Max Scherr
Encyclopedia
Max Scherr was an American underground newspaper
editor and publisher known for his iconoclastic 1960s weekly, the Berkeley Barb
.
Max Scherr was born in Baltimore, Maryland on March 12, 1916 in a Jewish household. His parents, Harry Scherr, a tailor, and Minnie, were Yiddish
-speaking Russian immigrants who arrived in America in 1898. His early life is obscure. From 1935 to 1938 he attended law school at the University of Maryland
, earning his law degree in June, 1938. For the next three years he practiced law in Baltimore, before going into the Navy in World War II.
After demobilization he attended the University of California, Berkeley
, earning a master's degree in sociology in 1949.
On a trip to Mexico in the 1940s he met and married Juana Estela Salgado, a medical student. Together they had a daughter, Raquel Lorraine Scherr, born in 1947. Returning to the United States, they lived in Albany, California
and Berkeley
, where Max Scherr worked for a publisher of legal textbooks, hanging out after work at a coffee shop called Il Piccolo Espresso
where he kibbitzed with local bohemians and radicals. By the end of the 1950s "The Pic" had become an important meeting place for SLATE
, the progressive student party at UC Berkeley. In 1958, Scherr purchased a bar, a local hangout popular with students and beatniks called the Steppenwolf at 2136 San Pablo Ave. in Berkeley, which became a stop on the West Coast folk music circuit. Scherr ran the Steppenwolf for seven years, selling it in 1965 for $10,000, which he used to launch the Barb.
The first issue of the Barb was dated August 13, 1965. Two thousand copies were printed and sold. According to legend, Scheer started the paper after a projected local paper to be published by the Berkeley food co-op
failed to appear. Scoffing at the claim that it would cost $43,000 to launch a small local paper in Berkeley, he boasted that he would have the first issue out in a week.
Around 1960 Scherr had split from Juana Estela Salgado and moved in with a much younger woman named Jane Peters (born Beatrice J. Peters in 1937), with whom he had two daughters, Dove and Apollinaire. By 1965 they had moved into a large, colonnaded house at 2421 Oregon Street. Coming home from the food co-op, he informed Peters that they had to put a paper out in one week "or I'll be the laughingstock of Berkeley." At the end of the week the promised paper, mostly written by Scherr, appeared. The smudgy first issue of 8 tabloid pages was crudely printed in a small edition of 2000 copies, and the paper was launched on a run which lasted almost 15 years.
The Barb quickly became the news and communications center for the militant New Left
protest movements swirling around the Berkeley campus of the University of California, where the Free Speech Movement
made nationwide headlines in 1964. By the fall of 1965 antiwar protest led by the Vietnam Day Committee
and Jerry Rubin
dominated campus activism in Berkeley, and the Barb soon emerged as the unofficial mouthpiece of the VDC. In the San Francisco Bay Area the paper provided a radical alternative to the stodgy conservatism and anticommunism of the established local press, dominated by Hearst's San Francisco Examiner, the Chronicle
and William Knowland's Oakland Tribune. Max Scherr considered himself and the paper to be part of the revolutionary left, although he had never been in any organized left-wing party, and the paper's news coverage was often seen as baiting the police and authorities in Berkeley, with inflammatory headlines like "Pigs Shoot to Kill—Bystanders Gunned Down." The battle over People's Park which began in 1969 with an article by Stew Albert
in the Barb was in some respects the paper's high-water mark in arousing its readers to militant activism in the streets, but the bitter aftermath, in which several protestors were shot and the city was occupied by the National Guard, left many in Berkeley with little appetite for further confrontation.
The paper grew rapidly, developing a nationwide following, and by mid-1969 Time
reported that the paper was circulating 86,000 copies and charging $450 a page for advertising, turning an annual profit of $150,000. This led to conflict with the paper's staff of 40, which was earning at most the legal minimum wage, and the staff rebelled, forming the Red Mountain Tribe collective and issuing a special strike edition of the Barb without Scherr. Scherr succeeded in getting them out of the paper's offices, whereupon he moved the newspaper's equipment into a new office and hired a new staff. The Red Mountain Tribe retaliated by starting their own competing paper, the Berkeley Tribe
, which lasted until 1972.
In 1970 Scherr announced the sale of the Barb to anthropology professor Allan Coult, but the sale fell through and it was soon back in Scherr's hands. In 1973 he set up a dummy shell corporation in Panama to control the paper and keep it out of the hands of Jane Peters, who filed for divorce in 1974 as his common law wife, demanding half of the paper. It transpired that Scherr and a tax shelter lawyer named Harry Margolis (who also represented Werner Erhard
's EST
) had arranged to sell the paper to a non-profit foundation in exchange for $2000 a month for life for Scherr, while a dummy corporation in the British Virgin Islands
(actually run from a desk at Margolis's offices in Saratoga, California
) controlled the paper's assets. Scherr stayed on as editor emeritus until 1978.
