worker, he discovered anarchism in the public library at Trapani which had a rich collection of texts & newspapers from the 19th century. Actively involved in campaigns around the police murder of Giuseppe Pinelli (made famous by Dario Fo’s play Accidental Death of an Anarchist where, like Pinelli, an anarchist is thrown from a police station window) & for the release & pardoning of the framed Valpreda & his comrades.


[2- 17 -1944] -- Italy: Pietro Bruzzi ("Brutius") captured & shot by the fascists, in Melegnano.

Bruzzi was a young anarchist who spent several years in France & fought in Spain in 1936. He was extradited to Italy & sent to the island of Ponza during WWII. He escaped & joined the anarchist resistance in Lombardy & began publishing the clandestine newspaper "L'adunata dei libertari" in 1943.

See Tratto da G.Sacchetti, "Resistenza e Guerra Sociale," in "Rivista Storica dell'Anarchismo," N1 Gennaio-Giugno, 1995.

http://orpheus.ucsd.edu/speccoll/visfront/
http://isole.ecn.org/ponte/documenti/ares.php
http://endehors.org/news/6636.shtml
http://www.municipio.re.it/manifestazioni/berneri/fedeli.htm

[2- 29 -1944] -- Félix Fénéon (1861-1944) dies. Feneon, the art critic, novelist, anarchist & friend of Seurat, Paul Signac, Théo van Rysselberghe, Henri-Edmond Cross, André Gide, et al.

A kind of cultural "terrorist" who may have been involved in terrorist acts of a less literary nature (one biographer claims he actually bombed a restaurant).

Standing from left to right: Felix Fénéon, Henri Gheon. Seated, left to right: Feliz Le Dantec, Emile Verhaeren, Francis Viele-Griffen, Henri-Edmond Cross, André Gide, Maurice Maeterlinck.

*To anarchist Felix Fénéon, charged with illegally carying a firearm, the judge said:

"You know you had on you everything you need to commit a murder?"

Fénéon replied:

"Yes, but I also had on me everything I needed to commit a rape."

Born in Austria in 1891, a mathematician, physicist & philosopher, Edgar was an historian & sociologist of science (The Social Origins of Modern Science), a member of the Vienna Circle & a teacher at Vienna People’s University. His wife, Ella, taught English & German literature. At the onset of the Nazi occupation in 1938, they fled to England & ultimately obtained refugee status in the US, although other family members perished in the Holocaust. His son, Paul Zilsel, was a physicist & long-time Seattle anarchist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Zilsel

To me, Cage was essentially a thirties lefty, who was more interesting than others who came out of that period because he made some original perceptions not only about art but especially about the place of politics in art, & then the possible role of art for politics, all the while remaining true to the sentiment of that time. In my sense of Cage, Zen & chance & everything else came afterwards; they are merely icing on this essentially anarchist cake.

— Richard Kostelanetz http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bright/cage/biography.html

French hair dresser & anarchist propagandist. Ardent anarchist, as is obvious in everything he does but in hairdressing. Wrote for "La Vrille" from 1903 to 1914, & some of his anti-military articles earned him jail time. Member of Cercle d'Etudes sociales & the Fédération Communiste Anarchiste & wrote for "Libertaire."

Collaborated with Sébastien Faure. His son Germinal was killed by the police in 1931. It was Benoît Broutchoux & Charles Malato who spoke at the massive gathering at Louise Michel's final graveside ceremony.

http://projekte.free.de/dada/btip002.htm

Trained as a teacher, influenced by Ramón Acín, involved with CNT, helped found the "Council of Aragon" (October 6, 1936), & after the Communist suppression of the Council joined "Columna Confederal Roja y Negra" (28 División Asca- so) & enrolled in the guerrilla "Los Libertadores."

A refugee in France following defeat of the Republicans, he was interned in the Vernet concentration camp, but escaped & began guerrilla actions in Spain, helping to free Manuel Lozano Guillén & Bernabé Argüelles from prison. During WWII he was part of a resistance network made up exclusively of Spanish libertarians, organizing the "Pat O'Leary" group, helping many thousands of Jews, allied POWs & antifascists to escape.

The famous so-called SOE "Pat O'Leary" network was in fact organised by the militant anarcho-syndicalist Francisco Ponzán Vidal & known throughout the south as the "Grupo Ponzan."

Arrested in 1943, Ponzán Vidal is today shot & burned alive by his Nazi captors, two days before the Spanish guerrillas liberate Toulouse.

http://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/resistance.htm http://www.nodo50.org/foroporlamemoria/documentos/2004/fponzan_04082004.htm
http://raforum.info/article.php3?id_article=2023&lang=en
http://www.periodicocnt.org/306nov2004/29/
http://direct.perso.ch/aff1404.html

Photographs show them armed & crouched behind barricades in scenes one could easily mistake for the street fighting in Barcelona in July 1936. Before long they were supported by regular troops from the Normandy beach-heads.

The first units to enter Paris & reach the Hotel de Ville were from the 9th Tank Company of the French 2nd Armoured Division. But the lead half tracks bore the names of Spanish battlefields — "Guadalajara"; "Teruel"; "Madrid" & "Ebro." They were manned by Spaniards, of whom there were 3,200 serving in the 2nd Armoured.

Many of these were veterans of the 26th Division (the anarchist Durruti Column) who had entered the French army from the prison camps in 1939 & gone on to fight in North Africa.

http://www.ateneuenciclopedicpopular.org/indexArticles.htm

The Maquis blow up the road & rail bridges & position themselves on surrounding hills with machine guns. The battle rages from 3:00pm till noon tomorrow. Three Maquis were wounded, 110 Germans killed, 200 wounded & the rest surrendered. The German commander committed suicide!

[Details / context]

Paris is occupied by the Maquis, driving out the Nazis; but the armed presence of Spanish anarchists within the Maquis causes alarm & the British Home Office gives a directive to penetrate the London-based Spanish anarchists.

Divisions between middle class pacifists & liberals, involved with the British anarchist movement during the war, & the rest of the movement, causes one split. Reaction against those from Spain who entered the bureaucracy during the Civil War & became ossified in those positions — tending to rely on the Allied cause rather than resistance — causes another split, though these divisions are not clear-cut until later.

========================================
'Forgotten Heroes: Spanish Resistance in France 1939-45'
http://www.ateneuenciclopedicpopular.org/antiga/texto/Articles/Articles6.htm
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/images/spain/MAQUIS06-300x212.jpe

Some 3,000 guerrillas (including many anarchists) mount two main attacks across the Pyrenees in 1944 against the Allied-supported fascists.

[Details / context]

A US Defence Department certified schizophrenic who deliberately sent himself amphetamine-crazy on a military bazooka range.

To clarify his philosophy, Grogan attended a Dialectics of Liberation conference where he received an ovation for his speech ...

& then informed the audience the first man to deliver it was AdoIf Hitler...

"Emmett Grogan was a wonderful storyteller, & Ringolevio is a great book."

— Jerry Garcia

http://theband.hiof.no/articles/lw_oui_grogan.html

Daily Bleed Saint, 2003-4

Novelist, founder of San Francisco's "Diggers."
http://www.bigmagic.com/pages/blackj/column9.htm#emmett
http://www.diggers.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diggers_%28theater%29
http://www.bobsboots.com/CDs/cd-e09.html


[12- 4 -1944] -- France: Louis Louvet & Simone Larcher begin publishing "Ce Qu’il Faut Dire" (What Must Be Said).

On October 22nd they sent out a circular announcing the publication of their newspaper, in homage to Sébastien Faure (using the same name of a paper he first began on April 2, 1916). This new paper debuts today, with the assistance an old collaborator of Lib: Pierre Mualdès. A few days hence, on December 10, the editors of C.Q.F.D. organize in Paris, with Charles Auguste Bontemps, the first public anarchist assembly after the Libération.

[12- 10 -1944] -- France: The first public anarchist assembly following the Libération (WWII) is staged today. Organized by the editors of the newly revived newspaper "Ce Qu’il Faut Dire" (What Must Be Said) & Charles Auguste Bontemps.


[12- 12 -1944] -- US: ¶ Edie Parker & Joan Vollmer move into communal apartment at 419 West 115th Street in New York. Beatsters Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg & William Burroughs end up living at the apartment, & Herbert Huncke is a frequent visitor..


[12- 16 -1944] -- On or about today the first number appears, of the newspaper "Le Rebelle", organe de combat et d'expression libertaire. Published without authorization, it changes its name to "L'Insurgé" (The Insurrectionist) in December 1945.
En-tête du numéro 7 de juin-juillet 1946

[12- 21 -1944] -- France: The anarchist paper "Le Libertaire," originally founded in 1895 by Sébastien Faure & Louise Michel, then as the organ of the l’Union Anarchiste (1920-1939), resumes publishing once again following the defeat of the Nazis.


[1- 1 -1945] -- Fritz Brupbacher (1874-1945) dies. A Swiss physician, studied medicine & psychiatry. An antimilitarist, revolutionary syndicalist & libertarian socialist, became in particular the friend of James Guillaume, Pytor Kropotkin, Vera Figner & Monatte. Practiced medicine with his wife Paulette Raygrodski, both active in the néo-Malthusian movement, for the right to abortion & a free sexuality. Fritz wrote the introduction to The Confession of the Russian anarchist Michael Bakunin (translated by Paulette), wrote Marx et Bakounine, Bakounine ou le démon de la révolte, & the autobiography 60 Years of Heresy, as well as numerous pamphlets.

"Bakounine redeviendra actuel le jour où l'homme commencera à trouver insupportables le despotisme bourgeois et le despotisme prolétarien."

[1- 4 -1945] -- Italy: In Raguse, Sicily, Maria Occhipinti, lies down in front of army trucks which come to find new young conscripts to incorporate into the new Italian army. Within minutes, a crowd surrounds the soldiers, forcing them to release their recruits, but kill a demonstrator & set off a major revolt.

[Details / context]

[1- 14 -1945] -- France: Jean Ajalbert dies.

Avocat, poète impressionniste, écrivain naturaliste & anarchiste. Active in the decadent movement with Tailhade, et al., transposing the effects of impressionist painting into poetry.

[1- 23 -1945] -- Germany: Georges Gourdin, French anarchiste, WWII Resistance partisan, dies in the Nazi camps of Elbruck.

[3- 10 -1945] -- Bulgaria: 90 members of the Bulgarian Anarchist Federation meet (or attempt to meet?) in an extraordinary session, seeking ways of resisting the new communist regime (which has closed all meeting places & prohibited the anarchist newspapers), are stopped by the communist militia & sent in concentration camps, where they are tortured & compelled to do forced labor.


[3- 15 -1945] -- Spain: Cenetista David Antona Domínguez (1904-1945) dies. Secretariado del Comité Nacional CNT. Militant anarcho-syndicalist, freed from prison in July 1936.

«No es hora de palabras. La mejor propaganda, la única, es la de los fusiles y ametralladoras, es la del plomo justiciero que hace inexpugnable la capital de nuestra revolución. En esta lucha titánica, en estas jornadas de sangre, se está ventilando el porvenir no sólo de España, sino del mundo entero. Compañeros: en nuestras balas está la decisión! ¡O el fascismo que es la muerte o nosotros que somos la vida!».

See España 1936: La revolución perdida V. El Frente Popular by Pierre Broué.
http://www.veuobrera.org/00fine-x/secr-cnt.htm

[4- 8 -1945] -- France: Congress of the Federación Ibérica de Juventudes Libertarias (FIJL), in Toulouse (April 8-9th). Participants include Victor García, who assumes responsibility for publishing the journals "Ruta" & "Solidaridad Obrera", puis de secrétaire de la IJA (Jeunesse Anarchiste Internationale).


[4- 19 -1945] -- Germany: Julius Nolden freed from Luttringhausen prison with the arrival of the Allies today. Previously head of the FAUD, on Pentecost Sunday of 1947 he met in Darmstadt with other comrades to establish the Federation of Libertarian Socialists.

Nolden was head of the anarcho-syndicalist FAUD (Free Union of German Workers) in the Rhineland & one of 83 sent to prison for "preparing acts of high treason." Unfortunately several of the 83 were murdered in prison by their captors.

[Details / context]

[4- 27 -1945] -- England: Three anarchist editors jailed for nine months for "incitement to disaffection", London.

[5- 1 -1945] -- France: First Congress of the Local Federations of the MLE-CNT in exile, held in Paris (-12th). Upwards of 450 anarchist local federations from the exiles in France & North Africa attend & are represented by no fewer than 400 delegates: membership stands at 25,000.
[Details / context]

[6- 20 -1945] -- François Le Leve (1882-1945) dies. Militant anarcho-syndicalist. One of the 15 who signed The Manifeste des Seize, along with Kropotkin, Grave & others, favoring the Allies during WWI. A member of the Resistance during WWII, he was captured & interned. He died while traveling home after being freed.

[9- 9 -1945] -- Uruguay: Elena Quinteros lives. Teacher, activist in the Federación Anarquista Uruguaya (FAU) Arrested, tortured, disappeared by the Uruguayan government in 1976.



[9- 15 -1945] -- Italy: Constitution à Carrare de la Fédération anarchiste italienne (F.A.I.) (15-19th).


[9- 18 -1945] -- France: Voline (1882-1945), Russian revolutionary & anarchist historian, dies. (See 11 August.)

Trotsky had ordered his execution in 1921, but a hunger strike by the anarchists in prison publicly embarrassed the Bolsheviks & embroiled them in scandal & Voline was among those released on condition they leave the country. It was the first time political prisoners were deported from the vaunted Red Fatherland of the Proletariat.

[Details / context]

[10- 6 -1945] -- France: Founding congress, Fédération anarchiste (FA), Paris, (6-7 octobre & 2 décembre). The charter, previously worked out in January 1944, & in Agen the 29 & October 30 of the same year, is adopted. The charter attempts to rectify errors of the pre-war period in the two organizations, the UA & the FAF. "Le Libertaire becomes their official publication. In February the groups in C.Q.F.D. are dissolved into the FA.


[10- 8 -1945] -- France: Plénum constitutif de la Fédération ibérique des jeunesses libertaires en exil (F.I.J.L.) in Toulouse, October 8-9th.


