Alexander Dunlop Lindsay

Alexander Dunlop Lindsay, 1st Baron Lindsay of Birker , also AD Lindsay or Sandie Lindsay for short, (born May 14, 1879 in Glasgow , † March 18, 1952 in Keele ) was a Scottish philosopher and nobleman.

Life and activity

Origin and early career

Lindsay was a son of Thomas Martin Lindsay (1845-1914), a university professor, and his wife Anna geb. Dunlop (1845-1903).

Lindsay was trained at the Glasgow Academy from 1887 . He then studied at the University of Glasgow , where he earned a master's degree in classics (ancient classics) in 1899 . He then moved to the University College of Oxford University . In between he spent a few semesters in Tübingen and Leipzig from 1900 to 1901 .

In 1903, Lindsay received a fellowship in moral philosophy from Edinburgh University . From 1904 to 1906 he taught as an assistant lecturer at Victoria University of Manchester, before moving to Balliol College in Oxford as a full lecturer (fellow) in philosophy in 1906 .

From 1915 (?) Lindsay took an active part in the First World War, in which he reached the rank of lieutenant colonel.

Interwar years

From 1922 Lindsay taught as Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow . In 1924 he took over the function of a master at Balliol College, Oxford University, which he would hold until 1949. He was then the first member of the Labor Party - to which he advised on educational issues - to be given the leadership of a college at Oxford University, which was a very controversial personnel decision at the time. During the more than twenty years that he held this position, Lindsay had great influence on his students, u. a. to the future Prime Minister Edward Heath .

As a Masters at Balliol College, Lindsay is rated as the guardian of the anti-authoritarian and critical spirit of this institution: he forbade his students to operate as strike breakers during the general strike of 1926 and he acted as the host of Mohandas Ghandis - the one in Great Britain at the time - in the early 1930s was still extremely controversial - during his stay in Oxford. From 1924 to 1925, Lindsay was also President of the Aristotelian Society.

In 1935 Lindsay received the post of Vice Chancellor of Oxford University. He remained in this position until 1938. Under his aegis, with the help of substantial donations from Lord Nuffield, the university was expanded to include a laboratory for physical chemistry and a college for doctoral students in the social sciences, which was later named Nuffield College.

On the occasion of a by-election in the constituency of Oxford City in the autumn of 1938, Lindsay ran as a non-party candidate - describing himself as an "Independent Progressive" - ​​unsuccessfully for a seat in the House of Commons , the British Parliament. In the election campaign, in which he was supported by the Labor Party, the Liberal Party and individual conservatives such as Harold Macmillan and Winston Churchill , he focused as a "one-topic candidate" on his sharp rejection of the Munich Agreement concluded this year between the to emphasize the British and French governments on the one hand and the German Reich on the other hand, in which he saw a dangerous and failed attempt to pacify a foreign policy aggressor. Lindsay was defeated in this by-election - which is considered one of the most contested by-elections in Great Britain in the 20th century ("one of the most contentious by-elections of the century") - finally against the conservative candidate Quintin Hogg .

At the end of the 1930s, Lindsay, as a prominent supporter of the anti-Nazi Popular Front movement, was targeted by the National Socialist police, who ultimately classified him as an important target: In the spring of 1940, the Reich Security Main Office in Berlin placed him on the special wanted list GB , a directory of people belonging to the NS - Regarded the surveillance apparatus as particularly dangerous or important, which is why in the event of a successful invasion and occupation of the British Isles by the Wehrmacht they should be located and arrested by the occupying troops following special SS units with special priority.

post war period

On November 13, 1945 Lindsay was raised to hereditary nobility as baron Lindsay of Birker, of Low Ground in the County of Cumberland . After his death, his title passed to his eldest son Michael.

In 1948 Lindsay was entrusted with the post of chairman of the official British commission for the reform of universities in the British zone of occupation of Germany.

In 1949, Lindsay retired from Oxford University. As a supporter of adult education, he took over the post of principal of the University College of North Staffordshire (now known as Keele University) as a retiree.

Marriage and offspring

In 1907 Lindsay married Erica Violet Storr (1877 - May 28, 1962), with whom he had two sons and a daughter.

Fonts

• The Philosophy of Bergson , 1911.
• The Philosophy of Immanuel Kant , 1911. (Reprints 1919, 2016)
• Oxford pamphlets , 1914.
• The Essentials of Democracy , 1929.
• The Balsam Firs of Western Australia , 1932.
• Christianity and Economics , 1933.
• Kant , 1934.
• Toleration and Democracy , 1942.
• The Modern Democratic State , Vol. 1, 1943.
• Religion, Science and Society in the Modern World , 1943.
• The Good and the Clever , 1945.
• The Essentials of Democracy , 1951.
• A New Theory of Vision. And Other Writings , 1954.
• AD Lindsay, 1879–1952 - Selected Addresses , 1957. (Compilation of speeches by Lindsay by anonymous contributors for the students of the University College in Keele)

literature

• Drusilla Scott: AD Lindsay. A Biography , London 1971.

Web links

• Short biography of Lindsay at Spartacus Educational

Individual evidence

1. ^ Robert Shepherd: A class divided: appeasement and the road to Munich, 1938 , 1988, p. 258.
2. ^ Entry on Lindsay on the special wanted site G: B. (Reproduced on the website of the Imperial War Museum in London) .