Pierre Ramus

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Pierre Ramus, 1924

Pierre Ramus ( pseudonym for Rudolf Großmann ; born April 15, 1882 in Vienna ; † May 27, 1942 on an Atlantic crossing ) was an activist and theorist of anarchism and pacifism . He is considered the most important representative of the anarchist movement in Austria.

Life

Rudolf Grossmann was the son of the merchant Samuel Grossmann from Hungary and Sofie Polnauer from Moravia. He had three sisters. In 1898 he was excluded from high school because of social democratic propaganda and fell out with his parents. At the age of 16, he was sent to relatives in the USA .

He attended lectures at Columbia University in New York and was a journalist for the social democratic New Yorker People's Newspaper (1898–1900) and from 1899 also for the opposition-social-democratic Gross-Newyorker Arbeiterzeitung . In 1900, under the influence of Johann Most and Emma Goldmann, he turned to anarchism, wrote for Johann Most's magazine Freiheit and was a speaker at anarchist meetings. At the age of 18, he published his first monthly newspaper Zeitgeist with the humor supplement Der Tramp in New York. He also wrote articles for the Chicagoer Arbeiter-Zeitung and was editor of the Chicago Sunday paper The Torch (1902-1903). In 1902 he was sentenced to five years in prison for allegedly leading a strike by silk weavers in Paterson, New Jersey . He then fled to England under the pseudonym Pierre Ramus (after the French humanist Petrus Ramus , 1515–1572).

From 1904 he continued his work as a publicist and speaker in anarchist circles in London. At the same time he attended lectures in economics and law at the London School of Economics and Political Science . Under his pen name Pierre Ramus he wrote for: Rudolf Rockers weekly The worker friend , the literary monthly newspaper Germinal , the anarchist weekly newspaper The Free Workers World (London 1906), The free workers (Berlin 1904-1907), the trade union Monatsblatt The free cigarettes workers and published the Monthly The Free Generation ; In 1927 he was the head of the magazine Der Anarchist . Under the influence of Peter Kropotkin , he turned to communist anarchism. In 1903 he met his wife, the Russian anarchist Sophie ("Sonja") Ossipovna Friedmann (1884–1974), in Kropotkin's circle. They had two daughters and were married in 1916.

He returned to Austria in 1907, where his reputation as a well-respected theorist and publicist preceded him. Here he founded the anarchist organ Prosperity for All (1907-1914), continued to publish The Free Generation and was the yearbook of the Free Generation (1910-1914). In 1907 he was Austria's delegate at the International Anarchist Congress in Amsterdam . He made lecture tours to Bohemia, France, England, Switzerland and in 1908 to numerous cities in Austria. He founded the group of domineering and non-violent socialists (Kropotkinians and Tolstoians ), the anarchist trade union federation for Lower Austria (1908-1911) and the Free Trade Union Association (1911-1914).

In 1914 - after Austria declared war on Serbia - he was arrested twice for espionage and high treason . He was under house arrest until the end of the war . His political contacts u. a. however, he was able to maintain to pacifist circles. During this time his three main works were created: “The heresy and lack of science of Marxism in the field of socialism” (1919), “The new creation of society through communist anarchism” (1920) and the “Peace Warriors in the Hinterland” (1924). In 1919 he founded the League of Dominant Socialists with the magazine Knowledge and Liberation .

In the interwar period from 1918 to 1932, his uncompromising adherence to non-violence and his anti-militarism during the “Austrian Revolution” and later also brought him into open opposition to Social Democrats and Communists. After 1918 he represented the anarchists in the Vienna Workers' Council, participated in the peace movement and in various autonomous settlement projects. In 1933 a group of National Socialists knocked him unconscious. Because of his commitment to voluntary vasectomy ("vasectomy affair"), he had to go to prison in Karlau near Graz for ten months in 1934 .

Ramus fled in 1938 because of his Jewish origins and as an anarchist after the annexation of Austria . His escape initially led him to Morocco via Switzerland, France and Spain. He died in 1942 on the ship that was supposed to bring him to his family in Mexico, who had fled before.

In 1992 the Pierre Ramus Society was founded in Vienna .

Fonts (selection)

  • William Godwin, the theorist of communist anarchism, Leipzig 1907
  • The Judicial Murder of Chicago , n.d. 1912, digitized by Hathi Trust (only with US proxy) (about the Haymarket affair 1886/87)
  • The Anarchist Manifesto , Berlin 1907, digitized at archive.org (a counterpart to the Communist Manifesto )
  • The heresy and lack of science of Marxism in the field of socialism, Vienna-Klosterneuburg 1919; Digitization at ZBW Kiel (a fundamental analysis of a theory incorrect according to Ramus, incorrect methods, senseless tactics and missing concrete content)
  • The re-creation of society through communist anarchism, Vienna-Klosterneuburg 1921, digitized at Hathi Trust (only with US proxy) (Ramus' theory, which establishes a reasonable order based on the existing knowledge of human nature)
  • Francisco Ferrer January 10, 1859 - October 13, 1909. His life and work . Third, increased edition. With an afterword by Dr. Eugene Heinrich Schmitt. Vienna-Klosterneuburg: Publishing house knowledge and liberation , 1921, digitized by Hathi Trust (only with US proxy)
  • Hinterland peace warriors , Mannheim 1924 (a partially autobiographical novel)
  • appeared posthumously: The basic elements of Max Stirner's philosophical worldview . In: Widerreden , ed. v. Kurt W. Fleming and Gerhard Senft , Verlag Max-Stirner-Archiv, Leipzig 2001, pp. 63–113, 126–128 (note)

Magazines

literature

  • Ramus, Pierre. In: Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss (ed.): Biographical manual of German-speaking emigration after 1933. Vol. 1: Politics, economics, public life . Munich: Saur 1980, p. 583 f.
  • Ilse Schepperle: Pierre Ramus: Marxism criticism and socialism conception . tuduv-Verl.-Ges, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-88073-278-7 .
  • Ilse Ruch-Schepperle:  Ramus, Pierre. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 21, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-428-11202-4 , p. 136 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Grossmann, Rudolf. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 9: Glass Green. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. Saur, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-598-22689-6 , pp. 343-357.
  • Beatrix Müller-Kampel (Ed.): "War is murder on command". Bourgeois and anarchist peace concepts. Bertha von Suttner and Pierre Ramus . Verlag Graswurzelrevolution, Nettersheim 2005. ISBN 3-9806353-7-6

Web links

Commons : Pierre Ramus  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files
Wikisource: Pierre Ramus  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Pierre Ramus before the lay judges. In:  Wiener Sonntags-Zeitung / Wiener Sonn- und Mondags-Zeitung , June 6, 1933, p. 10 (online at ANNO ).Template: ANNO / Maintenance / wsz
personal data
SURNAME Ramus, Pierre
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Grossmann, Rudolf (birth name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Activist and theorist of anarchism and pacifism
DATE OF BIRTH April 15, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH May 27, 1942
Place of death Atlantic