Franz Oppenheimer

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Postage stamp from the Deutsche Bundespost (1964) from the series Important Germans . Oppenheimer was the only sociologist to appear on a German postage stamp , until the Max Weber postage stamp from 2014, enforced as Federal Chancellor by his academic student Ludwig Erhard .
Ephraim Moses Lilien : Ex Libris Dr. Franz Oppenheimer (1908)

Franz Oppenheimer (born March 30, 1864 in Berlin ; died September 30, 1943 in Los Angeles ) was a German doctor , sociologist , economist who also campaigned for Zionism .

Life

Franz Oppenheimer was born as the third child of the teacher Antonie Oppenheimer, b. Davidson, and the rabbi of the Jewish reform community in Berlin , Julius Oppenheimer (d. 1909). He was a brother of the biochemist Carl Oppenheimer and the writer Paula Dehmel .

After studying medicine at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg and the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin , he received his doctorate in medicine under Paul Ehrlich in 1885 . During his studies he became a member of the "Alemannia Freiburg" fraternity and the "Hevellia Berlin" fraternity. He then worked as a general practitioner in a poor district of Berlin until 1895. In addition, he dealt with socio-political issues from 1890 and became increasingly active as a journalist. As editor-in-chief of Welt am Montag he worked in the same building as Friedrich Naumann , whom he met there and who published Die Hilfe there . In 1896 Oppenheimer published his first scientific work, Die Siedlungsgenossenschaft . It contains Oppenheimer's law of transformation , which is known to this day . In 1902 he belonged to the " New Community " around Heinrich Hart in Berlin-Friedrichshagen and to the committee of the " German Garden City Society " to u. a. Wilhelm Boelsche .

On January 3, 1909, he was one of the co-founders of the German Society for Sociology in Berlin . In the same year his doctorate he in Kiel with a thesis on David Ricardo to Dr. phil. From 1909 to 1917 Oppenheimer was a private lecturer in Berlin, then adjunct professor for two years . In 1919 he accepted an offer from Frankfurt merchants, including Karl Kotzenberg , chair of sociology and theoretical economics at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University . He held this first sociology professorship in Germany until 1929. His successor was Karl Mannheim .

From 1934 to 1935 Oppenheimer taught in Palestine . In 1936 he was made an honorary member of the American Sociological Association . In January 1939, Oppenheimer and his daughter managed to emigrate to Japan , where he had a teaching post at Keiō University in Tokyo , which he was unable to exercise because the cultural agreement between Nazi Germany and Japan prohibited the employment of anyone who did National Socialists displeased. Although he held a non-quota visa, his residence permit in Japan was withdrawn. He had to leave and went to Shanghai until 1940 . From there , Oppenheimer emigrated to the USA and settled in Los Angeles, where his younger sister Elise Steindorff, Georg Steindorff's wife, already lived. In 1941 Oppenheimer was a founding member of the American Journal of Economics and Sociology . He wrote several books in English that have not yet been published.

Oppenheimer's first marriage was from 1890 to 1913 with Amalie Martha Oppenheim and his second marriage from 1916 to Mathilda Hanna Horn, nee. Holl, married. Two sons, Ludwig (Yehuda) and Heinz Reinhard (Hillel) , came from the first marriage. The daughter Renata, the only child from a second marriage, married the actor Ernest Lenart .

Franz Oppenheimer died on September 30, 1943 in Los Angeles. His urn was transferred to a grave of honor in Frankfurt's southern cemetery on May 21, 2007 .

Scientific work

At Oppenheimer, trained in the methods of scientific research, one finds numerous attempts to work out similarly strict legal statements in the social and economic sciences. On more than 1200 pages, Volume IV of the System of Sociology offers a sociologically influenced historical treatise of the social and economic history of Europe from the migration to the present, which is not limited to the presentation of known facts usual for historians , but an explanation of the connections the basis of always the same social laws. His central sociological theses about the state received worldwide attention and have been translated into at least ten languages. On the way to Albert Jay Nock's Our enemy, the state (1935), Oppenheimer's theses demonstrably influenced at least radical- liberal and anarchist thinkers, although Oppenheimer himself, as a liberal socialist , drew different conclusions.

