Dieter Claessens

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Dieter Claessens (born August 2, 1921 in Berlin , † March 30, 1997 ibid) was a German sociologist and anthropologist .

Life

After graduating from high school, Claessens began studying theater studies in Berlin. He was used at the front in World War II and was a Soviet prisoner of war until 1949 . After that he settled in Berlin Pestalozzi-Froebel-House for Fürsoger train, but neither theory nor practical corresponded to his idea of a future professional activity. In 1951 he resumed studying theater studies, but dropped out again after one semester. From 1952 he studied sociology , psychology and ethnology at the Free University of Berlin . After receiving his doctorate in 1957, he worked there as an assistant until his habilitation in 1960. In 1962 he was appointed as the second professor of sociology (alongside Helmut Schelsky ) at the University of Münster , where he also worked as deputy head of the social research center at the University of Münster in Dortmund. In 1966 he returned to the Free University of Berlin, where he taught and researched until his retirement . At the same time, he was rector of the Berlin University of Applied Sciences for Social Work and Social Education (FHSS) from 1974 to 1978 .

Claessens considers “ status incongruence ” to be one of the key words in sociology. The incongruity of the status of his own family of origin predisposed him, according to his information, to the sociologist: His father came from a Rhineland family that had bought a 3000-acre estate in East Prussia ; his mother came from a patrician family , the Fehlings . He himself grew up in a stigmatized environment, on Berlin's Scharnhorststrasse .

Work and effect

Claessens' observer and discoverer temperament determined his publications. These became important primarily in their combination of anthropological , biosociological and sociological approaches to research into the onto- and phylogeny of humans. Although impressed by Norbert Elias ' process analyzes (which he was one of the first to quote in Germany), he was a thoroughly independent and innovative researcher, author and editor. In his habilitation thesis Family and Value System he already presented an influential theory (in discussion with Scheler , Plessner and Gehlen ) about the development of humans from newborns to toddlers . B. - Humans (towards animals) do not simply lose their instincts , as Gehlen postulates, but retain "instinct-building principles" to be found and develop them in a differentiated way (anthropologically ascertainable). Claessens' study The Concrete and the Abstract accordingly dealt with the incarnation on this side of the animal-human transition field. His study Capitalism as Culture stood out from a flood of post- 1968 polemics . His clear and blunt style and dry humor benefited his readers, especially those of his introductory texts and his special studies (for example on rationality , driving in traffic , on the family , the elite or political violence ). In academic teaching, his sense of justice and his gift for university education shaped many. A number of them became respected scientists without him having founded a school. His overall strong, albeit silent, effect on many researches (including those of neighboring disciplines) led to the statement that he was the most important of the German sociologists who appeared after the Second World War.

His essays in the anthology Anxiety, Fear and Societal Pressure ... (1966) are suitable as an introduction to Dieter Claessens' approach to action and systems sociology based on cultural anthropology . Not only because a broad intellectual interest profile and thematic research field becomes visible here, but also because both in the lead article (1966, pp. 88–101) on the production of conformist behavior in today's “pluralistic” societies of the western world and in the contribution to Driving in the flow of traffic and especially in the Autoreverat zur Habilitation (1962) - The family in modern society (1966, pp. 130-149) - it becomes clear that society as a cultural context and system of action is made by its members behavioral requirements that are often subjectively perceived as expected behavior expect and demand to maintain the system.

Selection of works

  • Status as a sociological development term , Dortmund: Ruhfus 1965 (his dissertation), ²1995
  • Family and value system. A study on the second socio-cultural birth of humans , [1962], 4th ed. 1978
  • Social Studies of the Federal Republic of Germany , 1965 (with Arno Klönne and Armin Tschoepe ; numerous editions)
  • Anxiety, fear and social pressure and other articles , Dortmund: Ruhfus 1966
  • Instinct, psyche, validity. Determinants of human behavior , [first edition 1966], Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen ²1970
  • Role and Power , [1968], ³1974
  • Nova Natura. Anthropological Foundations of Modern Thought , 1970
  • Capitalism as culture. Development and foundations of civil society , 1973 (with Karin Claessens)
  • Youth Lexicon , 1976 (with Karin Claessens / Biruta Schaller)
  • Groups and group associations. Systematic introduction to the consequences of socialization , 1977
  • The concrete and the abstract , Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, ​​[1980], ²1993
  • Group processes. Analysis of Terrorism , 1982 (with Wanda v. Baeyer-Katte)
  • Capitalism and democratic culture , Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1992
  • Joy in sociological thinking , Berlin: Duncker & Humblot 1993
  • Social history for those interested in sociology , Stuttgart: Teubner 1995
  • Concrete sociology. Comprehensible introduction to sociological thinking , 1997 (with Daniel Tyradellis )

About Dieter Claessens

  • Biruta Schaller / Hermann Pfütze / Reinhart Wolff (eds.): Look under every stone. Strange things from culture and society. Dieter Claessens on his 60th birthday. Frankfurt am Main / Basel 1981
  • Lars Clausen : Naturally in Society [Essay], in: Soziologische Revue , 5 (1982), pp. 399-407
  • Henning Ottmann : Review of the book Instinkt, Psyche, Geltung , in: Philosophisches Jahrbuch 86 (1979) 156–162.

Web links

Single receipts

  1. ↑ Information on the biography is based on Dieter Claessens, Von der Statusinongruenz zur Sociologie . In: Christian Fleck , (Ed.): Ways to Sociology after 1945. Autobiographical Notes . Leske + Budrich Opladen 1996. ISBN 3-8100-1660-8 , pp. 39-59.
  2. ↑ M. Rainer Lepsius : The sociology after the Second World War. 1945 to 1967. In Cologne journal for sociology and social psychology , German sociology since 1945 , special issue 21/1979, pp. 25–70, here p. 67.
  3. ^ Dieter Claessens, From the status incongruence to sociology . In: Christian Fleck, (Ed.): Ways to Sociology after 1945. Autobiographical Notes . Leske + Budrich, Opladen 1996, pp. 39–59, here p. 42 ff.
  4. ↑ So the speech by Lars Clausen 1995, Sociology Congress Halle.
personal data
SURNAME Claessens, Dieter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sociologist and anthropologist
DATE OF BIRTH August 2, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH March 30, 1997
Place of death Berlin