Collectors: Pierre Ramus

The Institute is an important repository of personal papers from the anarchist movement. The inventory of the papers of the Austrian anarchist Pierre Ramus (the pseudonym of Rudolf Grossmann, son of a Jewish father and a catholic mother, 1882-1942) has made one of this collection's most important archives available to researchers.

Grossmann's pseudonym, which he borrowed from the French humanist Petrus Ramus, conveyed his ideal of becoming an educating rationalist (Aufklärer). From 1898 till 1903 he was active in the anarchist movement in New York where he met Johann Most. He had to leave the country because of his political activities and went to England.

In London, he was active in the Jewish and German anarchist movement. He wrote for the Yiddish communist-anarchist weekly Der Arbeyter Fraynd (The Workers Friend) as well as for several German periodicals. In 1907 he returned to Vienna. There he founded the paper Wolhlstand für Alle.

In World War I Ramus was sent to prison for refusing to serve in the military. In November 1918 he founded the periodical Erkenntnis und Befreiung: Wochenschrift des herrschaftlosen Sozialismus, which appeared until 1933. In 1938 he sought refuge in France, from where he escaped the Nazis by fleeing to Morocco in 1940. In 1942 he died at sea, en route to Mexico.

In addition to manuscripts and documents concerning his political activities, his archive contains correspondence with kindred spirits in virtually all countries where an anarchist movement existed in his day. His correspondents included Diego Abad de Santillán, Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman, Thomas Keell and Gustav Landauer.

The archive measures 6.8 metres and is indexed.
Finding Aid: Inventory
The inventory was published as IISH Working Paper no. 35:
Tiny de Boer, Inventar des Nachlasses Pierre Ramus (Rudolph Grossmann) (1882-1942) (Amsterdam: Stichting beheer IISG 1997).