Joachim Matthes (sociologist)

Joachim Matthes (born June 1, 1930 in Magdeburg ; † May 3, 2009 in Erlangen ) was a German sociologist .

His main areas of work were initially the sociology of total institutions and the sociology of religion , then he also turned to cultural comparison and intercultural relations, with a special emphasis on Southeast Asia .

Life and work

As a high school student Joachim Matthes was in the Soviet occupation zone in 1947/48 nine months as "political" in custody in 1949 leaving examination laid after his release in Magdeburg and took in 1949 to study sociology, philosophy and law at the newly founded Free University of Berlin on . He received his doctorate in 1956 under Hans-Joachim Lieber on the subject of the sociology of the prisoner as an existential problem for Dr. phil. He then worked at the Evangelical Academies Loccum and Hofgeismar, and from 1960 to 1962 at the Institute for Social Research of the Diakonisches Werk der EKD . In 1964 he completed his habilitation at the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster with Helmut Schelsky for "sociology" and was immediately appointed to the chair of sociology and social education at the Ruhr University of Education in Hagen. At the same time he worked as a department head at the social research center at the University of Münster in Dortmund. In 1967 the Westphalian Wilhelms University appointed him to a professorship for sociology and in 1969 the newly founded University of Bielefeld , where he became the first dean of the first German faculty for sociology from 1969 to 1970. In 1976 he followed another call to the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg , where he worked as a researcher beyond his retirement in 1993 until his death. From 1979 to 1982 he was chairman of the German Society for Sociology .

He was married to the speech teacher Frauke Matthes (honorary prize of the Bielefeld Integration Prize 2011), the sociologist Ulrike Nagel and was married to Diana Wong for the third time. Since 1993 his first residence was Singapore .

Selected publications

• The sociology of the prisoner as an existential problem , Berlin 1955
• Problems of the sociology of religion , Westdeutscher Verlag, Cologne 1962
• Sociopolitical Concepts in Social Welfare Law , Enke, Stuttgart 1964
• The emigration of the church from society , Furche-Verlag, Hamburg 1964
• Sociology and Society in the Netherlands , Luchterhand, Neuwied 1965
• Introductions to the Sociology of Religion , 2 vols. ( Religion and Society , 1967; Church and Society , 1969)
• (Ed.) International Yearbook for the Sociology of Religion , Westdeutscher Verlag, Cologne
• Introduction to the Study of Sociology , Rowohlt, Reinbek [1973] ²1976
• Social change in Western Europe , [Reinbek 1973], Campus, Frankfurt am Main / New York 1979
• Everyday knowledge, interaction and social reality , 5th edition, Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1981,
• Introduction to the study of sociology , Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen ³1981
• Living environment and social problems , Campus, Frankfurt am Main 1981
• Biography from a practical science perspective , Nuremberg Research Association, Nuremberg 1981
• (Ed.) Crisis of the working society ? Campus, Frankfurt am Main 1983
• Church membership in transition , Gütersloher Verlagshaus Mohn, Gütersloh [1991] ²1992
• Between cultures? Schwartz, Göttingen 1992
• Understanding across cultural boundaries , Friedrich Alexander University, Erlangen 1993
• The social construction of reality. Berger-Luckmann revisited , Social Science Research Center, Nuremberg 1997
• The own and the foreign , Ergon, Würzburg 2005

Web links

• Literature by and about Joachim Matthes in the catalog of the German National Library
• Obituary by Andreas Feige (German Society for Sociology)