Alfred von Martin

Alfred von Martin (born July 24, 1882 in Berlin ; † June 11, 1979 in Munich ) was a German historian and sociologist and one of the last specialist representatives from the founding years of German sociology, who taught and published in the Federal Republic of Germany. Historical sociology and cultural sociology form the basis of his diagnosis of the times . Alfred von Martin published scientific texts over a period of 70 years.

Life

Empire

Alfred von Martin came from an entrepreneurial family. His father, Friedrich Martin, was a partner in the company "Fölsch & Martin", which operated saltpeter works in Taltal (Chile) and had an office in Hamburg. His maternal grandfather, the landowner Otto Roestel, was also an entrepreneur in the saltpetre industry. Shortly after the birth of his son, Friedrich Martin acquired a manor in Rothenburg an der Neisse . In 1907 he was raised to hereditary nobility.

Alfred von Martin secured substantial real estate financially for much of his life. Until he entered high school, he was tutored by a private teacher on the estate. After graduating from high school in Görlitz , he studied law and political science at the Universities of Breslau , Lausanne , Tübingen and Munich . In 1906 he completed his first degree with a doctorate to become Dr. jur. from. He then studied history at the Universities of Freiburg (there in particular with Friedrich Meinecke ), Heidelberg , Leipzig , Berlin , Florence and Rome . With the doctorate to Dr. phil. he finished these studies in 1913. During the First World War, in which he participated as a lieutenant in the reserve, von Martin completed his habilitation in 1915 in the subject of Medieval and Modern History at the University of Frankfurt am Main .

Weimar Republic and Third Reich

After the end of the war, the University of Frankfurt am Main appointed him associate professor. Since 1924 he taught history at the University of Munich with this status. In 1931 he moved to the University of Göttingen as an honorary professor , where he became director of the new “ Sociological Seminar ”.

Given the political situation he settled permanently in 1932 by his university duties of absence (for which he received an honorary professor no compensation), retired to Munich and went as a private tutor in the so-called inner emigration . In his own words, he hadn't been ready

“To continue lecturing after the abolition of the freedom to teach - all the less since the teaching assignment was one without material compensation. Even in the other case I would never have taught anything against my convictions, but then perhaps I would have looked for topics that were as "safe" as possible; but as it was, I had no reason to get involved in such trickery. "

During the next few years he dealt with the Renaissance and Jacob Burckhardt . Even before 1933, with his Machiavelli reception, he characterized a belief in leadership as decadent with a clearly current reference: “Machiavelli himself does not believe in the appointed (but not only 'appointed' by him ) savior ... He warms up (like Hitler again ) for the type of adventurous, daring mercenary ... The diagnosis made by this doctor is not wrong; but its etiology is one-eyed. Even no longer in possession of healthy ideas about what belongs to health, he prescribes the fascist poison as a remedy for sick times: pure political actionism - outside of a real order of values. ”His book Nietzsche and Burckhardt (Munich 1941) was one clear statement against the Nazi regime , which triggered violent attacks against him in the Nazi press. The first edition of his book The Religion in Jacob Burckhardt's Life and Thinking (Munich 1942) was confiscated by the Gestapo and it was probably only by chance that he escaped arrest. He was in contact with members of the White Rose resistance group , and in the spring of 1942 Hans Scholl had been a guest at Alfred von Martin's house several times.

After the Second World War

From 1945, von Martin resumed his publishing activities and sought a position as a university lecturer. During the Second World War he had lost all of his real estate, which had previously made him financially independent. He could no longer gain a successful foothold in university sociology - although he was an honorary member of the German Society for Sociology .

Dirk Kaesler describes Martin as follows:

“In keeping with his skeptical attitude, he remained a loner at the university even after 1945. A common theme in his late work was the tension between society and individual freedom. "

He was denied a return to the University of Göttingen. From there it was said that he was an unreliable colleague, that he had "let down" the faculty with his retirement. However, he taught as an outsider in his discipline, first as a lecturer at the Technical University of Munich (1946–1948), then as an associate professor and finally as a provisional full professor emeritus at the University of Munich (1948–1959). There he managed the newly created sociology chair until it was filled with Emerich K. Francis after lengthy political quarrels in Bavarian state politics .

During this time he wrote the first systematic description of sociology in the Federal Republic of Germany (1956). After retiring from academic teaching (at the age of 78), he presented an extensive list of older works. His bourgeois, critical style of thinking remained without a successor in university sociology.

In an obituary, Rainer Lepsius wrote about Alfred von Martin:

he consciously placed himself at the service of the values ​​he knew, skeptical of all power and despising the techniques and tactics of adaptation, valuing personal independence more highly than institutional influence.

