Knoll, Erwin

▪ 1995

      Austrian-born U.S. editor (b. July 17, 1931, Vienna, Austria—d. Nov. 2, 1994, Madison, Wis.), as editor of the political magazine The Progressive, was known for his commitment to civil liberties and nonviolence and his opposition to capital punishment, nuclear weapons, and U.S. intervention abroad. Knoll gained international attention in 1979 when he refused a government request that an article supposedly revealing hydrogen bomb design secrets be withheld, and the government secured a court order prohibiting publication—an act of prior restraint unprecedented in U.S. history. He contended that all the information was in the public domain, and after six months—following a Madison newspaper's publication of a letter containing some of that information—the Justice Department relented, and the article was printed. Knoll was reared and educated in New York—his family had fled the Nazis and moved to the U.S. when he was nine—and he received a B.A. from New York University in 1953. He also did graduate work in political science at George Washington University, Washington, D.C. He worked for the Washington Post (1957-63) and the Newhouse National News Service (1963-68) before becoming the Washington editor of The Progressive in 1968 and then moving to Madison in 1973 to be its editor. His opposition to the 1991 Gulf war—almost singular among U.S. editors—led to appearances on the PBS "MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour." Knoll's several books included Scandal in the Pentagon (1969; coauthor with William McGaffin), War Crimes and the American Conscience (1970; coeditor), and No Comment (1984; editor). He left a book about capital punishment unfinished.

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