Caroline Sommerfeld-Lethen

Caroline Sommerfeld (2018)

Caroline Sommerfeld-Lethen (born Sommerfeld; * 1975 in Mölln ) is a German philosopher and publicist . Since 2015 she has been working in the environment of the New Right .

Life

Sommerfeld studied German literature and philosophy at the University of Rostock from 1994 and received a scholarship from the German National Academic Foundation . In 2005 she published her dissertation on Immanuel Kant under the title How moral to become? . She held occasional teaching positions at the Universities of Rostock and Vienna, in 1998 she was an assistant at the Institute of Philosophy at the University of Rostock and acquired an ECHA certificate Specialist in Gifted Education (pedagogy for gifted children in elementary and secondary school).

Her two sons attended the Waldorf School Vienna West until the end of the 2018 school year , from which they were expelled at short notice due to their mother's "dangerous political views". In February 2017, Sommerfeld-Lethen herself had been dismissed as a school cook at the Waldorf School in Vienna West because she wrote on "right-wing extremist websites". In an official statement from the school from September 2018, it was said that she was not employed ("pure parenting work") and had expressed her wish, both verbally and in writing, to hand over this work. She had previously sent relevant texts via the mailing list, which parents had protested against.

Inspired by Renaud Camus ' revolt against the great exchange, Sommerfeld has been publishing Fauxelle on her blog since 2015 . Look under the delusion context. Since August 2016 she has been writing for the right-wing intellectual secession , a magazine of the Institute for State Policy in Schnellroda by Götz Kubitschek . Comments from Sommerfeld-Lethen appear regularly on the FPÖ- related platform unzensuriert.at .

Sommerfeld is married to the German scholar and cultural scientist Helmut Lethen (* 1939), a (former) exponent of the cultural left, with whom she has three children. In the Secession and her blog, she published several “Dialogues with H.” on the new right-wing disputes with the 1968 generation. Helmut Lethen answers her in his monograph Die Staatsräte, Elite im Third Reich: Gründgens, Furtwängler, Sauerbruch, Schmitt , which he describes as an “indirect discussion of the new right”. Lethen sees parallels with the “idea of ​​the national community” in the “original thinking of the new right”. It must first artificially create national identity through the “rituals of the mechanisms of exclusion” in order to be able to refer to it.

In 2017, together with Martin Lichtmesz , one of the Viennese heads of the new right wing and ideologue of the identitarian, Sommerfeld published a book entitled Living with Leftists. The book was conceived as a counterpart to Talking to Rights by Per Leo , Maximilian Steinbeis and Daniel-Pascal Zorn, was published by Götz Kubitschek's publishing house Antaios and was presented at the Frankfurt Book Fair amid turmoil, which triggered a discussion about how to deal with the New Right.

reception

Michael Pawlik described Sommerfeld's dissertation on Kant's moral ethics in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in 2005 as impressive and convincing.

The literary critic Ijoma Mangold wrote in Die Zeit that the book Living with Leftists had many blind spots, but it also had a keen eye for the blind spots of the left-liberal public. However, the fact that Sommerfeld and Lichtmesz attach the label “left” to everyone who rejects and opposes their positions is the point at which they would make it most decidedly too easy for themselves. Sometimes you have to laugh when you read Living with Leftists . The Homeric joke of Talking with Right, however, then jumps further and higher and also differs in terms of intellectual honesty, because while Living with Left uses its caustic joke exclusively with a view to the non-right-wing opponent, Talking with Right would be the rhetorical and medial rituals of rights and non-rights alike under the microscope. The recurring talk of “ guilt cult ” and “national masochism ” is the greatest blind spot in the thinking of the right. They would not see that the Germans dealt with their historical guilt in a sovereign, reflective and therefore more self-confident manner. Dealing with it would not be masochism, but historical awareness.

The Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote about Sommerfeld's change from positions of the 1968 movement to new right ideologies that they had a much-praised philosophical dissertation on Immanuel Kant under the title How moral to be? wrote and used to be “a welcome guest at humanities conferences”. Now she is marching “with the torchlight procession of the Viennese identities to commemorate the battle against the Turks of 1683 ”. Sommerfeld stated that every critic of this development must be an “individual on drug that destroys communities” and thus “antisocial in the literal sense”.

Positions

In a conversation with Hasnain Kazim , she said no when asked whether non-white Germans could also be. It is true that for them this should not be assessed solely from the point of view of “ race ”, “but it definitely has an elementary ethnic component. Citizenship alone is not enough. ”What is“ German ”is“ obvious ”and does not require a complex definition. It is enough to drive to a typical German small town and to register "how the people there think, how they speak, how they look". But it is not "completely blanket against strangers, that's nonsense".

In a conversation with her husband recorded in the “ Secession ” in 2017 , she demanded that Holocaust research should “be allowed to be free research”. The historian Volker Weiß noted that historical research is free in this country, only denial of the Holocaust is punishable . He criticized that no one asked Sommerfeld "in the numerous interviews" what exactly she meant by that.

Web links

• Author page secession

Publications

• (Ed.): Art of living and morality. Opposites and converging goals. With an introduction by Helmut Lethen. BWV, Berlin 2004, ISBN 978-3-8305-0577-8 .
• How to get moral Kant's moralistic ethics. Alber, Freiburg / Munich 2005, ISBN 978-3-495-48128-8 .
  • The more civilized, the more acting , review by Michael Pawlik in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , June 27, 2005, p. 38.
• with Martin Lichtmesz : Living with leftists. Verlag Antaios , Schnellroda 2017, ISBN 978-3-944422-96-1 .
• We educate. Ten principles. Verlag Antaios, Schnellroda 2019, ISBN 978-3-944422-78-7 .
• with Ellen Kositza : reading aloud. Verlag Antaios, Schnellroda 2019, ISBN 978-3-944422-76-3 .
• Self-rescue. (= Kaplaken. 69) Verlag Antaios, Schnellroda 2020, ISBN 978-3-944422-69-5 .

