Max Lowenthal papers

The Max Lowenthal Papers consist of memoranda, dairies, manuscripts, documents, and correspondence - personal and professional - donated to the University of Minnesota Libraries by the Lowenthal Family. The collection spans the years 1855 to 1970, with the bulk of the collection covering 1929 to 1954, beginning with Lowenthal’s work in Washington as Secretary to the National Commission on Law Observation and Enforcement through his work in the Truman White House as a political advisor and strategist in the United State's recognition of Israel. In addition, the collection includes several manuscripts, one unpublished, on subjects of interest to Lowenthal throughout his career, including stock manipulation in the railroad and banking industries, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the history of sedition laws in the United States. The collection also includes documents, correspondence and research materials created by Eleanor Mack Lowenthal.

The collection is divided into eight series. The first two series contain material from Lowenthal’s career as a lawyer and legal counsel to a presidential commission and several Senate committees and executive branch departments. These are arranged chronologically. The next three series contain material on Post War Palestine and Lowenthal’s role advising the Truman Administration on recognition of Israel; on Lowenthal’s role as a political strategist in Democratic politics during the Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower administrations; and on a wide range of issues and events concerning the abuse of civil liberties by the federal government, with particular emphasis on the FBI’s role in perpetrating these abuses. The remaining three series include correspondence between Max Lowenthal and several prominent politicians and jurists, including Harry S. Truman, Justice Felix Frankfurter, and Montana Senator Burton K. Wheeler, as well as general correspondence files; a manuscript series; and a subject series including materials on University of Minnesota professor William Schaper, The Lincoln School/Columbia University dispute and Eleanor Mack‘s (Lowenthal) materials.

The original donation included ninety boxes of materials, a substantial portion of which included government publications, news commentary, and clippings and published court records of cases Lowenthal consulted for his first book, The Investor Pays, published in 1932. In addition, there were multiple boxes of manuscript edits for The FBI, published in 1950. Because the newsprint had degraded on many of the clippings, and the government documents, news articles and court cases are available in research collections, the collection was extensively weeded. Some clippings were retained for their informational value and to give the researcher some idea of the extent to which Lowenthal collected news of the day and relied on news reporting to document his investigative writing.

Law Practice, includes formal and informal notes, correspondence, memos and commentary on various cases Lowenthal researched and litigated as a private attorney. Lowenthal’s law practice was conducted between 1912, the year he graduated from Harvard Law School, through 1932, when he was appointed as counsel to the Senate Banking and Finance Committee. During this twenty year period, Lowenthal was involved in a wide variety of litigation, including workers rights, defense of right-to-strike legislation and shareholder rights in receivership cases.

Legal Activities, focuses on Lowenthal's activities as a legal advisor. This series includes materials relating to the Second Hill Road Radio Tower, where Lowenthal served as a legal advisor as well as a plantiff in the lawsuit, and his work with the Missouri Pacific (MoPac).

Government Servicedocuments Lowenthal’s government service. This series is the largest of the collection, covering a 30-year period bracketed by WWI and WWII. It includes formal memos, personal and committee correspondence, written and typed notes, research materials, published government documents and news and commentary from papers and periodicals. There are seven subseries in this series. Subseries 1 (1918-1919) covers Lowenthal’s work with War Labor Policies Board, an amalgam of government departments engaged in war production that determined labor policy for government contractors. Subseries 2 (1929-1930) covers Lowenthal’s work as Secretary to the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement, better known as the Wickersham Commission, which investigated crime and the criminal justice system during Prohibition. The third subseries (1933-1934) covers the period Lowenthal acted as Chief Counsel for the Senate Banking and Currency Committee, drafting securities legislation which led to the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Subseries 4 (1935-1942) covers Lowenthal’s service to the Senate Committee on Interstate Commerce. The committee, chaired by Senator Burton K. Wheeler, investigated railroads and holding companies. Between 1939 and 1940, Lowenthal was placed in charge of preparing legislation for regulation of railroad finance and holding companies, as well as advising on railroad reorganization legislation. It was also during his work with this committee that Lowenthal meet and formed what became a lifelong friendship with Senator Harry S. Truman. Subseries 5 covers 1942-1943 and Lowenthal’s work for the Board of Economic Warfare, a coordinating board for Allied procurement of strategic war-related resources. In 1946, Lowenthal was appointed Special Envoy for the Restitution of Stolen Jewish Property. In addition to the official memos generated during Lowenthal’s fact-finding trip to Germany, Lowenthal kept an extensive personal diary recording his observations of several Displaced Persons camps in the US Occupied Zone. There are also eight pocket-sized notebooks containing long-hand notes taken during his two month fact-finding trip. Subseries 6 includes memos advising Truman and his associates on a variety of legislative and political matters.

Israeldocuments Lowenthal’s role as Truman’s advisor on Palestine and Israel during a critical period in US international diplomacy . This section focuses primarily on the period between November 1947 and 1949, and contains memos, a personal diary of events, correspondence, interoffice communication and a substantial number of clippings. Researchers will find Lowenthal’s typescript “diary” for the weeks leading up to the Truman Administration’s recognition of Israel especially valuable, particularly in light of Truman’s letter in the Correspondence Series identifying Lowenthal, not Truman, as the person "... who did the job.” The series includes official and unofficial memorandum, hand written notes, clippings, and correspondence between Lowenthal and Clark Clifford, David Niles, Matt Connelly and members of Israeli delegations involved in negotiations.

