Heiner M. Becker recently pressed charges against one or more persons suspected to be contributors of a German language syndicalist site, syndikalismus.tk. That site provided a PDF file with Rudolf Rockers «Anarcho-syndicalism», a well know text that was not published in German beforehand.
Heiner M. Becker claims to be the exclusive owner of all Rudolf Rocker copyrights, given to him by his friend Fermin Rocker, Rudolf Rockers son, who died in 2004. Becker re-edited the German language version of Rockers "Nationalism and Culture" some 12 years ago. He was awarded a loan of more than EUR 10,000 for that project on behalf of German FAU members – a loan that he had not repaid by the end of 2010.
Heiner M. Becker once was considered to be a member of the anarchist community. He has been well known in England, were he was a regular contributor to «THE RAVEN - anarchist quarterly» and other publications of FREEDOM PRESS as well as in France where he had friends in the Anarchist Federation. In the 90th he was one of those to acquiring estates of anarchists for the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. By this he is supposed to have become one of the worlds biggest contemporary private collectors of anarchist books and iconography.
Heiner M. Becker seized to have relations with the anarchist community years ago. Nowadays he is a member and the treasurer of a local party-like middle-class political grouping in his hometown. His publishing house, «Bibliothek Thélème» has not publish anything for years.
It is not known yet why he started filing against other suspected publishers of Rudolf Rocker texts without even trying to get in contact with them beforehand. But it is not unlikely that he will not only try to file against publishers of German language Rocker texts, but against those in other languages too, once the national copyright laws are favourable for him. So this should be dealt with as a warning to the community.
For most anarcho-syndicalists it will be a matter of course, that the ideas and publications of Rudolf Rocker are the heritage of the global anarcho-syndicalist movement. And not the playing field of the doutable aspirations of whatever salesman.
I wonder if Mr Becker realises that he is sitting on a goldmine, there's lots and lots of money in the Rocker market.........