Sad news from Princeton’s Institute of Advanced Study: Albert Hirschman, German-born brilliant scholar and veteran of the Spanish Civil War, passed away at the age of 97. From the IAS website: Renowned social scientist Albert O. Hirschman, whose highly influential work in economics and politics in developing countries has had a profound impact on economic...
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The fascist salute rears its ugly head in Madrid once more on the 37th anniversary of Franco's death.
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Victor Grossman in Berlin writes to report sad news: the death, earlier this month, of German IB veteran Adolphe Low, who was granted French citizenship in 1945 and remained in France. He was the last of the German International Brigade veterans. Adolphe Low was born as Adolf Löw in Cottbus, south of Berlin, in...
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The latest issue of Hollywood Reporter is dedicated to the blacklist, and includes in addition to several articles a five-minute video with interviews. Among those blacklisted, the “Hollywood Ten,” was Lincoln Brigade veteran Alvah Bessie.
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Is there a military family of the Spanish Civil War, and of the International Brigades in particular? Until November 11, 2012, I had never asked myself, or anyone else, that question. And the odds were against my doing so, not the least because “military family” and “Spanish Civil War” are words that are not...
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ALBA’s annual Online Fundraising Acution will be held from November 26 until December 11, 2012. Featuing, among many other items: Artwork and photographs including several painting by Dutch Volunteer, Bart Van der Schelling; Photographs by Sofia Moro; Rare, collectible Architects for Social Responsibility poster Rare books and journals pertaining to the Brigades such as a limited...
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We know, of course, that he gave his talent as a writer to support the Republican side.
But there are at least two additional things Hemingway did that have attracted little attention.
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Don Harris, founder of latienda.com, an on-line purveyor of fine Spanish foods, recently invited me to contribute a post to his blog. My short piece, on the foodways of Spanish immigrants in the US, is currently featured there:http://blog.tienda.com/ As I mention in the post, it was while conducting research about how Spanish immigrants in the...
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Mass demonstrations were held in Spain and other parts of Europe this week to protest against the austerity measures being imposed throughout the European Union. Depending on who you believe, the demonstration in Madrid on November 14 mobilized as many as one million people (according to its union organizers) or as few as 35,000 (according...
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The CBC program Living Out Loud celebrates Remembrance Day with a four-part documentary The Spanish Crucible. The first two parts were broadcast on November 9 and 11; the third and fourth will be aired on November 16 and 18. More details here; clips and an interactive timeline are here. Listen to the first...
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The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA) is an educational non-profit dedicated to promoting social activism and the defense of human rights. ALBA’s work is inspired by the American volunteers of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade who fought fascism in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). Learn more at our website or
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The iconic group portrait of raggedy Lincoln Brigade volunteers that’s become ALBA’s calling card over the years is now finally available in an uncropped, high-res print. When and where was it taken? And who exactly are these 29 men?
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Tina Modotti and Vittorio Vidali, who dedicated a major part of their lives to the Communist International, have long been surrounded by myth. New research by the historian David Jorge suggests that they consistently strove for broad leftist fronts—even when the leadership of the Comintern favored other tactics.
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Leon Bibel, a New-York-based painter, printmaker, and teacher who worked with the WPA and was only discovered by the public years after his death in 1995, was primed from birth to identify with the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War.
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Can conservation be a revolutionary practice? In his new book, The Monument of Tomorrow, Miguel Caballero shows that it certainly can. The story it tells is also the story of the Madrid that the Abraham Lincoln Brigade encountered—and helped shape—during the war.
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Few political leaders of modern Spain have been as maligned as Prime Minister Juan Negrín, who died in exile in 1956. But his personal papers, which have been only open to researchers since 2014, challenge long-standing portrayals of Negrín advanced by anti-Communist critics on both the left and right.
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The war in Spain was barely over, but the scramble to define the legacy of the International Brigades was on. Were they valiant antifascists, or had they been agents, victims, or dupes of world communism? In pre-1945 US popular culture, the brigadistas were often portrayed as heroic antifascists. At the same time, there were...
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China was entangled in multiple local and global crises when this image was published on the back cover of a Shanghai-based magazine.
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The Republic’s fight against fascism was not limited to the trenches. There was also a quieter, though no less vital front—the judiciary—where the Republic fought to preserve legality, due process, and democratic norms.
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Major US films and series about the Spanish Civil War have been few and far between. Why has Hollywood shied away from a topic that, on the face of it, presents such a trove of compelling stories?
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Close to 35 years after serving as a head nurse in the Spanish Civil War, Fredericka Martin, by then an accomplished author, returned to Spain to revisit the hospital sites where she had her fellow volunteers had saved hundreds of lives. Another half century later, Gina Benavidez, a doctoral candidate, followed Martin’s trail.
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ALBA's project to provide a complete list of the more than 2,800 individuals who left from U.S. territory to fight with the Spanish Republic
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