[10- 17 -1945] -- Argentina: Juan Peron's popularity increased after he introduced liberal workplace policies to the point where he was considered a threat by the Junta. In early 1945 he was arrested & detained.

Public discontent was great & the main trade union federation, the Confederacion General de Trabajo (CGT), organised the first major public action for democracy on October 17, 1945. Its call for Juan Peron to be freed was supported by the Union Sindical Argentina (USA), but not the anarchist union, the Federacion Obrera Regional Argentina (FORA). Eva Peron played a large part in this demonstration.

[10- 20 -1945] -- Spain: "El Quico" & two other anarchist guérillas, Jaime "Abisinio" Pares Adán & Juan "Roget" Salas Millón, at the request of Committee of Resistance of the CNT, bust three prisoners out of jail in Barcelona. [It appears 1945 is correct year. — ed.]

The audacious urban guerrilla, Francisco Sabaté, known as "Quico," became the nightmare of the Spanish fascists until his death in 1960 in a shoot-out.

[12- 2 -1945] -- France: First congress, of the post-war period, of the Fédération Anarchiste Française (FAF).



[12- 3 -1945] -- France: Augustin Hamon (1862-1945) dies. French sociologist & an anarchist who later became a socialist.


[1- 2 -1946] -- Jean-Bernard Pouy lives, Paris. Writer, author of many detective novels. La belle de Fontenay (prix mystère de la critique en 1993) features an old Spanish anarchist. Began the "Le poulpe" (The Octopus) series, featuring Gabriel Lecouvreur, libertarian investigator & destroyer of injustice. After having written La petite écuyère a cafté (1995), he began finding different, & often new, authors to continue the now popular series in the same vein.

[1- 15 -1946] -- [January 15] Spain:

Manuel Deza García is killed on January 15, 1946 in Fuenteobejuna (Cordoba) in a confrontation with three members of the Guardia Civil at the Los Canonigos farm.

The remainder of the group manages to escape.

Sources: Dictionnaire des guérilleros et resistants antifranquistas.

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[1- 21 -1946] -- France: Isidore Isou & Gabriel Pomerand, forming the lettrist movement in Paris earlier this month, cause their first lettrist scandal at the Théatre du Vieux-Colombier.

[1- 28 -1946] -- Chile: At Bulmes Square (Santiago) eight workers are murdered by police & many more seriously injured by the police dogs.


[1- 28 -1946] -- Chile: During this month Lota mine-worker strike.

In 1947, Pisagua (an infamous concentration camp) was opened & a period of fullscale of persecution of anarchists began. Anarchist organisations had to go underground & one such clandestine initiative was the Luisa Michel Cultural Center, which operated with the clear aim of giving a rational education to female workers.

In 1953 its name changed to "Luisa Michel Libertarian School." It was run by comrade Flora Sanhueza R. & had over 70 students. With time, it began to accept children as well. It worked non-stop until 1957, the strength & determinaton of the libertarian women resisting the authorities for a period of ten years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pisagua#Pisagua_as_a_camp_for_prisoners
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_concentration_and_internment_camps#Chile

[2- 15 -1946] -- France: The film Zéro de conduite (1933), by the anarchist Jean Vigo is finally released, after being banned since 1933.

Jean VIGO: Zero De Conduite

With this film, legendary filmmaker Jean Vigo's lyrical genius reinvents schoolyard rebellion as all-purpose, anti-authoritarian anthem. Essential radical viewing in any year. Needless to say, Vigo’s film of rebellion in a boarding school was too much for the authorities at the time. After its first showing in 1933 there was an immediate outcry, & fears that it might result in civil unrest caused the film to be banned. The ban remained in force until 1945, after which Zéro de conduitefinally received the appraisal & status it merited. It is now regarded as one of the most significant films in the history of cinema.

[2- 17 -1946] -- France: Les groupes C.Q.F.D. intègrent les rangs de la Fédération anarchiste.


[3- 23 -1946] -- Chile:

(1874- 23 de marzo 1946)

- Muere en Santiago de Chile Alberto Ghiraldo.

One of the most notable intellectuals active in Argentine anarchist circles in the early 20th century was the playwright, poet & journalist Alberto Ghiraldo, joining anarchist circles in 1900, when he took up editing the anarchist literary magazines "Martín Fierro" & "El Sol", as well as editing the daily La Protesta & founder / editor of "Ideas y Figuras".

"No hay país donde el anarquismo...."

[4- 20 -1946] -- Korean Anarchist Congress meets (April 20-23), in Anwui.

Establishes the considerable influence of Peter Kropotkin's ideas in post-war Asia. Shin Chae-H0 (1880-1936), a Korean historian, was one of the precursors of anarchism in this country. Then, later, the brothers Li Jung-Kyu (1897-1983) & Li Eul Kyu (1894-1972) — called the "Korean Kropotkin" — are the architects of this congress, along with another active figure in modern Korean anarchism: Ha Ki Rak, who later takes part, in 1987, in the congress of the Korean Anarchist Federation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism_in_Korea
Of current interest, see the Korean Anarchist Network, http://anarclan.net/

[5- 12 -1946] -- Japan: Founding Congress of the Nihon Anarkisuto Renmei (Japanese Anarchist Federation) held in Tokyo. About 300 people meet, with Iwasa as Chairman & Kenji Kondo as Secretary; the federation's organ is the weekly "Heimin Shimbun".

[5- 14 -1946] -- US: Artist, novelist, filmaker, anarchist & Conscientious Objector (CO) Lowell Naeve is released from prison.

The year is 1941. Naeve is sentenced to one year & sent to New York City’s West Street Jail before going to Danbury Prison. To most of the prisoners, you had to have done something really bad to be there.

One day, Louis Lepke, fellow inmate & famous boss of the Murder, Inc. crime syndicate, asks to speak with Naeve.

After conversing for a bit, Lepke says, referring to the fact that he was headed to the electric chair for ordering the killing of hundreds of people, "It don't seem to me to make much sense that they put a man in jail for that" (refusing to kill).

A few people have confused Naeve's encounter, thinking it happened to poet Robert Lowell, who also did time in West Street Jail & Danbury.

After serving his one-year sentence he is rearrested & sent back to Danbury.

... show details

Naeve was first imprisoned for nearly five years for refusing to register for the WWII draft. He met & became life-long friends with his co-writer & fellow draft resister, David Wieck, while in solitary confinement. During his imprisonment, Naeve became the radical he always wanted to be & later joined the anarchist group Why? along with Wieck.

Released today he realizes that not only is he a changed man but the world seems irrevocably different. He notes upon release: "Instead of a double chin or square mustache, it appears this country will get its fascism by congressional law & congressional committee. Everywhere there are signs that democracy has lost ground."

See A Field of Broken Stones (Libertarian Press, 1950) by Lowell Naeve (in collaboration with David Wieck): Although largely unknown, "this is a classic in revolutionary prison writing & should be placed alongside Kropotkin & Berkman’s prison memoirs. With a preface by Paul Goodman, it shows us what it was like for anarchists during the 1940s & 1950s. There is little information on WWII draft resisters in general (much less the WWI draft resisters, a few of whom Naeve met in prison), & specifically anarchist WWII draft resisters are virtually forgotten."

It was hailed by such men as Edmund Wilson, Christopher Isherwood, Paul Goodman, Kenneth Patchen, & Henry Miller. It became the focus of a San Francisco book-banning investigation, & a controversial chapter become part of "Poet's Follies" (staged in Son Francisco).

Regards Lepke & Danbury, see fellow inmate Robert Lowell's poem "On "Memories of West Street & Lepke."
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/g_l/lowell/lepke.htm

http://www.newformulation.org/1twoprisonanthologies.htm
http://www.manasjournal.org/pdf_library/VolumeXIII_1960/XIII-02.pdf
http://recollectionbooks.com/cs/retort/02ResistanceInPrison.html

[7- 10 -1946] -- Scotland: Stuart Christie lives. Scottish international revolutionary militant, anarchist publisher & bookseller.

Stuart joined the Anarchist Federation in Glasgow in 1962. On August 11, 1964, he was arrested with explosives under his kilt trying to cross into Spain to assassinate Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Franco.

Among his many activities he founded Cienfuegos Press, Refract Publications & Meltzer Press. Co-founder with Albert Meltzer of the Anarchist Black Cross.

[8- 5 -1946] -- Boris Vian begins writing J'irai cracher sur vos tombes (I'll Spit On Your Graves), which he completes in 15 days, on the 20th of this month. J'irai cracher sur vos tombes sold in excess of half a million copies. (Also included among Favorite Anarchist/Libertarian Novels compiled on the anarchy-list in July 1998.)

"In the tradition of Karl May & Franz Kafka, Boris Vian imagines an America even more amazing than the land he has never visited. I Spit on Your Graves is the first novel to put quotation marks around the 'hardboiled' — a vivid & startling performance."

— J. Hoberman

"To Americans Boris Vian has long been one of the hidden glories of French literature. In I Spit on Your Graves, he wrote an utterly untypical work, a blast from his Id that may well have killed him. Even now, with misogyny disguised as racial justice, its venom remains potent & disturbing, in equal parts appalling & riveting. It is a singular book, not for the squeamish, & not to be passed by."

— Jim Krusoe

http://www.franceweb.fr/poesie/vian.htm http://www.cad.polito.it/~squiller/Jump.html

[9- 13 -1946] -- France: Two anarchist congresses held in Dijon: Congrès constitutif de la Fédération des jeunesses anarchistes (F.J.A.) meets today; Congrès de la Fédération anarchiste (F.A.) meets today through the 15th.


[11- 12 -1946] -- México: Elisa Acuña (1887- 1946) dies on this Tuesday, México City.

Professor, journalist, anarquista.

[12- 5 -1946] -- US: Alexander Schapiro dies in New York. Russian-born anarcho-syndicalist & an important figure in the international movement. Secretary of the anti-authoritarian A.I.T. ("Association internationale des travailleurs").


[12- 19 -1946] -- US: Reenactment of Boston Tea Party in Boston. (Fashionably late?) Glorifies the destruction of property by vandals — who inspire "Eugene anarchists" during WTO protests in Seattle 1999.
See Jesse Walker's "The Broken Blue Line: How to start a riot,"
http://www.videoactivism.org/hotlinks.html#wto
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/wto.htm


[12- 24 -1946] -- Nederlands: Karl Max Kreuger lives (1946-1999), Amsterdam. Activist, anarchist, a founding member of the Vrije Bond (Free Union) after it split with the OVB (independent union), over it’s failure to involve itself in the broader social issues beyond the workplace.


[1- 17 -1947] -- Eugène Lanti (true name Eugène Adam) (1879-1947), ardent Espérantist, anarchist, dies. A founding member of the French Communist Party, he left it after several disillusioning trips to the USSR. Founder of Sennacieco Asocio Tutmonda (SAT), dedicated to the liberation of the working class, the eradication of national boundaries, & the use of Esperanto as a means in this struggle.

[1- 19 -1947] -- Switzerland: Luigi Bertoni (1872-1947) dies in Geneva. Swiss anarchist, typographer, & an untiring publisher of the bilingual newspaper "Le Reveil anarchiste" (The Anarchist Alarm Clock) which he founded in July 1900 & edited until his death. In 1936 he & Italian libertarian camerati went to fight in Spain on the Huesca front.


[2- 19 -1947] -- Pierre Besnard dies. French anarcho-syndicalist involved in the AIT (International Workers Association /Asociación Internacional de los Trabajadores), met Durruti, fought in Spanish Revolution of 1936. Wrote Le monde nouveau (1936), Les syndicats ouvriers et la révolution sociale (1930) & a contributor to l'Encyclopédie anarchiste.

[3- 18 -1947] -- Mikhael Guerdjikov (1877-1947) dies. Bulgarian militant involved in the Macedonian liberation movement, influenced by Bakunin's ideas; editor of numerous papers (& starting Bulgaria's first anarchist periodical, "Free Society"). His burial is the last gathering of Bulgarian anarchists for many years.

[5- 17 -1947] -- Belgium: The Revolutionary Surrealist Group is founded in Brussels by Paul Bourgignie, Achille Chavóe, Christian Dotremont, Marcel Havrenne, René Magritte, Marcel Mariën, Paul Nougé & Louis Scutenaire.

[5- 22 -1947] -- France: The manifesto Freedom is a Vietnamese Word ("Libertad es una palabra vietnamita"), published in the anarchist paper "Le Libertaire," signed by the surrealists Bonnefoy, Bousquet, Breton, Peret, Tanguy & 10 others, condemning the French imperialistic adventure in Indochina.


[5- 27 -1947] -- Spain: Anarchist guerrilla Enrique Marco Nadal arrested. Condemned to death in 1949, his sentence is commuted to 30 years imprisonment.
[Details / context]

[10- 13 -1947] -- Chile: During this month Lota mine-worker strike.

In 1947, Pisagua (an infamous concentration camp) was opened & a period of fullscale of persecution of anarchists began. Anarchist organisations had to go underground & one such clandestine initiative was the Luisa Michel Cultural Center, which operated with the clear aim of giving a rational education to female workers.

In 1953 its name changed to "Luisa Michel Libertarian School." It was run by comrade Flora Sanhueza R. & had over 70 students. With time, it began to accept children as well. It worked non-stop until 1957, the strength & determinaton of the libertarian women resisting the authorities for a period of ten years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pisagua#Pisagua_as_a_camp_for_prisoners
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_concentration_and_internment_camps#Chile


[10- 29 -1947] -- Belgium: Asger Jorn participates in the International Conference of Revolutionary Surrealism in Brussels.

[11- 17 -1947] -- Victor Serge dies. Novelist, poet, historian, & political activist. One-time French individualist anarchist who went over to the Bolsheviks, before they booted him. He remained sympathetic to to anarchists but was rather badly treated by them.

Serge lived in Paris in 1909, where he was associated with individualist anarchists, particularly his childhood friend Raymond Callemin. Collaborated on the newspaper "L'anarchie." In Barcelona, involved in the newspaper of the CNT, "Tierra y Libertad."

Serge went to Russia in 1918, a supporter of the communists. Critical of the direction of the party, he was imprisoned, but release in 1935 through the appeals of French intellectuals.

Wrote Le rétif (1909-1912), The Anarchists & the Experiment of the Russian Revolution, Memoirs of a Revolutionist, The Obscure Turning, Midnight in the Century (1939), Conquered City, etc. City Lights books recently published his poems (a fine little volume entitled Resistance, translated by Jim Brook).

