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. At the age of ten he was already working in order to pay for his own schooling, doing odd jobs and tutoring. His school costs were also subsidised by means of a small bursary. Despite the financial pressures he attended both elementary and secondary schools at Czernowitz, passing his Matura (school graduation exam) in 1921. By that time he had already, in 1918, joined the Young Socialists.
Vienna
On leaving school he moved to Vienna, registering his residency in the Austrian capital on 14 October 1921. It was normal across the Austrian empire for citizens to register their place of residence with the local town hall: he registered under the name "Jonas Leib" and entered his citizenship as Romanian, reflecting recent frontier changes. More intriguingly, when registering his residency he gave his religion as Muslim and his mother tongue as German There is also a reference in at least one source to his having worked as a middle-school teacher on conclusion of his school career, which probably reflected the need to "work his way" through his university-level education. Directly after registering his residency he enrolled for what turned out to be a four-year lower and higher degree course at the University Faculty of Laws and Political Sciences, in time for the winter term of 1921/22. He studied Jurisprudence, Applied Economics (Nationalökonomie) and History. It was also in 1921 that Leo Stern became a member of the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ).
According to Stern's own later recollection, the three professors at the University of Vienna who most influenced his thinking and future course were the philosopher-historian Carl Grünberg (1861-1940), the jurist-politician Max Adler (1873-1937) and the noted legal scholar Hans Kelsen (1881-1973). From a Marxist perspective, the politics of the university were overwhelmingly "Bourgeois" and conservative. Grünberg, Adler and Kelsen stood out as professors around whom the relatively few left-wing students tended to gravitate.