In the windswept cemetery of rural Geraldine stands the headstone of
Johann Sebastian Trunk, a German cabinet-maker, militant anarchist and
advocate of making the world anew—violently if necessary. The tidy
headstone betrays no indication of the radicalism once lived; indeed,
many anarchists in New Zealand, England or Germany would know little
more than the weekend adventurer scanning the concrete commemorations.
For despite the part Trunk played in the international anarchist
movement during its development in the 1870s to 1900s, little is known
about him—a fate shared by many comrades who, although integral to the
movement, have often been passed over for leading figures. Like the
headstone, his name is often inscribed among others but without any
further offerings of information.
As part of my own research on anarchism in New Zealand, I decided to check up a footnote in Frank Prebble’s
‘Troublemakers’ Anarchism and Syndicalism: The Early Years of the Libertarian Movement in Aotearoa/New Zealand:
“S Trunk, the militant German anarchist, previously in London, migrated
to New Zealand where his brother Lutjohann lived, and nothing more was
heard from him.” After tracking down other one-liners and piecing
together a family tree, I was able to make contact with Trunk’s
94-year-old granddaughter Joyce King, and other family members. I was
excited about the possibility of learning more on this mysterious
anarchist and possibly put a face to the name. But his anarchist
activities were a surprise to the family too. “We never, ever, heard a
whisper of anything of that,” recalled Joyce.
Who was Johann Sebastian Trunk? Was this transient and militant
anarchist active in the New Zealand labour movement? And how did he end
up in the South Island town of Geraldine—quite possibly the furtherist
place from the meccas of European anarchism one could get at the time?
What follows is a brief-but-nonetheless-needed biography of a
transnational anarchist whose activities are grounded in the tension and
conflicts of a movement coming of age.
Johann Sebastian Trunk was born on 1 November 1850 and grew up on a
family farm in Breitenbuch, Bavaria. Little information is known of his
time there, but family note that he was born a Roman Catholic and became
an apprentice cabinet-maker. The story handed down to Joyce and the
family was that to become fully certified in his trade, Trunk had to
work two months in another country: “from Germany he went to
Switzerland, from Switzerland he went to France, and while he was in
France, Germany got involved in a war with some other country and he
high-tailed it to London.”
The reality is only half true. Germany during the second half of the
nineteenth century was home to a burgeoning socialist movement,
personified by the German Social Democratic Party and the growth of
numerous labour unions. Under the umbrella of ‘social democrat’ fell
various tenets of socialist thought trying to find its feet—from those
who believed in gradualism and parliamentary change, to
pro-revolutionary, proto-anarchist advocates. For example, a number of
social democrats like the fiery Johann Most, were becoming disillusioned
with parliamentary politics and advocating more insurrectionary means
to bring about social revolution. Support for revolutionary change was
increasing in the German socialist movement, and Trunk was one such
advocate.
A paragraph or two on Johann Most is necessary, as his political
journey typifies that of Johann Trunk and many other
socialists-cum-anarchists of the period. Born into a life of poverty,
abuse and toil, Most drifted across the German empire as a bookbinder
until finding socialism. He then dived into a number of editorial roles
with instant success—saving fledging socialist newspapers with a
rhetoric that fell on fertile ground. Despite his growing radicalism
being suppressed by numerous stints in prison, Most was elected into
parliament as a social democrat in 1874, a position of relative immunity
held until exiled by the German government in 1878. A captivating and
powerful orator, Most used the public platform to popularise his
increasingly revolutionary views across Germany (and beyond).
The more time spent in parliament, the more radical his views became.
Although he never committed such acts, Most helped to popularise
‘propaganda of the deed’—the insurrectionary use of violence against
monarchs, state officials or employers in order to rouse the masses into
revolutionary action, and to set right the daily wrongs of capitalist
violence and exploitation. Terrorism to its detractors, propaganda by
the deed became rife across Europe from the mid 1870s and for a time was
uncritically adopted by many anarchists and other revolutionaries.