Serge's Memoirs of a Revolutionary is cited in "CounterPunch magazine"'s (edited by Alexander Cockburn & Jeffrey St. Clair) "Favorite 100 Nonfiction Books in Translation, Published in English Since 1900."
http://www.counterpunch.org/nonfictrans.html

     

Red granite outcrops through the red clay,
the world's first days show in the pain of living,
the street wanders off, huddled under its tottering,
tumble-down
     houses like old women squatting in the sun,
it takes up scant room between the sky & the endless
steppe,
a ragged Kirgiz walks alone, mournfully pursued by the dogs'
      barking,
nothing to steal, nothing to eat, lousy beggar! & even the dogs
     know you're hungry ...
I met his black look from the depths of time,
he's gone past, it's the past.

— excerpt, "On the Ural River"

Very fine collection of material, Victor Serge Homepage:
http://www.victorserge.net/


[2- 21 -1948] --

Spain: Dissolution of Movimiento Libertario de Resistencia (M.L.R.).

Founded by Liberto Sarrau in 1947, intended to be the armed wing of Spanish anarcho-syndicalism, militants included Celedonio González Sanmartín, Pedro Adrover, José Facerías, García Casino, Francisco Ballester, A. Gil, Manuel Pareja, ‘Tom Mix’, etc.

The MLR finally faded away when Sarrau & Joaquina Dorado were arrested by the police.

MLR, see entry 248, Historical Encyclopaedia of Spanish Anarchism by Miguel Iñiguez
http://libertaire.org/article137.html

[4- 8 -1948] -- Paul Delesalle (1870-1948) dies. French militant anarchist & revolutionary syndicalist.


[5- 2 -1948] -- US: 75th Birthday Anniversary Celebration of Rudolf Rocker. May 2, 1948.
... show details

Amalgamated Center. Contributions from F.W. Roman, A.E. Briggs, W.E. Holloway. (Chicago, Rudolf Rocker 75th Jubilee Committee, 48 pages).

[I don't know if this was the date of the celebration, or date of publication. — ed.]

[5- 15 -1948] -- France: Conférence anarchiste internationale (15-17th) in Paris.

[6- 26 -1948] -- Spain: Raul Carbeillera, an Argentinian anarchist who led CNT action groups against Franco's fascist state, is surrounded by police & the Guardia Civil in Montjuich, & kills himself rather than surrender. Carbeillera had several times slipped into Spain to fight with the Resistance ... but no more.

[7- 16 -1948] -- Netherlands: Founding of the Dutch Experimental Group by artists Karel Appel, Guillaume Corneille, & Constant & Jan Niewenhuys, Amsterdam. In September they issue their magazine "Reflex #1".

[7- 26 -1948] -- Spain: Raul Carballeira is killed in Montjuich in an encounter with hundreds of killers operating under Qrlintela, head of the Social Brigade, plus Guardia Civil & the "greys" (uniformed police).

Carballeira is one of many libertarian youngsters aiding in getting illegal anarchist publications distributed; 'Juventud Libre', 'Tierra y Libertad', 'Solidaridad Obrera' & 'Ruta,' for example, turned up regularly in Madrid & Barcelona.

[8- 23 -1948] -- France: Adrienne Montegudet (née Victorine Valdant) lives (1885-1948). Militante communiste et syndicaliste révolutionnaire puis libertaire. Frequenter of Monatte's circle.
Involved with anarchist activities in 1936, became secretary of the Comité des femmes libertaires & also assisted Italian & Spanish refugees. During WWII, in contact with Célestin Freinet, she aided & helped hide Czech refugees (primarily Jewish).


[9- 12 -1948] -- Spain: Antonio Ortiz, takes part with Primitivo Gomez & José Perez in an attempt to bomb (using a small private plane) the official platform where Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Franco is speechifying, in San Sebastien.

He was intercepted by Spanish fighters, but managed to escape.

Ortiz was a member of the CNT in 1936 during the Spanish Revolution & Civil War. Participated July 19/20 1936, in the Barcelona attack against the military barracks.

Ortiz directed the "Red & Black" column which won part of Aragon from the fascists, allowing the development of the libertarian communities.

A video cassette recalls the life of this little known anarchist: Ortiz, General Without God Nor Master.

[11- 8 -1948] -- France: "Le Cause était entendue" (The Case is Closed), declaration signed by Karel Appel, Guillaume Corneille, Christian Dotremont, Asger Jorn, Constant Nieuwenhuys & Joseph Noiret in Paris, marks the foundation of the art movement Cobra.

[11- 11 -1948] -- With a one-way ticket James Baldwin, a gay African American novelist who frequented anarchist circles in New York City, 24, sails for Europe.


[11- 11 -1948] -- France: Congrès de la Fédération anarchiste held in Lyon (11-14th).


[12- 17 -1948] -- Brazil: Anarchist Congress convenes in São Paulo, marking the resurgence of the movement after the "derrubada" (the falling trees) of the dictatorship.

Held at Nossa Chácara, in the Itaim barrio (December 17-19), a diverse cross-section of ideas & experience is represented by this mix of Brazilians & the many Italian, Spanish & Portuguese militants living in the country. Source: [ Arquivo de História Social ]

[12- 25 -1948] -- Bulgaria: The Bulgarian Communist Party declares as "outlaws" the anarchist founders of the FACB (Federation Bulgare Anarcho-Communist) & its newspaper "Rabotnitche Skamisal." Some things we can all agree on.

[2- 12 -1949] -- Italy: Nella Giacomelli dies. Contributor to Errico Malatesta's anarchist daily "Umanita Nova" & a founder of “Protesta umana” (1906-1909) with Ettore Molinari & Leda Rafanelli.


[3- 1 -1949] -- Denmark: "Cobra #1," issued in Copenhagen. Editors: Christian Dotremont & Asger Jorn.

[3- 26 -1949] -- US: Intellectually, the Cold War begins in earnest today, in New York City at the Waldorf Hotel. A conference organized by, among others, Lillian Hellman brought communist cultural celebrities together to defend the U.S.S.R. Those bolting from the Stalinist-dominated conference started the American Committee for Cultural Freedom, which included liberals, democratic socialists & even anarchists...
[Details / context]

[4- 13 -1949] -- England: Marie Louise Berneri (1918-1949) dies, age 31.

The elder daughter of Camillo & Giovanna Berneri. Editor of "Freedom," author of Neither East Nor West & Journey Through Utopia.
See the tribute published following her death, http://recollectionbooks.com/siml/library/berneri/MLBerneriTribute.html

[5- 6 -1949] -- Nobel Prize-winner, Maurice Maeterlinck, dies at 86, Nice, France. Belgian poet, playwright. His Pelléas et Mélisande (1892) is considered a masterpiece of Symbolist drama, &, in composer Claude Debussy's sensitive musical setting (1902), remains popular in the public eye. He was praised by anarchist critics, such as Octave Mirbeau (whose review first made Maeterlinck famous), & Emma Goldman, who included him in her famed drama lectures.

[7- 13 -1949] -- England: Clifford Harper lives, Chiswick, North London. Artist & self-described "committed anarchist."
[Details / context]

[7- 27 -1949] -- France: Jean Roumilhac dies in car accident. Fought in the Spanish Revolution. First president of the French section of the S.I.A. (International Solidarity Antifascist). In the 1940s Roumilhac created an agricultural company in the Rhone delta, enabling Spanish anarchist refugees to obtain legal residence permits.


[8- 3 -1949] --

Paul Roussenq (1885-1949) dies, Bayonne, France. Best known as the "anarchist convict."

Roussenq became an anarchist as a youth with his reading of libertarian newspapers & Elisee Reclus. His years in prison began at age16, when he was arrested for vagrancy & sent to jail for three months.

Worse still, in 1903, he threw a crouton (a piece of dried bread) at a prosecutor, & this dastardly terrorist act landed him in a disciplinary battalion in Biribi in Africa for five years.

Over there, under this marvelous Algerian sun... & the blows, still with the blows & always with the blows. The rebel rebelled again of course... insulting his "superiors," earning 3,779 days in the dungeons & yet another 20 years more...

Prematurely aging & in poor health, today Roussenq takes his life.

[Details / context]

[10- 5 -1949] -- France: Madeleine Vernet dies.
Anarchist, radical educator. Gets a street named for her in Paris.
[Details / context]

[10- 17 -1949] -- Spain: Six antifascist guerrillas, militants of the CNT, including José Sabater Llopart, are trapped & killed in Barcelona.

José Sabaté was the former head of the Barcelona Dyers Union, turned guérilla along with his two brothers, Francisco ("Quico") & Manuel (aka Manolo).

José teamed up with his brother "Quico," & the two became the nightmare of the forces of repression in Catalonia. Manuel joined another action group headed by Ramón Capdevila &, captured a few months from now, was executed in February 1950.

Quicko carried on the struggle against the Franco regime until his death in action in 1960.

See Sabate: Guerrilla Extraordinary & The Anarchist Resistance to Franco - Biographical notes, both by Antonio Tellez.

[10- 21 -1949] -- Spain: The anarchist Miguel Garcia is arrested. Tried & sentenced to death along with eight other companions, five of whom were executed. Garcia spent 38 days in the condemned cell until his sentence was commuted to 30 years imprisonment.
Source: Miguel Garcia, Spanish Political Prisoners (Simian, no date)

Garcia was one of the survivors of the libertarian resistance which refused, either at the end of the Spanish Civil War, or World War Two, to give up the fight for freedom. Theirs was a rearguard action, attempting to defend the workers' movement against Franco's murderous repression.

[10- 21 -1949] -- "El Cubano"

Spain: Julio Rodríguez, aka "El Cubano, a fighter with Catalan guerrilla groups, dies in a clash with the fascist police in Barcelona.

[11- 8 -1949] -- Italy: Group of anarchists attack the Spanish consulate with grenades in Gènes. Eugenio de Luchhi, Gaetano Busico, & Gaspare Mancuso arrested.


[11- 11 -1949] -- France: Congrès international anarchiste (11-19th) in Paris.


[1- 10 -1950] -- Clovis-Abel Pignat (alias "Tschombine Pategnon") dies.

Anarcho-syndicalist, untiring Swiss militant, founder of the FOBB (fédération des ouvriers du bois et du bâtiment, en Suisse Romande) & courageous propagandist of direct action & the wild cat strike.
Began the magazine "Le Falot" (on May 1, 1914) & wrote for others, such as Luigi Bertoni's "Le réveil anarchiste". Lucien Tronchet, another Swiss militant, wrote his biography, Clovis Pignat, une vocation syndicale internationaliste.

[1- 25 -1950] -- Australia: Anarchist John William "Chummy" Fleming, apparently quite this evening or in the wee hours of the 26th, dies, age 86. Tomorrow's Daily Bleed Saint.

A tattered cow-bell

'... Every Sunday until his death... he took his stand under a tree at the Yarra Bank & summoned a few cronies with a tattered cow-bell....'

[2- 2 -1950] -- Spain: Manuel "Manolo" Sabaté (Sabater) Llopart is garroted in Barcelona prison.

An anarchist militant, he was accused of having secretly crossed the frontier to take part in the Resistance. One of the main reasons for his harsh sentence of death is that he is the brother of Francisco Sabate, a famous & legendary member of the anarchist guérilla groups.

Francisco Sabaté, see,
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/SabateFrancisco.htm

[2- 19 -1950] -- France: Marc Pierrot (1871-1950) dies. Doctor of medicine, anarchist propagandist, publisher of the libertarian review, "Plus Loin."

[3- 11 -1950] -- Cuba: Third National Libertarian Congress (March 11-22) "to reorganize the libertarian labor movement & adopt concrete practical measures, enabling its militants to reorient themselves & to play a decisive part in the regeneration of the Cuban labor movement."
[Details / context]

[3- 13 -1950] -- Hippolyte Havel dies in psychiatric hospital, New Jersey.

Havel wrote for Goldman's "Mother Earth", was involved in the Modern School in NY, & wrote biographies of fellow anarchists such as the walking she-devil, Emma Goldman (he was also one of her lovers), Harry Kelly & Voltairine de Cleyre, along with various reviews & booklets. Havel edited "Revolt," the "Revolutionary Almanac" (funded by John Rompapas), & also "Open Vistas", with Joseph Ishill.

Just before WWI Havel opened a restaurant in NY City's Bohemian Greenwich Village which was a great meeting place for artists & intellectuals.

Proletarian Days

[3- 16 -1950] -- US: Grigori Petrovitch Maximov (1893-1950), Russian anarcho-syndicalist, dies. Editor & writer during the Russian Revolution for "Golos Truda" (The Voice of Labor), & its short-lived successor "Volny Colos Truda" (The Free Voice of Labor) both suppresed by the Bolsheviks, & author of an important history of Leninism in Russia, The Guillotine at Work.


[3- 19 -1950] -- France: Charles Benoit dies, in Paris. Revolutionary socialist, then an anarchist.

Benoit assisted Jean Grave with his paper "Les temps nouveaux." Founder of the group "propagande par la brochure," which actively distributed their very inexpensive — & often free — booklets.

During WWI Charles Benoît & Andre Girard, broke with Jean Grave over the "Manifesto of the 16" ("Manifeste de seize," siding with the Allies during WWI), Benoit publishing "La paix par les Peuples" in response. He was also active in the League for Human Rights. (Same Benoit, Karl Rickert, who fled in 1913 to Morocco with Ernst Jüenger?)

[4- 8 -1950] -- Spain: José Lluis Facerias, anti-fascist guerrilla, blows up the Lonja police station in Barcelona. Facerias was a veteran leader of the anarchist action groups, operating since the end of the Spanish Revolution in 1939.

[4- 9 -1950] -- France: A group of lettrists — including Serge Berna, Jean-Louis Brau, Ghislain Desnoyers de Marbaix & Michel Mourre — perpetrates the Notre-Dame Scandal, when Mourre, dressed as a Dominican monk, reads a sermon prepared by Berna announcing the death of God at Easter mass.

[4- 13 -1950] -- France: Hoche Arthur Meurant, French anarchist, anarcho-syndicalist, antimilitarist, dies.

