Carl Joachim Friedrich

Carl Joachim Friedrich (born June 5, 1901 in Leipzig , † September 19, 1984 in Lexington , Massachusetts) was a German-American political scientist at Harvard and Heidelberg University . His writings on constitutional theory made him one of the world's most famous political scientists after World War II. He also became famous for his theory of totalitarianism .

Life

His father Paul Leopold Friedrich was a professor of surgery, who died in 1916 as a privy councilor and general senior physician in the First World War over the exhaustion of his work at the operating table of a field hospital. His mother was the daughter of the former President of the Senate of the Reichsgericht Karl von Bülow .

Carl Joachim Friedrich grew up in Leipzig and after his father's death in Marburg , where he attended the Philippinum grammar school . From 1921 he first studied medicine, then economics at the Philipps University of Marburg and the Ruprecht Karls University of Heidelberg . In 1925 Friedrich received his doctorate in Heidelberg under Alfred Weber , Max Weber's brother. He initially worked as an assistant at the Economics Seminar and was a member of the Heidelberg Institute for Social and Political Science, which was newly founded by Edgar Salin and Alfred Weber. In cooperation with Alfred Weber and his fellow doctoral student Arnold Bergstraesser , Friedrich was involved in the founding of the German-American youth exchange in the course of the political youth movement in 1925, the forerunner of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and became its representative in the United States.

After moving to the US and his marriage to an American Friedrich 1926 Lecturer (was lecturer ) and 1931 Associate Professor ( Assistant Professor of Government ) at the prestigious Harvard University in Cambridge (Massachusetts) . He gained a reputation as a specialist in Prussian and European administration and government policy, received a full professorship in "Science of Government" at Harvard University in 1936 and became a member of the Harvard Graduate School of Public Administration, now the John F. Kennedy School of Government , whose direction he later took over.

Work and work

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.

There is no evidence for all direct and indirect citations. Especially in the penultimate paragraph that of Klaus von Beyme as well as the attribution as the "father" of comparative political science. - trm 11:54, Aug 27, 2012 (CEST)

During the Second World War , Friedrich, who had already accepted American citizenship in 1938 , became involved in political counter-propaganda in the United States and, together with the sociologist Talcott Parsons, headed the Harvard School of Overseas Administration and supported the American occupation forces in denazification . Friedrich was political advisor to the American government and sounded out the situation in defeated Germany. He was involved in the planning of the Moscow Foreign Ministers' Conference (1947) and the drafting of the Marshall Plan (1956) and personal advisor to General Lucius D. Clay , the head of the American military administration in Germany. He was also involved in the draft of the Herrenchiemsee Basic Law and the drafting of German state constitutions. Even after the Bavarian state constitution was passed, he was involved in the introduction of a popular litigation procedure within the framework of the legislation for the competences of the Bavarian Constitutional Court. In the following years he advised political bodies of the unifying Europe in the preparation of a draft of a pan-European constitution for the planned “European political community”. Friedrich is still considered a pioneer of European integration theories who see the EU as a “state in the making”.

After a visiting professorship at the University of Heidelberg, which he had already taken up in 1950, Friedrich received a professorship for political science at the Ruprecht-Karls-University in 1956. Between 1954 and 1966 he alternately taught semesters at the universities of Harvard and Heidelberg until his retirement in 1966. After his retirement he continued to teach at Harvard, at the University of Manchester and at Duke University as a visiting professor. Friedrich was President of the American Political Science Association in 1962/63 and of the International Political Science Association from 1967 to 1970 .

In his work, Carl Joachim Friedrich focused primarily on prophylactic prevention and the management of crises in politics and society. This thinking explains his theory of the modern constitutional state, and this intention is also the basis for his criticism of the totalitarian dictatorship. In addition to his controversial theory of totalitarianism , Friedrich developed new ideas, particularly in his research into constitutionalism and federalism . Friedrich understood politics in a community as a “process of community building”.

His best-known political science contributions were the publications "Constitutional Government and Democracy" (1937 ff.) And "Man and his Government" (1963) , which he later also translated into German . Friedrich's “Constitutional State” was viewed as a groundbreaking work “in which an attempt was made for the first time”, as his student Klaus von Beyme put it, “to replace the legal formalism of older literature and the 'country by country approach' with a comparative question ". Friedrich is therefore also seen as the "father" of comparative political science .

Friedrich's ideas of a “good democracy” also reject “ grassroots democracy ” as “totalitarian”. According to Hans J. Lietzmann, the theoretical assumptions - in particular his reference to Carl Schmitt's “constitutional state” - of Friedrich's theory of totalitarianism are considered potentially anti-democratic. According to Klaus von Beyme , Friedrich's main focus was "the creation and maintenance of resilient institutions". This can also justify his participation in the drafting of the state constitutions (see above).

