Hovory s Bedřichem Loewensteinem – Löwensteinová Miriam (2025)

The interviews with his father were conducted by his daughter between 2012 and 2013. The framework of the interviews consists of historical turning points from 1939 to 1989, which fundamentally influenced Loewenstein's life experiences. Loewenstein strictly adheres to objectivity, avoiding sentimental tones, and reflects on his own life and its vicissitudes in context and with perspective. For this reason, his narrative can quite accurately evoke images of the era. However, the interviews also address more general topics in the fields of history, social and political development, etc. They touch in detail and from multiple angles on many less-reflected topics, and due to Loewenstein's background and academic focus, also on relatively rare subjects.
Prof. PhDr. Bedřich Loewenstein, CSc., (1929-2017) was a historian. He was born into a Czech-German-Jewish family in Prague and grew up in a culturally diverse and bilingual environment. After studying at Charles University (which was interrupted for political reasons in the early 1950s), he worked at the Historical Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, was dismissed in 1970, and then moved to West Berlin in 1979, where he continued to work at the Freie Universität. After 1989, he collaborated with Czech scientific institutions, journals, and publishers.