Bodo Zeuner

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Bodo Zeuner at a panel discussion at FAU Berlin

Bodo Zeuner (* 1942 in Königsberg ) is a German political scientist and until 2006 was a professor at the Free University of Berlin at the Otto Suhr Institute (OSI) for political science located there.

Zeuner had been a professor at the Free University of Berlin since 1978, where he was responsible for the professional field of political adult education. He has also taught in the areas of industrial relations / trade union regulation and the basics of political science. He has published numerous publications on these topics and on party research .

Focus of his activity

Union work and political activity

Among other things, Bodo Zeuner is active in the area of ​​trade union work. So he published z. For example, a lecture entitled Distributive Justice Belongs to Democracy , which he gave in March 2004 in Freiburg im Breisgau at a ver.di conference.

In the text Inequality is cool , which he published in the blz, the membership magazine of the GEW , Bodo Zeuner deals with the plans of the then Red-Green Federal Government to give a few universities the status of an elite university and thus the education of a low one To bring part of the student body to a higher level.

For him, the elite plans of the federal government, which would represent a complete PR success, are the expansion of the “ideological inequality offensive - people should believe that more divisions in society benefit everyone” to include education. The elite term would act as a self-justification for the winners, following the motto "The higher earners deserve it better".

Bodo Zeuner had been a member of the Greens since 1980, the year the party was founded . “In protest against the war in Yugoslavia and neoliberal politics”, he resigned after 18 years of membership and was now involved first with the WASG and now with the Left Party . He was also a signatory to the call to vote trade unionists on the left! .

Research group right-wing extremism

Bodo Zeuner was the spokesman for a research group dealing with right-wing extremism in trade unions . Here he worked with Richard Stöss and Michael Fichter.

This research work was funded with 200,000 euros by the Hans Böckler Foundation and the Otto Brenner Foundation , and the results of the study were presented at a discussion event in the DGB building in the Berlin-Brandenburg district on June 1, 2005. With a survey of over 4,000 people, the empirical study was the largest research project to date on right-wing extremist attitudes in Germany. The clients rated the result of this examination as shocking. It has been found that skilled workers (around a quarter of union members) who have been trained in particular have a disproportionate tendency towards right-wing extremist convictions.

Overall, it was found that 20 percent of union members have a right-wing extremist attitude, which in percentage terms reflects the average of the rest of society. In their study, the researchers subsumed right-wing extremist attitudes towards “extreme nationalism ”, “state authoritarianism”, “trivializing National Socialism”, “ social Darwinism ”, “xenophobia” and “anti-Semitism”.

Red-green in the municipalities

In 1992, Bodo Zeuner and Jörg Wischermann carried out a survey on the subject of “red-green in the municipalities”, in which he discussed, among other things, the fluctuations in the relationship between the two parties. The results of this survey were published in 1995 in the book Rot-Grün in der Kommunen: Conflict Potentials and Reform Perspectives; Results of a survey of local politicians published.

The following is postulated in this book: Since the founding of the Greens, both parties have had a certain amount of experience in dealing with each other, which would be fed by both rejection and coalition negotiations. The main objective of the survey was formulated: “To sift through this inventory at the municipal level that offers itself as a field of experimentation and observation, to systematically describe the variety of forms of the relationship between the SPD and the Greens, its conditions and the reasons given by the actors for their actions ". The background is, among other things, the problems that have arisen at the municipal level, e.g. B. "Lack of political action and decision-making options". What is new about this study is that it represents the first full census among social democratic and green local politicians.

Politics at the university

At the end of June 2005, Bodo Zeuner wrote an open letter to Bernd Rabehl ; this had previously given an interview in the German voice , the newspaper of the NPD . In the letter, Zeuner condemned Rabehl for his right-wing populist statements and made it clear to him that he was thus outside the consensus and self-image of the faculty council of the Otto Suhr Institute.

In his farewell lecture, Zeuner gave a lecture on the enforcement of particular interests and citation cartels within universities.

Other activities

His daughter Katharina Zeuner, along with other people, was affected by a police operation at the Armando Diaz School on July 22, 2001 during the G8 summit in Genoa . Father Zeuner and mother Gundula Bölke-Zeuner (1941–2012) therefore entered into lively correspondence with the German Ministry of the Interior and also gave various newspaper interviews about it.

bibliography

  • Injustice at work: stories about civil rights in the company. Rasch and Röhring, Hamburg 1991.
  • Left and Democracy: Housing, Social History. Westfälischen Dampfboot Verlag, Münster 1985, ISBN 3-89136-425-3 .
  • Comrades, what now? Balance sheet and perspectives of social democratic politics. with contribution from Volker Grans. Konkret Literatur Verlag, Hamburg 1983.
  • Veto against Augstein: the fight in the Spiegel editorial team for participation. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1972.
  • List of candidates for the 1965 Bundestag election: Investigations into internal party decision-making and political leadership selection. Nijhoff Verlag, The Hague 1970.
  • Intra-party democracy. Colloquium Verlag, Berlin 1970. (new edition)
  • Red-green in the municipalities. Vs Verlag, 1998, ISBN 3-8100-1312-9 .
  • with Günter Polach and Jörg Wischermann: A sustainably different party system: Profiles and relationships of parties in East German municipalities. Results of a survey of local politicians. Leske + Budrich Verlag, Opladen 2000, ISBN 3-8100-2738-3 .
  • Criticism + hope. Political and political science texts from 50 years. Die Buchmacherei, Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-9819243-8-1 .

See also

Web links

Commons : Bodo Zeuner  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ blz: Inequality is cool: elite as the new guiding concept of the SPD education policy . ( Memento of January 11, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) blz No. 3–4, 2004.
  2. ↑ Call for initiative “Trade unionists vote on the left!” ( Memento from February 23, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Call for the 2005 Bundestag election.
  3. ↑ a b Jungle World. No. 26, June 29, 2005.
  4. ↑ a b red-green in the municipalities: conflict potential and reform perspectives; Results of a survey of local politicians. P. 1 ff.
  5. ^ Nachdenkseiten.de: The Free University of Berlin before going public? Comments on the economization of science. Farewell lecture on July 11, 2007.
personal data
SURNAME Zeuner, Bodo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German political scientist
DATE OF BIRTH 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Koenigsberg