Heinz Hartmann (sociologist)

Heinz Hartmann (born February 12, 1930 in Cologne ) is a German sociologist .

Life

Hartmann took advantage of a grant from the American government to begin studying sociology at the University of Chicago in 1952 . After completing his MA , he returned to Germany as an employee of the University of Chicago (Research Director).

Here he carried out a study on management education. The work was published in Paris in English and French in 1955 and also in German in 1958. He then turned to four case studies on German entrepreneurship in practice. Because of his studies, he received an invitation from Princeton University to do a doctorate there. He earned his Ph.D. in sociology in 1958. A year later, his doctoral thesis was published by Princeton University Press . The German edition was entitled The German Entrepreneur . At Princeton, he was promoted to Assistant Professor and Research Associate .

At the invitation of Helmut Schelsky , he continued his career in Germany. His habilitation took place in 1962, and he received a full professorship in sociology in 1964 at the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster . In the management of the social research center at the University of Münster (seat: Dortmund), he set up a department for entrepreneurship research, from which numerous publications emerged. Hartmann did not follow the Schelsky group, which after 1968 Bielefeld moved out to one where university new-style building, but continued its strong industrial-related studies of Munster from continuing. Münster also gave him the opportunity to develop his interest in science management and in scientific media (especially magazines). Activities for the DFG , advisory boards, expert groups, etc. followed. In 1995 he retired in Münster. He continued to be scientifically active and wrote a book about tin figures from the GDR.

His teaching activities included a number of visiting professorships, almost all of which took him abroad - for example at the University of Hamburg (H. Schelsky), at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna, at Columbia University in New York City (as a substitute for Robert K. Merton ), the London School of Economics and Political Science , the University of Missouri in St. Louis, the Wroclaw Business Academy , the Berlin-Karlshorst School of Economics and the Moscow State University for Administration and Management.

After Hartmann's return from the USA, he undertook to familiarize the German public with the status and development of American sociology. In 1967 he published his Modern American Sociology , which was in high demand in two editions. In 1970 his basic textbook on empirical social research was published . A similar phase of comparative scientific presentation and evaluation resulted from 1986-1993 when he was visiting professor in the GDR and in Eastern Europe.

His work is characterized by a close connection between empirical studies and conceptual-theoretical evaluation. This applies both to his studies of management and entrepreneurship, in which he incorporated analyzes of functional authority (on this, his book 1964) as well as of entrepreneurial central ideas, self-images and collective interests (on this, senior staff , 1973). This interlocking of empiricism and systematics can also be found in Hartmann's studies on cultural contact and acculturation , which he carried out on the subject of Americanization in the Federal Republic, Latin America and South Africa.

His work on Americanization quickly attracted attention for political reasons, but was also described as a pioneer of the cultural turn in the social sciences (see Enterprise and Politics in South Africa , 1962, and American Firms in Germany , 1963). After all, this way of working is also typical of his investigations into practice and the design of science, which on the one hand deal with the concrete management of research, and on the other hand tie in with very fundamental aspects of scientific theory and epistemology. In this part of the field he put several major works before: Organization of Social Research in 1971, criticism in the scientific practice in 1984 (with Eva Dübbers) and Disenchanted Science in 1985, edited and introduced by Wolfgang Bonß .

Hartmann has consistently advocated the expansion and improvement of scientific media. For decades he was co-editor of the magazine Soziale Welt , founded the Sociological Review in 1978 and was co-editor of the Management Review for many years .

Fonts (selection)

• American companies in Germany: observations on contacts a. Contrasts between industrial societies , Cologne, Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1963
• Functional authority. Systematic treatise on a sociological concept , Enke: Stuttgart, 1964
• The German entrepreneur, authority and organization (from the American by Meino Büning), Frankfurt am Main: European publishing house. 1968
• Organization of social research , Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1971
• Looking for Sociology . In: Christian Fleck , (Ed.): Paths to Sociology after 1945: Autobiographical Notes . Leske + Budrich Opladen 1996, pp. 291-309, ISBN 3-8100-1660-8
• A sociologist's logbook: training, work, recognition in the subject 1950 - 2000 , Münster: Spurt-Verlag, 2007
• Toys and society: sociological and historical aspects of collecting toy figures , Münster: Spurt-Verlag, 2009-
• History in tin - from the GDR. Spurt-Verlag, Münster 2010, ISBN 978-3-9811576-3-5

literature

• Dieter Bögenhold, Dieter Hoffmeister a. a., Social World and Sociological Practice. Sociology as a profession and a program. Festschrift for Heinz Hartmann. Göttingen, 1995.
• Arndt Sorge, "Heinz Hartmann on the occasion of his 70th birthday (February 12, 2000)", Cologne Journal for Sociology and Social Psychology , LII (June 2000), pp. 393–395.

Web links

• Literature by and about Heinz Hartmann in the catalog of the German National Library