Alexander Swan

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Gravestone for Alexander Schwan in the Nikolassee cemetery in Berlin-Nikolassee

Alexander Schwan (born February 1, 1931 in Berlin ; † November 30, 1989 there ) was a German political scientist .

Life

The Catholic son of a publishing house bookseller attended schools in Berlin, Borken , Geisa and Düsseldorf, where he graduated from the Görres-Gymnasium there in 1951 . He then studied at the universities of Bonn , Cologne , Freiburg im Üechtland (Switzerland) , Basel and Freiburg / Br. Philosophy, History, Political Science and Catholic Theology. He financed his studies temporarily through a bookseller's activity. In 1959 he was awarded a doctorate by Arnold Bergstraesser in Freiburg im Breisgau with a thesis on "Political Philosophy in Heidegger's Thought ". phil. PhD. In 1965, he completed his habilitation on “Political Ethics in the Theology of History Gogartens and Bultmann ” , also in Freiburg . In the 1960s he helped shape the normative - ontological orientation of the Freiburg School of Political Science. After a short time as a private lecturer and professor, Schwan was appointed full professor for the history of political theories at the Free University of Berlin in 1966. The predecessor to this chair was Otto Heinrich von der Gablentz .

From 1967 to 1968 he was Managing Director of the Otto Suhr Institute (OSI) in Berlin and campaigned for a fundamental reform of the OSI's statutes, which he helped to design. For the first time, with these new statutes, students and assistants in the decision-making bodies were each given a third of all votes ( third parity ). Schwan was heavily involved in education policy , which was expressed, among other things, in his participation in the formulation of university laws and in the participation in conferences of the federal and state centers or academies for political education, the church and party political academies or the Cologne Ostkolleg .

The experiences with the sometimes violent attempts by the rebelling students to further expand their right of co-determination made him more and more a spokesman for non-Marxist lecturers, because "Schwan increasingly saw the danger of a Marxist ideologization of science and a left-dogmatic overpowering of the University". A leaflet by left-wing students called him a "professional counter-revolutionary " because of his plans to strengthen state and professorial authority . In June 1971 Schwan, who was easily provoked, narrowly escaped attempts by radical students to throw him out of the window ("Dahlem window lintel"). He had refused to argue with students who had blown up his class. In view of the polarization and politicization at universities, Schwan subsequently expressed himself more critically about university reform experiments and - as a representative of "bourgeois science" attacked - was temporarily forced to hold seminars in his apartment. Nevertheless, he declined calls to other universities.

One of Schwan's main concerns was to draw conclusions relevant to democracy from the Second Vatican Council and the associated opening to ecumenism . Schwan was involved in the left Catholic Bensberg Circle until it gave up its peace and reconciliation-oriented goals in favor of those closer to socialism, in the Paulus Society and in the Central Committee of German Catholics .

From 1967 Schwan was a member of the SPD . There he was at times an advisor to the Basic Values ​​Commission and worked closely with Hans-Jochen Vogel on this committee . Within the party, he positioned himself against attempts to orient the party to the left and to reactivate the Marxist traditions that had been abandoned in the Godesberg program .

He became a leading functionary of the emergency community for a free university and was from 1978 to 1982 a member of the extended executive committee of the federal freedom of science . In June 1977 the state party congress of the Berlin SPD passed a resolution in which SPD members in the emergency community were accused of behavior that was harmful to the party. In response to this, he appeared in October 1978 at the state party conference of the Berlin CDU , where he accused the former SPD Senator for Science and Research, Peter Glotz , of tolerating and promoting “places of communist agitation and left-wing socialist alliances” at universities. Because of the increasing differences in university and educational policy, he resigned from the party on the day after the Berlin Higher Education Act was passed in November 1978, thus pre- empting an impending party expulsion process. Simultaneously with his departure, Schwan founded the “Voters' Initiative Education and Science for Richard von Weizsäcker ”. In 1979 he became a member of the CDU.

