Hans Heinrich Gerth

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Hans Heinrich Gerth (born April 24, 1908 in Kassel ; † December 29, 1978 in Glashütten , Taunus ) was an American sociologist of German origin.

Live and act

Hans Heinrich Gerth studied in Heidelberg with Karl Jaspers , Emil Lederer , Alfred Weber and especially Karl Mannheim . Later Paul Tillich and Adolph Löwe were his academic teachers at the University of Frankfurt am Main . He spent the academic year 1929/30 at the London School of Economics . After receiving his doctorate in Frankfurt in 1933, he became Rudolf Heberle's research assistant at the University of Kiel . He then worked as a journalist until 1937 , including as Berlin correspondent for the Chicago Daily News. Gerth emigrated to the USA via Great Britain in 1938. There he initially encountered the distrust of emigrants who had left Germany in 1933. According to an expression he coined himself, he was the prototype of the “Aryan late arrival” in exile.

Until 1940 he taught sociology as an assistant professor at the University of Illinois , then only as an assistant professor and from 1947 as a professor at the University of Wisconsin . During these years he devoted himself intensively to translating the works of Max Weber . In the United States, Gerth worked closely with C. Wright Mills , who was initially his student. In 1971 he returned to Germany, where he was Professor of Sociology at the University of Frankfurt am Main until 1975.

Gerth is regarded as the "mentor of an entire generation of well-known American social scientists". He was an honorary member of the German Society for Sociology .

Fonts (selection)

  • The social-historical situation of the bourgeois intelligentsia at the turn of the 18th century. A contribution to the sociology of early German liberalism (dissertation 1933);
  • From Max Weber: Essays in sociology. Edited and annotated with C. Wright Mills, Oxford university press, New York 1946 (new edition: Routledge, New York 2009, ISBN 978-0-415-48269-1 ).
  • Together with C. Wright Mills: Character and social structure. The psychology of social institutions . Harcourt, New York 1953.
    • Person and society. The psychology of social institutions. Athenäum-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main / Bonn 1970.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The doctorate was accompanied by formal difficulties because Karl Mannheim and his other academic teachers had already been “on leave” and some had already emigrated. The doctorate was only possible through a special application to the university rector. A scientific career was no longer possible for Gerth in National Socialist Germany. Ruth Meyer: Hans Gerth † (April 24, 1908– December 29, 1978). In: Cologne journal for sociology and social psychology . Volume 32, 1980, p. 195.
  2. ↑ Robert Jackall in the introduction to: Hans Speier : The intellectuals and the modern society. Nausner & Nausner, Graz / Wien 2007, ISBN 978-3-901402-41-8 , pp. 11–34, here p. 17, note 13.
  3. ↑ Robert Jackall in the introduction to: Hans Speier: The intellectuals and the modern society. Nausner & Nausner, Graz / Vienna 2007. ISBN 978-3-901402-41-8 , pp. 11–34, here p. 17.
personal data
SURNAME Gerth, Hans Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American sociologist
DATE OF BIRTH April 24, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH kassel
DATE OF DEATH December 29, 1978
Place of death Glassworks