Wolfgang Leonhard

Wolfgang Leonhard
Wolfgang Leonhard (1990)
Born	Wladimir Leonhard 16 April 1921 Vienna, Austria
Died	17 August 2014 Daun, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany
Nationality	German
Occupation	Historian, lecturer, writer
Political party	SED (later a party dissident)
Spouse(s)	(1974)

Wolfgang Leonhard (16 April 1921 – 17 August 2014) was a German political author, historian and a profound connoisseur on Soviet communism. From 1935 to 1945 he lived in the Soviet Union. He returned to Germany as member of the Ulbricht Group. In 1949 he broke with the founders of East Germany to become a Soviet critic and professor at Yale University.

Wolfgang (originally Vladimir) Leonhard was born in Vienna as the son of writers Susanne and Rudolf Leonhard. His mother had been a close friend of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, the German Communist leaders, and was an active Communist herself. At the time of Wolfgang's birth, however, his parents were already divorced, and his mother had married the Soviet ambassador to Austria, Mieczysław Broński, under Soviet law. Susanne Leonhard worked as head of the press department of the embassy.

From 1931 on, Susanne Leonhard and her son lived in the "Artists' Colony" in Wilmersdorf, Berlin, the home of many left-wing intellectuals. Wolfgang attended Karl Marx Grammar School and joined the youth organization of the Communist Party of Germany, the "Young Pioneers". As things grew more dangerous in Berlin, he was sent to Landschulheim Herrlingen, a private boarding school, in 1932.

After Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany in 1933, Susanne Leonhard sent her son to a boarding school in Sweden. She visited him there in 1935, but during her visit, her antifascist group in Germany was exposed and she could not go back to Germany. She was not allowed to stay in Sweden either, so she made her 13-year-old son choose between exile in England and exile in the Soviet Union. He chose the Soviet Union.