[5- 27 -1950] -- France: Congrès de la Fédération anarchiste, Paris, 27-29 mai.
[Source: Le Libertaire Chronologie]

[9- 28 -1950] -- US: John Sayles lives. Edgar Award-winning novelist (The Anarchist's Convention, Union Dues, etc.), independent film director (Lone Star, Passion Fish, Eight Men Out, The Secret of Roan Inish, & Matewan), screenwriter who frequently plays small roles in his own & other indie films. Sayles got his start in film working with Roger Corman.

[12- 8 -1950] -- Italy: 42nd national Congress of the Italian Anarchist Federation held (8th-10th), Ancône.

[1- 4 -1951] -- Bob Black, anarchist critic, lives. World's best loved anarchist, often in hiding from his enraged fan club.

"A Critic is like the house-niggers of yore who looked down on the field hands because, as household servants, they got to dress up & bask in the presence of quality folks. The Critic is Culture's liveried footman. But just beneath the surface (there isn't much room down there) he seethes with impotent envy like a eunuch in a seraglio.... The Critic is nothing in particular...is only an nth-generation photocopy...who in turn might best be characterized as what Jean Baudrillard calls a "simulacrum": a copy without an original."

      — Bob Black

[2- 6 -1951] -- France: Marcelino Massana arrested in Toulouse.

Massana's arrest was a typical example of harrassment against the CNT exiles & the willingness of the French carabineros to work with their fascist counterparts in Interpol. Spain demanded his extradition for "crimes" in Spain, but a court refused. Massana is one of the great anti-Franco guerrillas, on a par with Francisco Sabaté, Vila Capdevila & Facerías. Anti-Franco guerrilla... [Details / context]

[2- 8 -1951] -- Italy: During this month, in Turin, the first number of monthly magazine "Seme Anarchico" (Anarchist Seed) appears.

[2- 14 -1951] -- France: During this month premier numéro des cahiers mensuels d'études sociales "Contre-Courant," in Paris. Publishes until 1968, with the aid of many collaborators, under the direction of Louis Louvet.
[Details / context]

[2- 24 -1951] -- Italy: The French GAAP (Groupes anarchistes d’action prolétarienne) is created on February 24-25, 1951 by former members of the FAI excluded at the congress of Ancône.


[4- 21 -1951] -- Italy: Giuseppe Pasotti (1888-1951) dies. Anarcho-syndicalist & member of the Italian League of Human Rights.

[5- 12 -1951] -- France: Congrès de la Fédération anarchiste (12-14th) in Lille.

[5- 31 -1951] -- Belgium: Jean Marestan (1874-1951; born Gaston Havard) dies. Pacifist, author, anarchiste & militant néo-Malthusian.
[Details / context]

[6- 5 -1951] -- Japan: The Japanese Anarchist Federation reconstituted this month, but the organisation now under this name is largely composed of those sympathetic to syndicalism.

Simultaneously, the anarchist communists set up the Japan Anarchist Club (Nihon Anakisuto Kurabu), with the Japanese anarchist movement again divided as between 1928 & 1934.
... show details

To a large extent this was a re-run of history & some principal figures involved were the same. Hatta Shûzô died in 1934, but Iwasa Sakutarô was still very much the key personality among the anarchist communists, while Sanshirô Ishikawa again supported the syndicalists. The Anarchist Federation limped on until 1968.

The Anarchist Club long outlived its syndicalist rival, publishing the journal "Museifushugi Undô" (Anarchist Movement) until March 1980.

[6- 29 -1951] -- Urbain Gohier (1862-1951) dies. French author, journalist.

Lampoonist, antimilitarist, lawyer, burning supporter of Dreyfus, Gohier was a writer for the anarchist "Libertaire."

Author of L'armée contre la nation (1898), Les prétoriens et la Congrégation & A bas la caserne, etc. Arrested & tried for one of his books (acquited), Gohier did a year in prison (1905) for his activities in "l'Association Internationale Antimilitariste."

Gohier sank gradually into anti-semitism & patriotism, becoming a collaborationist during WWII.

[7- 6 -1951] -- France: The surrealist manifesto « Haute fréquence », dated May 24th, appears in the anarchist periodical "Le Libertaire". Some Surrealists work closely with the Fédération anarchiste (FA) over the next couple years.


[7- 17 -1951] -- Charles Desplanques (1877-1951) dies. French. Hairdresser, anarchist militant, trade unionist (a C.G.T secretary) & antimilitarist.

[7- 19 -1951] -- Spain: In Barcelona, César Saborit Carrelero, anarchist guerrilla & member of action group of José Lluis Facieras, is killed by two police officers of the "Brigada politico-social."alt; Cesar Saborit Carrelero

[8- 15 -1951] -- US: New York, première of the "Living Theatre" a lieu au domicile même de Julian Beck et de Judith Malina, faute d'avoir pu trouver une salle et de l'argent pour financer le spectacle. Four pieces are performed: anarchist Paul Goodman's "Childish Jokes"; Gertrude Stein's "Ladies' Voices"; Bertolt Brecht's "He who says yes & he who says no"; & Garcia Lorca's "The dialogue of the manikin & the young man."


[10- 6 -1951] -- France: During this month Guy-Ernest Debord joins the lettrists in Paris; The Cobra movement is dissolved.
[Exact day(s) not given —ed.]


[11- 14 -1951] -- Spain: 75 members of the CNT are tried in Seville prison, accused of reorganizing their union & aiding guerrillas, particularly for their attempt to evacuate a group of guerrillas by sea in 1949 from under the thumb of the fascist government.

Two death sentences are handed down, others get eight to thirty years’ imprisonment...

[Details / context]

[12- 22 -1951] -- France: Georges Gillet (1875-1951) dies. Militant syndicaliste & propagandiste anarchiste, antimilitariste.


[2- 1 -1952] -- During this month author Jack Kerouac has his first psychedelic experience when the anarchist/surrealist Philip Lamantia gives him peyote (Lamantia, a surrealist blood poet, was a member of the San Francisco Libertarian Circle with Kenneth Rexroth, et al.


[2- 10 -1952] -- US: Alfred Sanftleben (1871-1952) dies, Los Angeles, California. Militant German anarchist, active there, Switzerland & the US. Typesetter & translator, friend of Max Nettlau, Gustav Landauer, Rudolf Rocker & the Flores Magón brothers, & much influenced by Giovanni Rossi.

[2- 11 -1952] --

Anticoncept France: First projection of Gil J. Wolman's The Anticoncept, in Paris. http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/chronology/chronology.html | [Situationist Resources]

[3- 10 -1952] -- On March 10, 1952, when Batistats hordes staged their 'coup d'etat' to seize Cuba,

Libertarian Association of Cuba . . .The ALC was from the very beginning in the midst of the battle against The Batista regime. On March 10, 1952, when Batistats hordes staged their 'coup d'etat' to seize Cuba, the ALC proposed the full fighting solidarity of all revolutionary organizations to reorganize armed resistance & repulse the Batista troops. But the cowardice & demoralization of the Socorras government--"It is too late. We must avoid bloodshed"--gave Batista an easy victory. Later the blood flowed in torrents! Not for an instant did the ALC relax in the struggle to topple Batista. [Details / context]

[3- 24 -1952] -- Germany: Willi Jelinek dies, in the Bautzen prison camp (ex-GDR, East Germany), under unknown circumstances. Militant German anarchist-syndicalist. Member of "General Union of Workers" & collaborator on the weekly magazine "Proletarischer Zeitgeist" published in Zwickau (Saxony) from 1922 to 1933.

“Where one obeys, there are chiefs who order”

One of six surviviors of the Zwickau General Union of Workers (CGT), 27 others perished, victims of the Gestapo. Arrested on November 10, 1948 by the Communists, he was tossed into an old Nazi prison, then quickly transferred because of his prison organizing. His prison was the site of desperate prison revolts in 1950, & Jelinek managed smuggle information on the miserable conditions of thousands of prisoners to West Germany. His daughter visited him just prior to his death, on the 20th, & found him in good health.

(Extracted from an article of Jean Barrué on “Anarchism in East Germany” in the review “Iztok” n°2, September 1980, consultable on the site the-press-anarchist (see bonds).

[4- 2 -1952] --

Anti-anti France: The Anticoncept is banned by the French film censorship commission. http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/chronology/chronology.html | [Situationist Resources]

[5- 31 -1952] -- France: Bordeaux, 31 mai-2 juin. La Fédération anarchiste, réunie en congrès, adopte une motion d’orientation communiste libertaire.
[Source: Le Libertaire Chronologie]

[6- 30 -1952] -- Let Freedom Ring?: Congress passes McCarran-Walter Immigration Act, to screen out "subversive" aliens & deport them, even if they have become US citizens. Follows up on the McCarran Act (Internal Security Act of 1950) — one of the more bucolic provisions being its authorization of concentration camps "for emergency situations."

This immigration act strengthened provisions allowing exclusion of immigrants on grounds of insanity, disease, pauperism, crime record or political activity, & made exclusion of anarchists & communists easier. It attacked people merely on account of speech or association, even if there is no evidence they might act violently or illegally.

Harry Truman noted "The idea behind this discriminatory policy is, to put it baldly, that Americans with English or Irish names were better citizens than Americans with Italian, Greek, or Polish names..." — while in fact it was motivated more toward excluding non-whites in this aspect.

[7- 5 -1952] -- US: Early in July 1952, composer & anarchist John Cage performs a series of his sonatas & interludes in a large tent.

Charlip had printed programs on tiny pieces of toilet paper & placed these programs on a table next to the entrance. Also on the table was a large bowl of tobacco. During the concert, the audience was invited to roll cigarettes with this tobacco, using their programs as cigarette papers...

[Now that you have read this entry, you are prepared to answer at least one of the questions the Daily Bleed's Auntie Dave poses in The 2002 Quiz Music & Anarchists for the Research on Anarchism list...let's see how good your memory is now...or try your hand at some of the others!] http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/Music@Quiz/quiz_2002_4.html

[7- 13 -1952] -- Dr. Marie Equi (1872-1952) dies.

Equi was sent to prison during WWI for sedition (as were countless others opposing American involvement in one of Europe's bloodiest wars) under a newly amended Espionage Act.

The law "forbade criticism of the U.S. government, the constitution, the military, the flag, navy or uniform."

---

At her trial, Special Agent William Bryon of the Dept. of Justice, called her "an anarchist, a degenerate, & an abortionist."

Marie Equi, a lesbian anarchist & labor organizer, in her later years recalled how she & her mother were spat upon in the streets of Portland during this period.

[Details / context]

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[8- 29 -1952] -- John Cage composition "4 Minutes 33 Seconds" premiers, Woodstock, NY. It is scored for piano or "any group of instruments" (It is 4 minutes 33 seconds of silence; damn anarchists...).

[9- 4 -1952] -- [September 4] France

Benjamin Péret's "The Factory Committee: Motor of the Social Revolution" first published, in the French anarchist paper "Le Libertaire" on September 4, 1952. The first English translation appeared in "Radical America" (vol. IV, no. 6, August 1970).

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[10- 13 -1952] -- France: Second projection of Howls for Sade in Paris.


[10- 29 -1952] -- France: No More Flat Feet, tract denouncing Charlie Chaplin signed by the Lettrist International (Serge Berna, Jean-Louis Brau, Guy-Ernest Debord & Gil J. Wolman), is thrown into the crowd at a press conference for Chaplin's film Limelight at the Ritz Hotel, Paris.

Also, before the month is out, Debord meets Marcel Mariën, Paul Nougé & Louis Scutenaire in Brussels.

Lettrism, like all movements worthy of the name, engendered schisms & apostasies. One sect, the Lettrist International, led by Guy Debord, split off after the "left" lettrists, passing out abusive pamphlets, disrupted a Charlie Chaplin press conference. On Lettrism, see Greil Marcus, Lipstick Traces: A secret history of the twentieth century (Harvard, 1989; Margaret Moser, “Greil Marcus & the Mad Parade”, "Austin Chronicle," 10 Sep 1999) for a brief account of Lettrism, the Lettrist International (the "left wing" of Lettrism, & its offspring, the Situationist International).

[11- 1 -1952] -- "La Luminosa Torre," by André Breton, appears in Le Libertaire. Published by the Federacion Anarquista Francesa, the surrealists had previously published articles here, including a manifesto, May 22, 1947, "Freedom is a Vietnamese word," signed by Bonnefoy, Bousquet, Breton, Peret, Tanguy & 10 others.

Fue en el negro espejo del anarquismo que el surrealismo se reconocio por primera vez, mucho antes de definirse a si mismo y cuando apenas era asociacion libre entre individuos, despreciando espontaneamente y en bloque las opresiones sociales y morales de su tiempo. Entre las fuentes de inspiracion donde abrevamos, en esa posguerra de 1914, y cuya fuerza de convergencia era a toda prueba, figuraba el final de la Balada de Solness, de Laurent Tailhade:

Golpea nuestros corazones
en desbandada, en harapos
¡Anarquia! ¡Oh, portadora de luz!
¡Expulsa la noche! ¡Aniquila los gusanos!
Y levanta al cielo, aunque sea
con nuestros tumulos
¡La luminosa torre que sobre el mar domine!

[11- 14 -1952] -- Spain: Agustin Rueda lives (1952-1978). Anarchist militant, who after years of harrasment, is arrested in 1977 & dies from beatings (most likely administered by the prison administration). Efforts to keep his life from being forgotten have resulted in commemoration gatherings around Spain, including one on the 25th anniversary of his death (2003) & another, October 2004, celebrated with recollections, music & poetry.


[11- 16 -1952] -- Roman Delgado (1894-1952) dies. Spanish-Mexican anarchist, who emigrated to America at 16 & joined a Magoniste group in San Antonio, Texass.

A Magoniste, imprisoned in 1916 for participating in a strike, Delgado went to NY where he was expelled from the country; active with anarchist groups in México City until his death.

[Details / context]

[12- 4 -1952] -- Giuseppe Monanni (b. 1887) dies.

Monanni was Leda Rafanelli's lifelong companion & together with Ettore Molinari & Nella Giacomelli they formed “Protesta umana”. Under the fascists his activities were constrained, but post-WWII he wrote for the paper "Libertario" under the pseudonym "Mony."

