Proletariers aus der revolutionären Arbeiterbewegung, ed. Gustav Landauer (Berlin: Verlag des sozialistischen Bundes, 1913) and Weinberg, Forty Years in the Struggle: The Memoirs of a Jewish Anarchist, trans. Naomi Cohen, ed. Robert Helms (Duluth, MN: Litwin Books, 2008).
4 Elias Tcherikower, The Early Jewish Labor Movement in the United States (New York: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, 1961), 5.
5 Irving Howe, World of Our Fathers: The Journey of the East European Jews to America and the Life They Found and Made (1976; London: Phoenix Press, 2000), 11.
6 Shmuel Spector and Bracha Freundlich, eds. Lost Jewish Worlds: The Communities of Grodno, Lida, Olkieniki, Vishay (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1996), 18.
7 The commemoration in the great hall of Cooper Union was attended by over 3,500 men and women, according to the New York Times. The hall and stage were decked out with banners and flags. Music was provided by two large orchestras, one socialist, the other anarchist. The keynote speakers were the socialist Sergius Schevitch, and of course, Johann Most who, when introduced, “was greeted with a perfect storm of applause.” See “They Mourn Their Dead,” New York Times, November 11, 1888.
8 Paul Avrich and Karen Avrich, Sasha and Emma: The Anarchist Odyssey of Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012), 26.
9 Heiner Becker, “Johann Most,” Internationale wissenschaftliche Korrespondenz zur Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung Vol. 41, no. 1–2 (March 2005): 52; Eduard Müller, Bericht über die Untersuchung betreffend die anarchistischen Umtriebe in der Schweiz an den hohen Bundesrath der schweiz. Eidgenossenschaft (Bern: K.J. Wyss, 1885), 58, 69; J. Langhard, Die anarchistische Bewegung in der Schweiz von ihren Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart und die internationalen Führer (Bern: Verlag von Stämpfli & Cie, 1909), 280 note 1.
10 New York Times, November 23 and December 1, 1885. These “firebugs” were exposed as members of anarchist groups in Benjamin Tucker’s Liberty of March 27, 1886 (“The Beast of Communism”). Shortly thereafter the mainstream New York Sun picked it up with a headline: “A Chapter on Anarchism. Is Most’s Arson Doctrine in Practice Here?” (May 3, 1886).
11 Peukert was eventually cleared of all charges, although Most never accepted the findings. Neve died in 1896 in the “lunatic” section of a German prison.
12 Quoted in Paul Avrich, “Jewish Anarchism in the United States,” Anarchist Portraits (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), 178.
13 Ibid., 179.
14 Freiheit, October 25, 1884 and June 25, 1892.
15 Freiheit, March 2, 1889. The editors had used the slur “old hags” (alte Weiber).
16 “Anarchist End His Life. Mohr Taught His Children to Anathematize the Dead President,” New York Sun, January 29, 1902. See also “Killed Himself, Cheated Police,” New York Evening World, January 28, 1902.
17 Freiheit, February 1, 1902. Originally: “Genosse Mohr hat zu Paterson per Gas Selbstmord verübt. Ein böses Weib hat ihn in den Tod gejagt. So sinn’ se.”
18 Goldman, Living My Life, vol. 1, 151.
19 Goldman to Berkman, St. Tropez (France), February 20, 1929, in Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, Nowhere at Home: Letters from Exile of Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, eds. Richard Drinnon and Anna Maria Drinnon (New York: Schocken Books, 1975), 145.
20 Goldman, Living My Life, vol. 1, 77. Italics added.
21 Emma Goldman to Alexander Berkman, New York, ca. February 21, 1904, in Goldman, Emma Goldman: A Documentary History of the American Years, Volume 2: Making Speech Free, 1902–1909, eds. Candace Falk, Barry Pateman, and Jessica Moran (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005), 137.
22 Most, Memoiren, I, 14.
23 Emma Goldman, “Johann Most,” American Mercury 8 (June 1926): 159, 160.
24 Most, Memoiren, I, 56. Most recalls another experience from the time he lived in Vienna where he had joined the socialist movement. Sometime in 1870, Most, then twenty-four, temporarily lodged in the tiny house of a comrade who had a grown-up daughter sharing a room with Most. He soon found out she was engaged and compared himself to her fiancé. “He was a strapping lad, I a weak fellow. He was handsome, I ugly as sin; since I could not grow a beard yet, I most likely made […] a mere repulsive impression on the eternal Feminine.” See Most, Memoiren, II, 62–63.
25 Most, Memoiren, III, 27.
26 Ibid., 28.
27 According to the historian Heiner Becker, Most had a relationship with Clara Ringius while he was living in Berlin in 1878 (and while married). See Becker, “Johann Most,” 27, note 89.
28 Ibid. See also Andrew Carlson, Anarchism in Germany I: The Early Movement (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1972), 227.
29 Sarah Comstock, “Why Herr Most Likes California,” San Francisco Call, December 24, 1899. Most exaggerated the number of his marriages, perhaps deliberately. Twice in Comstock’s article Most says he had three wives. During an interview in Seattle six weeks later, he reportedly told the press of his six marriages. See Yakima Herald, February 8, 1900.
30 Minkin, “An die Leser der ‘volume,” Freiheit, April 21, 1906.
31 Rudolf Rocker, Johann Most: Das Leben eines Rebellen (Berlin: “Der Syndikalist”, 1924; Glashütten im Taunus: Detlov Auvermann, 1973), 387.
32 Her name was listed as “Publisher” on the masthead of the April 21 issue.
