Egbert Jahn

Egbert Kurt Jahn (born May 26, 1941 in Berlin ) is a German political scientist , contemporary historian and peace researcher and professor emeritus at the University of Mannheim .

Life

After graduating from high school in Wiesbaden, Jahn studied history, especially Eastern European, political science, geography and education in Marburg ad Lahn (among others with Peter Scheibert , Wolfgang Abendroth , Ernst-Otto Czempiel , Karl Christ , Walter Heinemeyer , Carl Schott , Kurt Scharlau) from 1961 to 1969 , Leonhard Froese ), temporarily also in Berlin and Bratislava. After the state examination in 1968, he did his doctorate in Eastern European history under Peter Scheibert in Marburg a. d. Lahn.

At the beginning of 1968 as a student in Marburg a. d. Lahn founded the University Association for Peace and Conflict Research (initially: University Association for Interdisciplinary Polemology) and was one of the first members of the Working Group for Peace and Conflict Research (AFK), which was also founded in 1968 . After a short time as a research assistant at Czempiel in Marburg from 1969 to 1970, he went to Frankfurt a. M. and in 1971 became the first research assistant at the Hessian Foundation for Peace and Conflict Research . In 1974 he became head of the research group “Socialist Countries” (until the end of 1990). In 1975 he accepted a professorship for “Socio-economic structures, institutions and foreign policy in socialist countries”, then for political science and political sociology at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main , and in 1993 a further professorship for political science and contemporary history at the University of Mannheim (until September 2005) in the successor of Hermann Weber . In 1992, while still in Frankfurt, he founded the Research Center for Conflict and Cooperation Structures in East Central Europe, Southeast Europe and Eurasia (FKKS), which he renamed in Mannheim as the Research Focus on Conflict and Cooperation Structures in Eastern Europe (FKKS). At the Mannheim Center for European Social Research (MZES), he initially headed a work area and finally until 2009 the research focus “New Democracies and Conflict Regulation”. From May 2004 to the end of 2009 Jahn gave regular lectures on "Political Issues in Contemporary History" in Mannheim for students of all fields of study and for senior citizens as a contribution to political education. Since October 2009 he has continued her at the Goethe University in Frankfurt. In 69 analyzes of political disputes from the headscarf and caricature dispute to the dispute over the nuclear weapons of North Korea and Iran, in which he presents the positions of the parties to the dispute, he examined the consequences of realizing the respective positions and developed his own proposals for the most peaceful and non-violent conflict resolution possible . These analyzes of “political issues” were or are accessible on the Internet and some of them have already been published as books.

In 1986/87 Jahn held a visiting professorship at the University of Copenhagen and helped set up the Center of Peace and Conflict Research. In 1988 he was visiting professor at the University of California at Irvine, and in 1993 at Vilnius University.

Research priorities

In the 1960s, Jahn dealt primarily with the question of nationality, nationalism and the idea of ​​the nation state. This work resulted in his dissertation on “The Germans in Slovakia in the years 1918–1929. A contribution to the problem of nationalities ”(1971). At PRIF, Jahn devoted himself in numerous essays to the foreign, armaments and détente policy of the USSR and the GDR and, sporadically, the other socialist countries, as well as German and European Ostpolitik and the structure of East-West relations. While he initially dealt with the socio-economic structures and interests in the communist-ruled countries, after a lengthy research stay in the Soviet Union in 1973, he assigned a decisive role to the ideological motivations of Soviet communist politics. Jahn saw an important difference between ideology as an inner intellectual drive and propaganda as an external justification of politics that often conceals the actual intentions for the purpose of public legitimation as well as cadre and mass mobilization. In East-West relations, Jahn saw the Cold War as ended in 1963 and, in spite of repeated new tensions and numerous local wars, often with the participation of the great powers, saw opportunities for a mutual relaxation-political approach with elements of convergence theory, i.e. a democratization of bureaucratic socialism or statism and a democratic-socialist transformation of capitalism through reforms in numerous steps. At the end of the 1970s, Jahn turned to the analysis of the political systems of the communist countries, which was reflected in the book "Bureaucratic Socialism - Chances of Democratization?" (1982). In the final chapter he predicted that large parts of the bureaucracy and the communist parties could be the carriers and triggers of democratization and that dissidents and critical intellectuals could at best be the prophets, not the social basis of democratization. He expected the oppressed nationalities and nations to “demand real international federation, cultural autonomy, and in extreme cases even national independence”. However, he did not anticipate a reintroduction of private ownership of the means of production.

In addition to his main scientific activity, Jahn dealt with questions of the peace movement and nonviolent politics for social change and for the defense of socio-political freedoms and rights (social defense or civilian defense). In the volume “Communism - and what then?” (1974), which apparently also found a certain dissemination in the GDR, he interpreted the New Left and international student movement around 1968 as the initiators of a third wave of the socialist movement after the social democratic and the communist, which, after the analysis of the relations of production by Karl Marx and others, is faced with the task of critically examining the conditions of destruction and the bureaucratization and militarization of the system of nation states that underpins them. He called the resulting pacifist socialism civilism.