[Details / context]

[12- 7 -1952] -- France: Founding Conference of the Lettrist International

Internationale Lettriste Founding Conference at Aubervilliers. Participants: Serge Berna, Jean-Louis Brau, Guy-Ernest Debord, Gil J. Wolman. Also during this month "Internationale Lettriste" #1, appears, in Paris. http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/chronology/chronology.html | [Situationist Resources]

[12- 17 -1952] -- Charles Laisant (1911-1952) dies. A pacifist & anarcho-syndicalist, Charles is part of a generational family of anarchists: His father Albert Laisant, his brother Maurice, & his grandfather Charles Ange Laisant (1841-1920), were all militant libertarians.


[12- 23 -1952] -- Russia: Vasily Eroshenko (1890-1952) dies. A blind Russian anarchist, novelist, translator, & an important activist in the Esperanto Movement, he lived much of his life in Asia.

[In September 2000, on the internet, I sought information about Eroshenko, & received this note & a chronology:

Hello!

I found some info about Eroshenko on Russian language & translate part of it. I hope you'll find what you are interesting in.

Best regards, D.G. aka V.
[Detailed chronology & biographical notes]]

[2- 10 -1953] -- US: Albert Theodore Schroeder dies (1864-1953), age 88.

He met & came to know the liberals, socialists, radicals & anarchists whose civil liberties he worked to uphold; the other defenders of civil liberties; & leading personalities in the field of psychology.

Schroeder's interest in free speech & press as well as social injustices grew to the point where he led the movement to incorporate the Free Speech League.

Schroeder took part in such cases as that against Moses Harmon, editor of Lucifer The Light Bearer, the San Diego Free Speech Fight, involving the well-known anarchists Emma Goldman & Alexander Berkman. Schroeder took an interest in the Denver Free Speech Fight (involving Emma & Ben L. Reitman), The Blast Case (Alexander Berkman); The Masses Case; the Margaret Sanger Case ; in the Debs & La Follette cases among many, many others.

[4- 30 -1953] --

Étranges étrangers

Kabyles de la Chapelle et des quais de javel
hommes des pays loin
cobayes des colonies...
Apatrides dAubervilliers

brûleurs des grandes ordures de la ville de Paris
Tunisiens de Grenelle
embauchés débauchés
manoeuvres désoeuvrés...
Enfants du Sénégal
dépatriés expatriés et naturalisés...
Etranges étrangers
Vous êtes de la ville
vous êtes de sa vie

même si mal en vivez
même si vous en mourez.

       — Jacques Prévert

Algerian anarchist Sail Mahomed (1894-1953) dies.

... show details

Ce poème de Prévert extrait de Paroles symbolise le combat d’une vie, celui de Saïl Mohamed. Saïl Mohamed, Ameriane ben Amezaine, est né le 14 octobre 1894 à Taourit-Béni-Ouglis, en Kabylie. Comme beaucoup d’Algériens, il a peu fréquenté l’école. Chauffeur-mécanicien de profession, il fut toute sa vie assoiffé de culture. Il vécut avec Madeleine Sagot. On sait peu de choses de sa jeunesse ; on apprend par un témoignage qu’il donne au Semeur de Normandie, le journal d’A. Barbé, qu’il est interné pour insoumission puis pour désertion pendant la première guerre mondiale. Ses sympathies pour le mouvement libertaire sont déjà affirmées.

Algerian anarchist Sail Mahomed (1894-1953) dies. George Fontenis delivered an address in his honour in the name of the anarchist movement at his funeral on 30 April 1953.

In Algeria, the anarchist movement emerged in the 19th-century. The Revolutionary Syndicalist General Confederation of Labour (CGT-SR) had a section in Algeria. Like other anarchist organisations, the CGT-SR opposed French colonialism, & in a joint statement by the Anarchist Union, the CGT-SR, & the Association of Anarchist Federations on the centenary of the French occupation of Algeria in 1930, argued: "Civilisation? Progress? We say: murder!"

A prominent militant in the CGT-SR's Algerian section, as well as in the Anarchist Union & the Anarchist Group of the Indigenous Algerians, was Sail Mohamed, an Algerian anarchist active in the anarchist movement from the 1910s until his death in 1953. Sail Mohamed was a founder of organisations such as the Association for the Rights of the Indigenous Algerians & the Anarchist Group of the Indigenous Algerians. In 1929 he was secretary of the "Committee for the Defence of the Algerians against the Provocations of the Centenary."

Sail Mohamed was also editor of the North African edition of the anarchist periodical Terre Libre, & a regular contributor to anarchist journals on the Algerian question.

http://cnt-ait.info/article.php3?id_article=959

[7- 26 -1953] -- Cuba: A young radical & baseball player, Fidel Castro (a pro prospect), leads an unsuccessful guerrilla raid on Moncada Barracks. Amongst the 61 rebels killed in the celebrated Castro-led attack is the anarchist Boris Luis Santa Coloma. http://www.patriagrande.net/uruguay/eduardo.galeano/memoria.del.fuego/19530726.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moncada_Barracks


[8- 10 -1953] -- Bulgaria: Alexander Nakov, anarchist militant, is released from prison.

[Details / context]

[9- 3 -1953] -- France: Publication in "Les Lèvres nues" #6 of Guy Debord's article 'Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography,' the first of a series of important Lettrist articles to appear in the Belgian journal. [I don't have the exact day — ed.]

[9- 20 -1953] --

Under the pseudonym Gilles Ivain, Ivan Chtcheglov completes his 'Formulary for a new Urbanism.'

[During this month; I don't have the exact day — ed.]
[Situationist Resources]

[11- 24 -1953] -- Max Baginski dies, NY's Bellevue Hospital. A large-scale character gifted with a rare spirit & mental accuity. An editor of the "Chicago Worker" newspaper. He helped publish the 1906-07 issues of the magazine "Freedom" & provided editorials for Emma Goldman's "Mother Earth" magazine. Rudolf Rocker calls him

"One of the most enlightened & perspicacious spirits of the German [anarchist] movement."

[12- 3 -1953] -- During this month, the foundation of the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus begins. [Exact day not given — ed.]

IMIB "... a Swiss architect, Max Bill, has undertaken to restructure the Bauhaus where Klee & Kandinsky taught. He wishes to make an academy without painting, without research into the imagination, fantasy, signs, symbols — all he wants is technical instruction. In the name of experimental artists I intend to create an International Movement For An Imaginist Bauhaus." — Letter from Asger Jorn to Enrico Baj This movement was Founded in Alba, Piedmont, Italy by Asger Jorn, Giuseppe Pinot-Gallizio, & Piero Simondo in September 1955. * July 28, 1957 The IMIB fused with the Lettrist International & the London Psychogeographical Association to form the Situationist International. Baj was excluded from this process. Sergio Dangelo & Elena Verrone were also involved in this movement. See Notes on the Formation of an Imaginist Bauhaus — Asger Jorn 1957 & Wikipedia http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/chronology/chronology.html | [Situationist Resources]

[12- 25 -1953] -- France: Anarchist Federation & the Libertarian Communist Federation founded by the FAF (French Anarchist Federation).



[2- 17 -1954] -- Belgium: Ernest Ernestan (aka Ernest Tanrez) dies, Brussels. Militant, writer, theorist of libertarian socialism, a significant figure of Belgian anarchism.


[8- 11 -1954] -- Lina Polito lives, Napoli, Italy, actress (Love & Anarchy).

[8- 24 -1954] -- France: Pierre Le Meillour (1884-1954) dies, in Sartrouville. Anarchist & anti-militarist.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/LeMeillourPierre.htm


[10- 7 -1954] -- France: Denunciation of the Paris Surrealists by the Lettrist International.

Et ça finit mal (And a Bad End), published today, a tract denouncing the withdrawal from Ça commence bien, a text written by the Lettrist International as a planned collaborative protest against the celebrations surrounding the centenary of Rimbaud's birth — of the signatures of the Parisian surrealists, who deemed the text "too Marxist" & denounced the Lettrists as Stalinists, falsifiers & publicity hounds.

[10- 28 -1954] -- Enrique Flores Magon (1877-1954), Mexican revolutionary anarchist & brother to the better known Ricardo Flores Magón, dies.


[11- 4 -1954] -- Sweden: Stig Dagerman, (1923-1954) 31, dies. Playwright, novelist, poet, anarcho-trade unionist. Created a review "40-tal ," & wrote for the libertarian newspaper "Arbetaren." Wrote The Snake (1945), & Island of the Condemned. His themes were precursors to the existentialists. Deeply pessimistic & suffering writer's block, he committed suicide: "Our need for consolation is impossible to satisfy."

HERE RESTS
A SWEDISH AUTHOR
FALLEN FOR NOTHING
THE CRIME WAS INNOCENCE
FORGET HIM OFTEN

By the time he was 26 Dagerman was editor of the Syndicalist youth paper & author of four novels, four plays, a book of short stories, a travel journal & hundreds of poems & pieces of journalism.

"Je crois que l'ennemi héréditaire de l'homme est la macro-organisation, parce que celle-ci le prive du sentiment, indispensable à la vie, de sa responsabilité envers ses semblables.(...)
Car qu'est-ce que le pouvoir si ce n'est le sentiment de n'avoir pas à répondre de ses mauvaises actions sur sa propre vie mais sur celles des autres?"

[11- 21 -1954] -- Chicago: Late this month [exact date unknown — ed.] The anarchist Catholic Dorothy Day notes:

When one is travelling it is often only possible to write a chronicle like a Pepys diary & there is not much room for comment. So here is the bare bones of my trip during this last month in the way of a letter to our readers, which, thanks to Ammon Hennacy’s street selling campaign, is increased by some thousands...

My last two meetings in Chicago were at Wilmette, in the basement of the rectory of St. Joseph’s church of John Mella’s promotion, & with a group of young anarchists led, if they can be said to be led, by Joffre Stewart, in the vicinity of the University of Chicago.

[12- 20 -1954] -- American novelist Sandra Cisneros lives.

Cisneros, the author of The House on Mango Street & Woman Hollering Creek & Other Stories, is a poet & fiction writer.

Self-described as a "terrorist," "anarchist," & a "Chicana feminist," she has said, "I’m trying to write stories that haven’t been told. I feel like a cartographer. I’m determined to fill a literary void."

[12- 22 -1954] --

Architecture for Life 'Architecture for Life' an excerpt from Asger Jorn's book Image & Form, is published in "Potlatch" #15. Also during this month Asger Jorn meets Guy Debord in Paris. [Exact day not given —ed.] http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/chronology/chronology.html | [Situationist Resources]

[3- 12 -1955] -- Louis Esteve (né à Gaillac-sur-Tarn en 1884) dies. French individualitst anarchist. Etudes à l'université de Toulouse, poète, romancier et essayiste, auteur d'une Psychologie de l'Impérialisme (1913). Il est un fidèle collaborateur du journal anarchiste individualiste d'Émile Armand "l'En Dehors" et ensuite de "l'Unique."


[3- 25 -1955] -- Russia US: Customs confiscate 520 copies of Allen Ginsberg's Howl as they enter the US. It will then be published by City Lights publishers in San Francisco, leading to the arrest of anarchist/poet/publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Customs also seized & destroyed another shipment of Ginsberg's poetry sent from Canada in the 60s.

The day after the poet's 36th birthday—520 copies of a book his press had published were confiscated by US Customs, acting under the order of Chester McPhee, US Collector of Customs. McPhee called the book "obscene": "you wouldn't want your children to come across it," he groused. The book was "Howl & Other Poems."

[5- 22 -1955] -- Roger Noel, aka the anarchist Babar, of "Alternative Libertaire," Belgian-French critical magazine, lives.

[6- 8 -1955] -- "A poem from 1955 that I sent to Kenneth Rexroth & I thought it was good because it was a dream & it had this illumination of a dream & it was about William Burroughs’s late wife..."

... show details (Ginsberg poem)

A drunken night in my house with a boy, San Francisco: I lay asleep: darkness: I went back to Mexico City & saw Joan Burroughs leaning forward in a garden chair, arms on her knees. She studied me with clear eyes & downcast smile, her face restored to a fine beauty tequila & salt had made strange before the bullet in her brow. —Allen Ginsberg, “Dream Record, June 8, 1955”: & this is about the last poem I wrote before “Howl.” http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/...olv1n4.html

[6- 25 -1955] -- France: Arrest of Pierre Morain, militant of the F.C.L. (Fédération Communiste Libertaire). Sentenced to prison for one year, released in March 1956.

The platformist (FCL) offered “critical support” during the Algerian revolution & cultivated links to the small anarchist movement that existed in Algiers in 1954.

... show details

Their support seems to have mainly taken the form of propaganda: flyers, posters, and newspapers. Members of the FCL used their paper, "Le Libertaire", to publish articles & communiqués in support of the anti-colonial uprisings in Algeria from 1954 onward.

Consequently, the state seized issues of "Le Libertaire" seven times between 1954 & 1956. The five editors of the paper were repeatedly prosecuted by the Ministry of the Interior. FCL activists were detained & interrogated on numerous occasions by French police in relation to the publication. Anarcho-communist Pierre Morain, for example, was prosecuted on charges related to the distribution of pro-revolutionary flyers & to the publication of two pro-MTLD articles in "Le Libertaire." As a result, he spent a year & a half in jail. Ultimately, the criminalization & surveillance of the FCL activists contributed significantly to its dissolution in 1956, well before Algerian independence.

Sources:
http://libertaire.org/article137.html
Anarchist Approaches to Anti-Colonial Struggles: French Anarchists & the Algerian War

[7- 7 -1955] -- France: The anarchist periodical "Le Libertaire" is seized from newstands, in transport & elsewhere.


[10- 7 -1955] -- American poet Allen Ginsberg organizes poetry reading at Six Gallery, SF (featuring also Michael McClure, Philip Lamantia, Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, Kenneth Rexroth) & brings down the house by reading "Howl" publicly for the first time.

"Six poets at the Six Gallery. Kenneth Rexroth, M.C. Remarkable collection of angels all gathered at once in the same spot. Wine, music, dancing girls, serious poetry, free satori. Small collection for wine & postcards. Charming event."

