Berlin workers and employees survey

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The Berlin worker and employee survey from the year 1929/1930 was a social science research project in the period preceding the seizure of power of National Socialism .

Erich Fromm , who was head of the social psychology department at the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research at the time, carried out these extensive investigations together with Hilde Weiss in order to record the frequency of different political and social attitudes . It is the first empirical study on the subject of authoritarian character or authoritarian personality .

The study

methodology

Fromm used the method of a questionnaire , which was still unusual in Germany at the time . In addition to socio-demographic data, questions were asked about habits, social and political attitudes. The answers should also enable psychological conclusions to be drawn about unconscious tendencies and drive structures (see Fromm's theory of social character ). The most important concepts here were Authoritarian Character, Revolutionary and Ambivalent Character. With around 700 completed questionnaires, this project almost reached the order of magnitude of the studies on authoritarian personality by Theodor W. Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel J. Levinson, R. and Nevitt Sanford and carried out 15 years later in the USA and which were very often cited was distinguished from the former by a much broader spectrum of political attitudes from the KPD to the NSDAP .

publication

A first report on the Berlin workers 'and salaried employees' survey can be found in the Studies on Authority and Family , which were published in 1936 as a collective work by Max Horkheimer , Erich Fromm , Herbert Marcuse and others. a. were published. In American exile, further evaluation was carried out, but the publication was not made for unexplained reasons. Wiggershaus suspected that Max Horkheimer was reluctant to publish “the work in which Fromm's methodological achievement in the field of empirical social research was most impressively demonstrated”. The study was not reconstructed by Wolfgang Bonß until decades later. In his foreword Bonß also described the background and prerequisites of this study, which at that time was still very rare in its theoretical differentiation and in the original combination of interpretative and statistical methods. It stood out as a contemporary historical document and as the most important work in German social research of that time - alongside the better-known study on The Unemployed von Marienthal by Marie Jahoda , Paul Lazarsfeld (among others).

context

Decades later, Fromm and Michael Maccoby carried out an investigation into the social structure of a Mexican village, based on the same basic principle.

Related topics are: analytical social psychology , social character and individual character .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rolf Wiggershaus: The Frankfurt School. History, Theoretical Development, Political Significance . Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 1997
  2. Erich Fromm: Workers and employees on the eve of the Third Reich. A social-psychological investigation (edited and edited by Wolfgang Bonß). Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart 1980. ISBN 3-421-01913-4
  3. Erich Fromm and Rainer Funk : Erich Fromm Complete Edition, Volume I: Analytical Social Psychology ; Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich, 1999. ISBN 3-421-05280-8 . Reference: Introduction by the editor - On the life and work of Erich Fromm , page XXVII-XXVIII: "With Michael Maccoby [...] [Fromm] investigated the social character of the inhabitants of a Mexican village in the sixties. [...] "
  4. ibid., As a study is mentioned in the bibliography : "[Fromm, E.] -, and Michael Maccoby, 1970b: Social Character in a Mexican Village. A Sociopsychoanalytic Study , Eaglewood Cliffs 1970 (Prentice Hall)"

literature

  • Erich Fromm: About the method and tasks of an analytical social psychology . Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, Vol. 1, 1932, pp. 28-54.
  • Erich Fromm: Social psychological part . In: Studies on Authority and Family. Research reports from the Institute for Social Research. Alcan, Paris 1936, pp. 77-135.
  • Erich Fromm u. a .: Second section: surveys . In: Studies on Authority and Family. Research reports from the Institute for Social Research. Alcan, Paris 1936, pp. 229-469.
  • Erich Fromm: Workers and employees on the eve of the Third Reich. A social-psychological investigation (edited and edited by Wolfgang Bonß). Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart 1980. ISBN 3-421-01913-4
  • Erich Fromm and Rainer Funk : Erich Fromm-Gesamtausgabe, Volume III: Empirical studies on the character of society ; Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich, 1999. ISBN 3-423-59043-2 .
  • Marie Jahoda, Paul Lazarsfeld, Paul Felix, Hans Zeisel: The unemployed from Marienthal . Hirzel, Wirth 1933 (reprint, Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt a. M. 2007). ISBN 978-3-518-10769-0
  • Rolf Wiggershaus: The Frankfurt School. History, Theoretical Development, Political Significance. Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 1997