CONTENT NOTES ON THE FOLLOWING SUB-SUBSERIES: U.S. DEPT OF JUSTICE, EMERGENCY ADVISORY COMMITTEE FOR POLITICAL DEFENSE, GUGGENHEIM RESEARCH TRIP, SCHOOL FOR OVERSEAS ADMINISTRATION, AMERICANLAW INSTITUTE, AND U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE (UNRRA):

Loewenstein appears to have first come to the attention of State Department and Department of Justice policy-makers through his writings and public lectures. In particular, his "Legislative control of political extremism in European democracies" (Columbia Law Review, 1938) and his talk on the same subject for the American Bar Association in September, 1940, attracted the attention of officials concerned about the spread of fascist movements and ideas (Box 32, folders 16-25). He began work as a consultant for the Justice Department in June 1942. At the newly-created War Division of the Department of Justice, where he was one of a number of Special Assistants to the Attorney General, Loewenstein oversaw research on Latin America and provided policy recommendations for the Special War Policies Unit and the Alien Enemy Control Unit. Loewenstein's multilingualism and familiarity with Latin American politics (he had traveled to South America as a Guggenheim Fellow from February to August, 1941) were put to use as he helped produce a series of reports on fascist political organization and activity in Latin America. These were submitted to the Emergency Advisory Committee for Political Defense of the American Republics. Formed in 1942 of representatives from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Uruguay, Venezuela, and the U.S., the purpose of the committee was to coordinate anti-fascist measures in the Americas. (The organization was also known as the Inter-American Emergency Advisory Committee for Political Defense; internal documents refer to the committee simply as the CPD). Loewenstein was also asked to provide expert testimony in support of the Justice Department's attempt to strip several Puerto Rican naturalized citizens of their U.S. citizenship for their alleged ties to fascist organizations. Although Justice officials decided to eliminate Loewenstein's testimony before the trial date, the correspondence, case documents, and memoranda on "denaturalization" that he retained provide a glimpse into some of the Justice Department's wartime activities and concerns (Box 43, Folders 13, 19, 20, 21).

Also for the CPD, Loewenstein produced memoranda analyzing fascist influence on Latin American educational institutions and on the dissemination of anti-Semitic propaganda in the region. Consistent with his interest in international law, Loewenstein also took a strong interest in the proposal of Dr. Luis Alberto Bouza of Uruguay to create a uniform penal code for the states of the Pan-American Union (Box 43, Folder 70).

Because Loewenstein resided in Washington, D.C., only part-time during his work for the Department of Justice, his relationships with his superiors and colleagues there are documented in a rich exchange of correspondence. A portion of the correspondence is organized by month (September 1942-July 1944), and the remainder filed by topic (U.S. Department of Justice- Criminal Division-Correspondence) or alphabetically by correspondent. His letters to Laurence A. Knapp (Chief of the Latin American Section and later with the State Department) and Carl B. Spaeth (Emergency Advisory Committee for Political Defense) document Loewenstein's advising role well. A small number of letters and memoranda belonging to Miguel A. Capriles, of the Special War Policies Unit of the Department of Justice, are also present in the collection.

Much of Loewenstein's work at the Department of Justice flowed both chronologically and intellectually out of his Guggenheim-sponsored research trip to Latin America in 1941 and he filed materials from both activities together. This subseries therefore includes the research files and correspondence generated in the course of his Guggenheim Fellowship.

In 1943, while working for the Department of Justice, Loewenstein was asked by the State Department to act as temporary legal advisor to the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). He also spent a portion of 1943 teaching at the Harvard School for Overseas Administration in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Concurrent with these obligations, Loewenstein served on a committee organized by the American Law Institute for the purpose of drafting a "Statement on Essential Human Rights." In the course of this work, Loewenstein carried on extensive correspondence with the committee chair, William Draper Lewis. Loewenstein later noted with pride in his memoir that some of his work on the document was incorporated into the United Nations 1948 Declaration of Universal Human Rights ("Des Lebens Überfluss," 232). In 1956, Lowenstein donated an "almost complete set" of the committee's papers to the Archives of the United Nations. Substantial documentation of his committee work for the American Law Institute and for the American Political Science Association remain in the collection. Copies of the United Nations Bulletin (1947-1952) collected and annotated by Loewenstein are also filed in this subseries. The full run of this publication is held at the Five College Depository.

In September, 1944, Loewenstein was recruited by Carl Spaeth of the Emergency Advisory Committee for Political Defense to assist at its headquarters in Montevideo, Uruguay, in compiling and editing a two-volume edition of the committee's research. ("Des Lebens Überfluss, 236). Very little material survives from this period.

In early summer 1945, Loewenstein was asked by the Justice Department to serve in the Legal Division of the Office of Military Government for Germany-U.S. (abbreviated as OMGUS in the original records and in this finding aid). He arrived in Berlin in July 1945 and remained until September, 1946. Loewenstein's work for OMGUS is especially well documented. As a self-described "troubleshooter" in the Legal Division ("Des Lebens Überfluss," 253), and as a liaison to the German legal and judicial community, Loewenstein produced dozens of reports and memoranda during his year in Germany, many in both English and German. Nominally, these memoranda cover a broad range of topics, from reform of the Civil Service Law, to the regulation of parties and elections, to reform of the German marriage law. The primary focus of all his work, however, and of that of the Legal Division more generally, was the denazification of German law and the reconstruction of the administration of justice in the three states (Länder) in the U.S. Zone: Bavaria, Greater Hesse, and Württemberg-Baden. One of Loewenstein's first contributions to this effort was to travel throughout the U.S. Zone to interview justices and lawyers considered candidates for positions in the reconstructed judicial system. His typed notes from several of these interviews provide summaries of these individuals' activities and affiliations during the years of Nazi rule. In most cases, Loewenstein has included his own frank assessment of each candidate (Box 46, folders 8-11).