Since a research stay in 1989 in the Soviet Union, Jahn has devoted himself entirely to the problem of nationalities, national movements and the formation of the nation state, i.e. nationalism as the legitimation of particular statehood. He was primarily concerned with the relationship between state nationalism and ethnonationalism and their effects on the opportunities for democratization and the reduction of violence. In his three-volume main work “Nationalism in late and post-communist Europe”, for which 51 colleagues made a contribution on specific topics and individual national territories, Jahn developed a differentiated terminology for national topics. Jahn understands nationalism as the will to own statehood, which, if it becomes massively effective, constitutes a large group as a nation. Jahn followed Ernest Gellner and constructivist theoretical approaches insofar as nationalisms create nations and not the other way around, nations create nationalisms. In contrast to premodern aristocratic and elite nationalism, modern mass nationalism such as democracy is a consequence of the idea of ​​popular sovereignty. According to this, nationalism has the function of separating a people who are or are to be constituted by the state from another people. This scientific concept of nationalism differs fundamentally from the widespread narrow, pejorative everyday concept, which only understands nationalism to be the right-wing, aggressive, intolerant, xenophobic and violent form of national consciousness. Jahn understands nation not only as a large group, like Karl Deutsch and the United Nations, that already has its own state (statehood), but also one that reestablishes its own statehood (e.g. in the 19th and at times in the 20th century the Poles) or want to create for the first time in history (e.g. the Slovenes or the Slavic Macedonians before 1991). Many nationalisms refer primarily to a single ethnic, but some explicitly to a polyethnic or multilingual reference group (Switzerland, Belgium, India). Jahn differentiates between several types of nationalism as a national striving for state independence, for federated partial statehood and for territorial or personal-corporate autonomy, as well as for supranational unity. Analogous to the staggered statehood in federal states, Jahn designed the term federal nation, which can consist of federated and autonomous nations. Accordingly, people can feel that they belong to several, tiered nations at the same time, which enables a way out of the conventional either-or-thinking about national identities and offers ways of political conflict regulation between nationalisms that are considered incompatible. Structural conflicts, to which Jahn counts not only those between capital and labor in market economies, between political parties in democracies but also those between nations about their position in the state system, cannot and should not be resolved in his opinion, but rather only regulated, in line with Ralf Dahrendorf . H. be transformed into civilized forms of competition with little violence.

From 2004 to 2019, Jahn used the findings from his research on nationalism and conflict regulation for his analyzes of 69 social and international disputes, which were evaluated in public lectures, in order to sound out the difficulties and chances of realization of non-violent and low-violence peace policy.

Memberships

In the Hessian Foundation for Peace and Conflict Research (PRIF) Jahn was on the board several times, from 1975 to 1976 and from 1981 to 1982 as an executive board member. From 1996 to 1999 he was a member of the board of the Mannheim Center for European Social Research. In the German Society for Peace and Conflict Research (DGFK) he was repeatedly a member of the council and also of the board of trustees (1979–1983). In the 1970s, he headed the “Socialist Countries” working group of the German Association for Political Science (DVPW). At the beginning of the 1970s he worked in the “Social Defense” working group of the Association of German Scientists (VDW). In the Working Group for Peace and Conflict Research (AFK) he was on the board of directors for many years, from 1977 to 1979 as chairman. In the 1980s he was the initiator of a peace research working group at the DGB Hessen. From 1986 to 1989 he was a member of the Council of the International Peace Research Association.

Public work

Jahn was never a member of a political party, but in the 1970s and 1980s he was a member of the Socialist Bureau , an independent democratic-socialist association that u. a. the monthly newspaper "links. Socialist Newspaper ”published. There he worked in the editorial department from 1971 to 1977 and also published numerous articles.

Jahn always strived to bring the knowledge he had acquired as a scientist into the public debate, often as a speaker in events and in working groups of the SPD and the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, later also of the party Die Grünen, but occasionally also in events of the CDU and the FDP, as well as various organizations of conscientious objectors and the peace movement. He also gave numerous lectures at the Evangelical Academies in Tutzing, Arnoldshain and Loccum, at the Bundeswehr Center for Internal Management in Koblenz and at the German Trade Union Federation. In the 1980s he was a lecturer at the Academy of Labor in Frankfurt a. M.

In November 1981, at the height of the dispute over a new runway for Frankfurt Airport, Jahn wrote a call for the establishment of a “Free People's University of Runway West”. Walduniversität Mörfelden-Walldorf ”, which received the support of 16 professors, several other personalities and over 3000 students within a few days and triggered fierce political debates. A Walduni association wanted to organize events on methods of nonviolent resistance, the economic arguments for and against the construction of the runway, alternative traffic and transport planning, the damage to the environment and living conditions (noise pollution), the relationship of the political will of the majority of the population in the local communities of a large company and parliamentary decisions of a country and other issues support non-violent resistance to runway construction. In addition, research on the future coordination of economic and ecological needs at the existing universities and research institutes should be stimulated. In this way, a counter-expertise should be activated, as was then mobilized in 2010 under completely different conditions in the alternative proposals for the station and rail transport project "Stuttgart 21". After a kick-off event in Mörfelden-Walldorf in March 1982 with 500 participants, however, only a few lectures with a small number of participants came about when the last judicial decisions on the admissibility of the runway construction had been made and the non-violent resistance ceased.

