1. Wolfgang Leonhard was a German political author and historian of the Soviet Union, the German Democratic Republic and Communism.
23 Facts About Wolfgang Leonhard
1. 2.
Wolfgang Leonhard was born in Vienna as the son of writers Susanne Kohler and Rudolf Leonhard.
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Wolfgang Leonhard's mother was an active Communist and had been a close friend of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, the German Communist leaders.
4.
Susanne Wolfgang Leonhard worked as head of the press department of the embassy.
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Wolfgang Leonhard visited him there in 1935, but during her visit, her antifascist group in Germany was exposed and she could not go back to Germany.
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Wolfgang Leonhard was not allowed to stay in Sweden either, so she had her 13-year-old son choose between exile in England and exile in the Soviet Union.
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From 1935 to 1937, Wolfgang Leonhard attended Karl Liebknecht School in Moscow, a school for the children of German and Austrian antifascists.
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Wolfgang Leonhard's mother was arrested by the secret police, NKVD, in October 1936, and had to do forced labour for the next 12 years, mainly in the camp of Vorkuta.
9.
Wolfgang Leonhard was now employed by the "National Committee for a Free Germany", an organization of prisoners of war and expatriates.
10.
Wolfgang Leonhard was chosen as a member of one of the two groups of German communists who were the first to return to Germany as soon as the Red Army had reached German territory.
11.
Wolfgang Leonhard was in the Ulbricht Group, led by Walter Ulbricht, later Secretary-General of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany.
12.
Wolfgang Leonhard identified the SED as the future governing power and asserted that people should seek to reach their own goals through the state apparatus.
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In Yugoslavia, Wolfgang Leonhard was in charge of the German programmes of Belgrade Radio.
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From Yugoslavia, Wolfgang Leonhard then went on to West Germany, where he worked as a political writer and as an expert on Eastern Europe.
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Professor Wolfgang Leonhard taught Soviet history and the history of international Communism at Yale from 1966 to 1987.
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Wolfgang Leonhard was a visiting professor at the universities of Michigan at Ann Arbor in the United States; and Mainz, Trier, Kiel, Chemnitz, and Erfurt in both West Germany and the former East Germany.
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Wolfgang Leonhard delivered lectures in places including Tokyo, Bombay, Accra, Ghana, and Colombo, Sri Lanka.
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Wolfgang Leonhard was the author of numerous books and essays on Eastern Europe and Communism.
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Wolfgang Leonhard's 1955 memoir, Die Revolution entlasst ihre Kinder, was translated into many languages and was an international bestseller.
20.
In 1987, when West German President Richard von Weizsacker visited the Soviet Union, Wolfgang Leonhard was able to return to that country for the first time since 1945.
21.
Wolfgang Leonhard has had meetings with a number of acquaintances from his life in Russia and East Germany.
22.
Wolfgang Leonhard's wife, Elke Leonhard, was an SPD member of the Bundestag, the German parliament, from 1990 to 2005.
23.
Wolfgang Leonhard died on August 17,2014, at a hospital in Daun, Germany, from a long illness at the age of 93.