Melvin J. Lasky, 84; Writer Stirred Anticommunist Passions in Europe

Melvin J. Lasky, an American writer and editor who shaped opinions against communism in Cold War Europe, has died. He was 84.

Lasky died of a heart ailment May 19 at his home in Berlin.

A native New Yorker, Lasky was the editor of two influential European magazines. His London-based magazine Encounter, which he edited from 1953 to 1991, was one of Europe’s leading intellectual journals, and in his 15 years at der Monat (the Month), he helped chronicle the aftermath of World War II.

Lasky served as a combat historian during the war and was among the first group of Americans into Berlin, entering with Gen. Lucius D. Clay’s military government contingent after the city was taken by the Soviet army.

Lasky stayed on as a freelance journalist, and in the fragile postwar years raised Clay’s ire for criticizing the Soviet Union. The general was close to expelling him in 1948 when Moscow imposed the Berlin Blockade. Instead, Clay reversed course and hired Lasky as an advisor, according to Lasky’s website

That same year, Lasky co-founded der Monat, in which he reported on the East German uprising in 1953 and the Hungarian revolution in 1956.

The magazine caused a scandal in Germany in the 1960s, when it was revealed that it was partly funded by the CIA.

The world leaders Lasky interviewed included Winston Churchill, President Eisenhower, former German chancellors Konrad Adenauer and Willy Brandt and former Czech President Vaclav Havel.

He wrote several books, including “The Hungarian Revolution” (1957), “Africa for Beginners” (1963), “Utopia and Revolution” (1977) and “The Language of Journalism: Volume One: Newspaper Culture” (2000).

Lasky was born in New York on Jan. 15, 1920, the son of Jewish immigrants from Poland.

He received a bachelor’s degree from City College of New York and a master’s degree in history from the University of Michigan.

In 1995, Berlin awarded Lasky its distinguished service medal, and in 1997, a commission of German historians included him as “one of the most important Berliners.”