Sociological work

Sociology of the bourgeoisie (entrepreneurs and intellectuals)

To a large extent, Martins' sociological work reads like a preparatory work for his planned, but no longer realized sociology of the bourgeoisie . Based on his main work, the sociology of the Renaissance (also translated into English, Spanish, Dutch and Japanese) , he describes in his historical-sociological diagnoses of the time the bourgeoisie as the main actor in the dynamics of capitalist development. During the Renaissance there was a change from the static and contemplative way of life of the Middle Ages to the activity of modern economic people. According to von Martin, the modern occidental bourgeoisie appears in two types, that of the entrepreneur and that of the intellectual . He ascribes the same characteristic properties to both types that did not exist in the Middle Ages: individuality and rationality .

With the emergence of bureaucratic statehood and large corporations, the original citizen type was reshaped in its actions and behavior. According to von Martin, the First World War marked the final turning point towards "post-bourgeois society". The post-bourgeois man - to the detriment of his individuality - got into dependencies, which are expressed through striving for advancement within organizations (no longer through independent entrepreneurial activity), through conformity and consumer orientation . The culture supporting intelligence ( educated middle class ) had suffered a loss of meaning and the only technical intelligence and Funktionärstum transformed.

Critique of contemporary sociology

This development towards objectification accelerated after the Second World War and also had an impact on the understanding of science in sociology. He (Alfred von Martin) got in an emphatic way

“Contrasted with all those scientific tendencies which - partly collectivist , partly Americanizing - strive for a sociologist in which the human being 'does not appear' or at least only as a given object of quasi-technical social manipulation. The broad factual current tending towards this is, as a complex of problems in contemporary sociology, a topic of particularly heavy weight; But it is precisely today's crisis-ridden threat to personality values ​​that can be considered a reason to see the social under the sign of the human . In and of itself, sociology, as a science, has nothing to do with worldview : 'functionalism' but also ' role play' is (or reveals) a certain worldview, even if one does not know it and would deny it. "

Analysis of class society

In addition to the sociology of the bourgeoisie - and there especially the sociology of intellectuals - von Martin was also concerned with the analysis of class society after 1945 . In contrast to Helmut Schelsky (and other leading sociologists of the first post-war decades), he denied the existence of a leveled middle-class society . Contemporary society has indeed undergone considerable changes compared to capitalism of the 19th century (organizational forms of companies, differentiation and not standardization of the workforce, social security), but:

"The essential elements of the class antagonism still exist: the division into planning and ordering 'above' and obeying, executing 'below', and with the relationship of domination the latent conflict of interests."

Confrontation with National Socialism

Font from 1948

Volker Kruse sums up Martin's diagnosis of National Socialism in five sentences:

• The National Socialist dictatorship was only possible because there was broad acceptance among the population;
• This acceptance could only have come about because the necessary awareness of values ​​was missing;
• the lack of awareness of values ​​was the result of a mental confusion of the German intelligentsia, which radiated onto the entire German people;
• the mental confusion had emanated from Hegel , Nietzsche and Spengler ;
• A disposition to extreme political outbursts is anchored in the German national character.

In contrast to almost all of his peers, von Martin actively endeavored in the post-war years through publications and lectures to deal critically and sociologically with National Socialism. He demanded the moral commitment of the social scientist , for which René König specifically highlighted him from the ranks of German sociologists.

Reception in sociology

Alfred von Martin's late work forms an " almost forgotten beginning of post-war sociology ". With his exclusively humanistic approach to sociology and his systematic- encyclopedic orientation in the academic world, he was isolated from the start (other representatives of the humanities-oriented sociology, such as Hans Freyer , came from the Leipzig School of Sociology and stood against Martin's declared opponent of German national ideology remote). In addition, it was not up-to-date with its humanity claim towards specialist science. Nevertheless, as Kruse emphasizes, 30 years later there were no serious errors to be found in von Martin's contemporary diagnostic work on Western post-war society.

Engagement in ecumenism and political Christianity

Alfred von Martin was a devout Christian of Protestant denomination and advocate of the Una Sancta ( One Holy Church ). In 1922 he became a member of the High Churches Association and was its second chairman in 1923/24. With the High Churches Association he pursued the goal of strengthening a sacramental and Catholic understanding of the church within Protestant churches. This endeavor is expressed in the formula "Evangelical catholicity". Because of increasing disputes with a “Prussian group” he left the High Church Association in autumn 1925 together with the entire “Catholic group” and founded the “High Church Ecumenical Association” with Karl Buchheim . von Martin was editor of the magazine of the new federal "Una Sancta", which appeared from 1925 to 1928. After that, the magazine was renamed "Religious Reflection" and he also published in it. Martin last converted to the Roman Catholic Church.

