John Michael Steiner

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John Michael Steiner

John Michael Steiner (born August 3, 1925 in Prague - † May 6, 2014 in Novato , California ) was a Czech-American sociologist and Holocaust researcher.

Life

Steiner was born as the son of the bank authorized signatory Kurt J. Steiner and his wife Ilse, b. von Ornstein, born. He grew up in a Christian family in Prague and attended an English kindergarten, a German elementary school and the Czech Neruda secondary school. A Jewish grandfather became the reason for the persecution by the Nazi rulers. After the assassination attempt on the deputy Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich in 1942, Steiner was arrested and taken to several German concentration camps ( Theresienstadt , Auschwitz-Birkenau , Blechhammer , Reichenbach ) and finally to Dachau , where he was liberated by American troops in 1945 . His mother and other family members were murdered in Auschwitz, and his father survived.

When he returned to Prague, he was able to take his Abitur and study medicine at Charles University from 1946 to 1949 . With the new communist rulers he came into political conflict, so that he was temporarily imprisoned. Steiner left Prague and emigrated to Australia, where he studied German and psychology at the University of Melbourne and worked as an interpreter and consultant for immigrants. He finished his studies with a BA in 1952. A scholarship enabled him to travel to the USA in 1952, where he completed an MA in sociology and German studies in 1955 and was authorized to teach at the University of Missouri , Columbia. He then became involved as a consultant, including in a state institution for the mentally handicapped and in the San Quentin Penitentiary in California . From 1956 to 1959 he taught at the School of Speech, University of California, Berkeley , and was also able to prepare for a doctorate in sociology and social psychology. In 1958 he became a US citizen.

The stay in Germany from 1962 was planned to collect the material for the dissertation on the social structure and interpersonal relationships in National Socialist concentration camps . From 1963 to 1964 Steiner worked as a freelancer at the Freiburg Research Institute for World Civilizations, which later became the Arnold Bergstraesser Institute , and at the same time suggested new approaches to rehabilitation of offenders in the Freiburg penal institution through group therapy (group counseling) - in collaboration with the Institute for Criminology and the Psychological Institute of the University of Freiburg. A grant from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation made it possible to complete the first research project with the dissertation Power Politics and Social Change in National Socialist Germany. A Process of Escalation into Mass Destruction (Power politics and social change in National Socialist Germany. A process of escalation into mass destruction). The doctorate was supervised by the retired sociologist Eduard Baumgarten in Freiburg. In 1968 Steiner was appointed Professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University , California, where he taught until his retirement in 1997. Subsequent research projects in Germany and Austria were supported by grants from the Fulbright Commission in 1974/1975 and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in 1981/1982. In 2004 Steiner received the Federal Cross of Merit in recognition of his research .

plant

Steiner was one of the few Holocaust survivors who, in their later research as sociologists or psychologists, sought direct contact with the perpetrators in the concentration camps. With imprisoned concentration camp guards and numerous members of the SS and Waffen-SS of higher and lower ranks, he conducted interviews about their biography and their function in the Nazi state , although he only admitted his identity as an Auschwitz survivor when asked directly. These interviews, for example with the “executioner of Buchenwald” Martin Sommer , and many autobiographical texts have been preserved as transcripts, some as videos. Some of this material is in the Holocaust Center in Washington . Steiner found access to other people and contemporary witnesses in a variety of ways, e. B. Felix Steiner and Karl Wolff (each a general of the Waffen-SS and SS-Obergruppenführer), Hitler's secretary Christa Schroeder and Albert Speer .

This research on the social psychology of the perpetrators and the topic of authoritarian personality in post-war Germany was difficult for several reasons, because almost without exception the German sociologists and psychologists avoided the actually obvious empirical research on this topic, which was so urgent given the age of those involved. Steiner was encouraged by Erich Fromm , who had an essential share in the social-psychological theory of the authoritarian character ( authoritarian personality ). He found support from the Attorney General in Hesse, Dr. Fritz Bauer and the ministerial official Dr. Heinz Meyer-Velde and the criminologist Prof. Armand Mergen . Namesake Felix Steiner, General of the Waffen-SS, as well as other generals helped the “American professor” (not knowing that he was an Auschwitz survivor) to find several hundred members of the Waffen-SS and the Wehrmacht who were between 1962 and 1966 were willing to fill out a questionnaire. I was invited as guest of honor to an annual SS-Kameradschaftstreffen of 1200 former members of the SS and their families in Nassau, Hessen, which lasted for three days. Ironically, I was asked to give a short address which, under the circumstances, was a somewhat difficult task ” (to Erich Fromm on November 10, 1975, from Steiner's estate). For his part, Steiner was an advisor to the much-discussed Stanford Prison Experiment by the California social psychologist Philip Zimbardo .