The focus of his academic work was on political theory and philosophy, in particular with the theory of democracy and pluralism , but also with Marxism. He dealt in particular with the ethical and ideal position of politics. The "demand for the ideal anchoring of free democracy in accordance with the basic values ​​of Western political culture" ( Karl Dietrich Bracher in an obituary) was an essential objective of his later writings. Schwan's work pervades “the question of which decisive normative foundations are decisive for pluralistic democracy, how they can be justified and how they can be brought to life, not least thanks to constant reflection on the reasons for these connections”.

After divorcing his first wife, he was married to Gesine Schwan (nee Schneider) from 1969 . The two adopted two children.

Offices and memberships

From 1964 Schwan was a board member of the Arnold Bergstraesser Institute for cultural studies research (Freiburg / Br.), Where he acted as vice chairman from 1969. Schwan was a board member of the Bund Freiheit der Wissenschaft . From 1970 to 1978 he was a member of the Academic Senate of the Free University of Berlin. From 1975 to 1981 he was a member of the Senate of the German Research Foundation . From 1980 to 1981 Schwan was a Research Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. In 1984 he was a Visiting Fellow at Robinson College, Cambridge .

Publications (selection)

  • Political philosophy in Heidegger's thought (dissertation, 1959).
  • Political ethics in the theology of history by Gogarten and Bultmann (Habilitation, 1965).
  • Catholic Church and Pluralist Politics. Political implications of the Second Vatican Council , Mohr, Tübingen 1966.
  • with Kurt Sontheimer : Reform as an alternative. College teachers respond to the students' challenge . Westdeutscher Verlag, Cologne and Opladen 1969.
  • with Gesine Schwan : Social Democracy and Marxism. On the tension between the Godesberger program and Marxist theory , Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1974, ISBN 3-455-09114-8 .
  • Historical theological constitution and destruction of politics. Friedrich Gogarten and Rudolf Bultmann , de Gruyter, Berlin [u. a.] 1976, ISBN 3-11-006783-8 .
  • Truth, plurality, freedom. Studies on the philosophical and theological foundation of liberal politics , Hoffmann u. Campe, Hamburg 1976, ISBN 3-455-09197-0 .
  • Basic values ​​of democracy. Orientation attempts in pluralism , Piper, Munich 1978, ISBN 3-492-00485-7 .
  • Theory as a maid of practice. System will and partiality - from Marx to Lenin , Seewald, Stuttgart 1983, ISBN 3-512-00675-2 .
  • with Klaus W. Hempfer (Ed.): Foundations of the political culture of the West. Lecture series at the Free University , de Gruyter, Berlin [West u. a.] 1987, ISBN 3-11-010786-4 .
  • Ethos of democracy. Normative foundations of liberal pluralism . Schöningh Publishing House. Paderborn, Munich, Vienna, Zurich 1992, ISBN 3-506-73366-4 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gerhard Göhler: Political scientist and philosopher. On the death of Alexander Schwan , in: Politische Vierteljahresschrift , 31st year (1990), Heft 1, pp. 97-100, here p. 98.
  2. ↑ See the statements by Gesine Schwan, quoted by Markus Porsche-Ludwig: Alexander Schwan. Foundations of normative politics (science). A work biography , Lit-Verlag, Berlin [u. a.] 2010, p. 47 f.
  3. ↑ James F. Tent : Free University of Berlin. 1948-1988. A German University in Current Events (translation from the American by Karl Heinz Siber), Colloquium-Verlag, Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-7678-0744-0 , p. 430.
  4. ↑ Information on the BFW website
  5. ↑ Information on the BFW website (PDF; 1.3 MB).
  6. ↑ Professional: Alexander Schwan . In: Der Spiegel . No. 49 , 1978, pp. 284 ( online - Dec. 4, 1978 ).
  7. ↑ Alexander Schwan: Ethos of Democracy. Normative foundations of liberal pluralism , Schöningh, Paderborn [u. a.] 1992, p. 13, ISBN 3-506-73366-4 , quoted from Markus Porsche-Ludwig: Alexander Schwan. Foundations of normative politics (science). A work biography , Berlin [u. a.] 2010, p. 29 f.
personal data
SURNAME Swan, Alexander
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German political scientist
DATE OF BIRTH February 1, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH November 30, 1989
Place of death Berlin