Blacks, Reds, and Russians

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Patrick Spät

Stuttgart, Pfingsten 1929: Die Polizei errichtet Straßensperren, in der Stadt sind die Vorhängeschlösser ausverkauft. Gregor Gog (1891–1945), landesweit berühmt als der »König der Vagabunden«, trommelt die Tippelbrüder und -schwestern zum Internationalen Vagabundenkongress zusammen und ruft den »lebenslangen Generalstreik« aus. Zwei Jahre zuvor gründete der ehemalige Matrose Gog die »Bruderschaft der Vagabunden«, um Obdachlosen zu helfen und sie politisch zu organisieren. Im gleichen Jahr veröffentlichte Gog mit „Der Kunde“ die erste Straßenzeitung Europas. Zeitlebens kämpfte Gog gegen Ausbeutung, Faschismus und Rassismus. Der König der Vagabunden schildert das abenteuerliche und entbehrungsreiche Leben der Vagabunden in den 1920er Jahren und enthält viele O-Töne aus jener Zeit. Ein Comic über Armut und Hoffnung, Freundschaft und Protest – und ein vergessenes Kapitel der Weimarer Republik. „Wo der Bürger aufhört, beginnt das Paradies!“ Gregor Gog (Quelle: avant-verlag)

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Jean E. Collins

Fifteen women journalists from the 1920's to today tell in their own words the demands and rewards they experienced in their profession.

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Marjorie Agosín

"In Osorno, Chile, the Nazis were the great feudal lords of the south and being Jewish was like possessing a savage and dangerous scar." The author thus describes the backdrop for this memoir of growing up as the daughter of European Jewish immigrants to Chile in the years before and after World War II. Speaking through the voice of her mother, she says, "I write these sometimes intermittent and true memories with the voice of an adolescent and then of a woman. . . . I wish to talk about my life in an unseemly and noisy house in southern Chile and about a town with fifty Nazis and three Jewish families. Everything I tell you is true and this is why I write so that it will be even more certain." This beautifully written story offers glimpses of cultures and landscapes little known outside of Chile. The narrative weaves back and forth through time offering the stories of the narrator's family: her father who had to leave Vienna around 1920 because he fell in love with a Christian cabaret dancer, her paternal grandmother who came to Chile in 1939 with a number tattooed on her arm, her mother's family from Odessa, and numerous aunts and uncles. The narrator returns to Osorno in 1993 and notes how little has changed. The Germans still display portraits of Hitler in their homes and sell Hitler memorabilia.

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Michael Carney with Gerald Hayes

"Mike Carney, the oldest living native Blasket Islander, was born on the Great Blasket Island in 1920. Raised in that unique, isolated Irish-speaking community, Mike left in 1937 to seek a better future in Dublin - and eventually in America. A chain of events led to the island's evacuation, with Mike playing a pivotal role, lobbying Eamon de Valera to relocate the remaining islanders living in increasingly desperate conditions. This is the story of his life and his efforts to preserve the memory of the Great Blasket, to promote Irish culture in America, and to set down roots in a new land."--Publisher description.