Most’s rejection of parliamentary and legalist methods for spectacular
direct action found his ideas edging closer to such an anarchist
position—one he would associate with during his years in London and the
Unites States.
Like Most, and as told to his family, Trunk did leave Germany in
1878. However, he left as both an apprentice cabinet-maker and a victim
of Otto von Bismarck’s anti-socialist laws. “Under the law,” writes
Gultsman in
The German Social Democratic Party 1975-1933,
“all socialist organization and agitation was prohibited… the
distribution and publication of socialist literature was outlawed and in
areas of strong socialist sentiment or on the suspicions of illegal
activity the police were empowered to impose a ‘minor stage of siege’
under which persons could be made to leave the area.” According to
contemporary anarchist historian and archivist Max Nettlau, Trunk was
active in the socialist movement from the early 1870s onwards, and in
all likelihood was in the Social Democratic Party. As a result, and
alongside over 900 expelled socialists, Trunk left German repression for
less hostile shores.
Amongst the “cacophony of foreign voices, and only the lurking
presence of spies to remind the political refugees of their troubles
back home,” Trunk found himself in the “most fecund source of banned
works of literature, history or philosophy”—Switzerland.[1] A relative
sanctuary for revolutionaries of all shades, Switzerland was then
flourishing in the smuggling of revolutionary newspapers from centres
like Paris and London. Paris was an important dissemination point for
Most’s own newspaper (and home to Victor Dave, an anarchist with whom
Trunk would later form a working relationship with). Trunk may have had a
hand in this transnational anarchist network, for Nettlau believed that
Trunk had written articles for the Swiss
Berner Arbeiter Zeitung
(Bern Workers Paper).[2] And like Dave, who was expelled from France in
March 1880, Trunk also ended up in London via Paris. Hermia Oliver in
The International Anarchist Movement in Late Victorian London
notes, “among the crowd of refugee socialists in London were also a
German joiner, Sebastian Trunk (deported from France in 1880, who was
described as very close to Most).”[3] It appears that apprenticeship of a
different kind—as an anarchist revolutionary—was the real reason for
Trunk’s high tailing across the Atlantic.
The fugitives from Germany added an increasingly radical voice to the
larger socialist community taking shape in London. This community often
centred around the Social Democratic Club on Rose Street, Soho Square
West, formed in 1877 by German expatriates in London “exasperated by the
internal disputes within the Communistischer Arbeiter Bildungs Verein
(Communist Workers’ Educational Society-CABV).” The new Club had five
sections of various nationalities, including German and English
sections—baptised in the midst of a lengthy stonemason’s strike.[4]
As well as being “packed to the brim with poor working class people,”
the Rose Street tenement served as a landing point for foreign
revolutionaries. As Mathew Thomas in his study of anarchist
counter-cultures in Britain notes, “anyone visiting Rose Street would
have encountered the European revolutionary world in miniature; its
thought, atmosphere and ethos. Such visitors would have witnesses
polemical debates about the aims and means of socialism and anarchism.”
Adding his vivacious voice to the debates was Johann Most, “who was
received with open arms by the [CABV]. They backed Most financially in
the founding of a newspaper,
Freiheit.”[5]
Johann Trunk, presumably fresh from his French deportation, “soon
joined forces with Most,” cementing a relationship that would be as
fraught as it was long. As a member of the
Freiheit
collective Trunk mixed his labour with the clutter that was its office;
newspapers, type and presses strewn amongst furniture and bottles of
beer. “Today
Freiheit is what it
should be. A newspaper that is completely for the revolutionary worker,”
wrote Trunk in November 1881, pleased with the direction
Freiheit and his comrades were taking.
However the British state was not, thanks to increasing pressure from
Bismarck and other foreign representatives wanting to achieve in London
what they had failed to do at home. On 30 March 1881 Most was arrested
and sentenced to sixteen months hard labour, after applauding the
assassination of Tsar Alexander II as “sterling propaganda-by-the-deed”
and thundering for similar acts to continue, “until the last tyrant, the
last plutocrat, and the last priest are dead.”[6] Yet his imprisonment
simply inspired his followers and gave the nascent anarchist community
in London a cause to rally behind. Comrades like Trunk, Frank Kitz and
Johann Neve ensured that
Freiheit
presses continued to run hot, with sales jumping from 3 to 100 per
week. Defence committees were formed at Rose Street by the English
section of the CABV, organising protests, publishing an English-language
Freiheit, and issuing scathing manifesto’s.
