Leo Stern

Jonas Leib "Leo" Stern (26 March 1901 – 2 January 1982) was an Austrian-German left-wing political activist. In 1933 he switched his party membership from the Social Democratic Party to the Communist Party. During the fascist ascendancy he participated in the Spanish Civil War as an anti-Franco Interbrigadist and later, in the Great Patriotic War, served as an officer in the Soviet Red Army. Between the two he studied successfully for a higher degree at the University of Moscow, receiving his Habilitation degree in 1940 in return for a dissertation on Contemporary Catholicism.

Emerging from the war in 1945 committed to Soviet-style communism, he made his home in occupied Vienna where he taught at the university. In 1950 he relocated to the newly launched Soviet sponsored German Democratic Republic (East Germany), taking East German citizenship in 1952. He made his home at Halle, accepting a teaching position at the university and quickly becoming one of the best known Marxist historians in the country. Between 1953 and 1959 he served as University Rector (Chief Officer and Administrator) at the merged (since 1817) Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg.

Life and works Provenance and early years Jonas Leib Stern was born into a large Jewish family at Voloka, a village near Czernowitz (as Chernivtsi was then known). Today (since 1991) the region is part of Ukraine, but at the time of Leib's birth it was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire: between (approximately) 1920 and the Second World War it was part of Romania. His father, Zalman Stern (1861–1901/2), is described as a farmer-businessman. Jonas was the youngest of his parents' twelve recorded children born between 1888 and 1901.

In 1925 Stern earned his doctorate ("Doctor rerum politicarum") with a dissertation on the modalities of Mercantilism. ("Die sozialökonomischen und politischen Grundlagen des Merkantilismus" He now stayed on at the university, working as a personal research assistant for Max Adler till 1932.) He combined this with a teaching job at the Adult Education Centre in Vienna between 1927 and 1934. Much of the same teaching material also turned up in his contributions on political-history to left-wing political journals and magazines, such as "Der Kampf", "Arbeit und Wirtschaft", "Die Weltbühne" and "Internationale Rundschau". They were published not under a name by which he was commonly known, but using one of three pseudonyms: F. Schneider, L. Taylor and L. Hofmeister. He also found time to continue with his own academic studies, obtaining his Absolutorium in 1927 or 1928, and then pursuing his researches "on the state theory of Marxism" in preparation for a dissertation intended to lead to a habilitation degree. Few details are available of Stern's contributions during the Spanish Civil War: according to at least one source Manfred Stern, Wolfgang Stern and Leo Stern (identified in Comintern communications of the time under the code name "Fred") all participated as military intelligence officers.

Back to Moscow The dictator's paranoia was at its peak when Leo Stern was recalled to Moscow, early in 1938: he had good reason to be apprehensive. Many comrades who had escaped from political or race driven persecution in Germany and Austria earlier in the decade were being summarily arrested by the authorities and shot or deported to concentration camps far away from Moscow. Fate, or Stalin's security services, dealt less brutally with Leo Stern, however. He was employed, till the end of 1939, by the "Publisher for International Literature" as an "Editor for Classics of Marxism-Leninism".

In October 1942 he was posted to the battle front at Stalingrad, taking part in the fighting till the capitulation of what was left of the German army there on 2 February 1943. He was then transferred to the fighting on the Southwestern Front till May 1943 before being moved again in order to work on a series of "special projects" for the Soviet Information Bureau (international press agency) which occupied his time till September 1944. He then returned to the fighting front for the final months of the war, participating as a member of the army that liberated Vienna in April 1945. In the immediate aftermath of the war he was frequently called upon to work as a simultaneous translator for Marshal Tolbukhin and other Soviet leaders of what was now a Soviet army of occupation. His formal position was as "Cultural Officer", however. He continued to serve as a senior Red Army officer of the Soviet Control Commission in Vienna till 1950, despite having been "demobilised" in respect of military operations in September 1945. as head of government had already been taken by Tolbukhin and endorsed by Moscow, however.

There are two not entirely complementary versions of Leo Stern's role in Renner's appointment. According to sources drawing on information subsequently approved by the ruling East German Socialist Unity Party, Stern loyally complied with the orders relayed to him by his commanding officer and helped push through the Renner appointment. In October 1953, prompted by a recommendation the previous year from the party Halle district leadership team, Leo Stern was himself appointed University Rector (Chief Officer and Administrator) at the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg. Stern's seven year incumbency, which came after two years during which the economist Rudolf Agricola had filled the position, was not without controversy, but as an organiser and administrator, belying the characteristics imputed by some sources to history professors in general, he proved highly competent. It was noted that despite his own Jewish provenance and record as a Red Army officer in the war against Hitler's Germany, at the ZfG, just as with his appointments at the university, he never shied away from commissioning contributions from scholars identified as "former Nazis", just as long as they demonstrated appropriate historical knowledge, insight and detachment in their submissions.

Academy of Sciences and Humanities In 1952 Stern was proposed for membership of the prestigious [East] German Academy of Sciences and Humanities. His three proposers were the pre-historian Wilhelm Unverzagt (1892–1971), the professor of ancient history Ernst Hohl (1886–1957) and the jurist-philosopher Arthur Baumgarten (1884–1966). A fourth, the agronomist Asmus Petersen (1900–1962), added himself to the list of proposers on 24 April 1952. and the early 1950s were a nervous time for the East German party leadership as they struggled to establish and extend party control in the face of acute economic austerity across the country. Stern's candidacy for membership seems to have had backing from leading figures in the university community that extended far beyond his four proposers. That it nevertheless failed demonstrates, in the opinion of one commentator, determination on the part of a small number of influential activist hard-line communists in the party hierarchy to crush and eliminate "bourgeois thinking" among academic colleagues during the early years of the East German dictatorship. With regard to "bourgeois thinking" it may have counted against Stern's candidacy that one of his four proposers was a former member of the National Socialist ("Nazi") Party (albeit – as far as one can tell – fully exonerated and/or rehabilitated after 1945) and another had spent the Hitler years exiled in Switzerland. The next year he took over as head of the history department at the Academy. While sidelined at Halle, Stern remained active in Berlin as a member, and later as chairman, of the History Advisory Board at the East German Secretariat for Higher Education. Although his published works on the history of the labour movement and his tally of awards during the 1960s demonstrate the effectiveness of his determination to sustain good relations with the party establishment, it is evident that he continued to be a focus of mistrust at some levels inside the homeland security services. When surviving files from old the Ministry for State Security were made available to researchers after 1990, several volumes stuffed full with reports and associated commentaries, bear testimony to the very extensive state surveillance to which Stern was subjected, even by the standards of East German surveillance state, and even after removal from his high-profile role at Halle in 1960.

At the academy in Berlin, Stern served in succession to Wolfgang Steinitz between 1963 and 1968 as Academy Vice-president and as chairman of the academy's working group for Social Sciences institutes and facilities. After that he served between 1968 and 1981 as director of the academy's History Research Centre.

Leo Stern died at Halle a few weeks short of what would have been his 82nd birthday on 2 or 3 January 1982.

Recognition (selection)