Herman Bernstein
an established journalist, translator, and Jewish advocate
Dickinson Professor Crispin Sartwell’s research interests in anarchist political philosophy brought him to the work of Russian revolutionaries Mikhail Bakunin and Petr Kropotkin. But Prof. Sartwell has a personal connection to Russian culture. His great-father, Herman Bernstein (1876-1935), was born in Vladislavov–now present-day Lithuania, but then located on the Russian-German border. In 1893, Herman emigrated from the Russian Empire to the United States, where he wrote for The New York Evening Post andThe Nation, and was an editor of The New London Day and The Jewish Tribune. In 1917, he returned to Russia to cover the Russian revolution for the New York Herald. In 1918, Herman made headlines by publishing a secret correspondence between Tsar Nicholas II and Kaiser Wilhelm II, which he called “The Willy-Nicky Telegrams.” On top of his journalistic career, Herman was a prolific translator, translating works by Leo Tolstoy, Maxim Gorky, and Leonid Andreev from Russian into English. A collection of his interviews with Tolstoy, Kropotkin, Leon Trotsky, and others was published in 1913 as Interviews by Herman Bernstein andCelebrities of Our Times.
Crispin Sartwell
(Prof. of Art & Art History and Philosophy).
Do you see a resemblance?
