ABSTRACT
In the 1950s and 1960s, Erich Fromm supported the American Socialist Party and criticised the nuclear threat to peace; yet, despite his contemporary interests, Fromm’s work was permeated by history. This reflected a life spanning a remarkable period. Born to an orthodox Jewish family in Frankfurt in 1900, his life took in the Kaiserreich as well as the First World War. He experienced the German revolution followed by Weimar’s democracy. He remained in Germany to witness the origins of the Third Reich, but observed the Second World War from a distance. There followed the occupation and division of Germany, the rise of the Cold War, and, more optimistically, the founding of the United Nations. From his vantage point in the Americas (first the USA, later Mexico), Fromm saw McCarthyism, the Korean War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Vietnam, and the civil rights movement (see Internationale-Eric-Fromm-Gesellschaft, e.g., Fromm, 1996a).
