Meulenbth Section One Corrected 06 06 03 208 Pages at Least Partly Converted to HTML by Outdated Word Program INSTEAD of a MAGAZINE
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MeulenBth section one corrected 06 06 03 208 pages at least partly converted to HTML by outdated Word program INSTEAD OF A MAGAZINE Correspondence, what is left of it and has been found, between ULRICH von BECKERATH, 1882-1969 & HENRY MEULEN, 1882-1978, It deals mainly with monetary freedom and ideas on free banking, but also with free trade, a free economy, criticism of overpopulation notions, anarchism, war and peace, revolution, liberation, totalitarianism, right and left type, racism, nationalism, tyrannicide, individual vs. collective responsibility, cooperative production, rights and liberties, philosophy, Kantian ethics, egoism, utilitarianism, atheism, Christianity, Buddhism, international languages etc. Both were fans of Benjamin R. Tucker. It spanned from about 1932 to 1959 (1969?) but only one 1935 letter is represented here. The rest is from 1946 to 1959. Compiled, edited and commented upon by John Zube, [email protected] (02) 48 771 436, 36 Oxley St. or P.O. Box 52, Berrima, NSW 2577, Australia. U. v. Beckerath was a man who came once very close to shooting Hitler. But then most of these and numerous other important letters and papers of his would never have been written. He was also associated with the resistance which culminated in the well-known tyrannicide attempt against Hitler on July 20th, 1944. He survived the subsequent and often atrocious mass murder, by the Nazi regime, of about 5,000 people, who were somehow associated with that resistance attempt, only because a friend of his close friend Heinrich Rittershausen managed to get access to their files at the Nazi's "Peoples' Court" and to destroy them. (See page 59.) At one stage, as one of the main contributors to the "Four Law Drafts", he might have come to help prevent the rise of the Nazi regime and WW II: Dr. Munzer, also a contributor, was a close advisor to Dr. Bruening then Chancellor and these drafts were waiting for Dr. Bruening's signature as emergency legislation to overcome the Great Depression - and as such they would have worked! - when the Bruening government was overthrown through the influence of some, who feared that Bruening, in desperation, might realize some popular "land reform" plan which would have expropriated some large proprietors of land. His main and life-long labour was the development of sound monetary freedom ideas and techniques. This correspondence is something of a treasure chest of ideas and references of interest to many freedom and peace lovers, from two thoughtful lives. Both were fans of Benjamin R. Tucker. Meulen knew him personally. The friendship between B. & M. persisted in spite of their strong disagreements on many subjects. 1 While B. had also many strong opinions and engaged in "prophecies" or forecasts which did not always come true and made at least two proposals which would have been better left unrealized (does anybody score perfectly?), Meulen was much more opinionated and prejudiced, especially when it came to the technical details of free banking, free trade and a free society. Beckerath, on the other hand, had frequently checked his own opinion again the facts, the own experiences and those of others, historical precedents, old and new literature references and looked at his ideas from almost all possible angles, or so it seemed to me. When he had to make guesses, they were at least well educated ones. Generally speaking, he stood up more consistently for individual freedom than did Meulen. In a few cases I rather side with Meulen but mostly I am on Beckerath's side. The subjects are here dealt with mostly only in short segments, which gives the exchange almost the appearance of a periodial. One might call it a writen dialogue, but since so many references of others are included, it is more a "multi-logue", a survey of many different opinions. Because of this and because both appreciated Tucker's main book: "Instead of a Book" and his magazine "Liberty" this title was chosen here for this correspondence. (The same title has also been used and may still be used by a US anarchist magazine.) U. v. Beckerath is insufficiently known as the author of 3 books on monetary freedom (soon to be placed on a website) and of numerous papers and letters on this subject. H. Meulen was somewhat better known, a,) as the author of "Free Banking, an outline of a policy of individualism", 1934, which is the second edition of his 1917 book: "Industrial Justice through Banking Reform" b.) as editor of "The Individualist". The second edition of Meulen's book, 429 pages, was microfiched