Much of Loewenstein's formal communications with OMGUS officials took place via reports and memoranda for which he maintained a partial index (Record of Written Work, Box 46, folders 15, 19, and 21). The bulk of his memos were directed to Judge J. Warren Madden, Charles Fahy, or Alvin Rockwell, each of whom led the Legal Division during Loewenstein's tenure. These documents contain detailed legal analyses of the division's initiatives along with Loewenstein's blunt assessments of the potential and real effectiveness of a wide variety of the Military Government's undertakings. Researchers interested in the formulation and implementation of denazification policies should consult the rich material in these folders (Reports and Memoranda, Box 46, folders 16-29) as well as the "Denazification" material (Box 46, folders 51-59, and Box 47, folders 1-4). Loewenstein was also involved in the reform of legal education, particularly at the law school of University of Munich.

Loewenstein's OMGUS correspondence files (Box 47, folders 5-38) include letters from German citizens seeking assistance with the difficulties they faced in the immediate post-war period. These form a small but rich source of information on life in Germany-and on U.S. occupation policies-immediately after the war. These letters also contain information about relationships among the staff of the Legal Division. Because the letters Loewenstein received in the autumn of 1946, after he left Germany, are especially rich in news and gossip about OMGUS, they are filed here. Correspondence beginning January, 1947, regardless of topic, is with the general correspondence files (Subseries D).

Additional OMGUS and HICOG Material:

Loewenstein also kept an "Office Diary" (typescript, primarily in English) throughout his year with OMGUS. Although many entries are mundane, the 200-page diary also contains an incisive running critical commentary on the Office of Military Government, its personnel, and its shortcomings. An equally blunt assessment of the failures of the Legal Division to accomplish its goals is contained in the typescript of an "interview" with Loewenstein in July 1946, shortly before his departure (Reports and Memoranda, Box 46, folder 28). Loewenstein drew heavily on his experiences in 1945-1946 for his Harvard Law Review article, "The Reconstruction of the Administration of Justice in American-Occupied Germany," (1948).

Loewenstein returned to Germany for portions of 1948, 1949, and 1950, where he worked for the Civil Administration Division of OMGUS and for the Office of the U.S. High Commissioner for Germany. The little material that survives from his activities during this period is located after the OMGUS materials. Related correspondence may be found in the General Correspondence files for these years (Subseries D).

Following his particular interest in constitutional law, Loewenstein became involved in two constitutional controversies during the 1950s and 1960s, one German and one Japanese. In the first (1952-1954), he advised the leader of the German Social Democratic Party, Adolf Arndt, as the latter mounted a constitutional challenge to the signing of European Defense treaties (the Brussels Treaty and the North Atlantic Treaty) by the Federal Republic of Germany. Loewenstein's own legal opinion in the matter was submitted to the Constitutional Court in March, 1954, and he wrote about his experience in the Yale Law Journal ("The Bonn Constitution and the European Defense Community Treaties," May, 1955: 805-839). Many of the major documents in the case are in the collection, along with substantive correspondence between Arndt and Loewenstein (1952-1955). These materials are primarily in German.

Almost ten years after his work as a constitutional law advisor in Germany, while teaching at Kyoto University on a Fulbright Fellowship (1961-1962), Loewenstein became an advisor to the Japanese Constitutional Reform Commission. He provided written commentary on the work of the Commission and advised its members as they prepared to solicit input from foreign scholars on possible revision of the constitution. Loewenstein's primary points of contact on the Commission were its Chairman, Kenzo Takayanagi, and Councilor Ichiro Otomo.

These files include correspondence with family members, friends, associates, acquaintances, and others between 1906 and 1973. They include letters from scholars and artists with connections to Munich, Paris, or Heidelberg in the 1910s and 1920s, including Thomas Mann, Lyonel and Julia Feininger, Otto Crusius, Max and Marianne Weber, Thomas Mann translator Lavinia Mazzucchetti, and Julien Reinach. The collection also includes several letters from the Annales historian Lucien Febvre and from his assistant, Lucie Varga, as well as letters from the playwright Alfred Neumann. Correspondents from German academic and political circles included Otto Kollreuter, Theodor Maunz, Gerhard Leibholz, Konrad Mommsen, Theodor Heuss, Karl Walser, Reinhold Maier, and Adolf Arndt, among many others. Loewenstein's interest in British constitutional history and politics led to correspondence with Harold Laski and Sir Ivor Jennings. The collection also contains two lengthy letters (1959) from Loewenstein's former student (and British intelligence officer) George Kennedy Young. American correspondents included Felix Frankfurter, Louis Brandeis, Edward R. Murrow, William Draper Lewis, Howard Shapar, C.J. Friedrich, and E.M. Kirkpatrick.

These files contain general correspondence (1908-1973) touching on a wide variety of topics and concerns. Some of Loewenstein's earliest cards and letters document his months at the University of Paris in 1911 and his experience in the German infantry in 1915. The chronological correspondence files after 1933 contain a fairly full picture of Loewenstein's daily life, chronicling arrangements for public appearances, conference participation, and minor business dealings. While most of Loewenstein's correspondence with his publishers is contained in Subseries B-Publications and Research, the files in this subseries contain some records of those relationships.