Erwin Scheuch

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Erwin Kurt Scheuch (born June 9, 1928 in Cologne ; † October 12, 2003 there ) was a German sociologist .

Life and education

Erwin K. Scheuch, as he later called himself in American fashion, grew up in poor circumstances, his father Otto had become unemployed as an accountant, the family did not adapt to the prevailing Nazi society and thus remained poor. Nevertheless, the boy, who was involved in the family's struggle for survival - including begging for food - managed to attend the Cologne-Nippes high school . In 1944 he was drafted as an air force helper and served with a heavy 8.8 anti-aircraft unit. After being wounded, he returned to Cologne early. After graduating from high school in 1948, he worked as a radio journalist for the Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk under Werner Höfer , for further training he was supposed to go to England for six months, but after his admission to study economics, social science at the University of Cologne , he embarked on a scientific career journalistic before. There he was proposed and selected by his teacher Leopold von Wiese for a USA scholarship as part of the Fulbright program , which he completed after a year at the University of Connecticut in 1951 with a Bachelor of Arts with distinction , which he was offered as a graduate Assistant in a Master’s program at Clark University , which he broke off after receiving a draft notice on the occasion of the Korean War and so returned to Cologne. Here he completed his diploma in 1953 and obtained his doctorate as an assistant at the seminar for sociology (until 1959) (and assistant at the then newly founded UNESCO Institute for Social Research) in 1956 under René König with a thesis on empirical social research . 1959/60 followed an 18-month post-doctoral stay at several American universities, financed by the Rockefeller Foundation . In 1961 he completed his habilitation with a thesis on scaling methods as an instrument of social research . From 1962 to 1964, as the successor to the late Samuel Stouffer, he represented the subject of social psychology at Harvard University , where he was appointed to the second chair of sociology at the University of Cologne, which he held until his retirement in 1993.

Scheuch was married twice: in 1951 in Bridgeport (Connecticut) with the American Joyce-Ann Dickinson, who then campaigned for relations with the USA in various ways in Cologne, for example for the America House and as a founding member of the exchange organization Open, which was originally based on the USA Door International , and with the journalist and sociologist Ute Pulm . He has two sons from his first marriage.

science

Originally rather left-wing liberal, Scheuch was - after sharp verbal attacks from the student movement of the 1960s - towards it critical to hostile. Following his academic teacher René König , he positioned Cologne sociology as an antipole to Jürgen Habermas and Frankfurt's critical theory that emphasized empiricism and freedom from judgment , but also worked as a contentious essayist and publicist.

Against this background he was a founding member of the Bonn Information Center for Social Sciences in 1969. In 1968 he was one of the founders of the Cologne School of Journalism . In 1970 he was chairman of the German Society for Sociology . Scheuch was chairman of the Institut International de Sociologie until recently .

His last comprehensive sociological analysis was the USA as a hegemon and is - especially for a friend of the United States - very critical. Scheuch also shows himself to be a connoisseur of the USA and its sociological literature in his main work, Sozialer Wandel , published in 2003 .

Daily politics

The liberal young university professor was deeply affected by the fact that in the course of the student revolt the students turned sharply against him and especially accused him of his military-sociological studies. By his own admission, Scheuch was a committed sympathizer of the SPD until Willy Brandt's second term in office. Then this "left him". In the future he turned sharp-tongued against many activities of the student movement and in 1970 he co-founded the conservative Bund Freiheit der Wissenschaft . He was also part of the CDU for 25 years.

In 1996/1997 Scheuch and his second wife Ute were among the co-founders of the right-wing conservative “anti-left cartel” “ Association of the Voice of the Majority ”.

Scheuch gained notoriety beyond specialist circles through the topics that had preoccupied him since the late 1980s: party feeling , patronage of offices and political corruption ; He examined its impact on the party system in particular on the “kölsche Klüngel” . Scheuch, together with his wife, published numerous books on this, including the popular titles: “ Cliques , Klüngel und Careers ” and “Bureaucrats in executive floors”. In particular, the first-named title was classified by Scheuch's critics as a pamphlet of the right wing of the Cologne CDU against the left wing. Scheuch was a member of the CDU , but increasingly offended his party with his investigations and left the CDU in 1997. The reason for him was the way the Union dealt with the business flight affair of Rita Süssmuth .

Erwin Scheuch was the author of Junge Freiheit and one of the most popular supporters of the weekly magazine against the surveillance of the newspaper by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution .

Scheuch also advocated the use of computers in children's rooms and wanted to show with an investigation that social skills did not atrophy, as his critics claimed. However, he also pointed out that only children could possibly use the (play) computer as a substitute for a playmate.

Prices

The Foundation for Conservative Education and Research (FKBF) founded by Caspar von Schrenck-Notzing awarded Erwin K. Scheuch the Baltasar Gracián Culture Prize on November 3, 2001 . The laudation was given by the Zurich philosopher Hermann Lübbe .

Fonts

  • A new world order? The USA as a hegemon . In: Conservative today . Yearbook of the Herbert-Gruhl-Gesellschaft eV 5th yearbook, Blaue Eule, Essen 2005, ( excerpts online ).
  • Infrastructures for social science research , Bonn 2004.
  • with Ute Scheuch: Manager im megalomania , Reinbek near Hamburg 2003.
  • Social change . 2 volumes, Wiesbaden 2003.
  • German bankruptcies , Berlin 2001.
  • with Ute Scheuch: The donation crisis - parties out of control , Reinbek near Hamburg 2000.
  • An evaluation of the market share model from a communication science perspective , Cologne 1999.
  • with Ute Scheuch: Bureaucrats in the executive suite , Reinbek near Hamburg 1995.
  • Ways out of disaffection with politics , Cologne 1993.
  • with Ute Scheuch: Cliques, Klüngel and Careers: On the Decay of Political Parties , Reinbek near Hamburg 1992.
  • USA - an ailing giant? , Freiburg im Breisgau 1992.
  • Does socialism have to fail? , Asendorf 1991.
  • How German are the Germans? , Bergisch Gladbach 1991.
  • Census, census protest and civic behavior , Stuttgart 1989.
  • Working time versus free time? , Cologne 1988.
  • China and India , Zurich 1987.
  • China's return to reality , Düsseldorf 1986.
  • Between prosperity and bankruptcy , Cologne 1984.
  • From Comptoir to modern office , Cologne 1977.
  • Will the Federal Republic of Germany become ungovernable? , Cologne, 1976.
  • Cultural intelligence as a power factor? , Zurich 1974.
  • Basic concepts of sociology: 1. Foundation and elementary phenomena , Stuttgart 1972.
  • Mass media and religion in the leisure society , Essen-Werden 1971.
  • Hashish and LSD as fashion drugs , Osnabrück 1970.
  • The application of selection procedures in representative surveys , Cologne 1956.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Vita data according to DNB
  2. Personal information after the interview on Alpha-Forum-BR from June 18, 1999 PDF BR-Online (accessed June 2011)
  3. ^ Bridgport Telegram August 10, 1951
  4. Manfred Funke: " Against the enemies of freedom. Files, articles and correspondence of the Cologne sociologist Erwin K. Scheuch ". Review in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , June 17, 2009