Hubertus, Prince of Löwenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg

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Prince Hubertus zu Loewenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg (October 14, 1906 – November 28, 1984) was a German historian and political figure who was an early opponent of Adolf Hitler. He fled Germany and helped to promote anti Nazism in the United States]. He was a former member of Parliament, and was the author of over 40 books. He was the head of the Free German Authors Association, and was decorated by Pope John XXIII for work toward reconciliation between the Roman Catholic and the Greek Orthodox church. ^[1]

[edit] Biography

He was born in Schonworth Castle near Kufstein in western Austria to Prince Maximilian zu Loewenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg, a cavalry officer in a Bavarian regiment. His mother was Constance, daughter of the First Baron Pirbright, an Englishman. He attended schools in Austria and Germany and the universities of Munich, Hamburg and Geneva. In 1929 he married Helga Maria Schuylenberg, who was born in Norway of Dutch parents, and had three daughters, Elisabeth Renauer of Bonn, Princess Konstanza zu Loewenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg of West Berlin, and Margareta von Schwartzkopf of Hanover, West Germany. He earned a Ph.D. in 1931 from the University of Hamburg with a thesis entitled: Outlines and Idea of the Fascist State and Its Realization.

In April of 1933 the Prince and his wife left Germany when their lives were threatened by the Nazis. They went first to Austria and later emigrated to the United States. In the 1940s he lived in Newfoundland, New Jersey and became an organizer of the Free Germany Committee. He moved to West Germany in 1946 and lived in Bad Godesberg. He wrote for the newspaper Vossische Zeitung, and predicted in an editorial that if Hitler came to power he would cause a Second World War.

He wrote The Tragedy of a Nation, and it was published in England in 1934, he said that "cowards to the very bone, the leaders [of the Nazi party] have not even dared confess that in nearly all cases, they arranged the cruelties committed." In the United States from 1937 to 1946, he was a visiting Carnegie Professor. When he returned to Germany, he was elected to the West German Parliament from 1953 to 1957 with the Free Democratic Party.

He died in Bonn of heart failure after suffering from peritonitis. He was 78 years old and had been living in Bad Godesberg in Bonn.

[edit] See also

• Löwenstein

[edit] References