In 1922 he was elected to the board of the Catholic Center , in which there were efforts to develop the party into a non-denominational Christian party. He later resigned from the center.

Fonts (selection)

• On the question of the beginning of the legislative period of the German Reichstag and the Prussian Landtag . Breslau 1906, legal dissertation.
• Coluccio Salutatis' treatise "On the Tyrant". A cultural-historical investigation . Freiburg im Breisgau 1913, philosophical dissertation.
• Medieval world and life view as reflected in Coluccio Salutati's writings . Oldenbourg, Munich / Berlin 1913.
• Coluccio Salutati and the humanistic ideal of life. A chapter from the Genesis of the Renaissance. Teubner, Berlin / Leipzig 1916; Reprint of the 1916 edition, Gerstenberg, Hildesheim 1973, ISBN 3-8067-0121-0 .
• Romantic Catholicism and Catholic Romanticism. In: Hochland 23 (1925) pp. 323–327
• Renaissance Sociology. On the physiognomy and rhythm of bourgeois culture . Enke, Stuttgart 1932; Second, changed and increased edition, Knecht, Frankfurt am Main 1949; 3rd edition, Beck, Munich 1974, ISBN 3-406-04906-0 ; Engl .: Sociology of the Renaissance (London 1944); Spanish: Sociología del Renacimiento (1970, ²1977, ³2005).
• Nietzsche and Burckhardt . Reinhardt, Munich 1941 (4th edition, Erasmus-Verlag, Munich 1947).
• The religion in Jakob Burkhardt's life and thought. A study on humanism and Christianity , Reinhardt, Munich 1942; second, increased edition as: Die Religion Jacob Burckhardt. A study on humanism and Christianity . Erasmus-Verlag, Munich 1947.
• Spiritual pioneers of the German collapse (Hegel, Nietzsche, Spengler) . Bitter, Recklinghausen 1948.
• Mind and society. Sociological sketches on European cultural history . Knecht, Frankfurt am Main 1948.
• Heroic nihilism and how to overcome it. Ernst Jünger's way through the crisis . Scherpe-Verlag, Krefeld 1948.
• Order and freedom. Materials and reflections on basic questions of social life . Knecht, Frankfurt am Main 1956.
• Sociology. The main areas at a glance . Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1956.
• People and society today . Knecht, Frankfurt am Main 1965.
• Under the sign of humanity. Sociological forays . Knecht, Frankfurt am Main 1974, ISBN 3-7820-0324-1 .
• Power as a problem. Hegel and its political impact . Academy of Sciences and Literature. Mainz 1976, ISBN 3-515-02378-X .

literature

• Richard Faber , Perdita Ladwig (ed.): Society and humanity. The cultural sociologist Alfred von Martin (1882–1979). Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2013, ISBN 3-8260-5123-8 .
• Margret Funke-Schmitt-Rink: Martin, Alfred von. In: Wilhelm Bernsdorf , Horst Knospe (Ed.): Internationales Soziologenlexikon. Vol. 2, Enke, Stuttgart 1984, p. 547.
• Dirk Käsler:  Martin, Alfred von. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 16, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-428-00197-4 , p. 282 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Volker Kruse: Historical-sociological diagnosis of the times in West Germany after 1945. Eduard Heimann, Alfred von Martin, Hans Freyer. Suhrkamp pocket book science, Frankfurt am Main 1994.
• Perdita Ladwig: The renaissance picture of German historians 1898–1933 (= Campus Research. Volume 859). Campus-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main u. a. 2004, ISBN 3-593-37467-6 , pp. 202-277.
• Mario Rainer Lepsius : Alfred von Martin † (July 24, 1882– June 11, 1979). In: Cologne journal for sociology and social psychology . 31st year, 1979, pp. 826-828.
• Günter Maschke : On the death of Alfred von Martin. Humanism and modernity. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung June 16, 1979, p. 25.
• Sven Papcke : Society diagnoses , classical texts of German sociology in the 20th century (= Campus series. Volume 1040). Campus, Frankfurt am Main u. a. 1991, ISBN 3-593-34432-7 , pp. 180-197.
• Anikó Szabó: eviction, return, reparation. Göttingen university professor in the shadow of National Socialism. With a biographical documentation of the dismissed and persecuted university lecturers: University of Göttingen - TH Braunschweig - TH Hannover - University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover (= publications of the working group history of Lower Saxony (after 1945). Volume 15). Wallstein, Göttingen 2000, ISBN 3-89244-381-5 , pp. 119-122.

