---
title: "Eugen Relgis"
chunk: 6/12
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugen_Relgis"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:03:21.362889+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== South American career ===
With noted help from anarchist translator Vladimiro Muñoz, Relgis began his new career as a Spanish-language writer and publicist with a succession of works. Umanitarism și eugenism was translated into a Spanish edition: Humanitarismo y eugenismo, Ediciones Universo, Toulouse, 1950. The same imprint released his essay Las aberraciones sexuales en la Alemania nazi ("Sexual Aberrations in Nazi Germany"), which discussed in some depth the characteristics of Nazi eugenics. Also in 1950, with his Montevideo printing office Ediciones Humanidad, Relgis released a Spanish edition of his Principiile, a version of Max Nettlau's World Peace volume, as well as reissuing Cosmometápolis. Two years later, Ediciones Humanidad published Relgis' biographical essay Stefan Zweig, cazador de almas ("Stefan Zweig, the Soul Hunter"), followed in 1953 by a Hachette version of De mis peregrinaciones europeas ("From My Wanderings in Europe"). Relgis also tried to get his contributions translated into Portuguese, asking anarchist philosopher José Oiticica for assistance. He was at the time employed by El Plata daily, editing its Wednesday literary page, and helping to discover, in 1954, the twelve-year-old poet Teresa Porzecanski.
In 1954, Relgis printed another biographical study, on Romain Rolland: El hombre libre frente a la barbarie totalitaria ("A Free Man Confronts Totalitarian Barbarity"). The following year, he gave a public lecture at the University of the Republic, titled "A Writer's Confession", and reissued Esseuri despre iudaism as Profetas y poetas. Valores permanentes y temporarios del judaísmo ("Prophets and Poets. The Permanent and Timely Values of Judaism"). A Spanish version of Umanitarism sau Internaționala intelectualilor was published, as El Humanitarismo, by Editorial Americalee in Buenos Aires (1956). One edition of the latter was prefaced by Nicolai, who was at the time living in Argentina. In November 1956, the same company issued Relgis' Diario de otoño ("Autumn Diary"), a collection of notes he had kept during the war years. Another tract, Albores de libertad ("Dawns of Freedom"), was prefaced by Rudolf Rocker, the anarcho-syndicalist thinker.
In 1958, the University of the Republic published Eugen Relgis' acclaimed political essay Perspectivas culturales en Sudamérica ("Cultural Perspectives in South America"), for which he received a prize from the Uruguayan Ministry of Public Instruction and Social Prevision. Relgis' reputation was consolidated in the intellectual circles and, in 1955, his name was unsuccessfully advanced for the Nobel Peace Prize. The same year, a volume of his collected Spanish texts and studies on his work was published in Montevideo, as Homenaje a Eugen Relgis en su 60º aniversario ("Homage to Eugen Relgis on His 60th Anniversary").
Relgis returned to poetry in 1960 and 1961, with the volumes En un lugar de los Andes ("Some Place in the Andes") and Locura ("Madness"), both translated by Pablo R. Troise. They were followed by two other booklets, also in Troise's translation: Corazones y motores ("Hearts and Engines", 1963), Últimos poemas ("The Last Poems", 1967). His complete Obras ("Works") were published over the next decades, while the essay ¿Qué es el humanitarismo? Principios y acción ("What Is Humanitarianism? Principles and Action") went through several successive editions and featured a prologue by Albert Einstein. Another one of Relgis' Spanish-language volumes, Testigo de mi tiempo ("A Witness of My Time"), with more essays on Judaism, came in 1961. His leading eugenics and sexology treatise, Historia sexual de la Humanidad ("The Sexual History of Humanity"), was also published in 1961 (Libro-Mex Editores, Mexico City), and, in 1965, his biography of Nicolai saw print in Buenos Aires.

=== Final years and death ===
In 1962, Eugen Relgis visited Israel and Jerusalem, tightening his links with the Romanian Israeli community, including the Menora Association and Rabbi David Șafran. It was in Israel that Relgis published another volume of memoirs, in his native Romanian language: Mărturii de ieri și de azi ("Testimonies of Yesterday and Today"). In 1972, he was made an honorary staff member of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
From the early 1960s, Relgis was in correspondence with figures in the Italian radical circles, such as the anarchist Gaspare Mancuso. In 1964, Mancuso and Regis' other Italian disciples founded the political journal Quaderini degli amici di Eugen Relgis ("The Friends of Eugen Relgis Notebooks"). He also became an occasional contributor to Mujeres Libres, the Spanish anarcha-feminist tribune in the United Kingdom. During the 1960s and '70s, as a spell of liberalization occurred in Nicolae Ceaușescu's Romania, Relgis was again in contact with Romanian intellectuals. Before the massive earthquake of 1977 devastated Bucharest, he was in regular correspondence with scholar Mircea Handoca.
Eugen Relgis lived the final decade of his life as a pensioner of the Uruguayan state—in 1985, a law raised his pensión graciable to 20,000 new pesos a month. In the 1980s, Relgis was exchanging letters with Romanian cultural historian Leon Volovici, and entertained thoughts about a recovery of his work by Romanian critics and historians. He died before this could happen, in Montevideo, at age 92.

== Political doctrine ==