Journalist · Editor · Berlin, Tel Aviv
KurtLoewenstein
He wrote for the Jüdische Rundschau in Berlin until the Nazis shut it down in 1938, then for MB in Tel Aviv for the rest of his life. He spent his last five years on a book about Thomas Mann and the Jewish question, and died before he could correct the proofs.
1902 Breslau 1973 Tel Aviv
The unfinished book
Thomas Mann zur jüdischen Frage
Analyse von Werk und Leben — eine Spiegelung des deutschen Judenproblems.
Loewenstein worked on it for more than five years, researching in Zurich at the Thomas-Mann-Archiv. Lambert Schneider Verlag in Heidelberg announced it for their 1974 list. He died on 12 November 1973, before he could make the final corrections, and the book was never published.
What survives is the last draft: 343 typed pages. The complete scan is here, along with each section as a separate file, and an English translation of the preface and table of contents.
About this archive
Why the site exists
This site is dedicated to our late grandfather Kurt Loewenstein, born in Germany in 1902 and died in Israel in 1973.
During the 1930s in Berlin, Kurt was a journalist at the Jüdische Rundschau until he was forced to leave Germany in late 1938, together with his wife Hanna and their daughter Miriam. In Israel he continued his work at MB, the weekly journal of the Association of German Jews in Israel. In his last years he worked on a book about Thomas Mann and the Jewish question, following comprehensive research. He did not finish it, but he left the original manuscript — last draft, 1973.
The manuscript is in German. If you have a question about Kurt Loewenstein, the book, or anything else held here, please get in touch.
Michal and Eran Arigi · Kiryat Ono, Israel · October 2013
Berlin, 1933–1938
The paper he made
Under Robert Weltsch, Loewenstein sat on the editorial staff of the Jüdische Rundschau from 1933 until every Jewish periodical in Germany was banned in 1938. Keeping Jewish readers informed in those years took an unusual degree of nerve.
After the November pogrom, the Propaganda Ministry ordered a replacement bulletin and then removed him from it within days.