Richard Löwenthal

Richard Lowenthal (1908-1991) was a German politician and writer.

Lowenthal was born in Berlin in 1908, the son of a Jewish businessman. He studied economics and sociology at Berlin and Heidelburg in the 1920s.

At one point he led the youth group of the Communist Party of Germany (Opposition) (KPO). He was among a number of KPO members who split off in 1932 over the group's unwillingness to criticise the official communists, and subsequently joined the Socialist Workers' Party (SAP).

He joined the ginger group New Beginning, and fled the Nazis to Prague, along with many social democratic leaders, in 1935.

According to Anthony Glees:

Here he urged active resistance, arguing that Social Democracy's faith in the German people and an economic collapse inside Germany was idiotic and that co-operation with communists was desirable. How to draw the line between communism and Social Democracy remained the chief theoretical and practical concern until his death.

Following Nazi pressure on the Czechs, he left for London in 1938.

According to Glees:

As a New Beginner he attracted the interest of the Foreign Office as well as the intelligence services. Following the attack on France there was for a short time a demand for Germans prepared to risk their lives for the anti-Nazi cause. Lowenthal's skills lay in the pen rather than the sword, however, and he was set to work on both black and white propaganda; the enigmatic Sefton Delmer, Richard Crossman and Patrick Gordon Walker were close associates.

In 1948 he began to work for Reuters and The Observer under editor David Astor.

In 1969, after a year at Harvard, Lowenthal took a chair at the Free University of Berlin. By this time, an old friend, Willy Brandt, was Social Democratic chancellor of Germany. Lowenthal's anticommunist credentials meant that he was chosen to write a paper on policy towards Eastern Europe and Communism that was accepted by the SPD on 14 November 1970.</ref>

In 1981, Lowenthal published his Six Theses on Social Democracy which accused the SPD of flirting with the far left and East German communists.

Affiliations

• Konigswinter member.
• Friederich Ebert Foundation
• Congress for Cultural Freedom
• Salzburg Seminar in American Studies
• Trilateral Commission

External Resources

• Riccardo Bavaj, “Western Civilization” and the Acceleration of Time. Richard Löwenthal’s Reflections on a Crisis of “the West” in the Aftermath of the Student Revolt of “1968”, Themenportal Europäische Geschichte (2010), accessed 23 June 2011.