Gerhard Weisser

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Gerhard Weisser at a forum talk about the Kieler Woche 1965

Gerhard Weisser (born February 9, 1898 in Lissa ; † October 25, 1989 in Bonn ) was a German social scientist , university professor , social democrat , academic policy advisor , Protestant and educator . He is considered one of the founding fathers of the Godesberg program ; closely related to his work are the so-called living situation concept and the non-profit housing industry.

Life path

Youth and Studies

Gerhard Weisser was seen on February 9, 1898 in Lissa (today Poland) as the son of the District Court Councilor Rudolf Weisser and his wife Johanna, née. Pulst, the light of the world. He attended the humanistic high school in Magdeburg and passed the Abitur examination there in 1917. During his school days, Weisser was a member of the Wandervogel , the first German youth movement. After graduating from high school, Weisser was called up for military service and completed it until 1918, when he began studying social and economic sciences in Göttingen. Under the influence of the Neufries school around Leonard Nelson - with which it came to a break a few years later due to scientific and personal differences - he also dealt intensively with philosophical questions during this time. In 1923 Weisser received his doctorate in Tübingen with a thesis on "Economic Policy as Science". rer. pole. with summa cum laude.

Start of professional career and habilitation

Weisser began his professional career in 1923 as a scientific assistant to the Magdeburg city administration, soon afterwards he held the position of deputy head of the municipal housing office, and was then appointed municipal financial administrator of this city in 1927. During this time, Weisser joined the SPD and in 1930 the inhabitants of the city of Hagen elected him their mayor. He held this office until the NSDAP came to power in 1933. During the National Socialist era , Weisser worked for various publishers and was, among other things, managing director of Otto Schwartz & Co. During the Second World War, namely in 1943, Weisser completed his habilitation in Rostock with a thesis that was only published in 1949 under the title “Form und Wesen der Einzelwirtschaften . Theory and Politics of Their Styles ”should be published. However, he did not receive the Venia Legendi .

After the Second World War

After the end of the Second World War, Weisser took over the management of the Ministry of Finance and Economics in what was then the Free State of Braunschweig . In March of the following year he was elected Secretary General of the Zone Advisory Council for the British Zone in Hamburg , and he also held the honorary presidency of the general association of non-profit housing companies . From 1948 to 1950 he was State Secretary in the Ministry of Finance of North Rhine-Westphalia .

As a professor at the University of Cologne

In 1950, Gerhard Weisser became a full professor for social policy and cooperative affairs at the University of Cologne . From 1954 to 1970 he was chairman of the board of the re-established Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung , and after resigning from this office he was honorary president of the board of trustees until his death. During this time, Weisser also worked in the "Chamber for Social Order" of the Protestant Church, in all the SPD program commissions up to the Godesberg program , and was also a member of the SPD Fundamental Values ​​Commission .

After retirement

After Weisser retired in 1966, he went to Göttingen to teach as an honorary professor . In the same year Weisser founded together with Friedrich Karrenberg and others the "Research Institute for Social Policy and Advisory Social Science eV" (today: "Institute for Advisory Social and Economic Sciences - Gerhard Weisser Institute eV"), whose scientific director he became. In 1968 Weisser received the Federal Cross of Merit with a star. In 1983 the Faculty of Social Science at the Ruhr University Bochum awarded him an honorary doctorate. On December 12, 1987, he was honored with the Order of Merit of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia . He died in Bonn in October 1989. He was married to Gerda von Dresler and Scharfenstein (1896–1981), a daughter of the General of the Infantry and Pour le Mérite carrier Hermann von Dresler and Scharfenstein , whom he already met in the Wandervogel period. The couple had four children.

Focus of his work

The life situation concept

Weisser's socio-political considerations were centered around the “life situation approach”, the “life situation concept”. According to Weisser, life situations cannot be adequately determined by socio-economic variables such as income, education, apartment size, etc. He was concerned with the quality of the opportunities that individuals or groups have to achieve well-being. In this context, Weisser explicitly thought of the weak and endangered in society, of socially disadvantaged groups, who should not be dependent on benevolent gifts or state welfare, but rather who should have improved legal claims and rights of participation. The critical further development of the living situation concept u. a. in the Federal Social Welfare Act .

Social policy was a very comprehensive term for Weisser, and he himself used the term social policy rather than an “expression of the system of practical social policy”. For Weisser, the guarantee of a free and just society was only conceivable if “socio-organizational and socio-educational means” work together. In this respect, Weisser was also seen as a pedagogue. In a nutshell, Weisser's socio-political theory can best be described as a “theory of the distribution of life situations”.

Freedom socialism

Both in the context of his academic work and in connection with his social democratic commitment, a large part of his publications is concerned with the re-establishment and further development of the concept of free-democratic socialism. He considered democratic Free Socialism, by which he understood a third way between communism and capitalism, to be real implementable. He wanted more freedom through socialism, emphasizing in particular components such as co-determination, free public economy and property policy. Within the SPD he took the view that Marxist-philosophical orientations should be pushed back in favor of the recognition of basic values ​​such as solidarity or freedom.

Philosophical questions

Since his student days, Weisser had also had a keen interest in epistemological and epistemological questions that were primarily normative in nature. In doing so, he tied in with the philosopher Jakob Friedrich Fries as well as with the critical concepts of the common good of Immanuel Kant . He separated himself more and more from his teacher from his student days in Göttingen, Leonard Nelson.

Non-profit housing industry

In the context of his housing science studies, Weisser dealt in particular with housing cooperatives, with non-profit cooperatives in this area. Weisser was significantly involved in the development and creation of the general association of non-profit housing companies (GGW).

Trivia

On his 90th birthday he received a letter of congratulation from Willy Brandt with the words:

"" A wealth of writings on free democratic socialism came from your pen. Right from the start, you wanted to make scientific knowledge fruitful for a liberal organization of society. Quite a bit of it has lasting significance. ""

- Willy Brandt : Letter of congratulations on her 90th birthday

Estate and publications

Weisser's estate was given to the Archive of Social Democracy (AdsD) by his children in 1993. This collection contains all writings, including correspondence. He has published on the following topics: cognitive and value-critical problems in social science, social politics, social pedagogy, social policy, co-determination, wealth policy, distribution problems, national economy and individual economic policy (including on types of companies and cooperatives), contemporary history, sociology, housing, articles in dictionaries and encyclopedias and to much more.

His important concise dictionary articles include social security , distribution (II) politics and wealth and wealth policy .

literature

  • Rudolph Bauer : Weisser, Gerhard , in: Hugo Maier (ed.): Who is who of social work . Freiburg: Lambertus, 1998 ISBN 3-7841-1036-3 , pp. 617f.
  • Werner Wilhelm Engelhardt: On the life's work of the social scientist, politician and educator Professor Dr. Dr. hc Gerhard Weisser (1898-1989) . 1998 ( weisser-institut.de [PDF]).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Merit holders since 1986. State Chancellery of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, accessed on March 11, 2017 .
  2. ↑ Quoted in Jutta Steinruck : On the 25th anniversary of Gerhard Weisser's death (1898-1989) , October 25, 2014.
personal data
SURNAME Weisser, Gerhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German social scientist, university professor, politician (SPD), chairman of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung
DATE OF BIRTH February 9, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Lissa
DATE OF DEATH October 25, 1989
Place of death Bonn