Web links

• Literature by and about Alfred von Martin in the catalog of the German National Library

Remarks

1. ↑ His legal dissertation is from 1906, his last book was published in 1976.
2. ^ Source, as well as on other biographical details: From two letters from Alfred von Martin's son Gregor to Richard Faber. In: Richard Faber, Perdita Ladwig (Ed.): Society and Humanity. The cultural sociologist Alfred von Martin (1882-1979). Würzburg 2013, pp. 29–37.
3. ↑ From a letter from Martins to the dean of the Philosophical Faculty Göttingen from November 15, 1945, quoted from: Anikó Szabó: Expulsion, return, reparation. Göttingen university professor in the shadow of National Socialism. With a biographical documentation of the dismissed and persecuted university professors: University of Göttingen - TH Braunschweig - TH Hannover - University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover. Göttingen 2000, p. 120 f., Sönke Zankel, on the other hand, says that the badly affected private fortune forced Alfred von Martin to give up the unpaid position in Göttingen, cf. Sönke Zankel: With leaflets against Hitler. The resistance group around Hans Scholl and Alexander Schmorell. Cologne 2008, p. 219.
4. ^ Alfred von Martin: Sociology of the Renaissance 3rd edition, Munich 1974, pp. 128 and 131.
5. ↑ Cf. Alfred von Martin: The religion in Jacob Burckhardt's life and thinking. 2nd edition Munich 1947, pp. 8 and 35f.
6. ↑ Barbara Schüler: "In the spirit of the murdered ..." The "White Rose" and its effect in the post-war period. Paderborn 2000, p. 193.
7. ↑ Dirk Käsler , quoted from: Anikó Szabó: Expulsion, return, reparation. Göttingen university professor in the shadow of National Socialism. With a biographical documentation of the dismissed and persecuted university professors: University of Göttingen - TH Braunschweig - TH Hannover - University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover. Göttingen 2000, p. 122.
8. ^ Which, according to M. Rainer Lepsius, was "published in a very unfortunate way". Three books of a social studies for teachers had been stapled together carelessly, with no continuous page counting. The book was hardly noticed. See interview Richard Fabers and Perdita Ladwigs with M. Rainer Lepsius in June 2009 about Alfred von Martin. In: Richard Faber, Perdita Ladwig (Ed.), Society and Humanity. The cultural sociology Alfred von Martin (1882-1979), Würzburg 2013, pp. 11–28, here p. 17.
9. ↑ Quoted from: Anikó Szabó: Expulsion, return, reparation. Göttingen university professor in the shadow of National Socialism. With a biographical documentation of the dismissed and persecuted university professors: University of Göttingen - TH Braunschweig - TH Hannover - University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover. Göttingen 2000.
10. ↑ Cf. Volker Kruse: Historical-sociological diagnosis of the times in West Germany after 1945. Eduard Heimann, Alfred von Martin, Hans Freyer. Frankfurt am Main 1994, p. 138.
11. ^ People and Society Today , Frankfurt am Main 1965, p. 7.
12. ↑ People and society today. Frankfurt am Main 1965, p. 59.
13. ↑ Cf. Volker Kruse: Historical-sociological diagnosis of the times in West Germany after 1945. Eduard Heimann, Alfred von Martin, Hans Freyer. Frankfurt am Main 1994, p. 105 f.
14. ↑ This is what Alfred von Martin points out in his small publication Geistige Wegbereiter des German collapse. Hegel - Nietzsche - Spengler from 1948.
15. ↑ Cf. Volker Kruse: Historical-sociological diagnosis of the times in West Germany after 1945. Eduard Heimann, Alfred von Martin, Hans Freyer. Frankfurt am Main 1994, p. 108.
16. ^ Sven Papcke : Society Diagnoses , Classical Texts of German Sociology in the 20th Century. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main u. a. 1991, p. 180.
17. ↑ Cf. Volker Kruse: Historical-sociological diagnosis of the times in West Germany after 1945. Eduard Heimann, Alfred von Martin, Hans Freyer. Frankfurt am Main 1994, p. 138 f.
18. ↑ See Karl Buchheim: A Saxon Life Story. Memoirs 1889–1972. Munich 1996, p. 126.
19. ↑ See: List of Board Members of the Hochkirchlichen Vereinigung ( Memento of the original from February 15, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
20. ↑ See: Karl Buchheim on the Internet ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
21. ↑ Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung : 1918-1933: The development of Christian parties in the Weimar Republic. Retrieved April 2, 2020.

This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on November 24, 2009 .