Leo Stern

Leo Stern (born Jona(s) Leib: 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 of Contemporary Catholicism. Emerging from the war in 1945, almost certainly by now closely networked with members of Soviet military intelligence, and more committed than ever 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. His three elder brothers included the communist activists Manfred Stern (1896–1954), believed to have worked for Soviet intelligence in China the United States, and Wolfgang "Wolf" Stern (1897–1961), a military historian. (The fourth of the brothers, Dr. Filipp Stern, left less of a footprint in the historical record of twentieth century political activism.) 1901 (applying the Gregorian calendar) was the year both of the Leo Stern's birth and of his father's death. The region in which he was born and grew up was an impoverished one. Jonas Leib grew up with his mother, born Henriette "Yetty" Korn (1863-1934) and siblings, in circumstances of some poverty.