| Melvin Jonah Lasky | |
|---|---|
| Born | January 15, 1920 New York, NY, USA |
| Died | May 19, 2004 Berlin, Germany |
| Nationality | Polish-American |
| Occupation | Journalist, Author, Editor, |
| Religion | Jewish |
| Spouse | Brigitte (Newiger) Lasky, Helga Hegewisch |
| Children | Vivienne Lasky, Oliver Lasky |
Melvin Jonah Lasky (15 January 1920 - 19 May 2004) was an American journalist, intellectual, and member of the anti-Communist left. He was the older brother of the influential entertainment lawyer Floria Lasky and Joyce Lasky Reed, the President and founder of the Faberge Arts Foundation and former Director of European Affairs at the American Enterprise Institute.
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Born in New York City and schooled at City College and later the University of Michigan, he would serve in World War II as a combat historian for the 7th Army. Lasky remained in Germany after the war, making his home in Berlin, where he worked for American military governor Lucius D. Clay. During this time, Lasky was an outspoken critic of the United States' earlier reluctance to intervene to stop the genocide of European Jews.
He became editor of The New Leader and, later, of the German-language Der Monat ("The Month"). Lasky had founded the latter during the Berlin Blockade in 1948 as an anti-Communist but Leftist, socially progressive journal which became one of the leading Germanophone highbrow socio-political journals for decades, incorporating essays and articles from many Western European and North-American, as well as dissident East Bloc intellectual figureheads, such as George Orwell, Hannah Arendt, Franz Borkenau, Thomas Mann, Arthur Koestler, Raymond Aron, Ignazio Silone, Heinrich Böll, Hans Sahl, Max Frisch, T. S. Eliot, Saul Bellow, Milovan Djilas, Richard Löwenthal, Peter de Mendelssohn, Hilde Spiel, Hermann Kesten.
In the Anglosphere, Lasky was best known for his role as Editor-in-Chief of Encounter. He succeeded Irving Kristol, the original editor and founder, in 1958 and helped turn the young magazine into one of the most highly regarded periodicals in Europe. Lasky steered Encounter to represented the point of view of the anti-Communist, anti-Totalitarian Left.
In 1967, it was revealed that, unbeknownst to Lasky, Encounter as well as Der Monat were two of many publications that had been funded covertly by the CIA via the Congress for Cultural Freedom (today Association for Cultural Freedom). Despite a lack of evidence that those in charge of the magazine were aware of the source of the funding or that the CIA had ever pressured editorial decisions, the public perception of the Encounter was damaged. Lasky remained at Encounter until the magazine folded in 1991, while Der Monat was sold to Die Zeit, and temporarily ceased publication in 1971. From 1978 until 1987, Der Monat (now titled Der Monat (Neue Folge) or simply Der Monat (N. F.)) re-surfaced as a Die Zeit quarterly without Lasky's involvement as editor-in-chief, but Lasky remained publisher along with his German wife Helga Hegewisch, while the journal's new editor-in-chief was SPD politician and later German Minister of Culture Michael Naumann. A new economy & marketing publication called Der Monat appearing in Germany since 1997 has nothing to do with the former journal's socio-political concept and design.
Lasky was the author of many books including Utopia and Revolution, Voices in the Revolution, On the Barricades and Off, and The Language of Journalism. He was married twice, to Brigitte Lasky (née Newiger) with whom he had two children, Vivienne Lasky and Oliver Lasky, and to German novelist Helga Hegewisch.
Lasky died in May 2004 of a heart ailment. A portion of his unpublished memoirs appears in News from the Republic of Letters, as well as in The Berlin Journal, Spring, 2007.
In October 2010, the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich will officially open the Lasky Center for Transatlantic Studies, a research center associated with the university's American Studies department. The Lasky Center will also be home to Lasky's personal library and papers. The first director of the Lasky Center will be Christof Mauch.