Rudolf Rocker

Johann Rudolf Rocker (March 25, 1873 – September 19, 1958) was an anarcho-syndicalist writer and activist. A self-professed anarchist without adjectives, Rocker believed that anarchist schools of thought represented "only different methods of economy" and that the first objective for anarchists was "to secure the personal and social freedom of men."

Mainz

Early life

Rudolf Rocker was born to the lithographer Georg Philipp Rocker and his wife Anna Margaretha née Naumann as the second of three sons in Mainz, Hesse (now Rhineland-Palatinate), Germany, on March 25, 1873. This Catholic, yet not particularly devout, family had a democratic and anti-Prussian tradition dating back to Rocker's grandfather, who participated in the March Revolution of 1848. However, Georg Philipp died just four years after Rocker's birth. After that, the family managed to evade poverty, only through the massive support by his mother's family. Rocker's uncle and godfather Carl Rudolf Naumann, a long-time member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), became a substitute for his dead parents and a role model, who directed the boy's intellectual development. Rocker was disgusted by his schoolteacher's authoritarian methods calling the man a "heartless despot". He was, therefore, a poor student.