Richard Loewenthal

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Richard Löwenthal (pseudonym Paul Sering ; born April 15, 1908 in Charlottenburg ; † August 9, 1991 in Berlin ) was a German political scientist . From 1961 to 1974 he was a professor at the Free University of Berlin . He dealt with problems of world politics, democracy, communism and university politics .

Life

Berlin memorial plaque on the house, Höhmannstrasse 8, in Berlin-Grunewald

He was born as the son of the Jewish sales representative Ernst Löwenthal (1870-1937) and Anna Löwenthal, née Gottheil (1880-1969). After attending the Charlottenburg Mommsen-Gymnasium , he studied economics and sociology in Berlin and Heidelberg from 1926 to 1931. Among his professors were Alfred Weber and Karl Mannheim . In 1931 he received his doctorate on Marx's theory of the crisis cycle .

From 1926 to 1929 he was a member of the KPD and, together with Franz Borkenau and Boris Goldenberg, headed the Kostufra (Communist student faction ), which he left in 1929 due to contentious disputes. In the following years he became involved in the KPD opposition and became a member of Walter Loewenheim's (code name: Miles) Leninist organization . After 1933, as a leading ideologist in Berlin, he played a key role in setting up the organization that was renamed the Neu Beginnen group . At this time he adopted his code name "Paul Sering".

In June 1935, the Neu Beginnen group split up and Loewenheim was dismissed. The management of Neu Beginnen took over until the wave of Gestapo arrests among NL members and others. a. Lowenthal. In August 1935, Löwenthal emigrated to CSR and worked in the NB foreign office in Prague . In April of the following year he accepted a research fellowship in London , which lasted until October 1937. He then returned to the NB headquarters until he fled to Paris in 1938 . In 1939 Löwenthal went to London, from where he also participated in the opposition to National Socialism in Germany.

In exile he maintained close ties to the Fabian Society and was a member of the advisory board of the International Socialist Forum . He also advocated the reconstruction of the Second International . Since Löwenthal was influenced by the post-war program of the British labor movement, he also advocated that Germany should complement parliamentary democracy with centralized investment management geared to the interests of the working population . From 1940 to 1942 he worked for the broadcaster of the European Revolution .

In 1945 he became a member of the SPD . Until 1958 Löwenthal worked as a freelance political journalist for the Reuters news agency and as a foreign correspondent for the Observer in Bonn, where he also wrote columns for Die Zeit under the pseudonym Rex Löwenthal . In 1961 he was appointed full professor for the science of politics and for the history and theory of foreign policy at the Otto Suhr Institute of the Free University of Berlin , where he had previously been a guest lecturer. He also took part in various research programs on the development of Eastern Europe (including the German Society for Eastern European Studies , the Federal Institute for Eastern Scientific and International Studies , the Eastern Bloc Research Advisory Board and Developing Countries at the Friedrich Ebert Foundation ). In 1974 Richard Löwenthal retired and continued to work as a freelance journalist in Bonn. For many years he was the deputy chairman of the SPD Fundamental Values ​​Commission.

In 1974 Löwenthal was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In 1978 he was awarded the Ernst Reuter plaque , in 1983 he was awarded the Great Federal Cross of Merit with a Star , and in 1984 the Waldemar von Knoeringen Prize of the Georg von Vollmar Academy .

He had been married to Charlotte Herz, nee Abrahamsohn (* 1908), a legal scholar, sociologist and economist, since 1960.

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In his extensive scientific work, Löwenthal dealt with various political science and historical topics. Among other things, he benefited from the knowledge of the sociologist Max Weber .

His doctoral thesis on The Marxian Theory of the Crisis Cycle showed that Löwenthal initially dealt primarily with scientific-theoretical questions of communism, although his criticism of the communist theory of social fascism led to his exclusion from the KPD in the late 1920s. Further publications on communist topics followed, in which he increasingly dealt with the role of the Soviet Union and, in particular, with its state and social structures. Another important topic in this context was the way in which communism was implemented in the USSR (Khrushchev and world communism; The Broken Monolith - From Stalin's World Party to Communist Pluralism; The Soviet bloc between supremacy control and autonomy; One-party system and bureaucratic rule in the Soviet Union; Soviet Domestic Policy - Driving Forces and Trends) .

In 1935, Löwenthal published his own theory of fascism in the Zeitschrift für Sozialismus , which was directed against the Comintern's theory of fascism and made an important contribution to the discussion of the foundations and perspectives of the National Socialist regime (Fascism: System and Contradictions; Fascism: Prerequisites and Carrier) . This scientific approach influenced the work of Franz Neumann and Otto Bauer (Between Two World Wars) , among others . Later, Löwenthal also dealt with the subject of National Socialism in more detail (historical requirements of German National Socialism; resistance and refusal in Germany from 1933 to 1945) .

