Carl-Heinz Boettcher

Carl-Heinz Boettcher (born March 27, 1928 in Hamburg ; † May 21, 2015 in Bergisch Gladbach ) was a German sociologist and publicist .

Life

Carl-Heinz Boettcher belongs to the generation of flak helpers , whose representatives were already used in the military at the age of sixteen during World War II. An apprenticeship as a publishing bookseller after the war was followed by a study of economics and social sciences with a degree in economics and sociological fieldwork for the sociologist Helmut Schelsky . As a student he was already committed to overcoming the East-West antagonism and a third way between capitalism and communism in the sense of the social theories of John Maynard Keynes . He joined the SPD in 1955 through the Paulskirchen movement .

After graduating, he worked as a journalist. He was an editor at Spiegel and the Hamburger Morgenpost . Then he worked for the public relations work of the Federal Border Police. Together with the sociologist Erwin K. Scheuch , he took a critical look at the ideology of the New Left . Most recently he was managing editor of Deutsche Welle .

His wife Gisela comes from Upper Silesia. The couple met in the last months of the war and started a large family at an early age. She last lived in North Rhine-Westphalia in the Bergisches Land.

After a long illness, he died on May 21, 2015 at the age of 87 in Bergisch Gladbach .

theses

Boettcher's main theme is the world-historical special route of the West, which in his view began 6000 years ago between the Atlantic and the Volga, where societies with highly cultural features existed in the Stone Copper Age. He connects the archaeologists' funnel beaker culture with the Indo-European language of the linguists. In the tradition of Vere Gordon Childe and Franz Oppenheimer, he also represents sociologically oriented historical research with regard to prehistory, which also takes linguistic and ethnological facts into account. In addition to Germany, it was particularly popular in France.

While - according to Boettcher - the post-glacial optimum in the Middle East led to extreme drought and prompted the construction of large-scale irrigation systems, combined with population concentration in a small area, stockpiling in central magazines and the strong dependence of individuals on the rulers, the development in Europe took off different course. Here, abundance of rain and almost unlimited new land, as well as a dense river network that favored traffic and long-distance trade, enabled cultural, political and economic decentralization with extensive personal freedom and a permanent balance of power. The evolving archaic feudalism developed in the course of the Middle Ages and modern times into the democratically constituted, constitutional and socially founded society of today.

Awards

• In 1983 Boettcher was awarded the Cross of Merit on Ribbon.

Fonts

• Concept and cause of entrepreneurial profit - presentation and criticism (diploma thesis), Hamburg 1950.
• Between the Fronts - Tasks of German Politics, Hamburg 1954.
• A ghost emerges in Europe - the rise and fall of communism (co-author Hellmuth Scheffler), Cologne 1967.
• A new KPD? Notes and documents on the subject of communism and parliamentary democracy, Cologne 1968.
• The uprising is being prepared - From the dictatorship of the proletariat to the educational dictatorship of the New Left, Cologne 1969.
• La culture des gobelets en entonnoir en Europe centrale, Lyon 1991 (translated by Jean-Paul Allard).
• Le moyen âge commence à l`age de la pierre, Lyon 1994 (translated by Jean-Paul Allard).
• Pouvoir centralisé ou pouvoir partagé - L`Orient et l`Occident au cuprolithique, Lyon 1996 (translated by Jean-Paul Allard).
• Indo-Européens et Indo-Européanisés, Lyon 1999 (translated by Jean-Paul Allard).
• The origin of Europe - The cradle of the West 6000 years ago, Röhrig Universitätsverlag, St. Ingbert, 1st edition 1999, 2nd edition 2000, ISBN 978-3-86110-200-7 .
• The origin of Europe, in Josef Gros (ed.), Publishers from the Saarland in the state representation in Berlin, Blieskastel 2004, pp. 165–203.
• Power struggle and religious warfare - Europe in the early modern period, Röhrig Universitätsverlag, St. Ingbert 2014, ISBN 978-3-86110-555-8 .
• Europe's way into the modern age - From the world state to the world of states, Röhrig Universitätsverlag, St. Ingbert 2005, ISBN 978-3-86110-390-5 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Carl-Heinz Boettcher in the catalog of the German National Library