He presented the ZDF-Magazin, a news magazine of ZDF which highlighted human rights abuses in communist-ruled Eastern Europe, from 1969 to 1987.
He was Jewish and was deported to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp during Nazi rule.
He also worked as a reporter for RIAS, before he became one of the first students at the Free University of Berlin.
He considered himself "a man of the center" ("ein Mann der Mitte") and lamented the ever increasing trend towards left in the West German political life, which made him look like an arch-conservative.
The Gerhard Löwenthal Prize, annually awarded by his widow Ingeborg Löwenthal, the conservative newspaper Junge Freiheit and the Foundation for Conservative Education and Research, is named in his honour.