Ellic Howe

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Ellic Paul Howe , originally Ellic Winston Paul Fourman , (born September 20, 1910 in London ; died September 28, 1991 there ) was a British typesetter , author and historian .

Life

Ellic's mother was the daughter of a Russian-Jewish immigrant who had built a cigarette factory ("De Reszke") in London. On a trip to Odessa she met the lawyer Maximilian Fourman, married him and returned with him to London. There Ellic was born, his mother Ella died in childbirth. The father returned to Odessa and left the child with the grandfather. This handed him over to the care of his daughter Anna and her husband Garfield Howe, who adopted Ellic. In Bradford he attended public school . In 1925 his grandfather died and his inheritance made him financially independent. He traveled through Germany, France and Italy and learned languages. From 1929 he studied history and economics as an undergraduate at Hertford College at Oxford University for two years . He spent the following years in Berlin, Paris, Rome and Vienna.

Back in London, he developed a passion for typography and completed from 1934 with James Shand, a typesetter -Teaching in Hertford . In 1935 he met Stanley Morison and became his student. After completing his apprenticeship, Howe continued to work for Shand on a commission basis, published his first essays in his magazine Typography and researched the history of printing and typography. In 1943, "The Trade" was his first major study on the history of printing.

In 1938, at the height of the Munich crisis , Howe volunteered for service with an anti-aircraft unit of the British Territorial Army. In February 1940 he was promoted to Warrant Officer Class II and headed a secret registry as a sergeant major on the staff of the Anti-Aircraft High Command in Stanmore . From November 1941 he worked under Sefton Delmer as a "master forger" for the Political Warfare Executive . For the use of agents and for the purpose of psychological warfare, he forged documents such as Wehrmacht orders, German ID cards , postage stamps and food cards as well as propaganda material. From November 1941 to May 1945 Howe's department handled nearly 1,500 print jobs.

After the war Howe resumed his research on book history and published "The London Compositor" (1946), his most important work on the history of printing as well as bibliographic studies on London typesetters and bookbinders . With his second wife Elsa (née Antweiler) he brought out a “Pekingese Scrapbook” in 1954.

In the 1960s, in “Urania's Children” (1967), he dealt with the history of modern astrology , its theosophically inspired renaissance and its role in the Third Reich . Studies of Freemasonry followed in the 1970s , especially the Golden Dawn and Theodor Reuss' Ordo Templi Orientis . In "The Black Game" (1982) he told the story of the "Black Propaganda" of the Political Warfare Executive and the work of his department during World War II .

Works (selection)

  • "The Trade": passages from the literature of the printing craft, 1550-1935 , Hutchinson, London 1943
  • The London Compositor. Documents relating to wages, working conditions and customs of the London printing trade, 1785-1900 , The Bibliographical Society, London 1947
  • The London Society of Compositors (Re-established 1848): a centenary history , with Harold E. Waite, Cassell, London 1948
  • The British Federation of Master Printers, 1900-1950 , British Federation of Master Printers, London 1950
  • The London Bookbinders, 1750-1806 , with wood engravings by Gwen Raverz, Dropmore Press, London 1950
  • With John Child: The Society of London Bookbinders, 1780-1951 , Sylvan Press, London 1952
  • With Elsa Howe: Pekingese Scrapbook , Chapman & Hell, London 1954
  • Nostradamus and the Nazis: a footnote to the history of the Third Reich , Arborfield, London 1965
  • Urania's Children: the strange world of the astrologers , William Kimber, London 1967. - 2nd exp. Edition: Astrology and Psychological Warfare during World War II , Rider, London 1972
  • Rudolph Freiherr von Sebottendorff , unpublished typescript, London 1968, ed. and with a chronological table on Sebottendorff's biography and a preliminary bibliography of his writings by Albrecht Götz von Olenhusen, limited and numbered private print, Freiburg 1989, unchanged private reprint 2009.
  • Fringe Masonry in England 1870-1885 , in: Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 1972, pp. 242-295; on-line
  • The Magicians of the Golden Dawn: a documentary history of a magical order, 1887-1923 , Routledge and Kegan Paul, London 1972. - US edition by Weiser, New York 1978
  • The Collapse of Freemasonry in Nazi Germany 1933-35 , in: Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 95, 1982, pp. 21-36; on-line
  • Astrology and the Third Reich , Aquarian, Wellingborough 1984 ( Urania's Children , revised and expanded). - German edition: Urania's children. The Strange World of Astrologers and the Third Reich , ed. and translated from the English. by Franz Isfort, Beltz Athenaeum, Weinheim 1995
  • The Black Game: British subversive operations against the Germans during the Second World War , Michael Joseph, London 1982. - German edition: The Black Propaganda: An inside report on the most secret operations of the British secret service in World War II , translated from Hans Jürgen von Koskull, revised by the author. u. erg., Beck, Munich 1985
  • With Helmut Möller: Merlin Peregrinus: Vom Untergrund des Abendlandes , Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1986

literature

  • Ways and astray. Contributions to the European intellectual history of modern times. Festschrift for Ellic Howe on September 20, 1990 , ed. by Albrecht Götz von Olenhusen in connection with Nicolas Barker, Herbert Franke and Helmut Möller, 2nd edition with the obituaries of Ellic Howe in the appendix, Freiburg 1993
  • Sefton Delmer : An autobiography. , Vol. 1. Trail sinister , Vol. 2. Black boomerang , Secker & Warburg, London 1961 and 1962. - German edition: Die Deutschen und ich , Nannen, Hamburg 1962

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Lee Richards: The Black Art - British Clandestine Psychological Warfare against the Third Reich , Peacchaven, 2010, ISBN 0-9542936-3-0 , GoogleBooks
  2. ↑ Nicolas Barker: Ellic Howe , obituary in The Independent , October 2, 1991, in: paths and detours , 1993, p f 274th
  3. ↑ a b Die Schwarze Propaganda , Munich 1983, p. 24 ff.
  4. ↑ TYPOGRAPHY , modernism101.com
  5. ↑ Ellic Howe , obituary in the Daily Telegraph , October 23, 1991, in: paths and detours , 1993, pp 276 et seq.
  6. ↑ Sefton Delmer: Die Deutschen und ich , 1962, p. 535 ff. - Howe is listed in Delmer's book under the pseudonym Armin Hull .
  7. ↑ Ellic Howe , obituary in The Times , October 8, 1991, in: paths and detours , 1993, pp 279 et seq.
personal data
SURNAME Howe, Ellic
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Howe, Ellic Paul; Fourman, Ellic Winston Paul (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British typesetter, author and historian
DATE OF BIRTH September 20, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH September 28, 1991
Place of death London