Tom Goyens. Beer and Revolution: The German Anarchist Movement in New York City, 1880-1914. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007. 263 pp. $40.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-252-03175-5.
Reviewed by Thomas Adam (University of Texas at Arlington)
Published on H-German (March, 2009)
Commissioned by Susan R. Boettcher
"There were no bombs, though there was plenty of beer"[1]
Tom Goyens's book investigates and describes the cultural and social infrastructure of New York's German-American anarchist circles. It provides a colorful, impressive picture of this movement and makes a significant, valuable contribution to the recent turn towards transatlantic and transnational history by looking at a truly transatlantic movement: anarchism.
The German and German-American anarchist movement in New York was, as Goyens points out, "part of the broader history of international radicalism, making it an American, a German, and a transnational movement" (p. 3). And, although many in this country might identify anarchism with open and sometimes undifferentiated violence (and the Haymarket bombing in particular), there was nonetheless more to the movement. Anarchism was defined by two fundamental experiences: "one of momentum, the other of exclusion" (p. 5). Goyens contends that "the anarchists' opposition to the state--their civil disobedience--became the foundation for a self-sufficient culture of defiance" (p. 6). Therefore, he explores the infrastructure of the anarchist milieu in New York by looking into its neighborhoods, particularly via meeting places, such as saloons and lecture halls. Yet, it would be impossible to reduce New York's anarchist milieu to the meetings and political discussions in beer halls and saloons. Like the Social Democratic milieu in various German cities, it included social and cultural activities such as reading clubs, theater and musical groups, and even picnics, all of which represented the attempt to create a counterculture.
See also English on Goyens