50 · [Published by a Czarist Secret Police Agent!] Krantz, Ph. [Philip]

DI KULTURGESHIKHTE: DER MENSH UN ZAYN ARBAYT: ZAYT ER HOT ZIKH BEVIZEN OYF DER ERD BIZ UNZER TSAYT [VOL 1 ONLY, OF 3 VOLUMES] דיא קולטורגעשיכטע : דער מענש און זיין ארבייט: זייט ער האט זיך בעוויזען אויף דער ערד ביז אונזער צייט

Nyu York [New York]: A.M. Yevalenko, 1900. Item #43186

Period cloth with text portion of original paper wrapper mounted on front. 303 pages. Includes illustrations. 20 cm. In Yiddish. Title translates as “Cultural History: Man and His Labor: Since He Appeared on Earth to Our Time.” Singerman 5784.
Vol 1 of three volume work on the anthropology of men and their labor. As an interesting aside, we note that the publisher A. M Yevalenko, president of the International Library Publishing Company, a Yiddish publisher of radical and scientific literature, was a friend of Chaim Zhitlovsky and of many of the emigre Russian radicals in America. He was unmasked by the Socialist-Revolutionary Burtsev in 1910 as an Okhrana [Czarist Secret Police] agent. At the trial held to prove or refute the charges in New York, Abraham Caspe (as well as Chaim Zhitlovsky) was part of the committee which ultimately held the charges to be true (see NY Times, April 26, 1910)
Jacob Rombro (1858-1922), better known by his pen name Philip Krantz, was a Belarusian-born Jewish-American socialist, newspaper editor, and Yiddish writer.
Krantz’s early years were shaped by the intellectual ferment of 19th-century Eastern European Jewry. Educated in Ashmyany, Zhitomir, and Kremenchug, and arrested as a youth for revolutionary activities, he went on to study at the St. Petersburg Technological Institute and later at the Sorbonne.
Fleeing Russia after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, Krantz settled in Paris and then London, becoming a key figure in early Jewish socialist circles. He was a founder of the Jewish Arbeiter Verein and an early contributor to Yiddish socialist journalism, despite initial resistance to writing in what he called the "Jewish Jargon." Krantz would go on to devote his life to it, becoming editor of Arbeter Fraynd and a delegate to the 1889 International Workers Congress in Paris.
In 1890, Krantz immigrated to New York, where he edited Arbeter Tsaytung and later Dos Abend Blatt, becoming a prominent voice in the American Jewish labor press. He contributed prolifically to nearly every significant Yiddish publication of the era, including Zukunft, Der Sotsyal-Demokrat, The Forward, andDi Idishe Velt, and served as editor at the International Library Publishing Co., which helped disseminate secular, socialist, and scientific knowledge to Yiddish readers.
Krantz's literary output was immense and educational in intent—writing on science, history, and philosophy for Jewish immigrants still navigating a new world in an old tongue. His works include popular surveys of astronomy and ancient history, as well as biographies of Spinoza, Muhammad, Bar Kokhba, Sabbatai Zevi, and the Rothschilds, among many others. A tireless educator and propagator of knowledge, Krantz was committed to enlightening his readership, helping to build a secular Jewish culture in Yiddish for the modern age. (Wikipedia)
SUBJECT(S): Civilization -- History. OCLC: 7417239.
Ex-library with usual markings. Covers loose, wear to exposed title page. Fair Condition. (YID-48-18-LECC-ggx).

Price: $100.00