Student Activism in the 1930s
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ASU Autobiographies

American Student Union Summer Training Institute Autobiographies
Autobiography of Samuel Wolfenstein
1. I was born in 1921 in to a middle-middle-class Jewish family, living in the residential suburban community of Cleveland Heights. My father is a relatively successful physician and his income has always been sufficient to keep our family in comfort.

2. I went through the entire public school system of Cleveland Heights, but most of my political education was gained through extra-curricular activities. During my earlier years I read rather extensively. From the writings of Nietzsche and Spengler I learned to evaluate critically the ideologies and mode of life which I had learned to exert more or less unquestioningly. Early I became discontent with the system I found in operation in society, insofar, that is, as I came into contact with it. From Freud I came to understand the psychological basis of this discontent, and from Strachey--and later Marx and Lenin--and from the liberal magazines which always lay around the house, Nation, New Republic, New Masses, its economic and social justification.

3. The chief influence upon my thinking, however, was not the writers I read, although many of them--Ibsen, Spinoza, Proust, Joyce, and Mann are a few--influenced me considerably, but the people with whom I came into contact. My father is an "old-fashioned" liberal with a strong inclinations towards socialism. His ideas were, without his intending it, impressed upon me at an early age. It was from my sister that I gained my first acquaintance with modern culture and with recent philosophical and psychological thought. The person, however, who influenced most directly my political thinking was a friend of my sister, one Dr. Feuer. Be made the first attempts to teach me the meaning of the ideas concerning which I had been reading and hearing in actual life. At a somewhat later date I met several leaders of the progressive movement--in particular I have in mind William Mandel and Mac Weiss--who made a great personal impression upon me, but at this time my general ideas about political and economic subjects were pretty well formed.

4. The above account may suggest an academic detachment from practical life. This impression would not be inaccurate. There were several reasons for such an attitude on my part. In the first place, this attitude was exemplified by my father and sister. Secondly, the community in which I was living, the Cleveland Heights public schools, seemed thoroughly reactionary and appeared to offer no possibilities for progressive action. It was only slowly that I came to the realization that this very situation made a first effort at progressive action all the more important.

5. In the spring of 1936 three friends of mine and I decided to organize a chapter of the ASU in our high school. It was only then that I began to realize my colossal ignorance on the question of how to apply the theories in which I believed to practical life. In the course of the next two years we certainly made many and grave errors in our attempts at organization, but I believe that we did succeed in laying some sort of foundation for a progressive movement in the high school. And of course we profited from our experiences.

6. Last year I was fairly active in the ASU at the University of Chicago, but I realize how full of shortcomings was my work. Contact with a more fully developed progressive movement emphasized again to me how much I have yet to learn. Which, in a way, accounts for my being at Locust Farm at this time.

7. Next year, which I realize will be a very critical one, I hope to be able to contribute more to the progressive movement than I have in the past. I hope that my stay here will help me to accomplish that end.

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