Low

LOW (Loewe), British family of Hungarian origin which became prominent in journalism and literature.

MAXIMILIAN LOEWE (1830–1900) was born in Hungary and joined the Nationalist party led by Louis Kossuth. After the failure of the 1848 revolution in Hungary, Loewe fled to England where he engaged in business. Within a short time he acquired a considerable fortune as a result of speculation but in 1878 lost it all. Loewe became interested in the Theist movement and helped to establish its church. He was a profound admirer of British culture and imbued his children with a love of English literature.

His son, SIR SIDNEY James MARK LOW (1857–1932), became a lecturer at King's College, London. His bent was for literature but the state of the family finances compelled him to earn his living as a journalist which he successfully combined as literary editor of the Standard (1904). He edited, with F.S. Pulling, the Dictionary of English History in 1884 and 20 years later published his second and most important work, The Governance of England (1904). As a journalist, Low achieved a high reputation for his style and sense of history and was given access to the papers of eminent statesmen such as Lord Milner and Leopold S. *Amery. From 1888 to 1897 he achieved fame as editor of the St. James Gazette. During World War I, Low wrote a series of books on the British Empire in which he took a strict imperialist line with high propaganda value. He was knighted in 1918. An ardent patriot and confidant of leading statesmen, he was compelled to resign his official position as editor of the wireless service of the Ministry of Information in order to forestall a House of Commons question on his "Central European origin."

Maximilian's second son, SIR MAURICE LOW (1860–1929), was also a well-known journalist. He immigrated to the U.S. when the family fortunes waned and became Washington correspondent of the Boston Globe and subsequently of the London Daily Chronicle and Morning Post. He was considered one of the best correspondents in the United States and by his writing and lectures did much to arouse American public opinion to an awareness of the German menace and to improve the image of Britain. For these services, he was knighted in 1922. He wrote studies of the United States, of which the best known is The American People (2 vols., 1909–11), as well as books concerning World War I and a political novel.

Maximilian Loewe had six sons and five daughters. One daughter, Edith, who was a leader of *WIZO, married Montague David *Eder, psychologist and Zionist leader. Ivy, a daughter of Sir Sidney Low, married Maxim *Litvinov, the Soviet political leader.

Sources: Encyclopaedia Judaica. © 2007 The Gale Group. All Rights Reserved.