I am a German Marxist philosopher and atheist theologian. I was born in Ludwigshafen, the son of an assimilated Jewish railway-employee. After studying philosophy, I married Else von Stritzky, daughter of a Baltic brewer. My second wife was Karola Bloch, whom I married 1934 in Vienna. When the Nazis came to power, we had to flee, first into Switzerland, then to Austria, France, Czechoslovakia, and finally the USA. I returned to the GDR in 1949 and got a chair for philosophy in Leipzig. My anti-orthodox Marxism did not fair well with the Stalinist State, so both my wife and I were blacklisted from working and publishing. When the Berlin Wall was built in 1961, I did not return to the GDR, but went to Tübingen in West Germany, where I received an honorary chair in Philosophy. I continued to argue and orginize against both authoritarian communism and capitalism.
My work became very influential in the course of the student protest movements in 1968 and in liberation theology. I WAS OUT THERE AT 80 BATTLING THE WATER CANONS
Some of My Writings
The Principle of Hope Vol. 1, 2 and 3
Literary Essays
Essays on the Philosophy of Music
Spirit of Utopia
The Utopian Function of Art and Literature
Natural Law and Human Dignity
Aesthetics and Politics
Heritage of Our Time
Philosophy of the Future
Man and His Own
