“One of the most courageous early opponents of Hitler” was how one influential West German newspaper described Prince Hubertus zu Loewenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg, who had actively challenged Hitler and the leadership of Nazi Germany. A prominent German Roman Catholic layman, he called them “cowards to the very bone.”
His valiant efforts to warn against Hitler even before he came to full power were followed by an illustrious career after World War II as a politician and historian. When the Prince died in 1984 at the age of 78 in Bonn, he was remembered well by those whose lives he touched and by those he helped save during the Holocaust.
It was in part to acknowledge his lifelong fight against Nazism and anti-Semitism, his commitment to freedom and justice, and to draw attention to the efforts of non-Jews who spoke out about the dangers of Hitler that led the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith’s International Center for Holocaust Studies to pay tribute to Loewenstein last week.
At an emotional ceremony at ADL national headquarters in New York, old friends and acquaintances reminisced about Loewenstein’s activities in the 1930’s and 1940’s — in Germany and later, after Hitler came to power, in the United States. He was forced to flee his homeland after his life was threatened by the Nazis.
Loewenstein’s widow, Princess Helga zu Loewenstein, recalled that they first sought refuge in Austria in 1933, and finally came to the United States. “I ask you to remember,” she said, “that to the outside world, you are always the land of the free and the hope of all refugees.”
AN EXTRAORDINARY FIGURE
A former close associate of Prince Loewenstein, Volkmar von Zuhlsdorf, described the Prince as “a distinguished man, a scholar, and a writer of outstanding achievements, a political leader of visionary insight and a fighter for freedom, justice and human rights throughout his life.”
Indeed, Prince Loewenstein was an extraordinary figure of unique insight. He was born in Schonworth Castle near Kufstein in western Austria to an old noble family with its roots in Franconia, a region in southern Germany.
His father was Prince Maximillian zu Loewenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg — a calvary officer in a Bavarian regiment and a man of letters–and his mother, Constance, was the younger daughter of the first Baron Pirbright, an Englishman.
As a youth he attended schools in Austria and Germany, and the universities of Munich, Hamburg and Geneva. He earned a doctorate in 1931 at the University of Hamburg after writing a thesis entitled, “Outlines and Ideas of the Fascist State and Its Realization.”
He became a writer for “Vossische Zeitung,” a left-liberal newspaper. In an early editorial, he warned against Hitler’s rise to power and its implications for world peace. Later, while active in the Catholic Center Party, he founded the Republican Youth Movement in Berlin and wrote editorials for another newspaper, “Berliner Tageblatt,” all advocating support for the failing Weimar Republic.
A RISING FORCE AGAINST HITLER
According to Zuhlsdorf, Loewenstein was quickly becoming a rising force in Germany against Hitler and Nazism, earning nationwide attention and acclaim. “In particular, Hubertus Loewenstein campaigned against the infamy of anti-Semitism,” recalled Zuhlsdorf.
“He was one of the first to take Hitler’s hateful, depraved rattling against the Jews seriously and to denounce him with all the power at his command. He warned against the dangers ahead, but all too many people, even some of his Jewish friends among them, thought that he must be exaggerating,” Zuhlsdorf said.
Loewenstein arrived in the U.S. in 1937. It was here that, speaking in his fluent English at universities across the country, he warned of the dangers of Hitler, anti-Semitism, and totalitarianism. His lecture topics included, “Anti-Semitism: Lowest Pit of Abomination,” “Hitler Talks Peace While Preparing War,” and “Hitler Won’t Last, Democratic Germany Will Be Reborn.”
While in the U.S. — where he was a visiting professor of the Carnegie Foundation on many campuses — Loewenstein also helped found the Free Germany Committee, consisting of German emigres, who sought to lay the foundation for “a genuine national German government with freedom for all people” after the war.
PROLIFIC POST-WAR ACTIVITIES
After nearly a decade here, Loewenstein and his family returned to Germany in 1946 where he committed himself to assisting in the rebuilding of German democracy. He was elected to the West German Parliament as a member of the liberal Free Democratic Party, and soon became an internationally recognized spokesman on behalf of the West German government, lecturing and teaching in more than 60 countries.
He authored more than 40 books, including “The Tragedy of a Nation” (1934), “The Germans in History” (1945), “NATO and the Defense of the West” (1962), and an autobiography, “Towards the Further Shore” (1968). At the time of his death, he was reportedly working on a book about what he called “the Creators of Christian Europe.” He was also the long-time head of the Free German Authors Association.
Loewenstein’s distinguished career represents “the finest traditions of German culture which the Hitler regime unfortunately sought to destroy,” Clifford Forster, a New York attorney who was a close associate of the Prince in the 1930’s, told the ADL gathering. “He foresaw that the Nazi regime was a threat to peace and would bring about a world war.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