Because of a solidarity campaign initiated by numerous social scientists with Rudolf Bahro, Jahn was banned from entering the GDR in March 1985 when he and his students wanted to go on a long-prepared excursion to Leipzig. In the files of the GDR State Security Service, he was described as an influential divers and splitter of the peace movement because of his functions in the AFK, above all because, after his criticism of NATO retrofitting, he had also criticized the invasion of Soviet troops in Afghanistan, for example in the Catholic newspaper “Publik-Forum”.

Since May 2004, Jahn has been addressing a broader audience with his lectures on “Political Issues from a Contemporary Historical Perspective”, both among students from all disciplines and among the older generations (senior studies, third-age university).

Fonts (selection)

• The Germans in Slovakia in 1918-1929. A contribution to the nationality problem. R. Oldenbourg, Munich / Vienna 1971, ISBN 3-486-43321-0 .
• Communism - and then what? For the bureaucratisation and militarization of the system of nation states. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1974, ISBN 3-499-11653-7 .
• A criticism of the Soviet-Marxist doctrine of the “just war”. In: Reiner Steinweg (Red.): * The just war: Christianity, Islam, Marxism (Friedensanalysen 12). Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1980, ISBN 3-518-11017-9 , pp. 163-185.
• The Influence of Ideology on Soviet Foreign and Armaments Policy. In: Osteuropa 36. (5, 6, 7/1986), ISSN  0030-6428 , pp. 356-374, 447-461, 509-521.
• Bureaucratic Socialism: Opportunities for Democratization? Introduction to the political systems of communist countries. Fischer, Frankfurt 1982, ISBN 3-596-26633-5 .
• (in collaboration with Pierre Lemaitre and Ole Waever) European Security - Problems of Research on Non-Military Aspects. Copenhagen: Center of Peace and Conflict Research 1987, ISBN 87-89180-00-3
• Issledovanija problem mira v period i posle konflikta "Vostok-Zapad". Stat'i poslednich 20 let (Peace research in and after the East-West conflict. Essays from twenty years) LIT / Progress, Münster / Moscow 1997, ISBN 3-8258-3042-X .
• Political issues. VS-Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2008, ISBN 978-3-531-15833-4 .
• (Editor) Nationalism in late and post-communist Europe. 3 volumes Nomos, Baden-Baden 2008/2009, ISBN 978-3-8329-3873-4 , ISBN 978-3-8329-3921-2 , ISBN 978-3-8329-3922-9 . (Also published in English and Russian).
• Political Issues Volume 2. German domestic and foreign policy . VS-Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2012, ISBN 978-3-531-18617-7 .
  • German Domestic and Foreign Policy . Political Issues Under Debate, Vol. 2, Berlin-Heidelberg: Springer 2015, ISBN 978-3-662-47911-7
• Political Issues Volume 3. International Politics . VS-Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2012, ISBN 978-3-531-18618-4 .
  • International Politics . Political Issues Under Debate, Vol. 1, Berlin-Heidelberg: Springer 2015, ISBN 978-3-662-47684-0
• Peace and conflict . VS-Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2012, ISBN 978-3-531-16490-8 .
• Political disputes Volume 4. World political challenges , Wiesbaden: Verlag Springer VS 2015, ISBN 978-3-658-05033-7
• Political issues. Volume 5. War and compromise between nations and states , Wiesbaden: Verlag Springer VS 2019, ISBN 978-3-658-26285-3
  • War and Compromise Betweeen Nations and States . Political Issues Under Debate, Vol. 4, Cham 2020, ISBN 978-3-030-34130-5
• Spornye politiceskie voprosy s tocki zrenija sovremennoj istorii , Moscow: ROSSPEN 2014, ISBN 978-5-8243-1923-1
• Spornye politiceskie voprosy s tocki zrenija sovremennoj istorii , Tom.2, Vyzovy mirovoj politiki, Moscow: ROSSPEN 2016, ISBN 978-5-8243-2083-1

Web links

• Literature by and about Egbert Jahn in the catalog of the German National Library
• Curriculum vitae: Egbert Jahn, University of Mannheim
• Egbert Jahn, emeritus of the Mannheim Center for European Social Research at the University of Mannheim

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Bureaucratic Socialism: Chances of Democratization ?, Frankfurt a. M. 1982, p. 211.
2. ↑ Called up in: links No. 145, April 1982, p. 25.
3. ^ Opening speech by Egbert Jahn: Nonviolent Resistance in Parliamentary Democracies. The experiences of Martin Luther King and the American civil rights movement, in: Psychosozial 2/1982, pp. 124–137.
4. ^ Afghanistan. End of relaxation ?, in: Publik-Forum 9 (3/1981), pp. 3–4.