Joseph Bornstein was born on October 18, 1899 in Kraków, Poland, at that time part of the Habsburg monarchy. His father was a Russian citizen. After his death the family moved to Berlin in 1905. Joseph Bornstein attended the Sophien-Gymnasium and later the universities in Berlin and in Vienna. After the First World War, Joseph Bornstein became stateless and in 1925 was granted German citizenship that was revoked after 1933. Around the year 1920 Joseph Bornstein joined the circle of young socialist enthusiasts gravitating around Paul Levi (1883-1930), a cofounder of the German Communist Party (KPD) who re-joined the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) after disagreement with their Communist leadership in 1922. In this intellectual milieu Joseph Bornstein met Leopold Schwarzschild (1891-1950), Stefan Großmann (1875-1935), and Valeriu Marcu (1899-1942).
Joseph Bornstein started his collaboration with Leopold Schwarzschild and Stefan Großmann's intellectual journal the Tagebuch in 1923 where he worked on cases of political and social injustice in interwar Germany. After editor-in-chief Carl von Ossietzky left the Tagebuch for the Weltbühne in 1927, Joseph Bornstein became an executive editor, since Leopold Schwarzschild formally kept the position of editor-in-chief. He led the newspaper until 1931 when he resigned from this post, but remained closely associated with the Tagebuch . Joseph Bornstein's reports and investigative work were highly prized and he was extolled as a Wunderkind of German journalism in an obituary in the Aufbau . He covered a story of the investigation and trial of the murders of German Communist leaders, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht Karl, the story of Sacco and Vanzetti, and others. Joseph Bornstein was a member of the Deutsche Liga für Menschenrechte (German League for Human Rights).
In 1933, Joseph Bornstein left Germany via Switzerland and settled in Paris, France where he continued his collaboration with Leopold Schwarzschild in Das Neue Tagebuch . Joseph Bornstein remained at the paper until 1938 and wrote under the pen name of Erich Andermann. Besides Das Neue Tagebuch, he also contributed to other periodicals of the German exile community in France, such as Montag Morgen and Pariser Tageszeitung . From January 1939 to February 1940 he was editor-in-chief of the Pariser Tageszeitung . It is likely that it was during this period that he met Joseph Roth, who also emigrated to Paris in 1933, and contributed to a number of German exile publications, including Das Neue Tagebuch and Die Pariser Tageszeitung .
After the war broke out Joseph Bornstein volunteered in the French army, but was interned in the camp Marolles, near Blois. In February 1940 he was mobilized in the French army, and was attached to the British Expeditionary Force in the 712th labour company. Joseph Bornstein was sent to Africa with this unit and later demobilized in September 1940. Shortly thereafter he was issued an emergency visitor visa by the consul of the United States in Algiers, Algeria. He arrived in the United States in March 1941 and settled in New York, N.Y..
In January 1942, Joseph Bornstein joined the US Office of War Information where he was Senior Script Editor at the German section of the International Press and Radio Program Division of the Overseas Branch. He also contributed to the broadcast of the Voice of America.
After the war he worked together with the widow of the poet Bruno Frank, Liesl (Elisabeth) Frank, in an agency that represented foreign authors on the American book market. Among their clients were two Nobel price winners - the German writer Hermann Hesse and the Italian novelist Alberto Moravia.
Joseph Bornstein married Jacqueline Lindner probably in 1944.
Joseph Bornstein continued his writing, including an analysis of the Nazi propaganda in Europe Action against the enemy's mind (1942), and after the war, The Politics of Murder in 1950. In the latter book he scrutinized political violence, murders, and assassinations in inter-war Europe and the Soviet Union. Great attention was paid to the case of the death of Leon Trotsky and Stalin's political practices. Joseph Bornstein worked on several other non-fiction projects that he left unfinished.
Joseph Bornstein died in New York on June 23, 1952. His wife Jacqueline Lindner committed suicide in October 1952.
From the guide to the Joseph Bornstein Collection, 1917-1952, (Leo Baeck Institute)