Electionscovers Lowenthal’s activities as a Democratic Party advisor, strategist and stalwart. Included are memos, correspondence and party literature from Democratic Conventions of 1944, 1948, 1952 and 1956, with the bulk focusing on the 1946 campaign, convention, and election. Of particular interest are Lowenthal's communication with Truman and his advisors as they barnstorm across the US in summer of 1948 prior to the Democratic convention. The material is arranged chronologically.

Civil Liberties, is composed of materials related to Lowenthal’s life-long interest in the conflict between civil liberties and government policing. Lowenthal wrote on a wide range of topics that fall under the umbrella of civil liberties, including government surveillance of citizens and government employees, immigration policy, espionage, sedition and use of investigative committees against citizens. He was particularly critical of J. Edgar Hoover and the activities and institutionalizing of the FBI in American culture. This section contains Lowenthal’s some of professional writing - exclusive of his books, manuscripts and periodical articles - on civil liberties, including memos, correspondence, and typed notes. Materials related to his book, The FBI, and the manuscript on the history of sedition law, tentatively titled A Mirror to Congresswill be found in Series VII. This section also contains documentation - memos, notes, letters, news accounts - related to Lowenthal’s appearances before the Senate House Un-American Activities committee in 1950 and 1952.

Correspondencecontains correspondence between Lowenthal and three prominent Americans: Harry S. Truman, Senator Burton K. Wheeler and Justice Felix Frankfurter, as well as many others, including politicians, lawyers, writers and fellow government advisors. The Truman, Wheeler and Frankfurter materials are each treated as subseries, and are arranged chronologically. Additional letters between Frankfurter and Lowenthal can be found in the Government Service subseries for the Wickersham Commission and Senate Currency and Banking Commission. The remaining correspondence is arranged alphabetically. Among those included in the Miscellaneous correspondence are John Carson, Charles and Mary Beard, William O. Douglas, Monte Lehman, Robert Szold, Max Branwen, Max Seaham, Anthony Lewis and various editors of The Nation, The New Republic, and Harper’s Weekly.

Manuscriptscontains material related to Lowenthal’s two published books and one unpublished manuscript: The Investor Pays, The FBI, and A Mirror To Congress (unpublished.) Because Mirrorwas never published, all of the drafts have been retained. For the other two books, the collections of drafts and galleys that were part of the original accession have been weeded to reflect a smaller selection of materials. At least one draft of each manuscript has been retained in its entirety. Correspondence between Lowenthal and his readers and publishers for these publications was also retained. The series also contains drafts of Lowenthal’s other writing, which include law journal articles and popular news commentaries such as appear in Harpers, New Republic and The Nation. Scholarly and popular material are interfiled by the publication title and date.

Subject Filescovers a wide variety of subjects, interests and activities important to Max Lowenthal throughout his life and work. The Professor William Schaper materials will be of interest to researchers exploring the issues of academic freedom and wartime dissent, as well as those interested in University of Minnesota during Lowenthal’s student years there. Anyone engaged in a fuller treatment of Max Lowenthal’s life will be interested in the contents of his library and the systematic and thoughtful way he went about building and dispersing its content. Biographers will have access to copious material documenting the Lincoln School/Columbia Teacher’s College conflict. The school and college became embroiled in litigation in the late 1930s, and several of the principles involved in the lawsuit where prominent New Yorkers, including Nelson Rockefeller. Lowenthal served for a brief time as counsel for the parent litigants. Towards the end of his career in government service, Lowenthal became involved in a number of philanthropic endeavors, including the administration of the Julian Mack Scholarship Fund at Harvard Law School, scholarship funds for Israeli and Palestinian secondary school students, and funding for agricultural and food-production projects in Israel’s Negev region. This section also contains files reflecting the Lowenthal's sponsorships of numerous European Jews who applied for travel visas during the Nazi rule in Germany and occupation of Poland and Hungary. The Subject series also includes Eleanor Lowenthal’s papers such as were contained in the original accession. This portion includes correspondence, notes, and memoranda from her work with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union and research for a possible publication on merchant seamen and their working conditions.

The collection provides a detailed overview of Max Lowenthal's work, his influence on important mid-century American political legislation and his deep concern over abuses of American civil liberties by the government. It is especially rich in several areas: the detailed and daily account of the internal turmoil in the Truman Administration in the run-up to the US recognition of Israel; materials related to investigations leading to securities regulation and the creation of the SEC (Lowenthal is referred to as the “father” of the SEC in at least one admirer’s letter) and transportation legislation. The collection is also valuable for anyone interested in the history of wiretap and sedition legislation in the United States. Periods and materials not well-represented in the collection include family correspondence, photographs, and Lowenthal's early years in Minneapolis and his Minneapolis law practice.

Max Lowenthal's original order and folder titles were maintained as much as possible. Many times he included the exact same document(s) in multiple files, and had materials from one person or organization divided into multiple files under different headings. Thus material do overlap between many of the series. For example, correspondents with letters in the Correspondence Series may also be represented in the Subject and/or Government Service Series.