Eduard Baumgarten

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Eduard Baumgarten (born August 26, 1898 in Freiburg im Breisgau ; † August 15, 1982 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German philosopher and sociologist . He worked on American intellectual history and philosophy and wrote a book about his uncle Max Weber .

Life

Eduard Baumgarten's parents were Fritz Baumgarten (1856–1913) and Else Georgii (1859–1924), his father was an older cousin of Max Weber and his grandfather Hermann Baumgarten was one of Max Weber's teachers and paternal friends.

First World War, Weimar Republic

At the First World War Baumgarten participated as a volunteer. He then studied economics, history and philosophy in Freiburg, Munich and Heidelberg (among others with Edmund Husserl ). He received his doctorate in 1924 under Alfred Weber on internal forms of human communalization . As an exchange student in the USA, he heard a. a. with John Dewey . He was a fellow of the Abraham Lincoln Foundation, a German branch of the Rockefeller Foundation .

Baumgarten was visiting professor at Columbia University , New York (1924), in Chicago (1926) and in Madison, Wisconsin (1926/27). He returned to Germany in 1929 and initially held guest lectures at the Technical University of Stuttgart . Baumgarten planned to do his habilitation with Martin Heidegger in Freiburg . Heidegger had promised him an assistant position and the two men became friends in private at first. However, it came to a rift , apparently after Baumgarten gave a Kant lecture in the senior seminar. For Heidegger, Baumgarten's pragmatic view of philosophy was unacceptable. The Jewish philosopher Werner Gottfried Brock , who had already qualified as a professor in Göttingen, received Heidegger's assistant position in 1931 and Baumgarten left Freiburg to change to the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen .

time of the nationalsocialism

At the beginning of 1933 Baumgarten received a (unpaid) teaching position for American studies in Göttingen. In the following years he taught American philosophy and intellectual history ( Ralph Waldo Emerson , William James , John Dewey , Benjamin Franklin ), pragmatism and puritanism (seminar on Jonathan Edwards and Nathaniel Hawthorne ). Because of his successful courses, he was supposed to get a lecturer position with examination permission in 1933 and was ready to adapt politically. He applied for membership in the SA. Heidegger tried to prevent both SA membership and employment as a lecturer.

In a letter dated December 16, 1933 to the "first leader" of the Nazi lecturers at the University of Göttingen, Hermann Vogel denounced Heidegger Baumgarten as a little convinced National Socialist. The letter says: “Dr. Baumgarten comes from the liberal-democratic circle of intellectuals around M. Weber in terms of his family and his intellectual attitude. During his stay here he was anything but a National Socialist ... After Baumgarten had failed with me, he dealt very lively with the Jew Frankel, who had previously worked in Göttingen and is now released here . I suspect that Baumgarten took up residence in Göttingen in this way ... At the moment I consider his admission to the SA to be just as impossible as that of the lecturer ... In the field of philosophy, in any case, I consider him to be a blind man ”. Vogel, the recipient of this letter, himself a lecturer in agricultural veterinary medicine, judged the letter to be "hateful" and unusable and put it on file. Baumgarten was able to continue his career - with the help of the NSDAP, as Rüdiger Safranski writes.

Baumgarten completed his habilitation on April 20, 1936 and was appointed lecturer on June 10, 1937. He had already joined the NSLB on April 1, 1934 (No. 294.404), and in 1937 he became a member of the NSDDB . On May 1, 1937 he became a member of the NSDAP and in the same year block warden .

In November 1940 he was appointed full professor at the Albertus University in Königsberg , where he then acted as deputy director of the Philosophical Seminar. There he taught until 1945 and, together with Otto Koehler, ensured that Konrad Lorenz was appointed to the Königsberg chair for human psychology.

Post-war period, Federal Republic of Germany

After the end of the war , Baumgarten's text German Leadership Models: Officer, Scholar, Craftsman ( Vieweg , Braunschweig 1945) from the series "Writings of the Academy for Youth Leadership " was placed on the list of literature to be segregated in the Soviet occupation zone .

