Description

This is a rare 1931 Polish translation of a socialist text by an Austrian author and activist Felix Kanitz (1894-1940), bound in a highly decorative avant-garde binding by a Polish author. Kanizt was born in Vienna to Jewish parents. Between the wars he was a proponent of the Kinderrepublik, an anti-authoritarian education movement. 

Kanitz’es work Kämpfer der Zukunft was first published in 1929. It was banned by the Nazis and was one of the first books, which was on the list of books to be burned in 1933.

Kanitz was imprisoned in Buchenwald concentration camp in the late 1938 and was executed there in 1940.  

Kazimierz Czapiński (Minsk, 1882– Auschwitz, 1942), who wrote an introduction, was a publicist and one of the main figures of the pre-WWII Polish Socialist Party. During the WWII he joined the Polish resistant and was captured by Gestapo in September 1941. He died in Auschwitz concentration camp in July 1942.

We could not trace any examples outside Polish institutions.

References: Piotr Rypson, Nie gęsi. Polskie projektowanie graficzne 1919–1949, Krakow 2011, p. 136.