— from postcard printed by Allen Ginsberg to publicize 1955 Six Gallery Reading

Much legend surrounds this event, which took place on October 7, 1955, though the date is sometimes given as October 13 http://www.litkicks.com/Poems/Howl.html

36. GINSBERG, Allen. Howl for Carl Solomon. Mimeographed sheets, 17 pages, 8 1/2 x 11 inches, stapled (original staple removed). (San Francisco: Privately printed, 1956). $37,500.00

First edition of Ginsberg's epochal poem, the most famous & influential poem of our time. One of only 25 mimeographed copies according to Morgan

A1. Dowden p. 7 (giving the number of copies as 50 & erroneously dating the "pamphlet" 1955, in addition to misspelling Marthe Rexroth's first name).

The first printing of Howl was mimeographed by Marthe Rexroth, using the version typed by Robert Creeley, for Kenneth Rexroth's poetry class at San Francisco State College in May 1956. The mimeo includes the title-page, with quotation from Walt Whitman, the dedication to Kerouac, Burroughs, Cassady & Lucien Carr, in addition to 15 numbered pages of poetry, including "Howl," "A Supermarket in California," "Sunflower Sutra" & "America," all unexpurgated. "Howl" is dated at the end of the poem on p.9 "San Francisco 1955-1956"; (the next three poems are dated Berkeley 1955 & the last poem is undated).

On May 18, 1956, having been told by Rexroth that Eberhart was "writing an article on S.F. Poetry & asked for a copy of my MSS," Ginsberg wrote a long analytical letter about Howl to Eberhart which provided the critical basis for Eberhart's enthusiastic article on the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance, "West Coast Rhythms," published in the "New York Times."

— Barry Miles, Howl, facsimile edition (N. Y.: Harper & Row, 1986), Appendix I.

---

On-stage, the poets were seated in a semicircle behind the podium. Kenneth Rexroth, dressed in a bow tie & a cutaway pinstripe suit, opened the evening with a few brief introductory remarks. Taking notice of the mixture of literary & political interests represented by those in attendance as well as by those on-stage, Rexroth compared the climate of San Francisco to that of Barcelona at the time of the Spanish anarchists, where culture survived despite an oppressive national political environment.

Also in attendance was Will Petersen

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Gallery_reading

---

[10- 13 -1955] -- ¶ During this month (I don't have exact day) Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder (Zen anarchist poet) & John Montgomery climb the 12,000 foot high Matterhorn mountain in the Sierra Nevada chain.


[10- 25 -1955] -- Italy: Ettore Cropalti (1900-1955) dies. Shoemaker, anarchist, anti-fascist militant.

[10- 31 -1955] -- François-Henri Jolivet (1875-1955) dies. French working poet, anarchist & pacifist songster.

Jolivet joined the revolutionary singers, "La Muse Rouge" (at age 17), participated in the worker festival, "Vache Enragée" of Montmartre, the pacifist "La Patrie Humaine," etc.

In the 1920s he frequented the "Musée du Soir" of Henry Poulaille, who wrote the preface to his collection, Chansons Sociales et Satiriques (1956).

Encouraged by Edith Piaf, Jolivet continued appearing in the cabarets of Montmartre until his death.

"PAPIERS A CUL

Un jour souffrant et tout pâle
D'une colique autoritaire,
Je me suis servi de mon livret militaire.
N'allez pas m'accuser ici
De façon trop peu délicate,
Ils usent à peu près ainsi
De leurs traités, les diplomates." (...)

[11- 23 -1955] -- Milly Witkop Rocker (1877-1955) dies. Anarchist, labor organizer, lifelong companion of Rudolf Rocker.

See Milly Witkop-Rocker, by Rudolf Rocker (Berkeley Heights: Oriole Press, 1956.)


[12- 25 -1955] -- Aurèle Patorni (1880-1955) dies of complications following surgery. Anarchist, writer, journalist, pacifist & néo-malthusien; married to typesetter & harpsichordist Régina Patorni-Casadesus. Collabroated on many, many journals & reviews, including Eugène Humbert's "La Grande réforme", with Louis Lecoin on "SIA" (organe de la "Solidarité Internationale Antifasciste"), Louis Louvet's "CQFD" & Louis Lecoin's "Défense de l'homme".

[2- 29 -1956] -- México: Simón Radowitzky (Szymon Radowicki) dies. Legendary Polish anarchist who killed police chief Ramon Falcon & his secretary with a bomb in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on November 14, 1909.

"With Radowitzky's passing one of the last social revolutionaries of the Russian Revolution of 1905, one of the finest idealists of the international labour movement was gone."

— Augustin Souchy

[Further details + links]
[Details / context of his assassination of Falcon]

[3- 17 -1956] -- Beatster Jack Kerouac hitchhikes from North Carolina to California, where he meets up with the anarchist poet Gary Snyder in Marin County. During the Spring Kerouac writes The Scripture of the Golden Eternity; writes Old Angel Midnight. Kerouac also meets Alan Watts & Robert Creeley.

[5- 29 -1956] --

US: Permaculturalist, Dreamtime Villager, poet, Elizabeth Perl Nasaw aka Elizabeth Was aka Lyx Ish lives (d.2004). Daily Bleed Saint February 28

[7- 20 -1956] -- Japan: Number 3 of "World Citizen" ("Mondcivitano," in esperanto) appears. Antimilitarist periodical affiliated with the International War Resisters International (WRI). Published by esperanto advocate Taiji Yamaga (1892-1970), a militant pacifist & long-time secretary of the Anarchist Federation of Japan.
See Victor García's Taiji Yamaga y su versión del Tao Te King & Three Japanese Anarchists: Kotoku, Osugi & Yamaga (Kate Sharpley Library, 2000).
http://www.antorcha.net/biblioteca_virtual/filosofia/tao/tao.html


[8- 23 -1956] -- Ernst Frick (1881-1956) dies. Swiss anarchist, artist, archaeologist & scholar of primitive languages.

Frick was involved with the circle around Erich Mühsam, Johannes Nohl (anarchist & one of Hermann Hesse's analysts), & the anarchist Freudian Otto Gross.

[9- 2 -1956] -- Italy:

September 2 to 8 First World Congress of Free Artists at Alba.

Editing of Guy Debord's film On the Passage of a Few Persons through a Rather Brief Period of Time.

Participants: Enrico Baj (Nuclear Art Movement, Milan; excluded in the course of the conference on the Lettrist delegate's demand), Jacques Calonne, Constant (ex-Cobra; Christian Dotremont does not attend, ostensibly because of illness), Giuseppe Pinot Gallizio, Asger Jorn, Piero Simondo, Ettore Sottsass Jr, Elena Verrone (International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus), Gil J. Wolman (Lettrist International/Potlatch), Sandro Cherchi, Franco Garelli (Turin), Jan Kotik, Pravoslav Rada (Czechoslovakia), Charles Estienne, Klaus Fischer, several others.

Two exhibitions are held simultaneously: Futurist Ceramics 1925-33, organized by Jorn & Gallizio, at Alba town hall; & an exhibition by the experimental laboratory at Corino cinema, involving Constant, Gallizio, Garelli, Jorn, Kotik, Rada, Simondo & Wolman.
Wolman's 'Address' is accepted by the congress as its final resolution.
Jorn is appointed committee director of Potlatch, while Wolman is added to the editorial board of Eristica.

[9- 19 -1956] --
Spain: Helios Gómez (1905-1956) dies. Anarchist artist, poet & militant activist; adhiere a la Aliança d´Intellectuals Antifeixistes de Catalunya; contributed to El Frente así como de la organización de la mostra homenaje a Durruti en Barcelona.

---

Gomez saw the struggle in terms of a wider issue which would determine the fate of people everywhere - in Europe, in Russia & Central Asia & in South & North America. El gran artista andaluz y catalán Helios Gómez, que con su trabajo visitó toda Europa y con su compromiso social todos los juzgados, sigue siendo un rebelde que molesta. Solo así puede entenderse que su figura siga sin recuperarse en el grupo de artistas e intelectuales que dió la II República.

---

[10- 24 -1956] -- Hungary: The first Russian tanks enter Budapest. Workers' Councilist movement spreads with councils being formed spontaneously throughout the country.

[10- 25 -1956] -- Hungary: Councils continue to form, despite Russian crackdown, opposing the "dictatorship of the proletariat" & Russian intervention.

For Castoriadis, future revolutions would necessarily strive for the takeover of the management of all production by the workers, themselves organized into workers' councils; the federation of the councils into a central assembly; the expropriation of the capitalists; the dissolution of the police & the army, & the arming of the proletariat; & the issuance of what Castoriadis refers to as a "call on the workers of other countries . . . [that would] explain to them the content & meaning of these measures," which "contain all that is essential to the process of building socialism." Otherwise, these revolutions would be doomed to failure, precisely because they were partial or restricted in their fields of action.

— "Workers' Councils, Cornelius Castoriadis & the SI" ("Not Bored!," #26, 1996)

http://recollectionbooks.com/anow/history/hungary.html

"Of the tendencies toward regroupment that have appeared over the last few years among various minorities in the workers movement in Europe," an unsigned text pronounces, "only the most radical current is worth preserving: that centered on the program of workers councils."

— Internationale Situationiste #6 (August 1961).
http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/6.insurrection.htm

[Details / context]

[10- 26 -1956] -- Hungary: Russian tanks fire on unarmed demonstrators in Budapest. Armed resistance begins in industrial centers, general strike begins, & state power disrupted as power is now in the factories & the streets.

The revolution had begun. An arms factory rushed truck loads of weapons to the city, where thousands of workers had gathered. Police & soldiers handed their arms over to the people. By early the following morning the main streets were in the hands of the workers & students, a Revolutionary Council was formed in Budapest & a General Strike, soon spread to all of Hungary. Armed only with light weapons & molotov cocktails, thousands fought back. After three days 30 tanks were destroyed & Russian tank crews began siding with the rebels. Workers' councils (2,100 across the country —ed.) were formed in factories, steel mills, power stations, coal mines & railway depots throughout Hungary. Peasants spontaneously formed their own councils, redistributed land, & supplied the towns with food. From the first day liberated radio stations broadcast the news across the country. [Details / context]

[10- 27 -1956] --

"Dear Hungarian Premier [Nagy]. We inform you that yesterday the workers' council took power in Borsod County in every respect. The Army & police are under its control. Soviet troops are showing a neutral attitude & have not interfered in our affairs. The workers' council adopts as its own all your demands & stands for amnesty for all Hungarians who have participated in the revolution. Stalinist provocateurs who yesterday shot into the people have been reached by the just punishment of the people." [Details / context]

[10- 30 -1956] --

Hungary 1956 Red Army tanks pull out of Hungary, as demanded in an ultimatum by the workers' councils. It seems as if the people had won... But on November 4th the tanks return. The Russian "dictatorship of the proletariat" dare not allow the proletariat to dictate. [Details / context]

[11- 4 -1956] --

Red Army tanks had pulled out of Hungary, as demanded by the workers' councils. It seemed as if the people had won. But today the tanks return. Having regrouped beyond the borders, 15 Russian divisions, now with 6,000 tanks, fall upon the Hungarian people. All major cities are pounded by artillery fire. In Budapest, the workers' districts bear the brunt of the assault. The people fight back as best they can, but the entire city is shelled continuously for four days & soon lays in ruin. After 10 days of terrible fighting, with thousands dead & injured, the people finally give in. Guerrilla bands fight on throughout 1957 but the last workers' councils are abolished on November 17th. Strikes & demonstrations continue until 1959.

http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/May68docs.htm


[11- 11 -1956] -- Hungary: Armed resistance is crushed throughout the country, including the industrial suburbs of Budapest, where it lasts longest. Passive resistance begins, a nationwide General Strike which lasts five days.

[11- 25 -1956] -- Belgium: At its foundation in Brussels, the Alliance Ouvriere Anarchiste (AOA) adopts the "circled-A" symbol.

@ Circle-A

The origin of the "circled-A" as an anarchist symbol is less clear.

Many think that it started in the 1970s punk movement, but it goes back to a much earlier period...

http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/CircleA.htm

[11- 28 -1956] -- Japan: Sanshirô Ishikawa (1876-1956) dies. Theorist, historian, translator, militant Christian socialist turned anarcho-syndicalist.

[Details / context]

[12- 6 -1956] -- Cuba: Fidel Castro's revolution. An improvement over the American & Mafia version, but ultimately just one authoritarian government replacing another.

Related interest, see Cuban Anarchism: the History of a Movement by Frank Fernandez (Tucson: See Sharp Press).

[12- 10 -1956] -- Italy: Exhibiting in Favor of Unitary Urbanism, December 10-15th

Unitary Urbanism Exhibition featuring work by Sandro Cherchi, Constant, Guy Debord, Jacques Fillon, Giuseppe Pinot Gallizio, Franco Garelli, Asger Jorn, Walter Olmo & Piero Simondo, Turin Cultural Union, Turin. http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/chronology/chronology.html | [Situationist Resources]

[12- 22 -1956] -- Manuel Devaldès (aka Ernest-Edmond Lohy) dies. Anarchist, pacifist & neo-Malthusian.

Devaldes founded "Revue Rouge" in 1895, which included contributions from the "cultural terrorist" Félix Fénéon, Verlaine, Laurent Tailhade, etc. In 1912 he was involved with the group "L'action d'art," as were Gérard de Lacaze-Duthiers & André Colomer, publishing a review of the same name.

Opposed to WWI, he found refuge in England which granted him conscientious objector (CO) status in 1914. Devaldes participated in many libertarian newspapers & reviews, & wrote several books & booklets (La chair à canon (1908), Contes d'un rebelle (1925), La maternité consciente (1927), Anthologie des écrivains réfractaires (1927), etc).

[1- 13 -1957] --

Gil J. Wolman & Jacques Fillon are excluded from the Lettrist International. http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/chronology/chronology.html | [Situationist Resources]

[2- 2 -1957] --

Mad psychogeographer February 2 to 26 Belgium: First Exhibition of Psychogeography, presented by the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus, the Lettrist International & the London Psychogeographical Committee at Taptoe Gallery in Brussels. The catalogue lists paintings & ceramics by Guy Debord, Asger Jorn, Yves Klein, Ralph Rumney, Michèle Bernstein, Mohamed Dahou & a "mad psychogeographer" but only Jorn, Klein & Rumney participate. http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/chronology/chronology.html | [Situationist Resources]

[2- 4 -1957] --

L'Art brut Talks by Ralph Rumney (L'Art brut de vivre [The Outsider Art of Living]) & Asger Jorn (Industrie et beaux-arts, extrêmes de l'unité situationniste [Industry & Fine Art: The Two Extremes of Situationist Unity]), Taptoe Gallery, Brussels (a "monosonorous talk" is presented by Yves Klein two days later). http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/chronology/chronology.html | [Situationist Resources]

[3- 25 -1957] -- Land of Freedom US: Customs again seizes Allen Ginsberg's book of poetry, Howl, this time the second printing published by City Lights Books in Frisco; the US District Attorney decides not to pursue, & the printing is released. But in August, Officer Friendlies from the Frisco Juvenile Dept raid City Lights Bookstore & charge the owner, anarchist & poet Larry Ferlinghetti with obscenity for selling copies of Howl.

whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days       & nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the       Synagogue cast on the pavement...

