Benedict Lachmann

Benedict Lachmann (born February 8, 1878 in Kulm , West Prussia , † December 4, 1941 in Litzmannstadt ) was a German writer and bookseller.

Life

Benedict Lachmann was born into the Jewish family of Wolff Lachmann and his wife Emma, ​​nee. Meier, born. He had four siblings: Anna, Georg, Martha and Rosa.

As a young man, Lachmann went to Berlin, where he joined the bohemians of poets and writers and frequented their legendary meeting place, the Charlottenburg Romanisches Café . In these circles he also got to know John Henry Mackay , who had published a biography about Max Stirner in 1897 and who introduced the name individualistic anarchism for his then little-known ideas . Lachmann was able to make substantial contributions to the difficult to elucidate Stirner biography, which Mackay included in the second edition of his book. Lachmann was also otherwise close to Stirner's individualistic anarchism. In 1906 Lachmann resigned from the Jewish community.

In the first decade of the 20th century Lachmann began to work as a journalist. In addition to smaller works, he wrote his book Protagoras - Nietzsche - Stirner. A contribution to the philosophy of individualism and egoism , the first edition of which appeared in 1914 and the second edition in 1923; a reprint was organized in 1978 by the publishing house of the Mackay Society founded by Kurt Zube . Shortly after the end of the First World War, Lachmann founded the magazine Der Individualistische Anarchist , of which twelve issues appeared. Also in 1919, Lachmann opened a bookstore in Berlin that once had well-known customers such as Albert Einstein and Gottfried Benn and which still exists today as a bookstore Bayerischer Platz with a sense of tradition.

Since Lachmann was a Jew according to the criteria of the National Socialist state, his living conditions became increasingly repressive in the years after 1933. After handing over the management of his bookstore to his partner Paul Behr in 1930 for health reasons, he sold the company to him in 1937. However, Lachmann did not emigrate. When Berlin Jews were first deported on October 18, 1941, he was taken to a camp in Litzmannstadt / Łódź. Due to the living conditions there, the unhealthy Lachmann died on December 4, 1941.

Stolperstein, Bayerischer Platz 13/14, Berlin-Schöneberg

On August 5, 2011, a stumbling block was laid in front of Lachmann's house on Bayerischer Platz in Berlin-Schöneberg.

Fonts

• Protagoras - Nietzsche - Stirner. A contribution to the philosophy of individualism and egoism , Verlag Leonh. Simion Nachf., Berlin 1914; 2nd edition udT Protagoras - Nietzsche - Stirner. Place the egoism! , Self-published; 3rd edition as a reprint of the 2nd in Verlag der Mackay-Gesellschaft, Freiburg / Br. 1978
• What is socialism Publishing house Keil, Frankfurt / M. and Leipzig 1919
• The individualistic anarchist . In: Der Individualistische Anarchist, 1st year, Issue 1, April 1919, pp. 1–3 (programmatic explanation)
• [Antibarbarus]: The individual and society. In: Der Individualistische Anarchist, 1st vol., Issue 3, May 1919, pp. 126-130
• [Antibarbarus]: The individual and politics. In: Der Individualistische Anarchist, 1. Vol. 5, June 1919, pp. 225-231
• The citizen king. France between the revolutions; 1830-1848. Löwe publishing house, Berlin 1939

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The key biographical data of this article come from a biographical sketch drawn up by Anne Meckel and Hannelore Emmerich .
2. ↑ One of the few documents from this time attests to his participation in a discussion of the Giordano Bruno Bund founded by Bruno Wille and Wilhelm Bölsche in 1902 (see report in: Der Freidenker, 10th year (1902), no and 16, reprinted in: Rudolf Steiner: Gesamtausgabe , Volume 59, p. 305).
3. ↑ Mackay thanks Lachmann as "a helper that I couldn't have wished for better". See John Henry Mackay: Max Stirner. His life and work , 3rd edition Berlin 1914, p. XIII.
4. ↑ On the history of the bookstore Bayerischer Platz