The Barb continued to decline, and in 1978, with sales down to 20,000 copies (from a peak of over 100,000), the paper's lucrative sex ads were spun off into a separate publication, the Spectator, in the hopes that the Barb could be saved. The decline continued, and by 1980 circulation of the Barb was down to the same 2000 copies Scherr had started with in 1965. The Barb finally folded in July, 1980.
Max Scherr died on October 31, 1981 of cancer.
Shortly before his death he told fellow underground newspaper editor Abe Peck: "We were a lot of well-meaning fools. All of us were tainted by the environment we were brought up in. We had no revolutionary base, no real class consciousness. Along with the good, we developed a large rip-off philosophy." But, he added, "we broke down a lot of barriers to honest thought and opened up a whole visionary realm of the future, which has to be worked on."
Underground press
The underground press were the independently published and distributed underground papers associated with the counterculture of the late 1960s and early 1970s in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and other western nations....
editor and publisher known for his iconoclastic 1960s weekly, the Berkeley Barb
Berkeley Barb
The Berkeley Barb was a weekly underground newspaper that was published in Berkeley, California, from 1965 to 1980. It was one of the first and most influential of the counterculture newspapers of the late 1960s, covering such subjects as the anti-war and civil-rights movements as well as the...
.
Max Scherr was born in Baltimore, Maryland on March 12, 1916 in a Jewish household. His parents, Harry Scherr, a tailor, and Minnie, were Yiddish
Yiddish language
Yiddish is a High German language of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, spoken throughout the world. It developed as a fusion of German dialects with Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages...
-speaking Russian immigrants who arrived in America in 1898. His early life is obscure. From 1935 to 1938 he attended law school at the University of Maryland
University of Maryland
When the term "University of Maryland" is used without any qualification, it generally refers to the University of Maryland, College Park.University of Maryland may refer to the following:...
, earning his law degree in June, 1938. For the next three years he practiced law in Baltimore, before going into the Navy in World War II.
After demobilization he attended the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
, earning a master's degree in sociology in 1949.
On a trip to Mexico in the 1940s he met and married Juana Estela Salgado, a medical student. Together they had a daughter, Raquel Lorraine Scherr, born in 1947. Returning to the United States, they lived in Albany, California
Albany, California
Albany is a city in Alameda County, California, United States. The population was 18,539 at the 2010 census.-History:In 1908, a group of local women protested the dumping of Berkeley garbage in their community...
and Berkeley
Berkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
, where Max Scherr worked for a publisher of legal textbooks, hanging out after work at a coffee shop called Il Piccolo Espresso
Caffe Mediterraneum
Caffe Mediterraneum, often referred to as Caffe Med or simply the Med, is a famous café located on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, California, near the University of California, Berkeley...
where he kibbitzed with local bohemians and radicals. By the end of the 1950s "The Pic" had become an important meeting place for SLATE
SLATE
SLATE, a pioneer organization of the New Left and precursor of the Free Speech Movement, was a campus political party at the University of California, Berkeley from 1958 to 1966.-Origins:...
, the progressive student party at UC Berkeley. In 1958, Scherr purchased a bar, a local hangout popular with students and beatniks called the Steppenwolf at 2136 San Pablo Ave. in Berkeley, which became a stop on the West Coast folk music circuit. Scherr ran the Steppenwolf for seven years, selling it in 1965 for $10,000, which he used to launch the Barb.
The first issue of the Barb was dated August 13, 1965. Two thousand copies were printed and sold. According to legend, Scheer started the paper after a projected local paper to be published by the Berkeley food co-op
Consumers' Cooperative of Berkeley
Consumers' Cooperative of Berkeley was a consumers' cooperative which operated from 1939 to 1988, when it collapsed due to internal governance issues and bankruptcy...
failed to appear. Scoffing at the claim that it would cost $43,000 to launch a small local paper in Berkeley, he boasted that he would have the first issue out in a week.
Around 1960 Scherr had split from Juana Estela Salgado and moved in with a much younger woman named Jane Peters (born Beatrice J. Peters in 1937), with whom he had two daughters, Dove and Apollinaire. By 1965 they had moved into a large, colonnaded house at 2421 Oregon Street. Coming home from the food co-op, he informed Peters that they had to put a paper out in one week "or I'll be the laughingstock of Berkeley." At the end of the week the promised paper, mostly written by Scherr, appeared. The smudgy first issue of 8 tabloid pages was crudely printed in a small edition of 2000 copies, and the paper was launched on a run which lasted almost 15 years.
