Karl Loewenstein Papers, 1822-1977 (bulk 1908-1973)

Requests for permission to publish material from the Karl Loewenstein Papers should be directed to Archives and Special Collections, Amherst College. It is the responsibility of the researcher to identify and satisfy the holders of all copyrights.

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Biographical Note

Karl Loewenstein was born in Munich, Germany, on November 9, 1891, son of a metalware manufacturer and grandson of a Stuttgart jurist. First guided by his parents toward a career in business, Loewenstein turned to the study of law at age nineteen. He attended the universities of Munich, Heidelberg, Paris, and Berlin and received his law degree from Munich in 1914. During World War I, he served with the German infantry (1915). He later completed preparation for a legal career and was admitted to the Bar in 1918. He went on to obtain his doctorate in civil and ecclesiastical law (1919). Loewenstein practiced law in Munich during the 1920s and, in 1931, became a lecturer (Privatdozent) at the University of Munich School of Law. During 1933, Nazi laws forbidding "non-Aryans" to teach German law led him to resign his position. Nazi-sponsored anti-Semitism also made Loewenstein's legal practice difficult to sustain, and he looked for opportunities to emigrate. Aided by the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced German Scholars, he obtained an offer of a two-year teaching position at Yale University. Loewenstein arrived in the United States in late 1933, after marrying his Hungarian fiancée (Piroska Rona). A few months before his position at Yale was due to expire, Loewenstein was offered and accepted a position in the political science department at Amherst College (1936-1939). In 1940, Amherst awarded Loewenstein an honorary M.A. and appointed him Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science. He held this position until reaching emeritus status in 1961, teaching political theory, the history of government, and international and comparative law.

In 1941, a Guggenheim Fellowship took him to South America for several months of research on contemporary Latin American politics. His subsequent public lectures and writings on trends in Latin American and European political culture caught the attention of officials at the U.S. Departments of State and Justice seeking to curtail the spread of fascism. In 1942, Loewenstein took partial leave from Amherst College to become a Special Assistant to the U.S. Attorney General in Washington, D.C. Part of his responsibility was to oversee production of a series of reports and memoranda for the Emergency Advisory Committee for Political Defense of the American Republics on fascist political organization and activity in Latin America. While at the Department of Justice, Loewenstein was asked by the State Department to act as temporary legal advisor to the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) (1943). He also spent several weeks teaching at the Harvard School for Overseas Administration in Cambridge, Massachusetts (1943-1944). Concurrent with these obligations, Loewenstein served on a committee of the American Law Institute organized to draft a "Statement on Essential Human Rights." After the war, Loewenstein was asked by the Justice Department in to serve in the Legal Division of the United States Office of Military Government for Germany. From 1945-1946, he lent his expertise in German law and his familiarity with the German legal community to the effort to "de-Nazify" the administration of German justice. As of September, 1946, his primary activities were once again teaching and writing, but he continued work as an advisor on matters of constitutional and international law. From 1952-1954, he advised the leader of the German Social Democratic Party, Adolf Arndt, as the latter mounted a constitutional challenge to the signing of European Defense treaties by the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1961-1962, while teaching at Kyoto University on a Fulbright Fellowship, Loewenstein became an advisor to the Japanese Constitutional Reform Commission.

Loewenstein was a prolific writer and a tireless promoter of his works and ideas. During his first decade in the U.S., he gave numerous public talks to civic groups, both locally and nationally. Later in his career, he held more than fourteen guest professorships, including one at the University of Munich (where he was later reinstated as a full professor). Loewenstein authored fourteen books and numerous articles, pamphlets, book reviews, essays, and letters to the editor. He wrote and lectured on a wide range of topics, including comparative constitutional law, the history of government, political symbolism, and international affairs. Some of his work incorporated a sociological perspective on political power that manifested the influence of Max Weber, whose circle in Heidelberg Loewenstein had frequented in his student years. Frequent travel gained him contacts around the world, some of whom became regular correspondents. In addition to his professional memberships, he was a member of the Cosmos Club (Washington, D.C.). Opinionated and verbally adept in both German and English, Loewenstein often generated controversy and criticism through his publications and public lectures. He appears to have relished intellectual debate. Toward the end of his life, he found it increasingly difficult to interest American publishers in his work. He was held in particularly high esteem in German academic circles, however, throughout his lifetime and beyond. In 1972, he was awarded the German Order of Merit by the Federal Republic of Germany. He died on July 10, 1973, on a visit to Heidelberg.

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Karl Loewenstein: Chronology

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Scope and Contents of the Collection

The Karl Loewenstein Papers contain a wide variety of materials collected and created by Karl Loewenstein over the course of his lifetime. The collection also includes items produced or collected by members of Loewenstein's family. The bulk of material produced or collected by Loewenstein spans the years 1908-1970; the relatively small quantity of family papers and photographs stretch back to 1822.

