Arnold Wolfers

Arnold Wolfers (full name: Arnold Oscar Wolfers ) (born June 14, 1892 in St. Gallen , † July 16, 1968 in Blue Hill , Maine ) was a Swiss - American political scientist . He is counted among the main proponents of the theory of realism in international relations .

Life

Arnold Oscar Wolfers was the son of the American businessman Otto Gustav Wolfers and his Swiss wife Clara Eugenie, geb. Hirschfeld. The couple lived temporarily in Switzerland, where their son was born and grew up. He attended school in St. Gallen until he graduated from high school in 1905 and did military service in Switzerland in 1911 and again in 1914/1915. After studying law at German and Swiss universities he was in 1917 at the University of Zurich Dr. jur. PhD . This was followed by two years as a lawyer in St. Gallen, during which time (1918) he married Doris Farrer.

From 1919 Wolfers turned to economics and political science and studied both subjects in Switzerland, Germany, Great Britain and the USA. In 1924 he was at the University of Giessen Dr. phil, completed his habilitation at the University of Berlin in 1929 . He had been working at the German University of Politics since 1922 , first as an employee of Paul Tillich in a working group on issues of religious socialism , then as a lecturer and seminar leader (establishment of a new department for international relations ) and finally, in 1930, as director of the university . In this function he established contacts with the Rockefeller Foundation . From 1930 he was also a private lecturer at the University of Berlin.

At the beginning of 1933 Wolfers emigrated to the USA. There he revised his political views. In Germany he initially had socialist tendencies after the First World War , but then became a sympathizer of National Socialism in the 1930s . After his emigration, the National Socialist rulers in Germany classified him as an “undesirable half-Jew”. In 1935 he was naturalized in the USA.

From 1935 to 1957 Wolfers taught as a professor of international politics at Yale University and was also an advisor to various government organizations, such as the Provost Marshal General (1942 to 1944), the Intelligence Office of Strategic Services (1944 to 1945) and the National War College . After his retirement in 1957 Wolfers was founding director of the Washington Center of Foreign Policy Research , an institution of Johns Hopkins University, until 1965 . Until 1968 he was also an advisor to the United States Department of State and various think tanks .

Wolfer's main research interests in the USA were initially the two world wars, Germany after the Second World War, the East-West conflict , geopolitics and international relations. With his “billiard ball model”, which is still used today in the relevant political science literature, he visualized the core message of the theory of realism in international relations . According to this model, the interactions between states resemble the game of billiard balls, which attract, repel and keep moving on the international stage, with the inside of the billiard balls ( domestic politics and social structure ) having no influence on their course. Wolfers himself questioned this assumption as early as the mid-1950s. He began to revise the theory going back to Hans Morgenthau , analyzed the values applicable in individual states in particular and thus approached neorealist positions.

Fonts (selection)

• American and German Wages: An Inquiry into the Causes of the High Wage Level in the United States. Julius Springer, Berlin 1930.
• The cartel problem in the light of German cartel literature. Duncker & Humblot, Munich 1931.
• Britain and France between two wars . Archon Books, Hamden, Connecticut 1960 (Revised new edition of 1940 edition).
• Discord and Collaboration. Essays on International Politics. The Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore 1962.

literature

• Douglas T. Stuart, Stephen F. Szabo: Discord and collaboration in a new Europe: essays in honor of Arnold Wolfers. Washington, DC, 1994.

Web links

• Entry on Arnold Wolfers in the Personal Lexicon of International Relations , Institute for Social Sciences at the Technical University of Braunschweig
• Guide to the Arnold Oscar Wolfers Papers, Yale University Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Andreas Jacobs, Realism . In: Siegfried Schieder and Manuela Spindler (eds.), Theories of International Relations . 3rd edition, Budrich. Opladen 2010, pp. 39–64, here p. 43.
2. ↑ Unless otherwise stated, biographical information is based on: Entry on Arnold Wolfers in the Personal Lexicon of International Relations ( Memento of the original from November 20, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Institute for Social Sciences at the Technical University of Braunschweig 
3. ↑ Entry on Arnold Wolfers in the Personal Lexicon of International Relations ( Memento of the original from November 20, 2016 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. , Institute for Social Sciences at the Technical University of Braunschweig , there under: Career . 
4. ↑ Xuewu Gu : Theories of International Relations. Introduction . 2nd edition, Oldenbourg, Munich 2010. P. 22 f.
5. ^ Marianne Kneuer: Democratization through the EU. South and East Central Europe in comparison . Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2006, p. 41.
6. ↑ Nadine Ansorg: Wars without borders. Causes of regional conflict systems in Sub-Saharan Africa . Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2013, p. 44.