According to Oppenheimer, good theories and theorists can be recognized by their forecasts. Correctly recognized social laws enable correct predictions of future developments. Correspondingly, in his utopian novel Sprung over a century (1932) , Oppenheimer ventured further than any other social scientist of his time. As early as 1932 he saw the coming of atomic weapons, the destructive power of which would be so enormous that the peoples would no longer dare war against one another. When others thought the hereditary enemy France was their neighbor, he described a united, borderless Europe for the year 2032 with predominantly manageable regional administrations. While the world was going through its worst economic crisis, he foresaw a social economy that would no longer experience crises and in which, above all, free, independent, co-operative people would organize their business. Three years before the first television station even went on air in Germany , he predicted that in 2032 there would be a videophone in every household and that unimaginable numbers of silent (electric) vehicles would glide along well-developed roads in the year 2032.

State theory

According to Oppenheimer, there are three state-theoretical sources:

  • philosophy deals with the state as it should be,
  • the jurist deals with the external shape of the state and
  • the sociology with the content , the life of the state society .

The sociological state idea developed further by Oppenheimer goes back to Gerrard Winstanley (1609–1676) and Henri de Saint-Simon (1760–1825). According to this, historical research shows that every state “in its very origin and in its essence at its first stages of existence is almost entirely a social institution that was imposed by a victorious group of people on a defeated group of people with the sole purpose of dominating the first to regulate the last and to secure it against internal uprisings and external attacks. And the rulership had no other end purpose than the economic exploitation of the vanquished by the victors. No primitive 'state' in world history came into being in any other way ... ”.

“Every state of the past and history to which this name is undisputed, especially every state that has become world-historical in its development to higher levels of power, size and wealth, was or is a class state , that is, a hierarchy of Superordinate and subordinate strata or classes with different rights and different incomes. "

“The irreconcilable dichotomy of the theories about the state is explained by the fact that none of them arose from a sociological point of view . The state is an object of universal history and its essence can only be recognized through a broad, universal historical consideration. So far, apart from the sociological theory, no state theory has taken this path (...). They all emerged as class theories . " (Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 2, p. 312)

"One can understand the state as an economic collective person of the ruling class who has procured the labor of the subjects as a" thing of value "." (Oppenheimer, Das Kapital, p. 84)

“The 'original norm' of this constitution is: You should steer us free of charge; for this purpose you have to obey when we give orders, otherwise you will get the sanction we like. " (Oppenheimer, System der Soziologie, Vol. II, p. 308)

Democracy theory

The cultural heritage of mankind from the millennia is the domination of the masses by a few (oligocracy) or individuals (monocracy). In contrast, democracy was originally neither a worldview, theory or ideal, but a reaction to the oligocracy with which it is still at war today. The term democracy expresses the right to co-rule by the people (demos), but is theoretically fuzzy, since a swelling of co-government on a broad basis logically pushes back the rule (kracy) exercised by the minorities.

But what should the word rule of the people mean? “Rule was never anything other than the legal form of economic exploitation.” “Since one cannot use 'rule over oneself' to exploit oneself, (...) this proves that if democracy is fully realized, the Democracy ceases to be cracy, and - acracy becomes. ”According to Oppenheimer, an acracy is“ the ideal of a society redeemed from all economic exploitation ”. The political abolition of class society presupposes its economic overcoming. All the weaknesses of democracy grow out of the oligocratic remnants of pre-democratic times.

sociology

According to Oppenheimer's theory of science, it is the task of sociology to research the laws of motion in society as an object of knowledge in the same way that natural scientists research the relationships in nature. All phenomena have a (background) reason that needs to be recognized. Like his closest friend Leonard Nelson , Oppenheimer practiced the Socratic conversation as a method of gaining knowledge in his seminar and in his circle of friends . Why do we know what we think we know and how certain is this knowledge?

