There were three Max Teichmanns, really. I came to know only one of them. Max the First was the one born (1924) in the Melbourne suburb of Carlton, then not at all its current gentrified self with bookshops, foreign-film cinemas, and swish Italian restaurants, but rather, working-class with the emphasis on working. His German father had, Max later informed me, fled the old country because of the conflict between his own radical-leftist principles and what Kaiser Bill would do to him if he attempted to put those radical-leftist principles in practice. (Max never once mentioned his mother in my hearing.)…