Leopold Schwarzschild
{{Short description|German author (1891–1950)}}
Leopold Schwarzschild (8 December 1891, in Frankfurt am Main, Germany – 2 October 1950, in Santa Margherita Ligure, Italy) was a German author.
Writings
His book World in Trance (1943){{cite book
| title = World in trance
| first = Leopold
| last = Schwarzschild
| publisher = Hamish Hamilton
| year = 1943
| asin = B0007IX5O8
}} is a history of international relations during the interwar years. A review in Foreign Affairs called it an "attempt to reinterpret the history of the two inter-war decades in terms of the progressive disintegration of Allied resistance to Germany's military revival".Robert Gale Woolbert, 'Recent Books on International Relations', Foreign Affairs Vol. 21, No. 3 (Apr., 1943), p. 574. It was praised by Winston Churchill but criticised by H.G. Wells, who called Schwarzschild "superficially intelligent and massively stupid", and Michael Foot, who denounced it as "a facile, scintillating treatise which...has received applause from those weary brains which prefer the dismal past to the adventurous future".{{cite magazine
| url = http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,791560,00.html
| title = INTERNATIONAL: The Old Adam
| format = abstract
| date = 24 July 1944
| accessdate = 12 March 2013
| magazine = Time
}} A. J. P. Taylor called the book a "brilliant argument in favour of firmness".A.J.P. Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War (London: Penguin, 1991), p. 344.
In the first edition of his The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945), Karl Popper distinguished between Karl Marx himself and his followers, arguing that they had transformed Marx's works into an unscientific dogma. However, Popper added a note to the fifth edition: "Some years after I wrote this...Leopold Schwarzschild's...The Red Prussian...became known to me...it contains documentary evidence, especially from the Marx-Engels correspondence, which shows that Marx was less of a humanitarian, and less of a lover of freedom, than he is made to appear in my book. Schwarzschild describes him as a man who saw in 'the proletariat' mainly an instrument of his own personal ambition. Though this may put the matter more harshly than the evidence warrants, it must be admitted that the evidence itself is shattering".Leopold Schwarzschild, The Red Prussian: The Life and Legend of Karl Marx (London: Pickwick Books, 1986), p. 4.
Antony Flew called Schwarzschild's biography of Marx "the most salutary and least devout of all the now numerous biographies".Antony Flew, 'Communism: The Philosophical Foundations', Philosophy Vol. 66, No. 257 (Jul., 1991), p. 271. Isaiah Berlin said that "Schwarzschild's evidence is, so far as it goes, accurately and even pedantically sifted; his research is minute, his scholarship impressive...[Marx] emerges as an almost incredible compound of treachery, envy, sadism, megalomania and paranoia". However, Berlin added that "[t]his portrait could, of course, have been achieved only by an interpretation of the facts which, while it cannot be formally refuted, is too unplausible to commend itself without qualification to serious students of the subject".Isaiah Berlin, 'Reviewed Work: The Red Prussian: The Life and Legend of Karl Marx. by Leopold Schwarzschild, Margaret Wing', International Affairs, Vol. 25, No. 4 (Oct., 1949), p. 532.
Works
- End to Illusion: A Study of Postwar Europe (1934).
- {{cite book |title= World in Trance: From Versaille to Pearl Harbor |translator= Guterman, Norbert |translator-link= Norbert Guterman |place= New York |publisher= L. B. Fisher Publishing Corporation |year=1942 |url= https://archive.org/details/bwb_T2-EFV-060/page/n5/mode/2up?view=theater |url-access=registration |via= Internet Archive}}
- {{cite book |title= Primer of the Coming World |translator= Guterman, Norbert |translator-link= Norbert Guterman |place= New York |publisher= Alfred A. Knopf |year=1944 |url= https://archive.org/details/primerofthecomin006629mbp/page/n5/mode/2up?view=theater |url-access=registration |via= Internet Archive}}
- {{cite book |title= The Red Prussian: The Life and Legend of Karl Marx |year = 1947 |translator= Wing, Margaret |place = New York |publisher = Charles Scribner's Sons |url =https://archive.org/details/redprussian0000leop/page/n5/mode/2up?view=theater |url-access= registration |via = Internet Archive}}; 2nd ed. 1986.
- {{cite book |title= Chronicle of a Downfall: Germany, 1929-1939 |year= 2010 |place= London and New York |publisher= I.B. Taurus |editor= Wesemann, Andreas |translator= Mitchell, Michael}}
Further reading
{{cite book |first = Martin
|last = Mauthner
|title = German Writers in French Exile, 1933–1940
|publisher = Vallentine Mitchell
|location = London
|year = 2006
|isbn = 978-0853035411
|url-access = registration
|url = https://archive.org/details/germanwritersinf0000maut
}}
References
{{reflist}}
External links
- {{Internet Archive author |sname=Leopold Schwarzschild}}
- [http://findingaids.cjh.org/?pID=489391 Guide to the Leopold Schwarzschild Collection] at the Leo Baeck Institute, New York.
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Schwarzschild, Leopold}}
Category:20th-century German writers
Category:20th-century German male writers
Category:People from Frankfurt
Category:Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United States