You will quickly find that much of what you think you know did not come about through your own perception, but rather through inherited tradition. The sociologist knows that the views expressed are often closely linked to the interests pursued by the social reference group . These reference groups, in turn, have the power towards their members to prevent any expression of thought that is contrary to the interests of the group. But even lies that are considered useful are often spread without moral concerns, if the serious existential interest of a group so dictates. This is how norms of thought and thought blockages arise in each seeker himself and in the society to be examined , which surrounds the seeker as a social medium. If, as a seeker , one were to follow the social imperatives of society exclusively , there would be nothing more to be recognized and the action would consist of a pure description and justification of what is as it is. Accordingly, a methodological break with the norms is required so that the socially unthinkable becomes conceivable as an idea and can then be empirically tested for its truthfulness .

Following Oppenheimer, a person must have learned to doubt and to ask where the norm forbids it if he wants to take up the profession of sociologist and gain relevant knowledge of the society around him. Accordingly, Oppenheimer practiced a critical sociology of knowledge in the training of his students in Berlin and from 1919 as a full professor at the University of Frankfurt am Main . Unfortunately, his successor in the office, Karl Mannheim , who later achieved fame as the founder of the sociology of knowledge, always avoided pointing out that the mentality he represented at the chair he took over had a tradition and was positively expected by the students after Oppenheimer. "Once you have learned to doubt and ask where the norms forbid it, you can never stop again." (Oppenheimer: System der Soziologie. Volume I, p. 539.)

Society and its laws of movement

Oppenheimer defined sociology as the doctrine of society and the laws of its movement . In order to discover these laws, all sociology has to “start from human needs. Because society is nothing but the smallest means of satisfying the needs of its members as completely as possible. "

The types of need have been represented in pyramid form since Maslow . Behind this are drives or purely biological necessities to secure one's own survival or the survival of one's own species.

Up to this point, humans are no different from animals. The sociologically interesting structure only arises through the type of organized need satisfaction in social form. Here Oppenheimer tries to typify different types of society and examines the course of their development for correspondences and regularities.

A basic typification results from the distinction between the two fundamentally opposing means that humans have “to procure the goods that they need. One means is one's own work on nature and, at a higher level, the exchange of one's work products for strangers, which is regarded as equivalent. Because these are the two activities that establish economic society, I have called this means the 'economic means'. "

The union of economic subjects creates an economic society. Your organization is based on productive work and exchange of equal value. A relationship between robber and robbed, on the other hand, does not establish a society, but a relationship of domination, as embodied in its original form through the emergence of the state.

“The second means that man uses to get the goods is the unpaid appropriation through force, namely through physical violence or the abuse of spiritual violence by patriarchs and priesthoods. I have termed this means the 'political means'. Why "political means"? Because it dominates all politics in international and intra-national life. The archetype of all international relations is war , and often enough it had a different pretext, but hardly ever any other reason than the enrichment of one nation at the expense of the other, or the defense against such an endeavor. (...) Above all, however, the political means also dominates the more important intranational life. It created the state. The state is nothing other than the political means in its development. "

According to Oppenheimer, all stages of development in social organization can be classified into three phases:

  • the original cooperative societies
  • the emergence of the state through conquering violence
  • the long process of regaining the state by the newly forming society.

Overcoming class antagonisms and mechanisms of exploitation is, according to Oppenheimer, a process that spanned centuries. The individual intermediate stages cannot be skipped, which is why he rejected the calls for class struggle based on the teachings of Karl Marx up to the revolutionary reinvention of state and society according to other rules as not very promising. If there was sufficient sociological education, science as an obstetrician could shorten the time required for the individual development steps according to Oppenheimer. On the other hand, this hope would be contradicted by the fact that the ruling elites of a society, which also includes science as a spiritual and ideological superstructure, are only open to changes in times of particular crises and thus even existing knowledge can only become effective if a time with a corresponding constellation asks for it.

Sociology as an art teaching

If there are phenomena in a society that large sections of the population consider to be a “ problem ”, this often leads to the question in public discussion , which educational measures (see also the educational effect) can influence the “ bad ” in people.