Despite ongoing harassment by police,
Freiheit continued
with interim editors and a rotating team of typesetters. However the
paper’s celebration of the assassination of Lord Cavendish and Thomas
Burke by Fenian revolutionaries in Dublin was a step too far for the
authorities. Its description of their deaths as “a heroically bold act
of popular justice” annihilating “the evil representatives of a
malignant government based on brute force,” saw
Freiheit falter under the weight of further police raids.[7]
With Most stewing in a London jail cell and Neve fleeing from persecution, Trunk boldly stepped into the hot seat, editing
Freiheit
from 20 May to 3 June 1882. Trunk and others also kept up spirits by
“issuing fiery broadsheets designed to ‘prove to comrades far and near,
that we are still there, and in no way prepared to throw our rifles in
the corn’: but to no avail.”[8] Printers brave enough to run the
presses were not forthcoming and
Freiheit was moved to Paris, then Switzerland, never to be printed in London again.
 |
| Mandate for Trunk and Neve, delegates representing the CABV at the 1881 London Social Revolutionary Congress. IISH |
During this period Trunk was also involved in other anarchist
developments in London. In 1881 he, alongside 6 others, was the organising secretary for
London Social Revolutionary Congress held in July, and attended with Johann Neve as
delegate for the CABV. They were mandated to "stick with the strict principles of our club (ie. communist revolution) and to fight any compromise by the parliamentary social-democrats from Zurich." Among the 45 delegates present to further
organised anarchism were key figures such as Peter Kropotkin and Louise
Michel. Trunk, alongside Neve and the Italian anarchist Errico
Malatesta, was elected to an International Committee created to maintain
anarchist relations after the congress.
In June 1885, Trunk was among other German anarchists who helped form
a North London branch of the Socialist League (SL). William Morris,
influential textile designer and a key member of the League, mentions
him in his diary: “I doubt if, except one or two Germans, etc, we have
any real anarchists amongst us.” This would change over time as the
Socialist League, and its paper
The Commonweal,
moved towards an overtly anarchist potion. As E P Thompson notes,
anarchist influence in the SL reached its climax in November 1888 when
Lucy Parsons, militant anarchist and widow of Chicago Martyr, Albert
Parsons, addressed a series of commemorative meetings organised by the
League. With Parsons and Kropotkin, Trunk also shared the platform on
the speaking tour.
It appears Trunk, active as he was in the English anarchist scene,
was also involved in the blossoming Jewish anarchist movement. “In
February 1885,” notes Rudolf Rocker in
The London Years,
“the radical movement among the East End Jewish workers started a club
in Berner Street… this club was for years the centre of propaganda and
social life among the Jewish comrades.” According to Rocker’s memoir,
Trunk was regular and welcome guest at the Club.
However Trunk and his fellow German anarchists were soon engulfed in
an intense and bitter dispute know as the Bruderkreig, or Brothers War,
which had been simmering since 1884. This complex split in the German
movement was based on ideological positions, competing newspapers, and
strong personalities, and was further clouded by the involvement of
police spies.
In February 1887, Johann Neve was arrested by Belgian police while
smuggling anarchist newspapers into Germany. As Andrew Carlson explains
in
Anarchism in Germany, “it was a
route that Berlin police wanted to smash, and Neve was a person they
wanted to imprison, but it took them several years of work and the
assistance of several police spies before they were able to achieve
these two goals.” After being thrown in a German jail, Neve wrote to
Trunk that he had carved the date 1902 into his cell door—the year it
would swing open and grant him freedom. It was the last letter anyone in
the movement ever received from Neve, who died in police custody in
1896.
