Max Nacht Papers
Period
1892-1973
Total size
0.6 m.
Consultation
Not restricted
Biography
Max Nacht: also named Max Nomad; born in Buczacz, Eastern Galicia, Austria-Hungary 1881, died in New York 1973; anarchist, later socialist writer; from 1902 on contributed widely to anarchist periodicals, e.g. Neues Leben; co-editor of the Polish anarcho-syndicalist monthly Wolny Swiat in 1904; fled arrest in August 1904 and went to Zurich, where he became an editor of Der Weckruf; abandoned anarchism in 1906 to become a member of Jan Machajski's group in Geneva; active in the Polish-Russian underground 1908-1909; went to the USA in 1913, where he changed his name into Max Nomad; in New York and Washington editor of pro-Soviet bulletins and translator for the Soviet Information Bureau 1921-1929; contributed to historical, sociological and political journals in Europe and the USA; lecturer in politics and history at the New York University and the New School for Social Research from 1945; among his publications are Rebels and Renegades 1932, Apostles of Revolution 1939 and his reminiscences Dreamers, Dynamiters and Demagogues 1964. Siegfried Nacht: also named Stephen Naft; born Vienna 1878, died in Flushing, Queens, New York 1956; anarchist and journalist; propagandist for anarcho-syndicalism; delegate for Eastern Galicia to the International Socialist Congress in Paris 1900; published widely in the anarchist press from 1901 on, mostly under the pen name of Arnold Roller, e.g. in Freiheit , Neues Leben , Der Anarchist , Der Freie Arbeiter ; went to Spain in 1903, befriended Anselmo Lorenzo, Juan Montseny and Francisco Ferrer; delegate to the International Antimilitarist Congress in Amsterdam in 1904; edited with Pedro Vallina L'Espagne Inquisitoriale 1904; for a while active in Bohemia where he edited Der Generalstreik ; with his brother Max editor of Der Weckruf (Zurich) 1905-1906; expelled from Switzerland, lived in several European countries; emigrated to the USA in 1912, changed his name into Stephen Naft and was naturalized in 1920; journalist for the New Yorker Volkszeitung in the early 1920s; Latin America editor of Tass 1925-1933; editor of the French news agency Havas in New York 1934-1935; worked for the US coordinator of Inter-American Affairs in the Second World War.
Content
Max Nacht papers: published and unpublished articles (partly typescripts) of Max Nacht on various subjects including the political situation in the thirties in America, Austria, India, Japan, Poland, Russia and Spain; on antimilitarism, anti-Semitism, communism, fascism, Nazism and socialism; documents on Waclaw Machajski; files concerning anarchists from all over the world, collected by Max Nacht; Siegfried Nacht papers: letters received from Vicente Blasco Ibañez 1908, Luigi Fabbri 1908, Augustin Hamon 1908, Harry Kelly 1932, R. Lange 1905, Charles Malato 1906-1907, Max Nettlau 1907-1935 and n.d., Hermynia Zur Mühlen 1929, Rudolf Rocker 1943-1944, 1950, 1952 and others; files on various persons and subjects collected by Siegfried Nacht including Michail Bakunin, Gustav Landauer, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Georges Sorel; on American, British and Russian anarchists and the Spanish Civil War; biographical notes concerning Max and Siegfried Nacht; correspondence with the International Institute of Social History (IISH); press clippings, pamphlets and printed material.
Processing information
Inventory made by Tiny de Boer in 2005