Kofler was born of
Jewish parents on 26 April 1907 in
Chotymyr,
Galicia,
Austria-Hungary (now
Ivano-Frankivsk Raion,
Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast,
Ukraine).
World War I in 1915/16 drove his family to escape to Vienna, where Leo attended business school, until 1927. His working career was cut short by the
1929 stock crash, and he became an adviser of a social-democratic education center in Vienna, joining the left wing of the social-democratic labour party (SDAP). From 1933 to 1934, he devoted himself to research with
Max Adler. In July 1938, after the annexation of
Austria by
Nazi Germany, he escaped to
Basel, Switzerland, where he was interned in an immigrant camp. Most of his family was murdered in
the Holocaust, and his parents were shot in 1942. Nevertheless, he continued his theoretical studies, being influenced especially by the writings of
Georg Lukács. In 1944 he published his first book under the pseudonym "Stanislaw Warynski". His second book, on the history of the civil society, was published in 1948 in
East Germany. In September 1947 he moved to the Soviet-occupied zone of Germany, and in 1948 became lecturer in medieval and modern history at the
University of Halle. But after his public criticism of the Stalinization of the
Socialist Unity Party, he was dismissed from his post. At the end of 1950, he escaped with his future wife Ursula Wieck to
Cologne in
West Germany, and worked there as well as in Dortmund and
Bochum as lecturer and researcher, publishing a stream of books and articles. He died on 29 July 1995 in Cologne after a lengthy illness. ==Main works==