April 21, 1906.
34 See the expense account in Freiheit, July 6, 1907. The photographer connected to the German anarchist movement was George Boelsterli who had a studio at 201 East 89th Street. See his ad in Freiheit, August 10, 1907.
35 Minkin’s words were included in the preface to volume four by the anarchist writer Frederick Thaumazo (pseudonym for Frederick Loevius). Interestingly, Thaumazo would become a vocal critic of both Berkman’s and Goldman’s depiction of Most in their respective autobiographies. In response to Berkman, for instance, he published a scathing pamphlet, The Martyrdom of Berkman. See Thaumazo, “Eine Erklärung als Vorwort,” in Most, Memoiren, vol. 4, ii–iii; Tom Goyens, Beer and Revolution: The German Anarchist Movement in New York City, 1880–1914 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007), 207.
36 Paul Avrich interview with John Most, Jr., October 28, 1979 in Avrich, Anarchist Voices, 19; Trow’s General Directory of the Boroughs of New York and Bronx, City of New York (New York: R.L. Polk & Co., 1907), vol. 2, 1015.
37 “Most, Lucifer J.,” Ancestry.com. U.S., World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917–1918. Original data: United States, Selective Service System, World War I Selective Service System Draft Registration Cards, 1917–1918 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration), M1509, 4,582 rolls. Imaged from Family History Library microfilm. Lucifer would also enlist in 1942.
38 See U.S. Bureau of the Census. Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1930; see also Lucifer J. Most’s obituary in New York Times, August 28, 1949.
39 Mike Carey and Jamie Most, High Above Courtside: The Lost Memoirs of Johnny Most (SportsPublishing LLC, 2003), 4.
40 Trow’s New York City Directory 1917 (New York: R.L. Polk & Co., 1917), 1434.
41 Carey and Most, High Above Courtside, 4.
42 Minkin’s Petition of Citizenship at Ancestry.com. U.S., Naturalization Records—Original Documents, 1795–1972 (World Archives Project). Original records are at Naturalization Records for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington, 1890–1972. NARA Microfilm Publication M1541, 40 rolls. Records of District Courts of the United States (Washington, D.C.: National Archives), Record Group 21.
43 Both sons signed affidavits as witnesses to Minkin’s petition for citizenship. John Jr.’s address was 22 Beech Street, North Arlington, NJ. Lucifer lived at 137 Seeley Avenue, Kearney, NJ. See Petition of Citizenship at Ancestry.com.
44 Trow’s New York City Directory 1933–34 (New York: R.L. Polk & Co., 1934), vol. 2, 2377.
45 Emma Goldman began writing her life story in the spring of 1929 while living in southern France. Berkman agreed to help her with revising and correcting the manuscript, and, according to Goldman, it was he who thought of the title Living My Life. Goldman contracted with Alfred Knopf as publisher, and the two met in Paris where they talked about producing a Yiddish version as well. It is perhaps this version that appeared in Forverts. In January and February 1930, Goldman dispatched the manuscript in installments to New York. Berkman contemplated writing his own story beginning with his release from the Western Penitentiary, but nothing came of it. See Avrich and Avrich, Sasha and Emma, 350–354.
46 Quoted in Avrich and Avrich, Sasha and Emma, 354. See also R.L. Duffue, “An Anarchist Explains Her Life,” New York Times, October 25, 1931.
47 Quoted in Avrich and Avrich, Sasha and Emma, 355.
48 Lucifer J. Most’s obituary in New York Times, August 28, 1949. He was buried at Hurdtown Cemetery (Morris County, NJ).
49 See Carey and Most, High Above Courtside, 3. See also “Johnny Most, 69, Radio Voice, That Cheered On Boston Celtics,” New York Times, January 4, 1993.
50 Paul Avrich interview with John Most Jr., October 28, 1979 in Avrich, Anarchist Voices, 19. There is a grave for “Helen Most” at Mount Hebron Cemetery in Flushing, NY, marking her death on February 3, 1954.
FORVERTS EDITORS’ NOTE1
We here begin to print the memoir of a woman who, for thirteen years, was married to a remarkable man, and in those thirteen years and the several years leading up to it, was closely connected to a group of people who engaged in some remarkable activity and led a strangely intimate life amongst themselves.2 During those years, they stirred up the world. Europe and America were in turmoil because of them. Emperors and kings fell by the hands of those who belonged to this movement. Then they murdered the empress of Austria.3 Here in America one of their men killed President McKinley.4 One member of the group, a young Jewish man from Kovno by the name of Alexander Berkman, shot at Frick, one of the biggest millionaires in America and the king of the steel industry.5 In her memoir, Emma Goldman, one of the central figures of this group, wrote in detail about its members and the life of free love they led.
Emma Goldman’s memoirs were published in the Forverts a year ago, and caused a striking sensation. The book was published in English, and all over America people wrote and spoke about it.6 Emma Goldman herself was an exceptional woman, and her life was full of exceptional incidents. She spent the best years of her life in America. During the war, the government sent her and her long-time friend, Alexander Berkman, out of the country for their anti-war protests.
The group about which we speak here are anarchists. At that time, anarchists around the world had two leaders: the famous Russian revolutionary, Prince Peter Kropotkin, and the German, Johann Most. Kropotkin was the more theoretical leader. The movement as a whole preached violence, bombing, gun-terror, dynamite, and poison. Kropotkin acknowledged this in a kind of theoretical way. The active promoter of these methods was Johann Most. He was one of the most extraordinary speakers in the world, and his speeches flickered and burned with gunpowder and dynamite. In Germany, Austria, and England, he would go from one jail to another. When the Russian revolutionaries assassinated Alexander II in 1881, he, Johann Most, in his newspaper Freiheit, which was then published in London, welcomed the deed and urged people to do the same thing to other crowns.7 Consequently, Most was sentenced to hard labor in an English prison. When his term there ended, he came to America and undertook the same activities, continually calling the worker to rise up and attack capitalists with pistols and bombs. Here, too, he went from one jail to another. Once, it actually happened that he was released from prison—after a year’s time—and on the evening of that very day he was again arrested for a speech he had given.
For several years in New York, Most was surrounded by a group of German anarchists and a few Jewish adherents. In the course of time, when German immigration had almost ceased,