[4- 19 -1957] -- Ian Heavens lives (1957-2000); Scottish anarchist, co-founder of the punk/samba band Bloco Vomit. A cofounder of the online Spunk Archives. See the Anarchist Encyclopedia page,

[6- 19 -1957] -- México: Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos allegedly lives, Tampico, Tamaulipas.

"Delegado Zero"

Spokesperson for the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN). His nickname (Marcos) is presumably an acrostic combining the names of the communities where the EZLN first rose in arms: Las Margaritas, Amatenango del Valle, La Realidad, Comitán, Ocosingo, & San Cristóbal. Prolific author, essayist, novelist, antiauthoritarian. "I shit on all the revolutionary vanguards of this planet," Marcos says. "We teach [children of the EZLN] that there are so many words like colors & that there are so many thoughts because within them is the world where words are born...& we teach them to speak the truth, that is to say, to speak with their hearts." "Marcos is the voice for many voices. His words, fashioned from humor & poetry, reveal the deep roots & abundant branches of the Zapatista insurrection in Chiapas. It is an original language for an original movement that is transforming Mexico & is helping to change the world." — Eduardo Galeano Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

"The only way to get their attention is to kill or be killed. If you ask us what's going to happen in the near future, we have no fucking idea. Sorry for using the word 'idea.' We are ready to go to war or move on to peace."

[6- 24 -1957] -- France: František Kupka (1871-1957) dies, in Puteaux. Czech Abstract Painter, anarchist, satirist & illustrator.


[6- 30 -1957] -- Brazil: José Oiticica (1882-1957) dies. Lawyer, student of medicine, teacher, & an influential figure in the Brazilian anarchist & labor movement.

Grandfather of the Brazilian artist & anarchist, Hélio Oiticica (1937-1980).

[8- 16 -1957] -- Italy: Adalgisa Fochi (1865-1957) dies. Mother of Camillo Berneri, grandmother of Maria Luisa Berneri & Giliana Berneri. Antifascists & anarchists, the whole lot of them.


[8- 30 -1957] -- Spain: José Luis Facerias is assassinated by the Barcelona police.

The ‘implacable fighter’ dies, riddled with bullets in an ambush laid by the police at the intersection of Urrutia & Verdun streets. Facerias was a veteran leader of anarchist urban guerrilla groups, fighting the fascist regime, which were operating inside & outside of Spain following the defeat of the revolution at the end of the 30s.

(Josep Lluís i Facerias, aka Petro or Petronio Face [1920-1957].)

[Facerias links & resources]

[9- 21 -1957] -- During this month [I don't have the exact day — ed.],

Guy Debord begins work on Mémoires, a book 'composed entirely of prefabricated elements.'

[Situationist Resources]

[10- 6 -1957] -- Alphonse Tricheux (1880-1957) dies, Toulouse. French militant anarchist, anarcho-syndicalist & pacifist.


[10- 15 -1957] -- Guy Debord's Remarques sur le concept d'art expérimental (Remarks on the Concept of Experimental Art), a critique of the text Pour un concept d'expérimentation musicale (Toward a Concept of Musical Experimentation) by Walter Olmo of the Situationist International's Italian Section.


[10- 17 -1957] -- French-Algerian author Albert Camus is awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. Camus wrote for many years for the anarchist & left wing press in France.

Camus' biographer Herbert Lottman comments on his association with numerous anarchists... [Details]

---

[11- 5 -1957] -- France: Potlatch #29, information bulletin of the Lettrist International, issued in Paris.
http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/chronology/chronology.html | [Situationist Resources]

[11- 20 -1957] -- France: Jean-Baptiste Knockaert (1857-1957) dies. Anarcho-syndicalist, communist, then a free thinker.

[1- 1 -1958] --

Nervenruh! Nervenruh! Keine Experimente! (Stay Calm! No Experiments!), the first manifesto of the Situationist International's German section, signed by Asger Jorn & Hans Platschek, Munich. (Reprinted in Pinot Gallizio e il Laboratorio Sperimentale d'Alba (Torino 1974), in Mirella Bandini, L'esthetique, le politique. De Cobra a l'internationale situationniste (1948-1957) (Arles 1998), & in Gruppe Spur 1958-1965. Eine Dokumentation (München 1979).

Also during this month, the French section issues two tracts: "Nouveau théâtre d'opération dans la culture" (A New Cultural Theater of Operations) & "Aux producteurs de l'art moderne" (To the Producers of Modern Art), a 'filoform tract' (A single line imprinted on a piece of paper 2 cm high & 90 cm long: "Si vous êtes fatigués d'imiter des démolitions; s'il vous apparaît que les redites fragmentaires que l'on attend de vous sont dépassées avant d'être, prenez contact avec nous pour organiser à un niveau supérieur de nouveaux pouvoirs de transformation du milieu ambiant")¹.

The former schematised the programme of the SI, while the latter invited artists, "tired of repeating outmoded ideas," to organise new modes for the transformation of the environment.²

http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/chronology/chronology.html | [Situationist Resources]

[1- 16 -1958] -- Eusebio C. Carbó (b. 1883), militant Spanish anarchist, dies.

[1- 25 -1958] -- France:

2nd SI Conference Paris, January 25-26: Participants: Michèle Bernstein, Guy-Ernest Debord, Asger Jorn, Abdelhafid Khatib, Giuseppe Pinot Gallizio. Exclusions of Walter Olmo, Piero Simondo & Elena Verrone of the Italian Section. http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/chronology/chronology.html | [Situationist Resources]

[2- 7 -1958] -- France: André Prévotel dies. One of the defendants, with his wife Andrée Prevotel, in the scandolous "Sterilizers of Bordeaux" trial.

[3- 9 -1958] -- France: Louis Moreau (b.1883) dies.

Artist, engraver, libertarian & militant pacifist

Trained as a lithographer, in 1900 he settles in Paris to practice his trade & develops a passion for drawing, then painting & engraving on wood.

Moreau began contributing to Jean Grave's "Temps Nouveaux." Mobilized during WWI, he nevertheless contributed to Pierre Chardon's clandestine newspaper "Semeur" (1916).

Elisee Reclus by Louis Moreau

Between the two disastrous World Wars, his "Femme libérée" illustrates "l'Idée Libre," the review of Lorulot, & he contributed wood engravings to E. Armand's "Néo-Naturien" & "l'En Dehors", etc.

With Germain Delatouche, like him also an engraver & libertarian, & other artists, they form, in 1924, the group "Les Partisans."

Portraits of famous anarchists, antimilitarist illustrations, bucolic or naturist landscapes, & various wood engravings by Moreau decorate many books & libertarian journals: "Les Humbles," "La Revue Anarchiste," "l'Almanach de la paix" (1934), "l'Unique" (until 1956), & numerous titles from Joseph Ishill's Oriole Press, etc.

« Rejected stardom » An artist of major talent, Moreau rejected stardom, making complete fun of any official recognition. His artist friend Manuel Devaldès wrote a biography of him in 1935.

The artist whose work is most often associated with the Oriole Press is Louis Moreau (1883-?), the French wood-engraver. It was Moreau who designed Ishill's printer's mark, & he contributed a large number of woodcuts for Ishill's publications.

http://www.todotango.com/English/creadores/jdfiliberto.html
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/bright/reclus/ishill/frontpiece.html

[3- 12 -1958] -- Bulgaria: Manol Vassev (1898-1958), true nameYordan Sotirov, dies. Poisoned by his prison guards one day before his scheduled release. A popular Bulgarian militant anarcho-trade unionist & a living symbol of resistance of both fascism & Bolshevism. He also spent several years in Stalinist concentration camps before his prison years.

[4- 12 -1958] --

'The classless society....'

Appearance of «Address by the Situationist International to the General Assembly of the International Association of Art Critics, Meeting on 14 April 1958 at the World's Fair in Brussels» signed by A. Khatib, W. Korun, G.-E. Debord, H. Platschek, G. Pinot Gallizio & A. Jorn on behalf of the Algerian, Belgian, French, German, Italian & Scandinavian sections of the Situationist International. On the back of the pamphlet: 'The classless society has found its artists. Long live the Situationist International!' Judicial proceedings are initiated against Walter Korun for his role in the scandal. http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/chronology/chronology.html | [Situationist Resources]

[5- 3 -1958] -- Gérard de Lacaze-Duthiers (1876-1958) dies. French individualist anarchist, friend of the arts, pacifist intellectual, Professor of Letters, member of l'Union Anarchiste & the group "l'Action d'Art."
... show details

Involved with the review "L'action d'art" with André Colomer & Manuel Devaldès. President of l'Union des Intellectuels pacifistes, responsible for the Parti Pacifiste Internationaliste, president of Syndicat des journalistes et écrivains. Collaborated on the famed Anarchist Encyclopedia produced by Sébastien Faure, & wrote some 40 books & pamphlets, mostly involving literature & pacifism.

[5- 12 -1958] -- Italy:

Construction of Situations . . . During this month ... Rapporto sulla costruzione delle situazioni, Italian edition of Guy Debord's Report on the Construction of Situations, with an introduction by Pinot Gallizio, Turin. Also during this month: 'Interview with Asger Jorn' by Walter Korun, on the meaning of the changes in experimental art before & after Cobra (1948-1951) in Kunstmeridiaan (Taptoe 58), volume V number 4-5-6, devoted to the avant-garde gallery Taptoe in Brussels. http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/chronology/chronology.html | [Situationist Resources]

[5- 16 -1958] -- A concert of John Cage's most important compositions is held, NY.

[5- 28 -1958] -- US: Catholic anarchist Ammon Hennacy ends 40-day fast against US nuclear weapons tests.

[5- 30 -1958] -- Italy:

In Praise of Pinot . . . First exhibition of industrial paintings by Giuseppe Pinot Gallizio, assisted by Giors Melanotte, Notizie Gallery, Turin. Elogio di Pinot Gallizio (In Praise of Pinot Gallizio), by Michèle Bernstein. http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/chronology/chronology.html | [Situationist Resources] | Assault on Culture | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Pinot-Gallizio | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mich%C3%A8le_Bernstein

[6- 23 -1958] -- Boris Vian (1920-1958) dies of a heart attack while at a preview screening of a film version of his 1947 novel, J'irai cracher sur vos tombes (I'll spit on your graves).

Vehemently anti-militarist & pacifist, an extremely gifted writer & jazz musician, & author of the song "Le déserteur" (a classic French chanson). After his death he became a hero to the '68 student revolution, especially in France, where his literary fame also grew. In English he is barely known.

[7- 25 -1958] -- England: International Anarchist Federations (IAF) Congress meets (July 25-August 1st) in London. Among those present are André Prudhommeaux & Clément Fournier, delegates of the Fédération anarchiste française.


[7- 28 -1958] -- US: Saxe Commins (1892-1958) dies, New York.

Saxe Commins an anarchist activist, a speaker, & Emma Goldman's nephew (Stella Ballantine's brother); his activities in his early years included collaborating on & editing Emma Goldman's newspaper, "Mother Earth."

He married the pianist Dorothy Berliner in 1927, & was senior editor at Random House from 1933-1958, working with many of the major American writers of this century, including William Faulkner, Eugene O'Neill (a close friend), Sinclair Lewis, & Theodore Dreiser, among others. He also directed Random House's Modern Library series.

For a fascinating look at the editing of some of the great American books of the 20th century, see What Is an Editor: Saxe Commins at Work by Dorothy Berliner Commins.

[8- 12 -1958] -- Spain: Goliardo Fiaschi, Italian partisan, anti-fascist & anarchist guerrilla , & Luis Agustín Vicente appear before a Court Martial, with Fiaschi receiving a prison term of 20 years & one day, with Vicente receiving 24 years & four months. The two guerrillas had entered Spain a year ago with José Lluís Facerias who was killed in a separate ambush.

[9- 13 -1958] -- US: American immigrant anarchist leader Rudolf Rocker dies, Mohegan, Maine. Anarchosyndicalist, anti-fascist. A Gentile, he became involved in the Jewish anarchist movement, learned Yiddish, lived in the Jewish community, & became the lifelong companion of Milly Witkop (1877-1953).

[10- 10 -1958] -- France: Opening of La Méthode, a cabaret operated by Michèle Bernstein & Guy Debord on the Rue Descartes, Paris.


[10- 11 -1958] -- During this month: 10 jaar experimentele kunst: Jorn en zijn rol in de theoretische inventie ('Ten years of experimental art: Jorn & his role in theoretical invention'), a text by Guy Debord, appears in Dutch in Museumjournaal, series 4 issue 4, Otterlo, the Netherlands. Also Walter Korun, of the Belgian section, is relieved of his functions.
[Exact days not given — ed.]


[10- 11 -1958] -- Maurice Vlaminck (b. 1876) dies. Artist & a founder of Fauvism. A racing cyclist as a young man. In 1900 he met Derain & began to paint seriously, earning his living by playing the violin. At this time he also contributed to anarchist magazines.

