Thomas Kuczynski is a member of a prominent family of Berlin intellectuals. His grandfather, Robert René Kuczynski, father, Jürgen Kuczynski and mother, Marguerite Kuczynski were all economists and/or statisticians. Thomas was born during the final year of the Second World War, and in 1945 the defeat of Nazi Germanyopened the wayfor the family to return, in 1947, to Berlin, by now surrounded by the Soviet occupation zone in what remained of Germany. Kuczynski successfully completed his secondary schooling at the Paul-Österreich Upper School in 1963. Between 1963 and 1968 he attended the University of Applied Sciences for Engineering and Economics at Karlshorst in what had become known in the west as East Berlin: here he studied Statistics. Thomas Kuczynski received his doctorate in 1972 for work on the closing period in Germany of the Great Depression which for these purposes he placed at 1932/33. His dissertation was supervised by Hans Mottek. Between 1972 and 1991 Kuczynski worked as a research assistant / researcher at the Institute for Economic history at the German Academy of Sciences at Berlin, serving as its last director during the run up to the political changes that led to the Academy's dissolution. Since 1991 he has emerged as a freelance academic and writer. In recent years Thomas Kuczynski's public profile has been raised with the publication of his study of compensation claims for forced labour victims of the Nazi years. Kuczynski concluded that the German Federal Republic should pay victims of forced labour under Nazi Germany approximately 180 Billion Deutsche Marks. Later, in his book "Brosamen vom Herrentisch", he increased his estimate to 228 Billion Deutsche Marks. In 2007 Kuczynski took part in the theatre project, "Karl Marx: Das Kapital - Erster Band", a show presenting a range of experts, mostly not normally to be found on a theatre stage, from various political and business backgrounds, giving their perspectives on Marxian philosophy in general and on in particular. Kuczynski claims to eschew "-isms", but it is hard to avoid concluding that much of his academic work is undertaken through an appropriately updated Marxist prism. He is a member of the advisory council of the :de:Bildungsgemeinschaft SALZ|Bildungsgemeinschaft SALZ, a left-of-centre think tank.
Personal
Thomas Kuczynski was married to the writer-philosopher Rita Kuczynski between 1972 and 1998, though they separated in 1991.
