Rudolph Rocker : German Father of Anarcho-Syndicalism

Image::1 Rudolph Rocker (1873-1958)
Rocker was born in Mainz, Germany, son of a workingman who died when the boy was five years of age. It was an uncle who introduced him to the German SociaI Democratic movement, but he was soon disappointed by the rigidities of German socialism. As a bookbinder, he wandered from one employment to another, and, from the contacts he made in this occupation, he became interested in anarchism. He lived in Paris and in London until after World War I. Although of Christian background, he identified himself with the Jewish and Slavic immigrants who settled in East London. He edited a Yiddish newspaper, Arbeiter Freund, and a Yiddish literary monthly, Germinal. He contributed his organizing efforts to the jewish labor unions in England. Interned as an enemy alien in England in 1914, Rocker and his wife left England upon their release. In 1919 he returned to Germany. With the rise of Nazism he fled to the United States. He is the author of a biography of Johann Most. His most widely read book was Nationalism and Culture, published in 1937. (Irving Horowitz, The Anarchists, 1964, Dell Publishing)
Note: Rocker is considered one of the foremost theorists on Syndicalism.