Hans-Joachim Arndt (political scientist)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hans-Joachim Arndt (born January 15, 1923 in Magdeburg ; † October 3, 2004 in Schriesheim ) was a German political scientist . He is counted among the circle around Carl Schmitt and represented the concept of a "political situation analysis". In his “concrete situation analysis” he considered the defeated status of the Germans after the Second World War to be decisive and criticized political science as being influenced by the Americans. Politically, Arndt is considered to be a representative of the New Right , who participated in neoconservative institutions and magazines as well as in events and publications that were classified as right-wing extremists by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution .

Life

Hans-Joachim Arndt was the son of the businessman Oscar Arndt (1880–1930) and his wife Elfriede, née Heinrich (1893–1979). He initially embarked on a career as an officer in the Kriegsmarine , attended the Mürwik Naval School from September 1940 ( crew 1940) and took part in the Second World War, most recently as an officer on the torpedo boat T 16. After his return from captivity in autumn 1947, Arndt studied the summer semester of 1948 economics, politics, philosophy and international law at the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen with Carl Brinkmann . Via the Institute for the World Economy in Kiel , he moved to the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg in 1949 , where he was accepted into the closer group of students around Alfred Weber and later around Alexander Rustow . In 1950/51 he studied at Washington University in St. Louis , where he earned a "Master of Arts in Sociology, Economics, and Political Science".

On June 20, 1952, Arndt received his doctorate from Riistow “On the causes of historical oblivion in American sociology”. phil. and from spring to autumn 1952 was Alfred Weber's assistant for an advisory role at the German trade unions . 1952/53 he stayed as a "Research Scholar" at the Littauer Center at Harvard University . Another stay took him to the Sorbonne in Paris in 1957/58 , where he also worked as a press representative. In Germany he worked from 1954 to 1956 as a press officer in industry, banking and the press. From 1956 to the end of October 1957 he worked as an economic policy advisor in the federal leadership of the FDP . During the election campaign he appeared at electoral meetings throughout Germany and was instrumental in drawing up the economic and financial policy sections of the Hamburg action program. He also wrote the advertising brochure Economic Policy , which appeared in August 1957 with a circulation of 12,000 copies. From 1958 Arndt worked as a freelance business consultant, most recently in the advanced training of business executives (including the Baden-Baden Entrepreneur Talks ). In 1960 he married the bookseller Margit, née Zembsch (* 1933); the couple had two daughters.

Arndt had been in close contact with Carl Schmitt since 1955 . He is counted among the third generation of Federal Republican students of Schmitt and seen as a representative of nationalist right-wing Schmittism. He had closer relations with Jacob Taubes and George Schwab . Although he had to withdraw an application for a habilitation in Heidelberg in 1961 , Arndt was appointed to the Chair of Political Science at Heidelberg University in 1968 through Ernst Forsthoff's mediation . In Heidelberg he was confronted with the student protests . In 1969, after the Institute for Political Science was occupied by around 1,000 students, he was forced to temporarily close the Institute. He and his seminars were also the target of attacks, which caused him to temporarily interrupt his teaching in 1972. From the 1974 summer semester, he was dean of the Philosophical-Historical Faculty at Heidelberg University for one year . From 1969 to 1976 he was a member of the Advisory Board of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation , from 1969 to 1973 its chairman. At the end of March 1988 Arndt retired .

plant

Arndt described his approach as a "political situation analysis". To this end, he transferred the planning and decision-making process, which was based on specific “situations” in the military, to the field of politics and subordinated it to a confrontational logic of power. Although he wanted to see his heuristic model located in the supposedly ideology-free space of political science on the one hand, on the other hand he attested the situation analysis to be able to provide concrete political decision-making aids. In his opinion, political science first had to be clear about the “basic situation”. In one of his best-known works, Die Besiegten von 1945 (1978), he stated that ruling political science had overlooked the central event of defeat and ignored the condition of the Germans after 1945 as defeated in a divided Germany ("basic situation"). In this attempt at a political science for Germans , he criticized the fact that West German political science had been decisively influenced by the Americans after 1945. As a result, it was not possible to build on a tradition of political science appropriate to the Germans. Arndt accused particularly left-wing liberal and social democratic university lecturers of not sufficiently opposing radical tendencies.

Arndt is counted among the inner circle of authors of the new right magazine Criticón . According to Friedemann Schmidt, his “political situation analysis” represented “the core of the new right wing great power discourse in the years following reunification - it determines the form and content of those contributions that revolve around Germany's new international leadership role”. Based on the strategic analysis of one's own situation as well as the “enemy situation”, the “decision” should be made to assert national interests.

In 1983 Arndt joined the “Germany Council” founded by Armin Mohler, which also included Hellmut Diwald , Bernard Willms , Robert Hepp , Wolfgang Seiffert and Franz Schönhuber . The first part of the 1984 declaration signed by Arndt, in which the “decriminalization of our history as a prerequisite for a self-evident national consciousness” was demanded, was almost verbatim in the preamble of the “Siegburger Manifestes” of the party Die Republikaner of June 16, 1985 .

In 1981 Arndt made a name for himself when he prepared a report for the Bavarian State Chancellery on the funding activities of the German Society for Peace and Conflict Research , on the basis of which the states of Baden-Württemberg and Schleswig-Holstein withdrew from their funding. The political scientist Edwin Czerwick sees this as a particularly striking example of “politics disguised as political science” for the implementation of political goals.