According to Oppenheimer, the question of what is “ good ” or “ bad ” in people is wrongly posed from the standpoint of sociology . Instead, it should read: “Can a society be built on such foundations that each individual is driven by his or her self-interest everywhere to act in solidarity with the interests of society? If so, then we no longer need to worry about ideas and evaluations. "(Oppenheimer, System, vol. I, p. 676)

On the one hand, Oppenheimer explored the laws of human action at the levels of the individual, the group and society like a scientist. On the other hand, he was of the opinion that the knowledge gained could not only be used for the scientific explanation of the past and for the prognosis of the future, but also, as in engineering, for the construction of functioning systems. The art of social organization described by Oppenheimer (ibid., P. 676) must not be misunderstood as a social-technocratic redesign of a social order from the desk, but rather aims at strategies for eliminating the causes of disturbances that exist with the existing systems their regulations for historical reasons.

The solution of social issues saw Oppenheimer politically by a focus on class antagonisms, as that of Karl Marx demanded class struggle was aimed. Oppenheimer, guided by the principles of Kantian ethics and the analyzes of Karl Rodbertus , who had a strong influence on him , preferred to remove the foundations of the economically sound existing class antagonisms and thus also to change social relations. He did not see the struggle as the mainspring of social evolution , but the striving for (self-) healing of society by expelling the original violence ( noxes ) and the legal institutions that resulted from it from the social body.

Sociology of domination

In contrast to the sociology of Max Weber , the rule than enforcing a (personal) power relations understood Oppenheimer stressed the original dichotomous typology Otto von Gierke and called rule as a relationship between two very unequal social classes . Accordingly, rule is a vertical social relationship, cooperative a horizontal social relationship.

Economics

His economic theory cannot be assigned to either the historical school of Gustav von Schmoller or the marginal utility school of Carl Menger or the liberalism of his time.

According to Oppenheimer, the economics of our time is characterized by certain inadequacies. It assumes an (ahistorical) initial distribution of goods in order to then explain the exchange processes technically and psychologically ( production and price formation ). But where this initial distribution comes from, neither the theory of marginal productivity nor the theory of original accumulation can explain. The causes of the distribution of wealth and income ultimately remain unexplained, which earned Oppenheimer and his followers the reputation of economics for building theory structures that were unrealistic. Strictly speaking, it is only incomplete due to certain path views (true, but partial). Oppenheimer's theory examines precisely these blind spots in the economy. The central question for him was not why the individual can find his economic freedom, but why the masses cannot. His system of sociology aims to show the " sociological history" emergence of violent appropriation and the state as well as the formation of political means. Monopolies are established through political means . Oppenheimer differentiates between personal monopoly and class monopoly .

His mind develops its own line of thought. It is based on the possibility of overcoming the political means to the full development of the economic means , which he has worked out. H. the creation of free competition among equals. Oppenheimer integrates the knowledge gained by liberalism ( Adam Smith ) and the solution of the social question. With his theories, he relativizes (or wants to relativize) the works of David Ricardo , Karl Marx , Joseph Schumpeter , John Maynard Keynes and other economists.

Cooperative idea

Law of transformation

The Oppenheimer transformation law belonged in the post-war literature of the cooperative movement in his most frequently quoted statements. As Kruck (1992 and 1997) has shown, Oppenheimer's statement was used completely distorted. The transformation law at Oppenheimer says that producing cooperatives in a capitalist environment cannot possibly accept anyone who seeks work. You have to close yourself off or go under.

When the Transformation Act was formulated in 1896, the members of the cooperative demanded that all cooperatives be open to new members as a matter of principle. Oppenheimer pointed out that this would be impossible in the commercial and production sector, while the capacity of the settlement cooperative he favored was rated as significantly higher.

Palestine

Franz Oppenheimer founded the agricultural cooperative Merchawia with Salomon Dyk in 1911 in Palestine, south of Nazareth . The project had a difficult time from the beginning and after a while it fell apart economically and organizationally. Buildings and infrastructure were taken over by a Marxist-oriented Kwuza .

Importance of teaching

Oppenheimer forms a bridge between very different schools, which during his lifetime brought him lively discussions but did not earn any school appreciation. The followers of his teaching are of the opinion that the value of his teaching has not yet been recognized. He is developing a way of thinking that must disturb any ruling class or anyone who wants to gain power by political means, because he has designed a tried and tested concept for overcoming the relations of domination (settlement cooperative).