"Many modernists — including Pablo Picasso, Frantißek Kupka, Maurice Vlaminck, & Kees van Dongen — thought anarchist politics to be inherent in the idea of an artistic avant-garde & created new formal languages expressive of their desire to effect revolutionary changes in art & society. Yet while Fauvism, Cubism, & Orphism radically altered the art of this century, the social-esthetic theories that nurtured some of their most significant manifestations were discredited by the decline of the anarchist movement after 1914, the rightward swing of political discourse during & after the war, & the concurrent advent of a resolutely apolitical formalist art criticism. Thus a "revolutionary esthetics" — a "politics of form" — played a crucial role in the development of modern art in prewar France, but its significance was first suppressed & then forgotten." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_de_Vlaminck See also "Cubism, Futurism, Anarchism: The 'Aestheticism' of the "Action d'art" Group, 1906-1920" by Mark Antliff "Oxford Art Journal," Vol. 21, No. 2 (1998), pp. 101-120. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0142-6540(1998)21%3A2%3C101%3ACFAT'O%3E2.0.CO%3B2-H

[10- 29 -1958] -- Boris Pasternak, under intense pressure from the Soviet government & press, wires the Swedish Royal Academy his "voluntary refusal" of the Nobel Prize for Literature. One of his crimes is to have written — in his novel, Dr. Zhivago — too sympathetically of the anarchists, & not kindly enough of the Bolsheviks.

[11- 10 -1958] -- Netherlands: Constant Nieuwenhuys & Guy Debord's 'The Amsterdam Declaration' issued in — surprise! — Amsterdam.

"The SI's minimum program is the development of complete environments, which must extend to a unitary urbanism, & research into new modes of behavior in relation to these environments." (excerpt) The declaration is reprinted in December in "Internationale Situationniste" #2 & also in German translation. See also Debord's "Constant & the Path of Unitary Urbanism" http://www.notbored.org/constant-debord.html [Situationist Resources]

[11- 18 -1958] -- France: Surrealism: Is It Dead or Alive?

A debate chaired by Noël Arnaud at Cercle ouvert, Paris. Advertized participants: Guy Debord, Henri Lefebvre (ill), Amadou, Sternberg & Tristan Tzara (all three absent). Debord's contribution, accompanied by a guitar & played on a tape recorder despite his presence, provokes howls of indignation from surrealism's defenders. Also during this month Manifesto by the German Spur group (G. Britt, E. Eisch, L. Fischer, H. Prem, D. Rempt, G. Stadler, H. Sturm, H.P. Zimmer) & Asger Jorn, appears in Munich. German translations of Constant & Debord's 'The Amsterdam declaration,' (Eklärung von Amsterdam) & Debord's 'Theses on Cultural Revolution' (Thesen über die kulterelle Revolution), are published by the SI's German section to serve in the preparatory discussion for the Situationist International's 3rd conference. [Situationist Resources]

[12- 4 -1958] -- France: Internationale Situationniste #2 is published.
[Exact day not given —ed.]

Internationale Situationniste #2 December 1958 Central bulletin published by the sections of the Situationist International. Editor: Guy Debord. Editorial Committee: Mohamed Dahou, Asger Jorn, Maurice Wyckaert. Also this month, release of Mémoires by Guy-Ernest Debord, with the help of Asger Jorn (originally planned for 1 May 1958). Published by the Situationist International, Copenhague. The cover is a sheet of raw number 2 sandpaper. http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/chronology/chronology.html | [Situationist Resources]

[12- 11 -1958] -- Italy: Alberto Meschi (1879-1958), anarchist, dies.

Meschi is one of the beautiful & beloved figures of the Italian anarchist movement. A self-taught anarchist & worker, he emerged as a highly respected libertarian & trade-union leader. For over 20 years the union paper "Il Cavatore" was dedicated to his name, & the city of Carrara, where he died, has a monument in his honor.

[12- 27 -1958] -- Argentina: A reunion of old friends at a meeting of the Argentinian Federación Libertaria today.

The Italian Luce Fabbri, the German Augustin Souchy & the Spaniard Diego Abad de Santillán share memories of clandestinity & repression due to their anarchist ideas & activities during the Spanish Revolution. Host Abad de Santillan (1897-1983) was a leading person in both the Spanish & Argentine anarchist movement. Fabbri (1908-2000) was forced to leave her country of birth in the fascist period & spent most of her life as a professor of Italian literature in Uruguay. Souchy (1892-1984) left Germany as a conscientious objector & went to Sweden in 1915, thereafter living in Spain & South America. http://www.iisg.nl/today/en/27-12.php photo courtesy International Institute of Social History

[1- 1 -1959] -- France: Michel Onfray lives to eat butter.

"L'autorité m'est insupportable, la dépendance invivable, la soumission impossible."

After suffering a heart attack at age 28 & being advised to change his diet, he replied that he "preferred to die eating butter than to economize [his] existence with margarine."

The episode led him to write his first book, Le Ventre des philosophes (The Stomach of the Philosophers).

He endorsed the French Revolutionary Communist League & its candidate for the French presidency in 2002, at odds with the libertarian socialism he advocates in his writings. In 2007, he endorsed José Bové.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Onfray
http://www.wpunj.edu/newpol/issue40/Ireland40.htm

[1- 19 -1959] -- Cuba: During this month the anarchist movement is supressed by Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Fidel Castro.

Cuban anarcho-syndicalists are purged from the unions & the papers "El Libertario" & "Solidaridad Gastronómica" are shut down. For the Cuban libertarian movement the repression is dejavu-all-over-again, forcing it once again into an underground existence, its members forced to choose between escaping into exile or the prospect of being tossed into prison. Surprisingly, for those previously jailed by the reactionary regime, the "revolutionary" prison cells seem oddly familiar.

[2- 18 -1959] -- Jacques Doubinsky (Iakov Dubinsky; 1889-1959) dies. As a young labor radical he joined the Ukrainian peasant uprising in 1918, fighting with the insurrectionary Makhnovist army.

Doubinsky went to Bulgaria, but was arrested & tortured before escaping & permanently settling in France. A director of the Jewish anarchist library "L'autodidacte", involved with "La libre Pensée" & in assisting Bulgarian refugees. His grandson is the anarchist & writer, Sebastien Doubinsky.

[Details / context]

[2- 28 -1959] -- The playwright most known for his verse tragedy, Maxwell Anderson dies in Stamford, Connecticut. His tragedy Winterset (1935), a poetic drama inspired by the Sacco & Vanzetti anarchist case is his most famous, but Anderson also wrote musicals, such as Knickerbocker Holiday (1938) & Lost in the Stars (1949).

[3- 26 -1959] -- Brazil: Anarchist Congress convenes at Nossa Chácara in São Paulo (March 26-29th). Large gathering of militants from all parts of the country, including Spanish & Italian exiles. Ten items are debated & approved, including the refounding of Centros de Cultura Social & reviving the publishing house Editora Mundo Livre, in Rio De Janeiro.
http://www.mauc.ufc.br/expo/2002/02/

[3- 27 -1959] --

Playground Netherlands: During this month the Dutch section of the Internationale Situationniste adopts a Resolution Against the Renovation of the Amsterdam Stock Exchange — a renovation called for by the dominant opinion in the artworld — proposing instead, 'the demolition of the Stock Exchange & the redevelopment of the land as a playground for the area's population [...] the center of Amsterdam is not a museum, but a place inhabited by living beings.' Also during this month Guy Debord is interviewed on Belgian radio, speaking at length on industrial painting. [Exact dates not given —ed.] http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/chronology/chronology.html | [Situationist Resources]

[4- 2 -1959] -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Rep. Alexander Celia introduces bill for posthumous pardon for the anarchists Sacco & Vanzetti to Massachusetts Legislature. The petition is denied. It is only 50 years after their execution, when Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Mass. Governor Michael Dukakis proclaims August 23, 1977, Sacco & Vanzetti Day, that any stigma is removed from their names.

[4- 5 -1959] -- Cuba: Censorship of the media, prohibition of strikes & other labor & anarchist activities in Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Fidel Castro's regime.
[Details / context]

[4- 8 -1959] -- France: Felipe Alaiz de Pablo (1887-1959) dies, exiled in Paris. Anarchist & journalist. Director of Revista de Aragon, writer for El sol de Madrid, Heraldo de Aragon, La Revista Blanca, Solidaridad Obrera de Valencia & Sevilla. Published novels & works on anarchism & translations.


[4- 15 -1959] --

The cinema, too, must be destroyed.... Netherlands: SITUATIONIST CHRONOLOGY 15 April to 8 May 1959 'A meter of art for 40 to 70 marks,' slogan of Giuseppe Pinot Gallizio's first exhibition of industrial painting at Van de Loo Gallery, Munich. 17 to 20 1959 3rd SI conference in Munich. Participants: Armando, Constant, G.-E. Debord, Erwin Eisch, Heinz Höfl, Asger Jorn, Giors Melanotte, Har Oudejans, Giuseppe Pinot Gallizio, Heimrad Prem, Gretel Stadler, Helmut Sturm, Maurice Wyckaert, Hans-Peter Zimmer. Foundation in Amsterdam of the Bureau for Invesigation for Unitary Urbanism. Director: Constant. Potlatch becomes a bulletin of internal liaison under the responsibility of the Dutch section. Adoption of 'The Amsterdam declaration.' The tract Ein Kultureller Putsch während Ihr schlaft! (A Cultural Putsch While You Sleep!), signed by Constant, Debord, Jorn, Pinot Gallizio, Wyckaert & Zimmer for the Dutch, French, Danish, Italian, Belgian & German sections, is distributed on the morning of the 21st with an invitation to Professor Bense's tape-recorded pseudo-press conference. Tape recorded conference by the Dutch section at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture. http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/chronology/chronology.html | [Situationist Resources]

[4- 25 -1959] -- France: Georges Cochon (1879-1959) dies. Tapestry maker, anarchist & very popular secretary of the "Federation of Tenants" (ancestor of the DAL). See the Anarchist Encyclopedia page, http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/CochonGeorges.htm


[5- 1 -1959] -- Italy: A drunkard is stopped by police.

On the evening of May Day, 1959, a drunkard is stopped by police.

Presumed to be a vagrant, he is in fact Renato Caccioppolli, an esteemed mathematics professor at Naples University, grandson of the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, & a Communist.

Thus begins the last week of the professor's life...

[Details / context]

[5- 13 -1959] -- France:

Cavern of anti-matter . . . May 13 ... Giuseppe Pinot Gallizio covers the walls, floor & ceiling of Drouin Gallery to create a 'cavern of anti-matter' out of 145 meters of rolls of industrial painting. 'Unfortunately, the poor presentation of this "attempt at the construction of an ambiance" prevented the efficacious application of industrial painting already seen in Italy & Germany.' (Potlatch #30) Also, Constant, first monograph published by the Bibliothèque d'Alexandria appears, Paris. http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/chronology/chronology.html | [Situationist Resources] | Assault on Culture

[6- 26 -1959] -- France: Joëlle Aubron lives (1959-2006). Anarchist member of the group "Action Directe". Action Directe went after symbols of capitalist exploitation (corporations, police, Ministries of Labour, Defense, etc). These included the killing of Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader General Audran (responsible for the sales of French weapons). Captured & sentenced to prison for life, she was released for medical reasons in 2004 after 17 years. She died from cancer March 2006.

[9- 18 -1959] --

18 September to 25 October Exhibition of collages, ceramics, drawings & graphic designs by Asger Jorn, Van de Loo Gallery, Essen.

[9- 22 -1959] --

Editing of Guy Debord's film On the Passage of a Few Persons through a Rather Brief Period of Time begins this month.

One reel (20 mins.), 35mm, black & white. Produced by the Dansk-Fransk Experimentalfilms Kompagni & Laboratoire GTC; cinematographer: André Mrugalski; editor: Chantal Delattre; assistant director: Ghislain de Marbaix; assistant cinematographer: Jean Harnois; script: Michèle Vallon; grip: Bernard Largemain. Music: Georg Friedrich Handel, Origin of Design; Michel Richard Delalande Caprice no 2. Voice-over: Jean Harnois, Guy Debord, Claude Brabant. [I don't have the exact day — ed.]

[10- 4 -1959] -- Industrial painting manifesto Per un'arte unitaria applicabile (For a unitary applicable art) by Pinot Gallizio, in the review Notizie: arti figurative #9, Turin. [Exact day not given —ed.]


[11- 21 -1959] -- Guy Debord

France: Guy Debord, questioned by the police tribunal about his participation in the Declaration on the Right to Insubordination in the Algerian War, has it recorded in his deposition that by the fact of having signed the declaration alone, he assumes complete responsibility for publication & distribution, 'equal to that of its signatories, whatever their identity, & the persons responsible, whomever of them might wish to be recognized as such.' Also today, Spur #2, journal of the German section of the Situationist International, published in Munich. Editors: Helmut Sturm, Heimrad Prem, Hans-Peter Zimmer, Lothar Fischer, & Jørgen Nash, Katja Lindell & Christel Fischer. [Situationist Resources]

[11- 29 -1959] -- ¶ Kenneth Rexroth, in his "New York Times Book Review" article on Mexico City Blues, attacks Jack Kerouac & his writing.

Kenneth Rexroth was generally extremely supportive of the writers associated with the "Beat movement," which he helped usher in. This included high praise for the poet & fellow anarchist Robert Duncan, despite the fact Duncan was involved with his wife. This article was a venomous attack on Kerouac, whom Rexroth met & disliked. Kerouac seemed to serve as a lightning rod for a variety of dislikes, anxieties & other misgivings he had about the rise of the younger writers to national prominence in the US.

http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/kerouac.htm

[12- 21 -1959] -- Spain: Antonia Maymón (b.1881) dies. Militant activist, as a rationalist teacher, naturista, libertarian, & as feminist. Maymón collaborated in numerous congresses & publications, such as "Generación Consciente", & was a founder of the FAI.


[12- 30 -1959] --

Spain: Francisco Sabaté ("Quico") & his guérilla group (Antonio Miracle, Rogelio Madrigal, Francisco Conesa & Martín Ruiz) slip into the country from the French border. A fateful attempt to reach Barcelona, they are forced into shoot-outs with the Guardia Civile (alerted & aided by French Intelligence) & all are killed within the next week. "Quico," the nightmare of the Spanish fascists, is finally shot down on January 5th. The entire episode causes a sensation throughout Spain, a reminder of the old resistance days. See Antonio Téllez's Sabate: Guerrilla Extraordinary, p.170. [Details / context]

Sur le passage de quelques personnes à travers une assez courte unité de temps (1959) First projection of Guy Debord's film On the Passage of a Few Persons through a Rather Brief Period of Time, Paris. Shooting for the film began on April 6th. While most of Debord's films may be viewed as online video, this is currently not one of them. http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/chronology/chronology.html | [Situationist Resources]