Footnotes

1. ^ Verlag Karl Alber: Author information: Caroline Sommerfeld-Lethen . Retrieved October 24, 2017.
2. ^ CV Caroline Sommerfeld. Retrieved May 5, 2018 . 
3. ^ Specialist in Gifted Education | KARG specialist portal gifted. Retrieved October 24, 2017 . 
4. ^ Caroline Sommerfeld-Lethen: Gifted and Waldorf School . In: Austrian Center for the Promotion and Research of Talented Students (Ed.): News & Science . No. 24 , 2010, p. 29–35 ( oezbf.at [PDF]). Gifted and Waldorf Schools ( Memento from October 23, 2017 in the Internet Archive )
5. ^ Christian Geyer: Waldorf School in Vienna: The wrong mother . ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed July 29, 2019]).
6. ↑ Volker Weiß: Lethen and Sommerfeld: The great staging . ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed February 3, 2019]).
7. ^ Claudius Weise: Identitarian Anthroposophy. What is unfortunately going on in the anthroposophical movement. In: The Three. Journal for Anthroposophy in Science, Art and Social Life 10 (October 2017), pp. 55–59. October 1, 2017, accessed February 10, 2018 . 
8. ↑ Identitarians cause a stir at Waldorf School. Retrieved May 6, 2018 . 
9. ↑ ^{a b} Volker Weiß: Lethen and Sommerfeld: The great staging. m.faz.net, February 3, 2019
10. ↑ About fauxelle . In: fauxelle . July 7, 2016 ( wordpress.com [accessed February 5, 2018]).
11. ↑ The Left as a Globalist Shapeshifter - The Example of France . In: Unzensuriert.at . May 10, 2017 ( unzensuriert.at [accessed February 5, 2018]).
12. ↑ Secession on the Net - A diary for the true, good and beautiful rights. Retrieved on February 5, 2018 (German). 
13. ^ Christian Geyer: Waldorf School in Vienna: The wrong mother . In: FAZ.NET . September 7, 2018, ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed September 11, 2018]).
14. ↑ He preaches the exchange, she marches on torchlight procession . In: sueddeutsche.de . 2017, ISSN  0174-4917 ( sueddeutsche.de [accessed April 17, 2018]).
15. ^ Ijoma Mangold: New rights: visiting other planets . In: The time . October 18, 2017, ISSN  0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed April 17, 2018]).
16. ↑ Helmut Lethen: Die Staatsräte, Elite in the Third Reich: Gründgens, Furtwängler, Sauerbruch, Schmitt. 1st edition. Rowohlt Verlag, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-87134-797-9 , pp. Cape. V .
17. ↑ Helmut Lethen on his book "Die Staatsräte" - Fictional Conversations with Gründgens . In: Deutschlandfunk Kultur . ( deutschlandfunkkultur.de [accessed on February 25, 2018]).
18. ↑ Konstantin Sakkos: Radio Review on Helmut Lethen, Die Staatsräte, Elite in the Third Reich: Gründgens, Furtwängler, Sauerbruch, Schmitt, Rowohlt 2018. In: https://www.swr.de/swr2/programm/sendung/lesenswert/ swr2-reading-worthy-criticism-helmuth-lethen-die-state councils / - / id = 659892 / did = 20941278 / nid = 659892 / 8zfu9s / index.html . SWR 2 Worth Reading Review, February 6, 2018, accessed on February 25, 2018 . 
19. ^ ^{A b} Richard Kämmerlings : Book fair tumult: "The plan of the right has worked perfectly" . In: The world . 17th October 2017.
20. ↑ Alex Rühle : Book fair conclusion: the right-wing stylized themselves to be victims after the book fair scandal . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . 15th October 2017.
21. ↑ Dirk Knipphals: Plea for reason with rights: Goebbels comparisons do not win . In: the daily newspaper . 16th October 2017.
22. ^ Lothar Müller : Frankfurt Book Fair: Books, Fists, Illusions . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . 16th October 2017.
23. ↑ Gerrit Bartels: Frankfurt: How the Book Fair deals with right-wing publishers . In: Der Tagesspiegel . October 12, 2017.
24. ↑ Thorsten Jantschek and Matthias Dell: Talking with the Right - Pros and Cons: Arguing as an end in itself? In: Deutschlandfunk Kultur . October 27, 2017.
25. ↑ Caroline Sommerfeld-Lethen: How to become moral ?. Kant's moralistic ethics . ( perlentaucher.de [accessed on April 17, 2018]).
26. ↑ New Right: The Nimbus of Nonconformism . In: The time . October 18, 2017, ISSN  0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed April 17, 2018]).
27. ↑ Johan Schloemann: He preaches the exchange, she marches on torchlight procession . In: sueddeutsche.de . 2017, ISSN  0174-4917 ( sueddeutsche.de [accessed April 17, 2018]).
28. ^ Hasnain Kazim: Identitarian activist Caroline Sommerfeld: Turned right side out . In: Spiegel Online . April 10, 2018 ( spiegel.de [accessed April 10, 2018]).