cover image Unheeded Warning

Unheeded Warning

Manes Sperber. Holmes & Meier Publishers, $29.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-8419-1032-4

A disciple of Alfred Adler in Vienna, Sperber (1905-1984), Jewish and Marxist, found his ``hopeful intimacy'' with that city shattered by arson and political murders. In 1927 he moved to Berlin, where he clung to his communist faith that the world was on the threshold of a workers' utopia. In this second part of a three-volume autobiography, the Austrian-born psychologist, novelist and essayist describes with aching immediacy the rise of Nazism in the early 1930s. A trip to Russia in 1931 fueled his disillusionment with communism. This intense reminiscence includes wry portraits of Wilhelm Reich and Bertolt Brecht, and an account of the author's break with Adler. It closes with the ordeal of Sperber's arrest by the Nazis in 1933 and his unexpected release a few weeks later. (July)