Documents of the revolution: The International Institute of Social History of Amsterdam (origin and development 1935 - 1947)

Abstract

In a country that seemed neutral in the face of the advance of Nazism, the Institute of Social History in Amsterdam was created in 1933 with the aim of safeguarding collections that were in danger, first in countries such as Germany and Austria, and soon after in almost all of Europe. Maria Hunink (1924-1988), who was the head of the library for many years, traces its development through the letters stored in the different collections that make up the Institute today. At the beginning, the article deals with the contacts between its two founders - Nicolaas W. Posthumus and Nehemia De Lieme - and its initial collaborators - the legendary librarian Annie Adama van Scheltema-Kleefstra, the historian expelled from post-revolutionary Russia Boris Nikolaevsky, the German historian Hans Stein, the libertarian historian and specialist on Russia Arthur Lehning, and Boris Souvarine, also founder of the French Communist Party and later a central member of Komitern. However, the focus remains on the acquisition of the initiatory funds that gave rise to its initial physiognomy, its prestige and, as a consequence, to the decision of many others to send their collections there.   The article gets a core of tension in what was the foundational donation that gave it international recognition: Max Nettlau's collection, whose producer became an icon of all the back-and-forth attacks before being able to decide to sell his collection scattered in different deposits in Vienna, Munich, London and Paris. Maria Huninck also traces the arrival of the other collections acquired during the early years, from James Guillaume, Robert Grimm, Valerian Smirnov, Wilhelrn Liebknecht, Karl Kautsky, Lev Trotsky, the library of the Russian Bund, the library of the Arbeiterbildungsverein, the documents of the Spanish anarchists Montseny and Santillán, and the Historical Archive of the German Social Democratic Party with the original manuscripts and letters of Marx and Engels.