The Barb quickly became the news and communications center for the militant New Left
New Left
The New Left was a term used mainly in the United Kingdom and United States in reference to activists, educators, agitators and others in the 1960s and 1970s who sought to implement a broad range of reforms, in contrast to earlier leftist or Marxist movements that had taken a more vanguardist...
protest movements swirling around the Berkeley campus of the University of California, where the Free Speech Movement
Free Speech Movement
The Free Speech Movement was a student protest which took place during the 1964–1965 academic year on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley under the informal leadership of students Mario Savio, Brian Turner, Bettina Aptheker, Steve Weissman, Art Goldberg, Jackie Goldberg, and...
made nationwide headlines in 1964. By the fall of 1965 antiwar protest led by the Vietnam Day Committee
Vietnam Day Committee
The Vietnam Day Committee was a coalition of left-wing political groups, student groups, labour organizations, and pacifist religions in the United States of America that opposed the Vietnam War...
and Jerry Rubin
Jerry Rubin
Jerry Rubin was an American social activist during the 1960s and 1970s. During the 1980s, he became a successful businessman.-Early life:...
dominated campus activism in Berkeley, and the Barb soon emerged as the unofficial mouthpiece of the VDC. In the San Francisco Bay Area the paper provided a radical alternative to the stodgy conservatism and anticommunism of the established local press, dominated by Hearst's San Francisco Examiner, the Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
and William Knowland's Oakland Tribune. Max Scherr considered himself and the paper to be part of the revolutionary left, although he had never been in any organized left-wing party, and the paper's news coverage was often seen as baiting the police and authorities in Berkeley, with inflammatory headlines like "Pigs Shoot to Kill—Bystanders Gunned Down." The battle over People's Park which began in 1969 with an article by Stew Albert
Stew Albert
Stewart Edward "Stew" Albert was an early member of the Yippies, an anti-Vietnam War political activist, and an important figure in the New Left movement of the 1960s....
in the Barb was in some respects the paper's high-water mark in arousing its readers to militant activism in the streets, but the bitter aftermath, in which several protestors were shot and the city was occupied by the National Guard, left many in Berkeley with little appetite for further confrontation.
The paper grew rapidly, developing a nationwide following, and by mid-1969 Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
reported that the paper was circulating 86,000 copies and charging $450 a page for advertising, turning an annual profit of $150,000. This led to conflict with the paper's staff of 40, which was earning at most the legal minimum wage, and the staff rebelled, forming the Red Mountain Tribe collective and issuing a special strike edition of the Barb without Scherr. Scherr succeeded in getting them out of the paper's offices, whereupon he moved the newspaper's equipment into a new office and hired a new staff. The Red Mountain Tribe retaliated by starting their own competing paper, the Berkeley Tribe
Berkeley Tribe
The Berkeley Tribe was a radical counterculture underground newspaper published in Berkeley, California from 1969 to 1972. After a staff dispute with publisher Max Scherr split the Berkeley Barb in July 1969, about 40 members of the Barb staff resigned and started the Tribe as a rival paper, after...
, which lasted until 1972.
In 1970 Scherr announced the sale of the Barb to anthropology professor Allan Coult, but the sale fell through and it was soon back in Scherr's hands. In 1973 he set up a dummy shell corporation in Panama to control the paper and keep it out of the hands of Jane Peters, who filed for divorce in 1974 as his common law wife, demanding half of the paper. It transpired that Scherr and a tax shelter lawyer named Harry Margolis (who also represented Werner Erhard
Werner Erhard
Werner Hans Erhard is an author of transformational models and applications for individuals, groups, and organizations...
's EST
Erhard Seminars Training
Erhard Seminars Training, an organization founded by Werner H. Erhard, offered a two-weekend course known officially as "The est Standard Training"...
) had arranged to sell the paper to a non-profit foundation in exchange for $2000 a month for life for Scherr, while a dummy corporation in the British Virgin Islands
British Virgin Islands
The Virgin Islands, often called the British Virgin Islands , is a British overseas territory and overseas territory of the European Union, located in the Caribbean to the east of Puerto Rico. The islands make up part of the Virgin Islands archipelago, the remaining islands constituting the U.S...
(actually run from a desk at Margolis's offices in Saratoga, California
Saratoga, California
Saratoga is a city in Santa Clara County, California, USA. It is located on the west side of the Santa Clara Valley, directly west of San Jose, in the San Francisco Bay area. The population was 29,926 at the 2010 census....
) controlled the paper's assets. Scherr stayed on as editor emeritus until 1978.
The Barb continued to decline, and in 1978, with sales down to 20,000 copies (from a peak of over 100,000), the paper's lucrative sex ads were spun off into a separate publication, the Spectator, in the hopes that the Barb could be saved. The decline continued, and by 1980 circulation of the Barb was down to the same 2000 copies Scherr had started with in 1965. The Barb finally folded in July, 1980.
Max Scherr died on October 31, 1981 of cancer.
Shortly before his death he told fellow underground newspaper editor Abe Peck: "We were a lot of well-meaning fools. All of us were tainted by the environment we were brought up in. We had no revolutionary base, no real class consciousness. Along with the good, we developed a large rip-off philosophy." But, he added, "we broke down a lot of barriers to honest thought and opened up a whole visionary realm of the future, which has to be worked on."