Max Lowenthal
| Max Lowenthal | |
|---|---|
Max Lowenthal counsels Senator Harry Truman (October 20, 1937)
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| Born |
Morchechai Lowenthal February 26, 1888 Minneapolis |
| Died | May 18, 1971 (aged 83) New York City |
| Cause of death | Heart ailment |
| Other names | Max H. Lowenthal (FBI) |
| Citizenship | American |
| Education | University of Minnesota |
| Alma mater | Harvard Law School |
| Occupation | Lawyer, government legal counselor |
| Years active | 1923-1967 |
| Known for | Friendship with Harry S. Truman, mentorship of Carol Weiss King |
| Notable work | The Federal Bureau of Investigation (1950) (book) |
| Children | David Lowenthal, John Lowenthal, Elizabeth Lowenthal |
Max Lowenthal (1888–1971) was a Washington, DC, political figure in all three branches of the federal government in the 1930s and 1940s, during which time he was closely associated with the rising career of Harry S. Truman; he served under Oscar R. Ewing on an "unofficial policy group" within the Truman administration (1947–1952).
Mordechai Lowenthal was born on February 26, 1888, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In the 1870s, his parents Nathan (Naphtali) Lowenthal and Gertrude (Nahamah) Gitel, Orthodox Jewish, emigrated from Kovno (now Kaunas), Lithuania, to Minnesota. At a young age, he started using the more "American" name of Max. Hed had two older siblings, of whom only one survived childhood.
He graduated from North High School in 1905, first in his class. He also attended Talmud Torah, where he learned Hebrew. He received a BA in 1909 from the University of Minnesota and graduated in 1912 from Harvard Law School, where he began a lifeling friendship with Felix Frankfurter.
Many of Lowenthal's accomplishments are presumed unknown as some are being discovered through historical research. Lowenthal had an incredibly discreet personality and often refused to take credit for his accomplishments.
A 1947 memo in Lowenthal's FBI file reveals the following chronology (supplemented):
Lowenthal ran a private law practice from 1912 to 1932. Cases involved workers rights, defense of right-to-strike legislation and shareholder rights in receivership cases.
In the early 1920s, Lowenthal seems to have had a law office in New York City. While Ann Fagan Ginger does not mention him as a mentor of Carol Weiss King in her biography of King, Ginger does say that King formed a "loose partnership" with radical attorneys, who included Joseph Brodsky, Swinburne Hale, Walter Nelles, and Isaac Shorr as well as a long-term association with Walter Pollak (once partner of Benjamin Cardozo, whom she met through her brother-in-law Carl Stern. Nevertheless, newspaper accounts of King (in the 1950s) mention Lowenthal as not only an associate but her employer. The Saturday Evening Post went even further in 1951 in a long article on Carol Weiss King:
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