Summing Up

by John Henry Mackay, Hubert Kennedy (Translator)

In this book, which was first published in Berlin in 1932, a year before the Nazis came to power, John Henry Mackay - the German writer with the Scottish name - clearly saw the danger that they brought - and not just to Germany. Yet he looked just as clearly into the future to see the danger that communist Russia meant for Germany and Europe in general. Here, in his final “summing up” of the story of his life, his account obviously had to be muted in order to get it published. Yet his honesty, his courage, his conviction found a way to communicate his views in a forceful way, not only to his time, but to us nearly a century later.
Following the assumption of power by the Nazis in 1933 - shortly before Mackay died - all of his writings were put on their list of “forbidden books”. Nor did recognition come with the end of World War 2. But more recently there has been a resurgence of interest in this extraordinary individual whose life was significant in several fields - not least as biographer of Max Stirner, the exponent of philosophical egoism, but also as himself the foremost philosopher of individualist anarchism and, it must be added, the leading exponent of man-boy love. (This last, of course, is not touched on in this book - one of the first actions of the Nazis was to condemn his writings in this field.)

118 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 21, 2013

About the author

John Henry Mackay grew up in Germany with his German mother after the early death of his Scottish father. His long literary career included writings in a variety of forms, though he was best known as a lyric poet and anarchist. His biography of Max Stirner revived interest in that 19th century philosopher of egoism.

Also wrote under the pen name of "Sagitta"