Hans Speier

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Hans Speier (born February 3, 1905 in Berlin , † February 17, 1990 in Sarasota , Florida ) was an American sociologist of German origin.

Life

In Germany - until emigration

Speier attended the Helmholtz Realgymnasium in Berlin-Friedenau , where he received his school- leaving certificate in 1923 . At the insistence of his father, who was unsettled by the inflation , he began an apprenticeship as a bank clerk before his intended course of study, during which he only attended lectures at the Friedrich Wilhelms University at lunchtime . After a year he broke off his bank apprenticeship, gave tutoring in mathematics and kept the mornings free to study philosophy, politics and history.

From 1925 Speier then studied at the University of Heidelberg the main subjects sociology and economics as well as the minor subjects philosophy and history and received his doctorate after just six semesters in 1929 with a dissertation on Lassalle's philosophy of history . He was the first doctoral student of the sociologist Karl Mannheim , but studied predominantly with the economist Emil Lederer , whose assistant he became as a student and then again in 1932/33 in Berlin.

With the support of Rudolf Hilferding (a college friend of Lederer), Speier got a job in 1929 as an editor for social sciences at Ullstein Verlag in Berlin. In 1931 he became a lecturer in sociology at the German University of Politics and was also active in the SPD's workers' education. In 1932 he also became Emil Lederer's assistant at the Friedrich Wilhelms University. After the National Socialists came to power , the German School of Politics was closed. Speiers wife lost her position as a welfare doctor in Berlin-Wedding because she was of Jewish origin. In September 1933 he emigrated to the USA, following his teacher Emil Lederer. His wife and daughter followed in October 1933.

After emigration - in the USA

In the USA he was from 1933 to 1942 and from 1947 to 1948 Professor of Political Sociology at the New School for Social Research in New York . During the Second World War and in the first post-war years he worked first as a propaganda specialist and then as a Germany expert for the US government. Speier also taught at the University of Illinois (1941) and the University of Michigan (1941). In 1948 he became the first director of the social science division of RAND Corporation , a position he held for nearly 15 years. In 1959 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . From 1969 to 1973 he was Robert M. MacIver Professor of Sociology and Government at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. In 1976 he returned to the New School for Social Research as a visiting professor. He lived in Hartsdale, New York and died while vacationing in Florida.

The sociological work

Speier was throughout his academic life with issues of sociology of knowledge is concerned and intellectuals sociology, especially the Marx 'conception of the rule intellectuals . In the 1930s he also worked on an employee sociology . His investigation The Employees Before National Socialism could not be published in 1933, some chapters appeared in 1939 as a hectographed edition in English translation. The complete book was not published in Germany until 1977, an English translation did not appear until 1986. After emigrating, Speier increasingly occupied himself with questions of militarism and made contributions to the sociology of war .

Fonts (selection)

  • The philosophy of history Lassalle, in: Archive for Social Science and Social Policy 61, 1929, pp. 103–127 (= dissertation, partial print).
  • Social Order and the Risks of War. Papers in Political Sociology. New York, Stewart 1952.
  • Divided Berlin. The anatomy of Soviet political blackmail. New York, Praeger 1961.
    • German: The threat to Berlin. An analysis of the Berlin crisis from 1958 until today. Cologne, Kiepenheuer & Witsch 1961.
  • Force and Folly. Essays on Foreign Affairs and the History of Ideas. Cambridge, Mass .: MIT Press 1969.
  • Wit and politics. Essay on power and laughter . Osnabrück / Zurich, Edition Interfrom 1975. ISBN 3-7201-5058-5 .
  • The employees before National Socialism. A contribution to understanding the German social structure 1918–1933. Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1977. ISBN 3-525-35979-9 .
    • English: German White-Collar Workers and the Rise of Hitler. New Haven, Yale University Press 1986. ISBN 0-300-03701-5 .
  • From the Ashes of Disgrace. A Journal from Germany 1945–1955. Amherst, University of Massachusetts Press 1981. ISBN 0-87023-135-9 .
  • The Truth in Hell and Other Essays on Politics and Culture 1935–1987. New York, Oxford University Press 1989, ISBN 0-19-505875-5 .
    • therein: Introduction. Autobiographical Notes. Pp. 3–32 with bibliography on pp. 30–32.
  • The intellectuals and modern society. Edited and introduced by Robert Jackall. Graz, Vienna, Nausner & Nausner 2007. ISBN 978-3-901402-41-8 Table of contents (with list of writings by Hans Speier).

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ All biographical information comes from: Hans Speier: Not the emigration, but the triumph of Hitler was the most important experience , in: ders .: The intellectuals and modern society , edited and introduced by Robert Jackall, Graz, Vienna 2007, p. 353 -376, and from the introduction by Robert Jackall, pp. 9-34.
personal data
SURNAME Speier, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American sociologist
DATE OF BIRTH February 3, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin , Germany
DATE OF DEATH 17th February 1990
Place of death Sarasota , Florida