John Henry Mackay

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John Henry Mackay.

John Henry Mackay (Greenock, Scotland, 1864 - Stahnsdorf, Germany, May 16, 1933) was an individualist anarchist, thinker, writer, and homosexual.

Raised in Germany, Mackay was the friend of Benjamin Tucker, and the author of Die Anarchisten (The Anarchists) (1891) and Der Freiheitsucher (The Searcher for Freedom) (1921). Mackay was published in the United States in Tucker's magazine, Liberty.

Using the pseudonym Sagitta, he also wrote a series of works for pederastic emancipation, titled Die Buecher der namelosen Liebe (Books of the Nameless Love). This series was conceived in 1905 and completed in 1913.[1] Under the same pseudonym he also published fiction, such as the pederastic novel of the Berlin boy-bars, Der Puppenjunge (The Hustler) (1926), a work confirmed as realistic by Christopher Isherwood who had experienced the scene personally.[2]

From 1906, the writings and theories of Mackay had a significant influence on Adolf Brand's organisation Gemeinschaft der Eigenen . Mackay had then lived in Berlin for a decade, and had become a friend of scientist and Gemeinschaft der Eigenen co-founder Benedict Friedlander.

Mackay was a key populariser of the work of Max Stirner (1806-1856) outside Germany, writing a biography of the philosopher. This added greatly to the understanding of the work of Nietzsche among English-speakers^{[citation needed]}.

Richard Strauss's well-known songs from his Vier Lieder (Op. 27), a wedding gift to his wife, Morgen and Heimliche Aufforderung (Secret Invitation) set two of Mackay's poems inspired by the love of boys to music.

Some say Mackay committed suicide but in Hubert Kennedy's book about his life it says: Mackay died on 16 May 1933 in the office of his doctor, only a few houses from his own, apparently of a heart attack. He was also suffering from stones in his bladder. This was ten days after the Nazi book burnings at the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft. Adolf Hitler had become dictator two months earlier, and all activities of the German homosexual emancipation movement soon ceased.

[edit] Further reading

Kennedy, Hubert. Anarchist of Love: The Secret Life of John Henry Mackay (2nd Edition, 2002) (full-text PDF link)
"On the Nameless Love and Infinite Sexualities: John Henry Mackay, Magnus Hirschfeld and the Origins of the Sexual Emancipation Movement", Journal of Homosexuality, Vol 50, No.1, 2005.
Complete works of John Henry Mackay: free e-books