Literature / Civil rights & activism
Fredy Perlman
1934–1985 · author, translator, publisher
Czech-born anarchist writer and publisher whose Black & Red press made Detroit a center of radical publishing; author of Against His-Story, Against Leviathan!
- Born
Brno, Czechoslovakia- Died
Detroit, Michigan
aged 50- Detroit years
- 1969–1985
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Fredy Perlman was born in Brno in 1934 to a Jewish family that fled the Holocaust to Bolivia and later settled in the United States. After studies at Columbia University and a doctorate from the University of Belgrade, he taught economics and in 1969 settled in Detroit with his wife, Lorraine. There the couple ran Black & Red, a small, largely hand-produced press that issued the first English translation of Guy Debord's The Society of the Spectacle and many radical pamphlets, and Perlman became a key figure around the Detroit anarchist paper Fifth Estate. His best-known book, Against His-Story, Against Leviathan! (1983), recasts world history as the resistance of free peoples against the state and strongly influenced later anarcho-primitivist writers. He also wrote plays and satirical sketches of Detroit's radical scene. He died at Henry Ford Hospital during heart surgery in 1985.
Highlights
- Author of Against His-Story, Against Leviathan! (1983)
- Published the first English translation of The Society of the Spectacle (1970)
- Co-ran the Black & Red press in Detroit
- Contributor to the Detroit anarchist paper Fifth Estate
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Related place · 1985
Henry Ford Hospital
He died here on July 26, 1985, while undergoing heart surgery.