Karl Wittfogel

Karl August Wittfogel (6 September 1896, in Woltersdorf, Germany – 25 May 1988, in New York, United States) was a German-American playwright, historian, and sinologist. Originally a Marxist and an active member of the Communist Party of Germany, after the Second World War Wittfogel was an equally fierce anti-communist.

Karl August Wittfogel was born 6 September 1896 at Woltersdorf, in Lüchow, Province of Hanover. Wittfogel left school in 1914. He studied philosophy, history, sociology, geography at Leipzig University and also in Munich, Berlin and Rostock and in 1919 again in Berlin. From 1921 he studied sinology in Leipzig. In between Wittfogel was drafted into a Signal Corps Unit (Fernmeldeeinheit) in 1917

Before the First World War, he was the leader of the Lüneburg Wandervogel group. In 1918, he set up the Lüneburg local of the radical Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD). In 1920, he joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). Wittfogel met Karl Korsch in 1920 and was invited to the 1923 conference that helped establish the Institute for Social Research and from 1925 to 1933 was a member of the Institute. He received his Ph.D. from the Frankfurter Universität in 1928. Wittfogel was always an active and faithful member of the communist party and a vocal critic of all its enemies. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Wittfogel tried to escape to Switzerland, but was arrested and interned in prisons and concentration camps. An international outcry led to his freedom in 1934.

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