Helmut Dahmer

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Helmut Dahmer

Helmut Dahmer (born February 13, 1937 ) is a German sociologist .

life and work

Dahmer grew up in Witzenhausen (North Hesse) and studied at the universities of Bonn , Göttingen and Frankfurt am Main . As a student in Göttingen, he joined the Socialist German Student Union (SDS) .

From 1960 Dahmer studied with Adorno and Horkheimer and worked as a tutor in a student residence. In the mid-1960s he was largely involved in developing a socialist-oriented concept for youth education work in the chemical-paper-ceramic industrial union . Dahmer received his doctorate in 1973 and from 1974 taught as a professor of sociology at the Technical University of Darmstadt . Since his retirement in 2002 he has been living as a freelance journalist in Vienna.

At the end of his tenure as a university lecturer, Dahmer pleaded for “a re-politicization of sociology”, which has become a historically forgotten discipline that “keeps researchers and research trapped in a labyrinth of busy irrelevance”.

Dahmer was editor-in-chief from 1968 to 1992 and since 1982 co-editor of the monthly psychoanalytic journal Psyche . After its editor, Alexander Mitscherlich , died in 1982, the editorial staff of the Psyche drew the attention of its readers “to the adjustment policy and ideology of the“ Aryan ”board of the DPG practiced in the first years of the 'Third Reich' and now half-forgotten . ”The article Psychoanalysis and Weltanschauung by the psychoanalyst Carl Müller-Braunschweig in a Nazi magazine played a key role . Dahmer had discovered this explosive article as a reprint as early as 1970 during his studies on Wilhelm Reich in his journal for political psychology and sex economy , but not exposed it. Now he reprinted it in the psyche . In the controversy that followed, he reported, “the sheer hatred of those psychoanalysts whose identity was fused with this dreary past of German psychoanalysis.” In the wake of these quarrels, Dahmer finally lost his position as chief editor of the psyche .

From 1984–1987 Dahmer was a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Hamburg Institute for Social Research founded by Jan Philipp Reemtsma .

In 1971, Dahmer published Leon Trotsky's writings on Germany (in two volumes) and is the spiritus rector of a German-language, commented Trotsky's writings edition, of which seven volumes have been published so far (end of 2012).

As a student in the 1960s, Dahmer oriented himself towards Trotsky's political ideas: “I kept my distance from the 'Maoists', the sympathizers of the Chinese 'Cultural Revolution', as well as from the circles from which the RAF later emerged,” he recalled 2010. “I was and am convinced that neither mass terror nor the 'individual' can burst open the iron casing of capitalism. [...] Trotsky and Trotskyism stand for an unfinished and undiscredited alternative [to capitalism] ”.

Helmut Dahmer is currently a member of the scientific advisory board of the journal for critical social theory and philosophy and publishes regularly in the criticism network .

Fonts (selection)

As an author

As editor

  • Leon Trotsky: How is National Socialism defeated? European Publishing House, Frankfurt am Main 1971, ISBN 3-434-45000-9 .
  • Leon Trotsky: Writings on Germany . European Publishing House, Frankfurt am Main 1971, ISBN 3-434-00164-6 .
  • (Pseudonym: Christian Rot) Otto Fenichel : Psychoanalysis and Society. Essays . Red printing block, Frankfurt am Main 1972. ("Raubdruck")
  • Analytical social psychology . Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1980, ISBN 3-518-10953-7 .
  • with Isaac Deutscher and Georg Novack: Leon Trotsky: memorandum. Political experiences in the age of permanent revolution . Translations from English by Harry Maòr. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1981, ISBN 3-518-10896-4 .
  • Leon Trotsky: Writings . Rasch and Röhring, Hamburg 1988.
  • Leon Trotsky: socialism or barbarism! A selection from his writings . Promedia Verlag, Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-85371-240-1 .

literature

  • Martin Kronauer, Julijana Ranc, Andreas Klärner (eds.): Border crossings. Reflections on a Barbaric Century. For Helmut Dahmer. Humanities Online, Frankfurt 2006, ISBN 3-934157-49-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Political-biographical interview with Helmut Dahmer from September 3, 2010
  2. ^ Helmut Dahmer: Sociology after a barbaric century. Wiener Universitätsverlag, Vienna 2001, p. 8.
  3. ^ A b Helmut Dahmer: Psychoanalysts in Germany 1933–1951. In: Karl Fallend, Bernd Nitzschke (Ed.): The "Fall" Wilhelm Reich. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1997 (stw 1285), pp. 167-189 (169).
  4. ^ Carl Müller-Braunschweig: Psychoanalysis and Weltanschauung. In: Reichswart. National Socialist weekly and organ of the Bund Völkischer Europeans / Organe de L'Alliance Raciste Européenne, 14th year, No. 42, Berlin October 22, 1933.
  5. ^ Carl Müller-Braunschweig: Psychoanalysis and Weltanschauung. In: Journal for Political Psychology and Sexual Economics. Volume 1, Issue 1, 1934, pp. 74-76.
  6. ^ Carl Müller-Braunschweig: Psychoanalysis and Weltanschauung. In: Psyche. 37th Jg., Stuttgart 1983, pp. 1116-1119.
  7. ↑ See Dahmer's successor: Hans-Martin Lohmann : Comment. In: Psyche. 52.2 (February 1998), p. 194.
  8. ↑ See overview of the publisher / editor of the journal for critical social theory and philosophy
  9. ↑ See author overview in the criticism network
personal data
SURNAME Dahmer, Helmut
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rot, Christian (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sociologist
DATE OF BIRTH February 13, 1937