His works were banned and confiscated in Germany in 1933 . This also explains that he is almost invisible, although his followers believe that his work is relevant to solving the social question . Some of the works have been compiled anew in recent years and are waiting to be rediscovered.

The way in which he fundamentally questions and analyzes the social conditions of his (and our) time and then leads them to an unspectacular and consistent solution is, in the opinion of his followers, the real value of his scientific method, which he developed through conscientious deduction and with the Discipline carried out by a scientist. It is due to this strictness of Oppenheimer that he rejected every sophism , as he is said to have often discovered it in economics and sociology.

All his life Oppenheimer advocated a theory that he called "liberal socialism". Especially in his books Neither Capitalism nor Communism (1932) and Neither so nor so. The third way (1933) he took the view that under certain political framework conditions (especially a functioning democracy) it was possible to bring about socialism by creating free competition with the means of liberalism . He rejected anarchism and revolutionary socialism as an unnecessarily pessimistic attitude. The institution of the state would be radically transformed by the introduction and constant expansion of democracy. Because, according to Oppenheimer's theory of submission, the state originally emerged as an instrument to subjugate the defeated to the victors, but democracy forces politics to show a humanistic side. The state is gradually changing from an instrument of oppression to an instrument of joint administration. Oppenheimer's ideal was a state in which there were no more classes, or at least no class interests, and in which the administration concentrated entirely on safeguarding the public interest.

Oppenheimer is one of the pioneers of the social market economy . Ludwig Erhard and Walter Eucken were among his students . Even Franz Bohm and Alexander Rüstow belonged to Oppenheimer's discussion group. Unlike Oppenheimer, Ludwig Erhard could not imagine an economy without private property. But of the values ​​of Erhard's “social liberalism”, competition, social responsibility, the fight against cartels and monopolies, the dismantling of trade barriers, the free movement of money and capital and the idea of ​​a united Europe (the “Europe of the free and Same ”) can be traced back to Oppenheimer's influence. Ludwig Erhard declared in a commemorative speech (1964):

“Something impressed me so deeply that I cannot lose it, namely dealing with the socio-political questions of our time. He recognized "capitalism" as the principle that leads to inequality, indeed that actually establishes inequality, although nothing was further from him than a dreary leveling out. On the other hand, he hated communism because it inevitably leads to bondage. There must be a way - a third way - that means a happy synthesis, a way out. I tried, almost in accordance with his mandate, tried in the social market economy to show a not sentimental but a realistic path. "

- Ludwig Erhard : Franz Oppenheimer, the teacher and friend

Persons connected with Oppenheimer

PhD students with a PhD topic

  • 1921: Ernst Bodien: Siegfried Budge's theory of capital profit
  • 1923: Erich Preiser : The Marxian crisis theory and its further education. Presentation and criticism
  • 1925 Ludwig Erhard : Nature and content of the unit of value

Habilitation candidates with a habilitation topic

Assistant at Oppenheimer's chair

  • Walter Ackermann (1889–1978), professor for education in Germany
  • Kurt Goldstein (1878–1965), Professor of Psychology in Germany and the USA
  • Julius Kraft (1898–1960), professor for philosophy and sociology in Holland, USA and Germany
  • Fritz Sternberg (1895–1963), assistant 1919–1923, Marxist economist and politician

Well-known students of Oppenheimer

People who scientifically related to Oppenheimer's writings

  • Walter Eucken (1891–1950), Professor of Economics in Germany
  • Paul Lüth (1921–1986), general practitioner, professor for social medicine in Germany (so inter alia in justice without court. Rowohlt 1981)
  • Alexander Rustow (1885–1963), professor for social sciences and economics in Germany and Turkey
  • Frieda Wunderlich (1884–1965), Professor for Sociology and Social Policy in Germany and the USA
  • Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995), American economist and political philosopher, thought leader of libertarianism and anarcho-capitalism

Companions

Honors

In 2013 a student residence of the FDS charitable foundation , the Franz-Oppenheimer-Haus , was named after him in Frankfurt am Main .

Exhibitions

  • The sociologist and economist Franz Oppenheimer (1864–1943). An exhibition of historical photographs , Westend Campus , Goethe University , Frankfurt am Main.