Neve’s imprisonment turned the anarchist’s political and literary
debate into one of outright war. Accusations that Neve had fallen victim
to a spy plot were rife, and friends quickly became enemies. Trunk
initially found himself on the side of his
Freiheit
comrades such as Victor Dave—‘collectivists’ who were sometimes at odds with anarchist communists like
Josef Peukert and the
Die Autonomie
group. However
Trunk—despite hiring a private investigator to determine where the
Autonomie
group’s money was coming from—later joined forces with Peukert and the
group. He cited Dave’s overbearing and tyrannical behaviour as the
reason for his defection.[9]
Trunk’s move to anarchist communism ensured he continued to be active
in London’s radical counter-culture. In March 1891 he spoke alongside
John Turner, Michel, Malatesta and Kropotkin at a London meeting
commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the Paris Commune. American anarchist Emma Goldman also visited him in 1900—his house
being a distribution point for leaflets, handbills, posters (and people)
from around the globe.
 |
| Daisy, Johann and Johanne, possibly before heading to New Zealand |
Yet it was Trunk who was soon to be shipping out. At 56 years of age,
and after personifying the development of anarchism in London, Johann
left Europe for New Zealand in 1906. Trunk’s brother-in-law, Johannes
Lutjohann, had already migrated to Christchurch and set up the billiards
table company Lutjohann and Co. Being a skilled cabinet-maker, Trunk
had been asked to join the company. Johann, his wife Johanne, and
daughter Daisy, soon met them in Christchurch. Not long after, the
company won a gold medal at the New Zealand International Exhibition for
a patent dinning-room billiard-table (which are now highly
sought-after).
Although Trunk was naturalised as a British subject in October 1908,
when the First World War broke out his German background (and age) meant
work was hard to find. The family decided to sell up, pool their money,
and purchase a farm. With his carpentry tools in tow, Trunk and the
extended family moved 140 km south to Geraldine. He contributed what
labour he could: “He was too old to do any of the farm work,” remembers
Joyce King, “so he took on the vegetable garden. He had beautiful
gardens, nice and tidy, very neat. That would have come out of his
cabinet making.” She recalls fondly that Trunk would take her to school
in a horse and gig, a far cry from the metropolitan London he had left
behind.
Indeed, little is known about this revolutionary’s activity in the
antipodes. It does not appear that Trunk was visibly active in the local
labour movement, despite some interesting family connections. Also
working at Lutjohann and Co. was another brother-in-law, Frederick
Schmidt (Smith), a socialist and avid reader of Marx. Frederick’s
grandson Robert Smith was on the executive committee of the Christchurch
Tramway Employees Union, and an active participant in the 1932 tramways
strike. Yet Trunk seems to have left his advocacy of propaganda by the
deed to days past. Having been involved in many of anarchism’s pivotal
milestones, who could argue against limiting his plotting to that of the
vegetable kind? After spending his final years in Geraldine, Johann
Sebastian Trunk died on 4 June 1933, aged eighty-three—without an
anarchist obituary but rich in transnational anarchist experience.
Many thanks are due to the family of Johann Trunk for their generosity and time, and for supplying the images above. Thanks also to Martin Veith, Barry Pateman, David Berry and Constance Bantman.
ENDNOTES
[1] Alex Butterworth, The World That Never Was: A True Story of Dreamers, Schemers, Anarchists, and Secret Agents, Pantheon, 2010, p.58.
[2] Max Nettlau, Geschicte der Anarchie. I owe many thanks to Martin Veith for accessing and translating hard-to-find German-language texts on my behalf.
[3] Hermia Oliver, The International Anarchist Movement in Late Victorian London, Croom Helm, 1983.
[4] Nick Heath, ‘Neve, John, 1844-1896’, available online at http://libcom.org/history/neve-john-1844-1896
[5] Andrew Carlson, Anarchism in Germany: Vol, 1: The Early Movement, Scarecrow Press, 1972, p.182.
[6] Frederick Trautmann, The Voice of Terror: A Biography of Johann Most, Green Press, 1980, p.45.
