Richard Löwenthal
| Richard Löwenthal | |
|---|---|
| Born |
April 15, 1908 Berlin, German Empire |
| Died | August 9, 1991 (aged 83) Berlin, Germany |
| Occupation | Political scientist |
| Known for | Arguing for a post-totalitarianism interpretation of Soviet politics |
Richard Löwenthal (April 15, 1908 – August 9, 1991) was a Jewish German journalist and professor who wrote mostly on the problems of democracy, communism, and world politics.
Löwenthal was born in Berlin, Germany, the son of Ernst and Anna Löwenthal. His father was a real estate agent. From 1926 until 1931, Löwenthal studied political science, economics, and sociology at Berlin University and Heidelberg University. His major intellectual influences were Max Weber and Karl Mannheim. From 1926 until 1929, Löwenthal was a member of the Communist Party of Germany, which he left over opposition to the tactics of the Comintern. Remaining on the Left, Löwenthal was a member of several dissident breakaway groups from the KPD in the last years of the Weimar Republic.
In 1933 Löwenthal was a prominent member of the anti-Nazi group Neu Beginnen (New Beginnings) which sought to organize the German working class to overthrow the Nazi regime. During this period, Löwenthal adopted the alias Paul Sering. In July 1933 the New Beginnings group broke up under the impact of a huge wave of Gestapo arrests of its members. As a wanted man, Löwenthal continued to work for an anti-Nazi working-class revolution until increasing pressure from the Gestapo led Löwenthal to flee to the United Kingdom in August 1935. Subsequently Löwenthal moved to Prague, Czechoslovakia where he remained active in left-wing German émigré groups. From April 1936 until October 1937, Löwenthal worked as a researcher in London before returning to Prague. Following the Munich Agreement of 1938, Löwenthal fled to Paris, France and then in 1939 returned to London, which was to be Löwenthal’s home until 1959. During the 1930s, in his writings Löwenthal expressed strong criticism of the definition of fascism proposed by the Comintern, and in particular criticized the Comintern’s social fascism theory which held that moderate left-wing groups such as the Social Democratic Party of Germany and Labour Party were as much fascist as were the Nazi Party, and if anything were more dangerous because of their “disguised” fascist nature, in contrast to the “open fascism” of the Nazis. Starting in 1935 Löwenthal began formulating his own definition of fascism, which was strongly influenced by the work of Otto Bauer and Franz Leopold Neumann. In these writings, Löwenthal concluded that Nazi Germany was not a puppet of Big Business as the Comintern had claimed and that, in fact, the Nazi regime was in and of itself the supreme power in the land. During the late 1930s, Löwenthal decided that another world war was inevitable, and saw his main task as preparing the German left for that war.
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