Works

Franz Oppenheimer created an extensive work, consisting of around 40 books and around 400 essays, with writings on sociology, economics and political issues of the time.

Books (selection)

  1. Theoretical foundation. 1995, ISBN 3-05-002673-1 .
  2. Political Writings. 1996 ISBN 3-05-002876-9 .
  3. Writings on the market economy. 1998 ISBN 3-05-003156-5 .
Fiction
  • Jump over a century. Published under the pseudonym Francis D. Pelton. Edited by Claudia Willms; Vorw. Klaus Lichtblau . Quintus-Verlag, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-947215-01-0 . (Utopian novel)

Editorships

  • Together with Otto Meyerhof and Minna Specht : Treatises of the Fries School - New Series. Founded by Gerhard Hessenberg and Leonard Nelson . Fifth volume 1st issue 1929, 2nd issue 1930, 3rd issue 1932, 4th issue 1933; Sixth volume, 1st issue 1933, 2nd issue 1935. (In place of Oppenheimer as co-editor for the last two issues of this last volume of the essays , published in 1937, Grete Hermann .)

literature

Web links

Commons : Franz Oppenheimer  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikiquote: Franz Oppenheimer  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Portrait of Julius Oppenheimer (d. 1909), rabbi of the Jewish Reform Community of Berlin from 1860 to 1909 , collections of the Jewish Museum Berlin, accessed on July 21, 2016.
  2. ^ Franz Oppenheimer: Experienced, strived for, achieved life memories. Edited by Ludwig Yehuda Oppenheimer. 2nd ed., Joseph Melzer, Düsseldorf 1964. pp. 72-73.
  3. ^ The state by Franz Oppenheimer , p. 11
  4. ^ The State by Franz Oppenheimer , p. 15
  5. ↑ The State by Franz Oppenheimer , p. 12
  6. ^ All quotations in Democracy by Franz Oppenheimer
  7. ↑ For all quotes up to this point see Democracy by Franz Oppenheimer , p. 170
  8. ^ "Transformation law" and reality of Oppenheimer's cooperative theory by Werner Kruck , In: Journal for public and public-sector enterprises, Vol. 15, 1992, on franz-oppenheimer.de
  9. ↑ And highly topical from the present: (PDF; 313 kB), p. 300
  10. ^ Roman Herzog honors Franz Oppenheimer , Die Welt dated September 28, 1995, accessed on June 24, 2020
  11. ↑ Pioneers of the social market economy: Franz Oppenheimer's writings published on franz-oppenheimer.de
  12. ↑ Helga Grebing , Walter Euchner, F.-J. Stegmann and Peter Langhorst, History of Social Ideas in Germany: Socialism - Catholic Social Teaching - Protestant Social Ethics , VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2nd edition 2005, ISBN 978-3-531-14752-9 , page 403
  13. ^ Paul Gottfried, Introduction to Franz Oppenheimer, The State, ISBN 1-56000-965-9 , 1999, p. xvii
  14. ↑ Traugott Roser, Protestantism and Social Market Economy , LIT Verlag, 1998, ISBN 3-8258-3445-X , page 62
  15. ^ Paul Gottfried, Introduction to Franz Oppenheimer, The State, ISBN 1-56000-965-9 , 1999, p. X
  16. ^ Karl Hohmann, Basic Texts on the Social Market Economy , Volume 2, Verlag Gustav Fischer, 1988, ISBN 978-3-437-40208-1 , page 561
  17. ↑ Ludwig Erhard: Franz Oppenheimer, the teacher and friend. In: Karl Hohmann: Ludwig Erhard, thoughts from five decades, speeches and writings . Pp. 858-864
  18. ↑ a b Experienced, strived for, achieved life memories , p. 203
  19. ↑ The Frankfurt economist Franz Oppenheimer is honored on his 150th birthday in an exhibition ( Memento from August 13, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on August 13, 2014
  20. ^ A liberal socialist: On the 150th birthday of Ludwig Erhard's teacher . In: FAZ , March 29, 2014, p. 26
personal data
SURNAME Oppenheimer, Franz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pelton, Francis D. (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sociologist and economist
DATE OF BIRTH March 30, 1864
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH September 30, 1943
Place of death los Angeles