Georges Politzer

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Georges Politzer (born May 3, 1903 in Nagyvarad , Austria-Hungary , † May 23, 1942 shot dead on Mont Valérien in Suresnes ) was a French philosopher and Marxist theorist of Hungarian - Jewish origin.

Life

Politzer was involved in the Hungarian unrest in 1919. As a result of the failure of the Communist Soviet Republic of Hungary under Béla Kun , Politzer went into exile at the age of 17 when the country came under the rule of Miklós Horthy .

He settled in Paris in 1921 after meeting psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Sándor Ferenczi in Vienna . Five years later, he had taken the academic hurdles up to agrégation in philosophy. He joined the French Communist Party between 1929 and 1931.

At the beginning of the 1930s, the French Communist Party founded the Workers' University of Paris ( l'Université Ouvrière de Paris ). During his employment at this university, Politzer was in charge of a course on dialectical materialism .

Politzer was a follower of Marx and Lenin , but also very interested in psychology , emphasizing the concrete aspects of this field and evaluating traditional psychology as more abstract. He also took a keen interest in Freud's emerging psychoanalytic theory and its applications before eventually distancing himself from it. At the same time he was employed as a professor of philosophy at the Lycée Saint-Maur .

He was mobilized during the German campaign in France in 1940 . At the same time, he remained on the side of the secret command of the French Communist Party . After his demobilization in July 1940, he oversaw the publication of a secret newsletter.

After his comrade and friend Paul Langevin , a world-famous physicist, was arrested in October 1940, Politzer published with Jacques Decour and Jacques Solomon the first edition of L'Université Libre ("Free University"), which appeared in 1940 and 1941 and under reported, among other things, of the imprisonment of scholars and the repression by fascism . He also worked with the philosophers Valentin Feldman , Charles Hainchelin and René Blech for La Pensée libre ("The Free Thought").

In February 1942 Politzer was arrested together with his wife Mai (also a communist and resistance activist). He was handed over to the Nazi occupiers on March 20, 1942 and tortured. He was executed by firing squad on May 23, 1942, shortly after secretly publishing a French academic journal. His wife was deported to Auschwitz concentration camp , where she died in March 1943.

Publications

  • Critique of the foundations of psychology (Critique des Fondements de la Psychologie) , 1928, German Critique of the Basics of Psychology. Psychology and Psychoanalysis , Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1978
  • Bergsonism , a philosophical joke (Le Bergsonisme, une Mystification Philosophique) , Éditions Sociales
  • Blood and Gold (Sang et Or) or Gold Conquered by Blood (L'Or Vaincu par le Sang) , November 1940
  • Revolution and counter-revolution in the 20th century (Révolution et Contre-révolution au XXè Siècle) , Éditions Sociales, March 1941
  • Elementary principles of philosophy (Principes Élémentaires de Philosophie) , transcripts of a course read at l'Université Ouvrière, 1935–1936
  • Written works 1 Philosophy and Myths (Écrits 1 La Philosophie et les Mythes) , Éditions Sociales, 1973
  • Written Works 2 The Basics of Psychology (Écrits 2 Les Fondements de la Psychologie) , Éditions Sociales
  • Critique of Classical Psychology , EVA, Frankfurt 1974

Remarks

  1. ↑ The title satirizes a speech gold and blood that Alfred Rosenberg had given on November 28, 1940 before the Chamber of Deputies in occupied Paris; in the row: This is where the new Germany speaks! Issue 15, it is also printed in German by Eher- Verlag. Rosenberg opposes the western capitalist gold principle, i.e. modern society with its variable legal and contractual system, with the static National Socialist blood principle, which structures society according to origin.

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personal data
SURNAME Politzer, Georges
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French philosopher and Marxist theorist
DATE OF BIRTH May 3, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Nagyvarad
DATE OF DEATH May 23, 1942
Place of death Mont Valérien , Suresnes