Thanks to letters of discharge from Karl Jaspers , Marianne Weber , Leopold von Wiese and Arnold Bergsträsser , Baumgarten remained in university service despite his National Socialist past and was initially visiting professor at the University of Göttingen in 1945 . Baumgarten had received a copy of Heidegger's 1933 letter from a sympathetic secretary. It was only because of these circumstances that this piece of evidence still exists today. During the hearings on the denazification of Baumgarten in 1946, the denunciation by Heidegger came to light.

In 1948 Baumgarten moved to Freiburg im Breisgau and in 1953 became honorary professor at the Technical University of Stuttgart . From 1957 until his retirement in 1963 he held the chair for sociology at the Mannheim Business School .

Fonts

  • Nationalism and social democracy . FP Lorenz, Freiburg im Breisgau and Leipzig 1919.
  • Inner forms of human communalization. Material-sociological investigations for the interpretation of a contemporary cultural movement (manuscript). Heidelberg dissertation 1924.
  • A report from America . In: H. Goverts (ed.): The student in foreign countries , Volume VII / VIII, 1929, pp. 201-217.
  • About the art of compromise. 1933 and ²1949 (Hirzel, Stuttgart 1949).
  • Sense of foreign customer . In: New year books for science and youth education , Volume 10, 1934, pp. 41–48. Baumgarten's introductory lecture.
  • The political subject of American studies at the University of Göttingen . In: Niedersächsische Hochschul-Zeitung , from June 12, 1934, SS 1934, pp. 7–8.
  • Community and conscience in Shakespeare's 'Coriolan' . In: Neuere Sprachen , Volume 43, 1935, pp. 363–384 and 413–425.
  • The spiritual foundations of the American community . Volume I: Benjamin Franklin. The teacher of the American Revolution . Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 1936; Volume II: The Pragmatism: RW Emerson, W. James, J.Dewey . Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 1938.
  • Kant's doctrine of the value of the person . In: Blätter für Deutsche Philosophie , Volume 15, 1941/42, pp. 69–93.
  • Man as a soldier . In: Blätter für Deutsche Philosophie , Volume 16, 1942, pp. 207–227.
  • Experience and thinking . In: Supplement to the Preussische Zeitung of February 13, 1942: 'Kant-Copernicus-Days of the University of Königsberg'.
  • Experience and truth . In: Research and Progress , October 1942.
  • Ethics of success and ethics of conviction . In: Blätter für Deutsche Philosophie , Volume 17, 1943, pp. 96–117.
  • German leadership models: officer, scholar, craftsman . Vieweg, Braunschweig [1945] ( Writings of the Academy for Youth Leadership , Volume 3). Lecture at the Braunschweig Academy for Youth Leadership, September 1943.
  • America customer . M. Diesterweg, 1952. 2nd edition.
  • Emerson's role model in Nietzsche's work and life . In: Yearbook for American Studies , Volume 1, Winter, Heidelberg 1956.
  • Max Weber. Work and person. Mohr, Tübingen 1964.
  • Conscience and power. Treatises and lectures 1933–1963 , selected and introduced by Michael Sukale . Hain, Meisenheim am Glan 1971 (= Mannheim Social Science Studies , Volume 2)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Heinrich Becker u. a .: The University of Göttingen under National Socialism . De Gruyter, Berlin 1998, p. 119 u. a.
  2. ↑ Cf. Cornelia Wegeler: "... we say from the international scholarly republic." Classical studies and National Socialism: the Göttingen Institute for Classical Studies 1921-1962 . Böhlau, Vienna 1996, p. 110 f.
  3. ↑ Quoted from Rüdiger Safranski: A master from Germany . Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt aM 1999, p. 307
  4. ↑ Cf. Rüdiger Safranski: A master from Germany . Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt aM 1999, p. 307
  5. ^ Frank-Rutger Hausmann : English and American Studies in the 'Third Reich' . Vittorio Klostermann, 2003, p. 441.
  6. ^ Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 32.
  7. ^ List of literature to be discarded. First addendum. Berlin 1947.
  8. ^ Ernst Klee: The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 32.
personal data
SURNAME Baumgarten, Eduard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sociologist
DATE OF BIRTH August 26, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Freiburg in Breisgau
DATE OF DEATH 15th August 1982
Place of death Frankfurt am Main