Fonts

  • The public as a substitute for the state. In: Archive for Legal and Social Philosophy (ARSP). 42, No. 2, 1956, pp. 239-247.
  • About the topos of work, employment and behavior towards technical objects. In: Archive for Legal and Social Philosophy (ARSP). 44, No. 4, 1958, pp. 543-556.
  • Credit Currency Policy and Expertise. The constitutional powers and the function of central banks. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1963.
  • The role of leadership and the objectification of corporate management. In: Corporate Management. Further training for young leaders in Germany. Reports on the Düsseldorf conference of the European Association of Institutes for the Further Education of Business Executives. 1965, pp. 63-84.
  • Corporate management as a professional? On the criticism of management training. Girardet, Essen 1966.
  • West Germany. Politics of non-planning. Syracuse Univ. Press, Syracuse, NY 1966.
  • with Siegfried Faßbender and Hans Hellwig: Further training for economic managers at the university. Memorandum of the German Institute for the Promotion of Young Industrial Managers. Econ-Verl, Düsseldorf 1968.
  • Constitutional Standard and Territory Status. In: Studium generale. Journal for interdisciplinary studies. 22, No. 8, 1969, pp. 783-813.
  • and Siegfried Faßbender: Management training in the company. Experience from field studies in Germany. Knapp, Frankfurt / M. 1971.
  • The defeated in 1945. Attempt at a political science for Germans including an appreciation of political science in the Federal Republic of Germany. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1978, ISBN 3428042387 .
  • Political science in the Federal Republic of Germany. In: Yearbook of Public Law of the Present. 29, pp. 1-41 (1980).
  • State-funded peace and conflict research in the Federal Republic of Germany from 1970 to 1979. Scientific report on the funding activities of the German Society for Peace and Conflict Research (DGFK). Bayer. State Chancellery, Munich 1981.
  • Youth Identity Disorders and Historical Awareness. Recent developments in the maintenance of a German image of history in the Federal Republic. In: Hamburg yearbook for economic and social policy. 27, pp. 115-134 (1982).
  • among other things: Inferiority as reason of state. [6 essays on the legitimacy of the FRG]. Sinus-Verl, Krefeld 1985, ISBN 3882892099 .
  • Political situation analysis . In: Dieter Nohlen u. Rainer Olaf Schulze (Hrsg.): Piper's dictionary of politics. Volume 1: Political Science. Theories - Methods - Concepts. Piper, Munich 1985, pp. 754-757.

literature

  • Volker Beismann et al. (Ed.): Political situation analysis. Festschrift for Hans-Joachim Arndt on his 70th birthday on January 15, 1993. San-Casciano-Verlag, Bruchsal 1993, ISBN 3928906003 .
  • Dagmar Drüll: Heidelberger Gelehrtenlexikon 1933–1986. Springer, Heidelberg 2009, p. 85.
  • Piet Tommissen : German interlocutor of Alexandre Kojève: Hans-Joachim Arndt In: Schmittiana. Contributions to the life and work of Carl Schmitt , Volume 6 (1998), pp. 27–31.
  • Dirk van Laak : Conversations in the security of silence. Carl Schmitt in the political intellectual history of the early Federal Republic , Berlin 1993.
  • Markus Josef Klein: "The doctor was a sailor". Anarch of the German humanities: an obituary for Hans-Joachim Arndt . In: Junge Freiheit 44, October 22, 2004.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Wolfgang Gessenharter: Conservatism and right-wing extremism. Sewing and distancing. In: Union monthly journal. No. 9, 1989, p. 567. ( PDF ).
  2. ↑ Michael Bauerschmidt et al. : Arndt, Prof. Dr. phil. Hans-Joachim. In: Jens Mecklenburg (Ed.): Handbook of German right-wing extremism. Elefanten-Press, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3885205858 ( Antifa Edition ), p. 441.
  3. ↑ Federal Managing Director Werner Stephan: Report of the Federal Party Leadership to the 9th Ordinary Federal Party Congress in Düsseldorf 28th and 29th March 1958. In: Ossip K. Flechtheim (Ed.): Documents on party political development in Germany since 1945 . Vol. 5. Structure and working methods of the German parties , part 2, Wendler, Berlin 1966, p. 426.
  4. ^ Reinhard Mehring: Carl Schmitt. Rise and Fall Beck, Munich 2009, ISBN 9783406592249 , pp. 541, 465, 556.
  5. ^ Friedemann Schmidt: The new right and the Berlin republic. Paths running in parallel in the normalization discourse. West German Verl, Wiesbaden 2001, ISBN 3531136429 , p. 73.
  6. ^ Friedemann Schmidt: The new right and the Berlin republic. Paths running in parallel in the normalization discourse. West German Verl, Wiesbaden 2001, ISBN 3531136429 , p. 111.
  7. ^ Wilhelm Bleek : History of Political Science in Germany. Beck, Munich 2001, ISBN 3406496024 , p. 416.
  8. ^ Friedemann Schmidt: The new right and the Berlin republic. Paths running in parallel in the normalization discourse. West German Verl, Wiesbaden 2001, ISBN 3531136429 , p. 73 f.
  9. ↑ Edwin Czerwick: Politics as a system. An introduction to the systems theory of politics. Oldenbourg, Munich 2011, ISBN 9783486706895 , p. 230.
personal data
SURNAME Arndt, Hans-Joachim
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German political scientist
DATE OF BIRTH January 15, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Magdeburg
DATE OF DEATH October 3, 2004
Place of death Schriesheim