Frithjof Bergmann

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Frithjof Bergmann, 2009

Frithjof Harold Bergmann (* December 24, 1930 in Weickelsdorf , Weißenfels district , Province of Saxony , Prussia ; † May 23, 2021 in Ann Arbor , MI ) was an Austrian - American social philosopher and anthropologist as well as the founder of " New-Work " - Move.

life and work

Frithjof Bergmann was the second son of Helmut Bergmann, a Protestant pastor and Else, born Graf. He grew up with two brothers and two sisters. To avoid the rise of the National Socialists , the family moved to Hallstatt in Austria around 1935/36 . In Gmunden he attended grammar school, where he graduated . The family was severely disadvantaged from 1938 onwards due to the mother's Jewish origins. After all, in 1945 his mother was only able to escape deportation to a concentration camp in the disguise of a nurse, after faking suicide without any contact with her family until the end of the war. Since the father had also been captured and became seriously ill, the boy was left on his own at an early age and worked most of the time as a farmer in the country, an experience that later shaped him in the development of his philosophy for New Work. The experiences of fascism and the war had awakened a fighting spirit in him and he thought early on how to make the world a better place. He wanted to leave post-fascist Europe and in 1949, shortly before graduating from high school, he won a competition at the US embassy in Austria with his essay World in which we want to live, and thus an academic year in Oregon (USA).

He then stayed there and initially made his way as a dishwasher, prize boxer, assembly line and dock worker. He later wrote plays and lived in self-sufficiency in the New Hampshire countryside for almost two years . He studied philosophy at Princeton University , received his doctorate here with a thesis on Hegel and received lectureships there as well as at Stanford University , the University of Chicago and the University of Berkeley .

From 1958 he worked at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor , where he held a chair for philosophy and later also for cultural anthropology . In 1999 he retired .

Bergmann wrote publications on economic, political and cultural topics and advised governments, companies, trade unions and municipalities as well as young people and homeless people on questions of the future of work and the willingness to innovate. Much of his work was with children and young people. He represented his approaches in the USA and Europe, but also in the countries of the global south .

He died in May 2021 at the age of 90, leaving behind two daughters and a son.

New Work

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From 1976 to 1979 he made trips to the then Eastern Bloc countries. There began by the realization that socialism had no future, his confrontation with capitalism , and the idea was to develop an alternative model, the movement of the "New Labor" ( english New Work).

1981 or 1984 he founded in the automobile city Flint in Michigan Center for New Work (German: Center for New Work ) where he advised General Motors . Since then, several such centers have sprung up in different countries and New Work has become Frithjof Bergmann's life's work.

theses

Criticizing the concept of freedom , Bergmann understood it not only to mean freedom of choice between alternatives, but freedom of action . Since the “job system” is at its end, mankind has the chance to free itself from the bondage of wage labor . Central values ​​of the "New Work" are independence, freedom and participation in community. This should consist of three roughly equal parts: gainful employment , "smart consumption" and "high-tech self-providing" ( self-sufficiency at the highest technical level) as well as "work that you really, really want":

  • On the other hand, the decreasing gainful employment of industrial society due to increasing automation in all economic sectors should be reduced for everyone and the financial basis should be created for things that cannot be produced through self-employment or neighborhood networks.
  • But in the near future, cooperatively operated fabbers could take over the in-house production of goods. Also, people should think about what they need. For example, many products are not very useful because using them is more work than saving, such as many garlic presses , the cleaning effort of which outweighs their benefits.
  • If a revolutionary process is rejected, the change can only be made gradually by people who orientate themselves on “what they really, really want” and thus gradually make themselves more independent. In so-called centers for new work people should overcome their “self-ignorance” together with the mentors and start looking for a job in accordance with their own wishes, hopes, dreams and talents. This should ultimately change your own life in such a way that you feel “alive”.

The psychologist Markus Väth later developed Bergmann's theory further and outlined four “pillars” for realizing “New Work” in the working world of the future.