The collection documents Loewenstein's scholarly career in depth. It includes versions of many of his major and minor works, from manuscript drafts of some of his earliest publications (circa 1919) to an unpublished essay in English on the Watergate scandal (circa 1973). Voluminous correspondence documents his negotiations with publishers, substantive discussions with colleagues in his field, applications for fellowships, and arrangements for guest professorships and public speaking engagements. The collection also includes evidence of Loewenstein's research (notes, clippings, printed material) on a variety of topics. Materials related to Loewenstein's participation in professional associations and committees beyond Amherst are also present in the collection, as are notes for courses and lectures given at Amherst and numerous other institutions. He also retained the texts or transcripts of several of his public lectures, radio addresses, and a German television panel session. Loewenstein's work for government agencies and commissions is also well documented through reports, memoranda, correspondence, and, in one case, a detailed, typed office diary (recorded while working for the U.S. Office of Military Government for Germany, 1945-1946).

Although the collection contains Loewenstein's personal diaries from 1905 and 1973 (with gaps), the unique shorthand that he employed make these difficult to read. Most of Loewenstein's extensive personal and professional correspondence, in contrast, was typed or written in a legible hand. Loewenstein retained a small number of legal case and correspondence files, several of which (including one of his own) concern claims for restitution of property lost after World War I or under the Nazi regime.

In his youth, Loewenstein received training in voice and held a life-long passion for music. The collection includes more than one thousand programs from musical or theatrical performances he (presumably) attended. The bulk of these are for European performances between 1902 and 1933. Loewenstein also tried his hand at fiction and poetry; several examples exist in the collection. Printed materials in the collection include many of Loewenstein's articles, often in the form of offprints, and similar items sent to him by colleagues and acquaintances. Loewenstein also collected World War II-era pamphlets and constitutions in pamphlet form. Loewenstein's completed memoir, a scrapbook with clippings and photographs, additional ephemera, financial and legal records, and a small number of recorded radio programs complete his collection.

Loewenstein's father, Otto Loewenstein, appears to have gathered the family papers and memorabilia that are included in the collection. These include correspondence, photographs, an autograph album from 1822, and legal documents. Otto Loewenstein's own memoir and six-volume World War I diary (1914-1918) are part of the collection. In addition, very small amounts of material belonging to Piroska Loewenstein and Mathilda Loewenstein (Karl Loewenstein's wife and mother, respectively) are part of the collection. Their materials include correspondence, books, brochures, lace patterns, and financial and school records.

The materials are largely in German and English. Karl Loewenstein's papers also contain manuscript and printed materials in Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Hungarian. The collection includes translations of Loewenstein's published works into additional languages. Piroska Loewenstein's papers contain significant amounts of material in Hungarian. Mathilda and Otto Loewenstein's papers are largely in German, while some of the ancestral documents collected by Otto Loewenstein contain very small amounts of material in Hebrew and unidentified scripts.

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Organization of the Collection

This collection is organized into four series:

• Karl Loewenstein
• Piroska (Rona) Loewenstein
• Otto Loewenstein Collection
• Mathilda (Oppenheimer) Loewenstein

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Series 1: Karl Loewenstein

Series 1 consists of thirteen subseries:

A: Biographical Materials and Life in Germany to 1933

B: Publications and Research

C: Policy Advising and Research

D: Correspondence

E: Teaching

F: Law Practice

G: Recordings

H: Fiction and Poetry

I: The Baron Gleichen-Russwurm Case

J: Personal Legal and Financial Records

K: Collections

L: Photographs

M: Pamphlet, Offprint, and Manuscript Collection

Subseries A: Biographical Materials and Life in Germany until 1933

Subseries A contains biographical and autobiographical materials documenting Loewenstein's life from 1892 to 1973. Documentation of Loewenstein's life includes identification cards, certificates, school records, diplomas, legal records, and records of military service from 1892 to 1933, as well as immigration related correspondence and transactions from 1933-1935. Correspondence and records related to the loss of Loewenstein's teaching position at the University of Munich in 1933 are located in Subseries D and E. This subseries also contains curriculum vitae, autobiographical statements, and lists of Loewenstein's publications. The scrapbook filed here documenting Loewenstein's career from 1933 through 1968 appears to have been largely the work of his wife, Piroska Loewenstein. Additional files of clippings by or about Loewenstein are located here as well. Original photographs contained in the scrapbook have been relocated to Subseries L: Photographs. Toward the end of his life, Loewenstein composed a memoir ("Des Lebens Überfluss," 427 pages). This subseries contains drafts and a final, typed version. An electronic scan of the memoir also exists: Loewenstein-Ueberfluss.pdf. Although Loewenstein's earliest travel diaries are legible (Box 4, Folder 1; Box 5), his remaining diaries (1905-1971) are written in a unique, partly illegible shorthand. Karl Loewenstein's biographical file at Amherst College also contains significant biographical material not duplicated in this collection.

Records, passports, and certificates are located first in the subseries, before descriptive and autobiographical materials. The diaries are located at the end of this subseries.

