Klaus Mehnert

Born in Moscow in 1906, Mehnert’s family left Russia in 1914. He received his PhD from the University of Berlin in 1928, and returned to the Soviet Union as an author and German newspaper reporter in the early 1930s. This career ended in 1936 when Goebbels ordered German newspapers to stop printing Mehnert’s news reports. He moved to America in 1936 and lectured at UC Berkeley, then accepted a position at the University of Hawaii from 1937 to 1941. In June of 1941 he accepted a position in Shanghai as editor-in-chief of a new publication to be called The XXth Century.

Following the WWII Mehnert was an advisor on Soviet and Chinese affairs to Chancellors Konrad Adenauer in the 1950s and Helmut Schmidt during the 1970s. Mehnert held various positions as a journalist (1949-61), and Professor of Political Science in Aachen (1961-72)

In 2005 the Klaus Mehnert European Institute was founded on the occasion of the 750th anniversary of the city of Kaliningrad (formerly Königsberg) as a cooperative venture between the Institute of Political Science at the Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen and the Kaliningrad State Technical University.

Klaus Mehnert’s Papers are held at Landesarchiv Baden Württemberg – Search. Search for Mehnert.

Selected Publications

• The Russians & their favorite books (Hoover Institution Press, 1983)
• Ein Deutscher auf Hawaii, 1936-1941 (1983)
• Ein Deutscher in der Welt : Erinnerungen 1906-1981 (Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1981)
• Maos Erben machen’s anders (Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1979)
• Kampf um Maos Erbe : Geschichten machen Geschichte (Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1977)
• Twilight of the young : the radical movements of the 1960’s and their legacy : a personal report (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1976)
• Moscow and the new left [transl.] (University of California Press, 1975)
• Amerikanische und russische Jugend um 1930 (Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1973)
• China nach dem Sturm (Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt [1971]–published in English: China returns (Dutton, 1972)
• Peking und Moskau (Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt [1962])–published in English: Peking and Moscow (Putnam [1963])
• Der Sowjetmensch; Versuch eines Portra ts nach dreizehn Reisen in die Sowjetunion 1929-1959. (Fischer Bucherei, 1958)–published in English: Soviet man and his world (Praeger, 1961)
• Asien, Moskau und wir; Bilanz nach vier Weltreisen. (Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1956)
• Stalin versus Marx; the Stalinist historical doctrine. (G. Allen and Unwin, 1952)
• The Russians in Hawaii, 1804-1819 (University of Hawaii, 1939)
• Youth in Soviet Russia [transl.] (Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1933)
• Die Sovet-Union, 1917-1932. Systematische, mit Kommentaren versehene Bibliographie der 1917-1932 in deutscher Sprache ausserhalb der Sovet-Union veroffentlichten 1900 wichtigsten Bucher und Aufsatze uber den Bolschewismus und die Sovet-Union (Im Ost-Europa-Verlag, 1933)