Lore, Ludwig

LORE, LUDWIG (1875–1942). The last leading editor of the influential New Yorker Volkszeitung and a precocious formulator of pluralistic or polycentric Communism, Ludwig Lore stands out as a most unique figure bridging eras of American left-wing activity. Son of a Silesian Jewish distiller in Friedeberg, Germany, born under the name of Arthur Ludwig Hellborn, Lore graduated from Berlin University, worked as a journalist, and played a prominent role in a German peace society before emigrating to the United States in 1903. Originally connected with the Industrial Workers of the World, he established himself within the Socialist Party as a New York journalist and supporter of the party’s Left. He felt especially drawn to Leon Trotsky during the latter’s sojourn to the United States, and characteristically retained a sense of personal loyalty to the Russian leader even when it had become politically unpopular.

But Lore could in no matter be described as a Leninist or Trotskyist. An early enthusiast of the Russian Revolution, he served as coeditor (with Louis Fraina and L. B. Boudin) of the Class Struggle, a pro-Bolshevik monthly (1917–1919), whose pages remained open to eclectic contributions. Meanwhile, Lore’s own base of support, German-Americans for the most part at least a generation older than himself, looked to him for intellectual and cultural leadership. He had joined the staff of the Volkszeitung in 1907 and became editor in 1919, guiding the publication into an advanced middle age with political dignity and literary style. Executive secretary of the German Socialist Federation as well, he sought to steer a course between reform socialism and hyper-Bolshevism. After some hesitation, he personally led his troops into the Communist movement and eventually out again.

Within 1920s American Communism, Lore remained a rare independent spirit, alternatively pursued and shunned by various factions. His Volkszeitung adopted an independent editorial policy, or rather retained its independence of pre-Communist days along with its high literary quality. Repeatedly attacked for “Trotskyism,” Lore found himself expelled, through Party manipulation of the German Federation leadership, in 1925. He and the Volkszeitung departed with their support virtually intact—a feat not accomplished again until the departure of the Yiddish Morgen Freiheit from the Communist movement nearly a half-century later. Due in no small part to his leadership, the paper survived, as a progressive weekly, to see the defeat of Nazism. Lore himself appears to have been forced out of the Volkszeitung in 1931, a bit of good fortune disguised as misfortune. He soon became a highly influential columnist for the New York Post, widely read for his accounts of ongoing events in Europe.

A non-academic but deeply emphatic account of Lore’s life, written by his grandson, sorts through assorted and contradictory claims made by Whittaker Chambers and others that during the 1930s, Lore had a role in Soviet intelligence, even while openly sympathetic toward Leon Trotsky. Lore’s purported job, performed for a monthly fee, appears to have been a retyping of low-level memos given Lore by friendly clerks at the State Department. Then again, given that he joined a US intelligence agency at the outbreak of the Second World War, a more likely possibility exists: he had been a double agent! The uncertainty of the sources permit no resolution.

Buhle, Paul. “Ludwig Lore and the New Yorker Volkszeitung.” In The German Radical Press in America, edited by Ken Fones-Wolf and Elliott Shore. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990.

Draper, Theodore. American Communism and Soviet Russia. New York: Viking Press, 1960.

Lore, David. Firebrand: Journalist Ludwig Lore’s Lifelong Struggle Against Capitalism, Socialism, and the Rise of Nazism. Morrisville, N.C.: Lulu Publishing Services, 2017.