Honors

• Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1944)
• Federal Cross of Merit (May 4, 1960)
• Large Federal Cross of Merit with Star (June 28, 1967)

Selected Works

• Politica Methodice Digesta of Johannes Althusius (Althaus) . With An Introduction By Carl Joachim Friedrich, Ph. D., Cambridge, Harvard University Press 1932.
• The Constitutional State of Modern Times , German translation by the author of Constitutional Government and Politics / Democracy (New York / London, 1937/1951), Berlin a. a. 1953.
• The age of the baroque . Culture and states of Europe in the 17th century (The Age of Baroque, 1610–1660, German translation of 'The rise of modern Europe', New York, 1952), from the Engl. trans. by F. Schöne. Stuttgart, 1954
• Totalitarian Dictatorships and Autocracy , with Zbigniew Brzeziński , Cambridge / Mass., 1956
• Totalitarian dictatorship , with the collaboration of Zbigniew Brzeziński, German translation (see above) Stuttgart 1957.
• Democracy as a form of rule and life . Strongly revised German translation of The New Belief in the Common Man (Brattleboro / Vermont, 1942), Heidelberg, 1959.
• The reason of state in the constitutional state , German translation of Constitutional Reason of State (1957), Freiburg, 1961.
• Political Science , Freiburg / Munich, 1961.
• On the theory and politics of the constitutional order . Selected essays. Heidelberg, 1963
• Prolegomena of politics . Political Experience and Its Theory. First part of the German translation of Man and his Government (New York, 1963), Berlin, 1967.
• Christian justice and constitutional state . Cologne / Opladen, 1967
• Trends of Federalism in Theory and Practice . New York / London, 1968.
• Political Dimensions of European Community Building , Opladen, 1968
• Politics as a process of community building . An empirical theory. Second part of the German translation of Man and his Government (New York, 1963), Cologne / Opladen, 1970
• Europe - a nation in the making , Bonn 1972.
• Johannes Althusius and his work in the context of the development of the theory of politics . Berlin, 1975

literature

• Klaus von Beyme (Ed.): Theory and Politics - Theory and Politics . Festschrift on the occasion of the 70th birthday of Carl J. Friedrich, The Hague 1971.
• Klaus von Beyme: A Founding Father of Comparative Politics: Carl Joachim Friedrich , pp. 7-14, in: H. Daalder (Ed.): Comparative European Politics. The Story of a Profession , London / Washington DC 1997.
• Hans J. Lietzmann: From the constitutional to the totalitarian dictatorship. Carl Joachim Friedrichs Totalitarismustheorie , in: Alfred Söllner et al. (Hrsg.): Totalitarismus. A history of ideas in the 20th century , Berlin 1997.
• Achim Siegel: Carl Joachim Friedrich's conception of the totalitarian dictatorship - a new interpretation , in: Ders. (Ed.): Theories of totalitarianism after the end of communism, pp. 273–307, Cologne / Weimar 1998.
• Hans J. Lietzmann: Political Science in the 'Age of Dictatorships'. The development of the totalitarianism theory Carl J. Friedrichs , Opladen 1999.
• Hans J. Lietzmann: Carl Joachim Friedrich (1901-1984) . Life - Work - Effect, pp. 179–191, in: Wilhelm Bleek / Hans J. Lietzmann (ed.): Classics of Political Science. Munich 2005.
• Steffen Kailitz: Carl Joachim Friedrich / Zbigniew Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy, Cambridge 1956 (and German translation Totalitäre Dictatur , Stuttgart, 1957), in: ders. (Ed.): Schlüsselwerke der Politikwissenschaft , pp. 129-133 (with further references on the theory of totalitarianism), Wiesbaden 2007.
• Arno Mohr / Dieter Nohlen (eds.): Political science in Heidelberg . 50 years of the Institute for Political Science. In it u. a .: Klaus von Beyme: Carl Joachim Friedrich. A founding father of comparative politics (slightly shortened version of the article published in: H. Daalder (Ed.) Comparative European Politics, see above, 1997), Heidelberg 2008.

Web links

• Literature by and about Carl Joachim Friedrich in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Bastian Bohn, The Constitutional Law of the Popularklage - At the same time an investigation of the case law of the Bavarian Constitutional Court from 1995 to 2011. Dissertation, ISBN 9783428136308 , page 58 ff.
2. ^ Members of the American Academy. Listed by election year, 1900-1949 ( PDF ). Retrieved October 8, 2015
3. ↑ ^{a b} Information from the Federal President's Office