Louise Berger

Louise Berger was a Russian Latvian anarchist, a member of the Anarchist Red Cross and editor of Emma Goldman's Mother Earth Bulletin in New York. Berger became well known outside anarchist circles in 1914 after a premature bomb explosion at her New York City apartment (known as the Lexington Avenue bombing), which killed four persons and destroyed part of the building.

Berger was born in Latvia in the 1890s. Around 1905, she left Latvia for Western Europe. In Hamburg, Germany she met two other Latvian Anarchist Red Cross members, Charles Berg and Carl Hanson (her stepbrother), and accompanied them to New York City in 1911. When the three arrived in New York, the three joined the Lettish (Latvian) Anarchist Group, an organization primarily devoted to the publication and dissemination of anarchist literature. However, when a number of comrades organized a Lettish Anarchist Red Cross in December 1913, the three became some of its first members.

During this same period, Berger, Berg, and Hanson also became active in anarchist labor rights groups and the Anti-Military League. Most of these organizations used the Ferrer Center at their hub for activities. Here individuals like Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman,Luigi Galleani, and members of the Anarchist Red Cross and the Industrial Workers of the World spent a great deal of their time. During these meetings, plans were made to stage protests at the Tarrytown, New York estate of Standard Oil magnate John D. Rockefeller, owner of the Ludlow mines in Colorado.

The Ludlow Massacre in Colorado and police dispersal of the Tarrytown protests enraged most radicals. In June, members of the Lettish Anarchist Red Cross, including Berg, Hanson, Berger, and IWW member Arthur Caron began plotting a bomb attack to assassinate Rockefeller.

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