[7] Trautmann, p.70.
[8] Bernard Porter, ‘The Freiheit Prosecutions, 1881-1882’ in The Historical Journal, 23(4), p.854.
[9] During my research for Sewing Freedom
I located a lengthy text on Victor Dave and the Brothers War, written
by Trunk. The text is in old-style German and awaits a keen translator
to shed further light on the conflict.
Despite agreeing with much of the text, I guess what jarred me was the feeling that it was too black and white, and I couldn’t tell if the Situationist quotes were for real or satire. I think what Olly says about certain types of work leading to further investment in ‘the system’ is spot on. To be aware of the contradictions in our work, and to know how our work reproduces capital, is the first step in challenging and ending that work.
But if I understand what this text suggests, it is that we should aim our struggle towards particular jobs. Olly points out the flaws of this approach, yet it still reads as if certain jobs have more potential for class struggle over others.
I feel this is problematic. It makes me think of those who argue that Auckland should be the main place of struggle, because that’s where the biggest employers are. Or that the online financial sector should be the place of struggle, because that is where the finance sector operates.
Playing havoc with the economy or the financial sector might bring down the economy or the financial sector, but this is not the same as ending capitalism. As we know, capital is not a place, but a social relationship. Thinking about where this relationship might best be ruptured is useful, but trying to pinpoint exact locations of struggle is extremely difficult and possibly a distraction from a broader, collective approach.
Yet it is clear that certain work changes the way we relate to others, as Olly points out. This division of labour, or the divisions between ourselves, is super important – even more so now that many people do not identify as workers, or as a class (this might not be such a bad thing, depending on your point of view, but that is another discussion altogether).
However most people can relate to discussions about work; to the day-to-day content and activity of their jobs (waged or unwaged). I think this is a potentially fruitful way forward for those of us who wish to end the wage relation. Rather than spending time raising the ‘class consciousness’ of our peers in an abstract sense, we can get to the heart of our work, and how we reproduce capital.
Feminist and marxist, Iris Young, talks about how the division of labour may be a more useful way forward than that of class. In ‘The Unhappy Marriage’ she writes that “the division of labour operates as a category broader and more fundamental than class. Division of labour, moreover, accounts for specific cleavages and contradictions within a class… [it] can not only refer to a set of phenomena broader than that of class, but also more concrete. It refers specifically to the activity of labour itself, and the specific social and institutional relations of that activity.” She goes on to talk about how this might speak to the role of professionals – ie the subject of Olly’s text.
I find this approach helpful, because it makes clear that all work reproduces the wage relation – whether you’re an academic, information worker, or a kitchen hand – and that struggle around the activity of work is potentially more fruitful than trying to pinpoint which jobs are best to spend energy on.
In other words, what might be more constructive is to discuss the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of struggle against the wage relation, wherever that struggle may be, rather than focusing on ‘where’.
This relates to another aspect of this text I find troublesome. It feels like another anarchist text policing individuals within the movement for their decisions. It seems to place a lot of emphasis on the role of the individual anarchist. I get this, because that is what we can relate to in our own lives and our own organising, as anarchists. But this does not strike me as a way forward, but a further step inward.
Olly clarifies that we need a collective response to this on Redline, which is cool to hear.
Finally, I don’t agree with the ‘poverty of everyday life’ comment of Olly’s. Struggle around our everyday life is a must, but poverty often begets more poverty, and not struggle. I don’t like what this leads to (even if it is unintentional) – that the worse off people’s jobs are, the more they will struggle against it. If anything, history has shown that struggle on a collective scale tends to take place when things are good or improving for workers (a huge generalisation, I know).
I’m not sure if what I’m trying to say makes sense. I guess the short of it is that the potential for mass, collective struggle against the wage relation (and work) is all around us. We don’t need to narrow that to a particular type of work, especially when there may be important sites of struggle that is neglected in doing so. For example, could capital reproduce itself without childcare and daycare centres? I’m not saying this is a great example, but it is the type of question I’d love to discuss, rather than trying to monitor the further personification of capital by individual comrades.