August Spies (journalist)

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August Spies (1886)

August Vincent Theodor Spies (born December 10, 1855 at Burg Landeck (Rhön) , Hesse ; † November 11, 1887 in Chicago , Illinois ) was editor-in-chief and publisher of the socialist workers' newspaper and a spokesman for the American labor movement in Chicago.

biography

Childhood and youth

Spies was the eldest son of a forester and his wife Christina. At first he got private lessons, later he attended the Polytechnic in Kassel . When August was 17 years old, his father died. The family's financial situation deteriorated dramatically as a result, so that August emigrated to the United States .

Living in the USA

In 1872 Spies arrived in New York City , New York and began an apprenticeship in furniture construction. A year later he moved to Chicago , Illinois , where he lived until his death, except for brief interruptions. In 1876 he went into business for himself, and a short time later his mother came to the USA with her younger siblings. Spies took them in. At this time he began to be interested in the labor movement and in 1877 joined the Socialist Workers' Party of North America . In response to the Great Railroad Strike , one of the largest strikes of the 19th century, and its brutal suppression, Spies joined the Lehr- und Wehrverein , an organization of armed workers, that same year .

In 1880 he became the publisher and manager of the local Arbeiter-Zeitung and was also its editor-in-chief from 1884–1886. Under the impression of the brutality of the police in demonstrations and strikes, election fraud and their legitimation by corrupt judges, Spies turned more and more from the legal path of the social democrats and developed revolutionary - anarchist tendencies. He became the spokesman for the social revolutionary wing of the American labor movement. In 2017, writings by August Spies were exhibited in the Neue Galerie on the occasion of documenta 14 in Kassel.

Condemnation

In November 1887 he was executed by hanging along with three other anarchists after a bomb exploded on May 4, 1886 at a rally for the eight-hour workday in the Haymarket . This was one of the most famous judicial murders in the United States.

In 1893, Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld annulled the verdict:

“None of the defendants could be linked to the case. The jury was selected in part. "

John F. Kennedy later judged Altgeld: "A shining example of moral courage ."

literature

  • Dyer D. Lum : August Spies. In: Twentieth Century. September 3, 1891.
  • Heinrich Nuhn : August Spies, a Hessian social revolutionary in America. Victims of the tragedy on the Chicago Haymarket in 1886/87. With personal reports and documents (= Friedewälder contributions to regional folklore and culture 1). Jenior & Pressler, Kassel 1992, ISBN 3-928172-11-5 .
  • The Autobiographies of the Haymarket Martyrs. First published in the newspaper Knights of Labor , 1886/87 (Reprint. Edited and with an introduction by Philip S. Foner. Humanities Press, New York NY 1969 (= AIMS - American Institute for Marxist Studies. Historical Series 5, ZDB -ID 444865-0 )).
  • Spies, August Vincent Theodore . In: James Grant Wilson, John Fiske (Eds.): Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography . tape 5 : Pickering - Sumter . D. Appleton and Company, New York 1888, p. 632 (English, full text [ Wikisource ]).

Web links

Commons : August Spies  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: August Spies (journalist)  - sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ I was born within the ruins of the old robbers castle Landeck upon a high mountains peak (Landeckerberg) in Central Germany in 1855. Autobiography. Website of the Chicago Historical Society ( Memento of the original from May 18, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved April 13, 2011 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.chicagohs.org
personal data
SURNAME Spies, August
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Spies, August Vincent Theodor (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American labor leader
DATE OF BIRTH December 10, 1855
PLACE OF BIRTH Landeck Castle (Rhoen) , Hesse, Germany
DATE OF DEATH November 11, 1887
Place of death Chicago , Illinois, United States