Leopold Schwarzschild

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Leopold Schwarzschild (born December 8, 1891 in Frankfurt am Main , † October 2, 1950 in Santa Margherita Ligure , Italy ) was a German publicist and sociologist .

Life

Edition of the exile magazine Das Neue Tage-Buch published by Schwarzschild on March 25, 1939.

He was the son of an old Frankfurt Jewish-Orthodox family of scholars and merchants and studied history and economics after completing a commercial apprenticeship. After the First World War , in which he participated as a soldier, he also studied sociology, temporarily with Franz Oppenheimer in Frankfurt am Main.

After initial journalistic professional experience at the Frankfurter Generalanzeiger , Schwarzschild went to Berlin and, from 1922, together with the publicist Stefan Großmann from Vienna, published the magazine Das Tage-Buch , which he founded in 1922 , which critically examined the development of the Weimar Republic from a left-liberal perspective . The diary was a "high quality media product" in terms of content. Fritz Raddatz emphasizes that the "green notebooks read like a grandiose story of the Weimar Republic." After Großmann fell seriously ill, Schwarzschild became the sole editor of the daily book in 1928 . Schwarzschild was a business journalist.

Shortly after the seizure of power of the Nazis to flee had Schwarzschild in May 1933 from Berlin to Vienna. Then he went to France. In Paris, from July 1933, he published the important German-language exile magazine Das Neue Tage-Buch . All of his writings were banned in Germany, and on August 25, 1933, his name was on the first expatriation list of the German Reich . As a result, Schwarzschild lost his citizenship. In addition, his property left behind was illegally confiscated by Germany. In the Lutetia district (1935–1936), Schwarzschild was involved in the attempt to create a “ popular front ” against the National Socialist dictatorship. He signed the "Appeal to the German People". In July 1937, he founded to protest against the Stalinist faithful line of the Popular Front, together with Bernard von Brentano , Alfred Doblin , Konrad Heiden , Rudolf Lang u. a. the Bund Freie Presse und Literatur , which was explicitly directed against any totalitarian tutelage of writers (from both the fascist and the Stalinist side). In the summer of 1940 he emigrated to New York and worked as a writer and journalist.

Schwarzschild returned to Germany in 1949. He died in the fall of 1950 while on vacation in Italy; suicide is suspected.

Political argument in exile

During his exile in Paris, the Protection Association of German Writers Abroad (SDS) tried to denounce him as Goebbels' agent . The reason for this was his critical examination of the Moscow trials . He had published a number of articles on it. Hans Sahl as a member of the board of directors of the SDS refused to sign the decision of the association and thus prevented the liquidation of Schwarzschild. After these events, the Bund Freie Presse und Literatur was founded in 1937 .

Significance for sociology

According to Sven Papcke , Schwarzschild’s sociological well-founded demand to bring about the end of illusions (also the title of the most famous Schwarzschild book from 1934) as quickly as possible is one of the “most important interpretations of the rise, rule and possible misunderstanding of National Socialism, submitted by exile ”. In his work End of Illusions , Schwarzschild presented and analyzed widespread contemporary misjudgments about the peace treaties after 1919, the many economic crises, conflict avoidance ( League of Nations / disarmament) and greed for profit. At the same time he explained the social function of such “ derivatives ” ( Vilfredo Pareto ) as apparently rational motives for action.

In the emigration, Schwarzschild noted with resignation that the German refugees also continued to cultivate their respective ideologies and illusions and were unable to argue together.

Fonts (selection)

  • The end of illusions , Querido Verlag, Amsterdam 1934
  • Primer Of The Coming World , Knopf, New York 1944
  • From war to war , Querido Verlag, Amsterdam 1947
  • The Red Prussian. The Life and Legend of Karl Marx , Scribner, New York 1947
    • The red Prussian. Life and legend of Karl Marx , Stuttgart 1954
  • Chronicle of a downfall: Germany 1924–1939. The contributions of Leopold Schwarzschild in the magazines "Das Tage-Buch" and "Das Neue Tage-Buch" , ed. v. Andreas Wesemann, Czernin Verlag, Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-7076-0156-0

literature

  • Schwarzschild, Leopold. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 19: Sand – Stri. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. De Gruyter, Berlin a. a. 2012, ISBN 978-3-598-22699-1 , pp. 159-185.
  • Martin Mauthner: German Writers in French Exile. 1933-1940 . Vallentine Mitchell et al. a., London a. a. 2007, ISBN 978-0-85303-540-4 .
  • Sven Papcke : German sociology in exile. Diagnosis of the present and critique of epochs 1933–1945 . Campus, Frankfurt am Main 1993, ISBN 3-593-34862-4 (including Chapter I: On the Sociology of Illusion. Leopold Schwarzschild , pp. 13–37).
  • Dieter Schiller: "In deliberate opposition to the communist-Ullstein gang". Schwarzschilds Bund of Free Press and Literature in Paris . In: Anne Saint Sauveur-Henn (Ed.): Escape destination Paris. German-speaking emigration 1933–1940 . Metropol, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-932482-85-9 , pp. 215-229.
  • Martin Jung:  Schwarzschild. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 24, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-428-11205-0 , pp. 31-33 ( digitized version ).

Web links

References and comments

  1. ^ Wilhelm von Sternburg : "There is an eerie atmosphere in Germany": Carl von Ossietzky and his time. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-351-02451-7 . P. 167.
  2. ↑ Michael Hepp (Ed.): The expatriation of German citizens 1933-45 according to the lists published in the Reichsanzeiger . tape 1 : Lists in chronological order. De Gruyter Saur, Munich 1985, ISBN 978-3-11-095062-5 , pp. 3 (reprinted 2010).
  3. ^ Sven Papcke: German sociology in exile. Diagnosis of the present and critique of epochs 1933–1945 . Campus, Frankfurt am Main 1993, p. 31.
  4. ^ Sven Papcke: German sociology in exile. Diagnosis of the present and critique of epochs 1933–1945 . Campus, Frankfurt am Main 1993, p. 17
personal data
SURNAME Schwarzschild, Leopold
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German publicist and sociologist
DATE OF BIRTH December 8, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH October 2, 1950
Place of death Santa Margherita Ligure , Italy