Publications

literature

Filmography

  • 1999: Professor Dr. Frithjof Bergmann social philosopher and anthropologist in conversation with Marion Glück-Lev. Consignment of 25 June 1999 in the series alpha-Forum - VIPs in discussion of BR-alpha .

Web links

Commons : Frithjof Bergmann  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Frithjof Bergmann - We should not serve work, but work should serve us. Biography. In: Website of NANK Co: llaboratory (ed.), Vienna, undated , accessed on May 27, 2021.
  2. ↑ a b c Obituary: Frithjof Harold Bergmann. December 24, 1930 - May 23, 2021. In: Dignity Memorial, May 23, 2021, accessed on May 27, 2021: “ Frithjof Harold Bergmann was born on December 24, 1930 and passed away on May 23, 2021 in Ann Arbor, Michigan and is under the care of Muehlig Funeral Chapel. ”
  3. ↑ Benjamin Berend, Michaela Brohm-Badry: What is New Work? In: New Work: Sovereignty in the post-digital age. essentials. Springer, Wiesbaden 2020, 10.1007 / 978-3-658-29684-1_4 , pp. 11-13.
  4. ↑ Prof. Dr. Frithjof Bergmann - Setting the course for New Work. In: The NWXnow Videocast. New Work SE , August 17, 2020, accessed on May 27, 2021.
  5. ↑ a b c Eight University of Michigan faculty members were given the emeritus title by the UM Regents at their Sept. 16-17 meeting. In: Michigan News. University of Michigan , April 26, 2007, accessed May 27, 2021 . Frithjof Bergmann - Professor Emeritus. Personal Profile (May 31, 1999 Retirement Memoir) at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts (LSA) .
  6. ↑ a b c Frithjof Bergmann in conversation with Marion Glück-Levi (1999). Broadcast archive of the alpha forum on the Bayerischer Rundfunk website, as of September 7, 2011 (with the option to download the transcript as a PDF, 43.24 KB), accessed on May 27, 2021.
  7. ↑ See Traunspiegel, 01/2021 , p. 5 .: “... born in Weickelsdorf (Saxony). But just five years later ... "
  8. ↑ a b Publishing information on Frithjof Bergmann: New work, new culture. Arbor, Freiburg 2004. In: Book tip - Frithjof Bergmann: “New work, new culture”. Website of the Neuer Weg bookstore in Würzburg, December 28, 2006, accessed on May 27, 2021.
  9. ↑ “And then, as an 18-year-old high school student, I was allowed to write an essay about which school I would like. I designed the utopia of a school that strengthens adolescents and encourages their development, instead of filling them with knowledge and beating them with discipline. It didn't change anything at school, but everything in my life. I won the grand prize, a one-year scholarship in the United States. After graduating from high school I started the trip, and instead of staying for a year, I stayed for the rest of my life. ”Quoted in: Traunspiegel, 01/2021 , p. 5.
  10. ^ Frithjof Bergmann: New Work New Culture, Work We Want And A Culture That Strengthens Us . John Hunt Publishing, zero books, Winchester, Washington 2019, pp. 36 .
  11. ↑ Note: Deviating from 1981 in the information in the personal profile of the University of Michigan, where Bergmann taught and was retired, 1984 is often mentioned as the year the Center for New Work was founded .
  12. ↑ “At General Motors they tried to make something out of the 'New Work' that was almost militarily organized. What we had in mind was more linked to the terms improvisation, invention, innovation. ”Quotation from one of several interviews with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . Quoted in the obituary in FAZ.net on May 25, 2021.
  13. ↑ Gunnar Sohn : Frithjof Bergmann: New work, new culture. Book review. In: Political Literature (archive) of Deutschlandfunk , January 3, 2005, accessed on May 27, 2021.
personal data
SURNAME Bergmann, Frithjof
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bergmann, Frithjof Harold; Bergmann, Frithjof H.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian American philosopher and anthropologist
DATE OF BIRTH December 24, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Weickelsdorf , Weißenfels District , Saxony Province , Prussia , German Empire
DATE OF DEATH May 23, 2021
PLACE OF DEATH Ann Arbor , Michigan