Lothar Peter completed his PhD under Wolfgang Abendroth’s supervision at the University of Marburg, where he was also active in SDS, and later became a professor of sociology at the University of Bremen. His most recent book is Marx on Campus: A Short History of the Marburg School (Brill, 2019).
From the failed resistance against Hitler to the Cold War divide, Wolfgang Abendroth’s career was defined by the tragedies of the German left. But as postwar Germany’s most important socialist intellectual, he showed how an academic can keep their work rooted in the struggle.