The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Loewe, Wilhelm

LOEWE, lė'vĕ, Wilhelm (also called ), German politician: b. Olvenstedt, near Magdeburg 1814; d. 1886. He was educated at Halle, and adopted the medical profession. Elected in 1848 to the Frankfort Parliament, he acted with the extreme party of democracy; became first vice-president of the Parliament; and later, at Stuttgart, was its president. Charged with sedition in this, which was considered a revolutionary procedure, and once acquitted, he was nevertheless sentenced to life imprisonment for contumacy. After some vears in Switzerland, France and England, he came to this country, and for eight years practised medicine in New York. Availing himself of the amnesty in 1861, he returned to Germany, and in 1863 was elected to the Prussian House of Deputies. Four years later he was a Progressist member of the North German Reichstag. Disagreeing with his party in 1874 on the military law, he attempted to form a new Liberal party. He favored the

policy of high protection adopted in 1879. In the elections of 1881 he lost his seat.