By giving up the concept of democratic centralism after 1935, Löwenthal achieved an ideological rapprochement with social democracy , in particular Otto Bauer's Austromarxism and the attitude of the traditional left social democratic party opposition. Together with Karl Frank, Josef Poppling and Josef Buttinger, Löwenthal wrote the work The Coming World War , which depicts the tasks and goals of German socialism as an attempt to determine the position of the left socialist in relation to the expected war in Europe.

In Klare Fronten , published in London in 1941, Löwenthal propagated the German Revolution between the world powers with regard to the war aims of the Allies . In this important work, Löwenthal advocates the participation of the USSR in the later reorganization of Europe in order to prevent the suppression of the revolutionary movements and the transfer of the capitalist social order to the USSR by the Western powers. In 1943, however, Löwenthal distanced himself from his position represented in Clear Fronts and oriented himself more towards the Western powers, above all towards the British labor movement. From then on he remained an advocate of Germany's ties to the West, because only they could offer protection from the Soviet Union's striving for power.

In the 1960s, Löwenthal's work Beyond Capitalism , published in 1947, received new attention from the socialist left and the student movement . The work is a theoretical work on democratic socialism and should represent a contribution to socialist reorientation in Germany. In addition to a dirigistic economic system, he called for a European union in order to assert oneself between the two power blocs in East and West.

However, in 1967 Löwenthal turned against plans by the Socialist German Student Union to introduce forms of plebiscitary democracy in universities and society, and a year later he publicly distanced himself from the student movement, as he could do little with the neo-Marxism of the student revolt. As an established university professor, he warned against the "romantic relapse" into Marxism and against giving up the secure Western alliance. In this work he described the student movement as a "backward-looking revolution".

In 1970, Richard Löwenthal was one of the closest founding circle of the Bund Freiheit der Wissenschaft : together with Hans Maier and Hermann Lübbe , he had formulated the call for founding.

Because of his scientific analysis of National Socialism, Löwenthal is valued as a leading theoretician of social democracy. In addition, Löwenthal was an advisor to the SPD party leadership for a long time, particularly on issues relating to the relationship between social democracy and communism. This led to a critical dialogue with Willy Brandt , whom Löwenthal advised on foreign policy issues. Löwenthal warned Brandt against neglecting the traditional social democratic electorate.

Works

  • Fascism - Bolshevism - Totalitarianism. Writings on Weltanschauung dictatorship in the 20th century. Edited by Mike Schmeitzner, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2009, ISBN 978-3-525-32600-8 .
  • Foreign policy perspectives of the West German state.
  • Khrushchev and world communism. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1963.
  • Democratic socialism in the eighties.
  • Fascism (system and contradictions).
  • Fascism (requirement and carrier).
  • The Broken Monolith: From Stalin's World Party to Communist Pluralism.
  • The Coming World War: Tasks and Goals of German Socialism.
  • The romantic relapse: ways and wrong ways of a backward-turning revolution.
  • The Soviet bloc between supremacy control and autonomy.
  • Democracy in the Changing Society Lectures held in the summer semester of 1962.
  • The transformation of capitalism.
  • The "New Beginning" resistance group.
  • The second republic 25 years of the Federal Republic of Germany - a balance sheet . Edited by Richard Löwenthal and Hans-Peter Schwarz.
  • One-party system and bureaucratic rule in the Soviet Union.
  • Ernst Reuter. A political biography. (Together with Willy Brandt), Munich 1957.
  • Edzard Reuter on his sixtieth: Breaking the boundaries
  • History between yesterday and tomorrow
  • Social Change and Cultural Crisis: Future Problems of Western Democracies.
  • A divided country halved a country: essays on Germany.
  • Historical prerequisites of German National Socialism.
  • Beyond Capitalism: A Contribution to Socialist Reorientation. Dietz, Berlin / Bonn-Bad Godesberg 1977, ISBN 3-8012-1096-0 .
  • Soviet Domestic Policy: Driving Forces and Trends.
  • Socialism and active democracy Essays on their requirements in Germany.
  • The Coming World War. Epilogue by Richard Löwenthal.
  • From the cold war to Ostpolitik.
  • What is popular socialism? In: Journal of Socialism. Vol. 3, issue 36, September 1936.
  • World Political Considerations: Essays from Two Decades.
  • Resistance and denial in Germany 1933 to 1945. Dietz, Berlin / Bonn 1984, ISBN 3-8012-0074-4 .
  • Between courage and fear: Berlin 1950 . Special print from: Breaking the boundaries: Edzard Reuter for his sixtieth.

literature

Web links

Commons : Richard Löwenthal  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rex Löwenthal: The Red Front. Apostates take their place. In: The time. October 24, 1957 No. 43.
  2. ↑ Founding appeal from 1970.
personal data
SURNAME Löwenthal, Richard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sering, Paul (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German political scientist and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH April 15, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Charlottenburg
DATE OF DEATH August 9, 1991
Place of death Berlin