Subseries B: Publications and Research

This subseries contains manuscripts and typescripts of Loewenstein's published and unpublished work as a political scientist, including book and article manuscripts, essays for the popular press, book reviews, and letters to the editor. Also included in this subseries are research files, correspondence related to publications, reviews of Loewenstein's published works, texts and transcripts of speeches and radio addresses, grant application materials, and materials gathered on or for research trips and conferences. Journals in which Loewenstein's work appeared, or offprints from those journals, are also in this subseries. Not included in this subseries are research files and correspondence directly related to Loewenstein's work as a policy advisor (Subseries C) or to his non-scholarly work (Subseries A and H). Additional correspondence relating to his publications is found in Subseries D: Correspondence. Additional materials documenting Loewenstein's tenure as a Fulbright Fellow in Japan are in Subseries E. Since Loewenstein accepted public speaking engagements almost whenever he spent significant periods abroad, transcripts of public lectures given in Germany, Japan, Belgium, and elsewhere are located in Subseries C (Policy Advising and Research) and Subseries E (Teaching). Recordings of a small number of Loewenstein's lectures and interviews are in Subseries G.

Of particular interest in this subseries are the clippings and pages from the Vössische Zeitung and other German newspapers that Loewenstein gathered in 1932-1933 for his unpublished essay on the German constitutional crisis of 1933. Germany's leading liberal newspaper, the Vössische Zeitung was shut down in 1934. While the collection contains only few dozen news articles from this period, they provide a penetrating view of liberal intellectuals' understanding of the unfolding political situation shortly before the Nazi seizure of power.

The correspondence in this subseries has been processed only at the folder level, maintaining Loewenstein's organization by year span and language. The contents of the correspondence files consist primarily of negotiations with publishers and thank-you notes from the many individuals to whom Loewenstein sent offprints of his works. Letters with more substantive content, if found, have been foldered by topic (e.g. reactions to Brazil under Vargas). Loewenstein generally retained carbon copies of his typed correspondence and filed incoming and outgoing correspondence together.

A portion of Loewenstein's grant application and conference materials have also not been processed below the folder level.

• Published works and related material (drafts, notes, research materials, correspondence and reviews) filed by published title and arranged by date of publication
• Unpublished works, arranged by approximate date of creation, if known
• Minor publications (short essays, book reviews, and letters to the editor), arranged by date of publication
• Research files not clearly connected to any one publication
• Correspondence regarding publications, arranged by year
• Publishing contracts
• Reviews of published works, if not located with the draft of that publication
• Public lectures and speeches
• Grant application materials
• Materials gathered for and during research trips and scholarly conferences
• Offprints and journal issues containing Loewenstein's published scholarly works, arranged chronologically.

Note that this finding aid lists manuscripts and related material by the published title of the work in question. In cases where the working title and the final, published titled of a work differed, the contents of a folder may not appear to match the title given on the folder. Useful (although not comprehensive) bibliographies of Loewenstein's published works can be found in Markus Lang, Karl Loewenstein: Transatlantischer Denker der Politik (Stuttgart, 2007), pp. 323-328; and in the Festschrift für Karl Loewenstein (Tübingen, 1971), pp. 508-516.

Subseries C: Policy Advising and Research

Loewenstein spent much of the period from 1942 through 1946, and a considerable portion of the period 1947-1954, as a consultant and advisor to governmental and intergovernmental bodies. In 1961-1962, he was asked by members of the Japanese Constitutional Reform Commission to offer his insights and opinions as they considered fundamental reforms of Japan's 1946 constitution. The reports, memoranda, correspondence, and other material accumulated by Loewenstein in the course of these activities are gathered here. Material that is related in substance to his work as an advisor, or that document activities that he carried out simultaneously with his advising work, are also gathered here.

The subseries arrangement reflects the organizational roles Loewenstein assumed during this period, in approximate chronological order.

• War Department
• U.S. Department of Justice
• Emergency Advisory Committee for Political Defense
• Guggenheim Research Trip
• School for Overseas Administration - Harvard
• American Law Institute / American Political Science Association
• U.S. Department of State - UNRRA
• OMGUS
• Germany, 1947-1952
• European Defense Community Constitutional Controversy
• Japanese Constitutional Reform Commission
• U.S. High Commission for Germany - Printed Series

Subseries D: Correspondence

For most of his life, Loewenstein carried on extensive correspondence with colleagues, friends, and associates. A significant proportion of the correspondence consists of letters to or from family, friends, and acquaintances from the period before 1933. The letters also document Loewenstein's personal experience of the critical year of 1933, when he and thousands of other Jews sought to emigrate from Germany. Loewenstein's post-1933 correspondence includes letters to fellow scholars, presidents, and congressional representatives that document many of his intellectual and political concerns. Loewenstein also wrote to private persons he had never met (e.g., Hannah Arendt), sometimes including a copy of one of his publications.

The correspondence files are arranged in three groups:

• Alphabetical correspondence files
• Chronological correspondence files
• Topical correspondence files