Everything about Franz Borkenau totally explained
Franz Borkenau (
December 15,
1900-
May 22,
1957) was an Austrian writer. Borkenau was born in
Vienna,
Austria, the son of a civil servant. As a university student in
Leipzig, his main interests were
Marxism and
psychoanalysis. In
1921, Borkenau joined the
Communist Party of Germany and was active as a
Comintern agent until 1929. After graduating from the
University of Leipzig in
1924, Borkenau moved to
Berlin. In
1929, Borkenau resigned from both the Comintern and the KPD owing to his personal repulsion and disgust over the way the Communists operated, combined with an increasing horror over
Stalinism.
Despite his break with
Communism, Borkenau remained on the Left and worked as a researcher for the Institute for Social Research in
Frankfurt,
Germany. During his time at the
Frankfurt Institute, Borkenau was a protégé of
Carl Grünberg and his main interest was the relationship between
capitalism and
ideology. In
1933, the half-Jewish Borkenau fled from Germany and lived at various times in
Vienna,
Paris and
Panama City.
In September
1936, Borkenau paid a two-month visit to
Spain, where he observed the effects of
Spanish Civil War in
Madrid,
Barcelona and
Valencia. In course of his Spanish trip, Borkenau was much disillusioned by the behavior of the agents of the Soviet secret police, the
NKVD in Spain and of the
Spanish Communist Party. In January
1937, Borkenau made a second visit to Spain, during which he was arrested and tortured by Spanish Communists before being released. Borkenau’s experience inspired his best-known book,
The Spanish Cockpit. During
World War II, Borkenau lived in
London, and worked as a writer for
Cyril Connolly's journal
Horizon.
In
1947, Borkenau returned to Germany to work as a professor at the
University of Marburg. In
1950, Borkenau attended the conference in Berlin together with other
anti-Communist intellectuals such as
Hugh Trevor-Roper,
Ignazio Silone,
Raymond Aron,
Arthur Koestler,
Sidney Hook and
Melvin J. Lasky that led to the founding of the
Congress for Cultural Freedom. Borkenau was very active in the Congress, and was often attacked by Marxist intellectuals such as
Isaac Deutscher for his fierce
anti-Communism. Borkenau was a leading advocate for the
Totalitarianism school.
In the
1950s, Borkenau was well-known as an expert on
Communism and the
Soviet Union. Borkenau was one of the founders of Sovietology. Borkenau’s techniques were a minute analysis of official Soviet statements and the standing arrangement at the
Kremlin on official occasions to determine what Soviet leader was in
Joseph Stalin's favor and what leader was not. Another area of interest for Borkenau was in engaging in an intellectual critique of
Arnold J. Toynbee and
Oswald Spengler's work over when and why civilizations decline and die. The latter critique was published posthumously by his friend
Richard Löwenthal. Borkenau became increasing active as a free-lance author living in
Paris,
Rome and
Zurich, where in the latter city he died suddenly of a heart attack in 1957.
Work
- The Transition from the Feudal to the Bourgeois World View, 1934.
- Pareto, New York : Wiley, 1936.
- The Spanish Cockpit : an Eye-Witness Account of the Political and Social Conflicts of the Spanish Civil War, London : Faber and Faber, 1937.
- Austria and After, London, Faber and Faber 1938.
- The Communist International, London : Faber and Faber, 1938.
- The Totalitarian Enemy, London, Faber and Faber 1940.
- Socialism, National or International, London, G. Routledge 1942.
- European Communism, New York : Harper, 1953.
- World communism; a History of the Communist International, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press 1962.
- End and Beginning : on the Generations of Cultures and the Origins of the West, edited with an introduction by Richard Lowenthal, New York : Columbia University Press, 1981.
Further Information
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