by me with some index notes by me and also a warning about this book by Ulrich von Beckerath, 7, April 1968, in PEACE PLANS 796. All issues of Meulen's little Journal, "The Individualist", that I could get hold of and also my correspondence with him and some other material by and on Meulen were also microfiched by me in my PEACE PLANS series. I have also microfiche-published thousands of pages of Beckerath's writings and many more of them are to come. Alas, most are only in German, with only few of them having been translated into English so far. But at least his three monetary freedom books were translated into English, however imperfectly. (Their French translation is much better.) In my edition of them in PEACE PLANS 9-11, I tried to eliminate most of these mistakes, as far as I could and also provided a common index to these three books. These 3 books are now available from me by e-mail, until they will appear on a website or on a CD-ROM. The other writings by Beckerath, in my series, has not yet been indexed by me. But an indication of his kind of monetary freedom thinking can be found in the preliminary but already long compilation of monetary freedom thoughts which is accessible on www.butterbach.net/freebank.htm A short representation of his monetary freedom ideas, largely in my own words, can also be found in my first peace book, now accessible on www.panarchism.info/ Numerous other monetary freedom titles were microfiched in my PEACE PLANS series and as many of them as possible could and should also be offered on CD-ROM and online. I produced in 1990 a long monetary freedom bibliography, of about 124 pages, but have not yet got around to update it. It is also available from me by e-mail until it appears on a website or CD-ROM. My main literature list and two supplementary lists are on www.butterbach.net/project.htm The main literature list is also on my website www.acenet.com.au/~jzube together with some supplementary material. 2 All too little of the exchanges between B. & M. has found is way into M.'s small journal: "The Individualist", although M. believed that everything essential in his correspondence and reading had been abstracted or reviewed in it. Especially I missed, in those issues of THE INDIVIDUALIST that were accessible to me, B.'s criticism of M.'s free banking ideas. Maybe some of this is to be found in issues I have not yet seen. However, with only about 60 small pages published annually, M. could not include many contributions and filled his pages mostly without B.'s input. B. alas, had never for long access to any periodical (the Annals, for his 3 books, excepted) and never got around to establishing one himself, although he had wished to do so from the time shortly before the Nazi regime began, in 1933. The Nazi period and the post-war years did not enable him to carry out this project. He remained largely confined to correspondence, of which probably more about 10 - 15 thousand pages remain to be digitized and microfilmed. Most of his correspondence up to 22 November 1943 was destroyed in an air raid on Berlin, with his extensive library. The correspondence between B. & M. was, naturally, interrupted from at least 1939 to 1945. B.'s letters sometimes amount almost to short "lectures", the only lectures he could provide as a rule, by writing letters, including his book reviews and comments on articles and clippings, with sometimes so many inserts included, that his envelopes burst. He was usually very polite and even complimentary to the persons involved - but sharp, like Tucker, in attacks against ideas and opinions that he thought to be flawed. Usually they were. It is a pity that he had never a magazine like Tucker's and a readership like that of Tucker's "Liberty" at his disposal. I knew B personally from 1952 to my emigration in 1959. Afterwards there was some correspondence between us, previously microfilmed by me. I may be biased in his favour, but I believe there are less flaws in his own ideas and those he preserved and transmitted, than in the ideas of most other writers of the past and present, who covered such a wide field. Most of the good ideas I know of I learned through him. Once I counted more than 200 of them. The ideas and thinking of Meulen was, I believe, still rather flawed. But, judge for yourself the exchanges between these two long-term libertarian friends and fans of Tucker and of many of the other individualist anarchist classical writers. B. always drew a strong distinction between letter writing and article writing and did not want segments of his letters to be published as articles but to remain characterised as mere letters. With articles he took even more care than with his very thoughtful and stimulating letters.