The interviews provided insights into typical patterns of personal and family history, curriculum vitae and motives for registering for the SS or Waffen-SS, to become a member of a death's head association (concentration camp guard) or the Gestapo . He also found evidence that these organizations were relatively permeable; H. Reports or transfers between the organizations and affiliations were not uncommon. A second project - using a questionnaire - was aimed at comparing the socio-economic data and, above all, the social and political attitudes, especially the typical characteristics of the “authoritarian personality”, among members of the Waffen-SS and SS and members of the Wehrmacht .

The former members of the Waffen-SS and SS differed from those of the Wehrmacht in their political convictions and values. On average, those expressed themselves more authoritarian, conformist and obedient, intolerant, narrow-minded and rigid, etc. U. latently hostile. Even twenty years after the end of the war and about thirty years after the voluntary reporting or recruitment of these men, typical attitudes still existed, which suggest relatively long-term dispositions. These characteristics of the authoritarian personality were only recorded here on the level of attitudes and must be discussed in the context of obedience behavior : Under which situational conditions and obedience requirements are individual differences in the disposition of authoritarianism so awakened that conformity and latent hostility become manifest violence? The political reality of National Socialism systematically brought about this escalation (see Steiner 1976, 1980, 2000).

Other works by Steiner dealt with the "fragmentation of conscience", i. H. the split in the standards of value between brutal violence and peaceful family life, as reported by several of the outstanding perpetrators, and the impressive examples of an ideological shift from right-wing to left-wing extremist attitudes. He was moved by the existentially difficult fact that survivors in the concentration camps were fatally entangled in the details of what was happening, and sometimes could only survive when others died.

Steiner contributed significant results and insights to the understanding of the National Socialist worldview and to the social-psychological analysis of authoritarian personality, situational conditions and manifestations of destructive violence. In order to explain the conditions and triggering situations of authoritarian and destructive behavior, Steiner gave numerous lectures and held interviews on television and radio, wrote in newspapers and spoke as a contemporary witness in schools. He founded the Holocaust Center, Sonoma State University , Calif., USA.

Publications (selection)

  • Group counseling in adult prisons. In: Monthly for criminology and criminal law reform. Volume 49, 1966, pp. 160-172.
  • Totalitarian Institutions and German Bureaucracy. In: Exerpta Criminologica. Vol. 8, 1968, pp. 295-304.
  • Bureaucracy, Totalitarianism, and Political Crime. In: Essays in Honor of Armand Mergen. Kriminalistik-Verlag, Hamburg 1969, pp. 31–53.
  • with Jochen Fahrenberg: The development of authoritarian attitudes among former members of the SS and the Wehrmacht: An empirical study. In: Cologne journal for sociology and social psychology. Volume 22, 1970, pp. 551-566.
  • Power Politics and Social Change in National Socialist Germany. A Process of Escalation into Mass Destruction . Mouton, The Hague, Netherlands 1975, ISBN 90-279-7651-1 .
  • with Stuart C. Hadden and Len Herkomer: Price Tag Switching. In: LG Toornvliet (Ed.): Criminology between the Rule of Law and the Outlaws. Kluwer, Deventer, The Netherlands 1976, pp. 173-185.
  • Power, Ideology, and Crime. In: St. Schafer (Ed.): Readings in Contemporary Criminology . Reston Publishing C., Reston, Virginia 1976, pp. 90-100.
  • with Günter Bierbrauer (translated and edited): The Stanford prison experiment. A simulation study of the social psychology of imprisonment. 3. Edition. Santiago Verlag, Goch 2010, ISBN 978-3-9806468-1-9 . (incl.DVD) (reprint of Goch 1983 edition)
  • The SS yesterday and today: A Sociopsychological View. In: Joel E. Dimsdale (Ed.): Survivors, Victims, and Perpetrators: Essays on the Nazi Holocaust . Hemisphere Publishing Corporation, New York 1980, ISBN 0-89116-145-7 , pp. 405-456.
  • About the creed of the SS. In: KD Bracher, M. Funke, H.-A. Jacobsen (Ed.): National Socialist Dictatorship 1933–1945. A balance sheet. Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf 1983, pp. 206-223.
  • Reflections on Experiences in Nazi Death Camps. Slave Laborer at the Blechhammer (Ehrenforst) Synfuel Plant. In: Siegwald Ganglmair (Ed.): Documentation archive of the Austrian resistance. Yearbook 1996, pp. 57-78.
  • with Jobst Freiherr von Cornberg: arbitrariness in arbitrariness: Hitler and the exemptions from the anti-Semitic Nuremberg laws. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte. No. 2, 1998, pp. 143-187.
  • with Jochen Fahrenberg: Authoritarian attitude and status features of former members of the Waffen SS and SS and the Wehrmacht. An extended reanalysis of the study published in 1970. In: Cologne journal for sociology and social psychology. Volume 52, 2000, pp. 329-348.
  • The Role Margin as the Site for Moral and Social Intelligence: The Case of Germany and National Socialism. In: Crime, Law & Social Change. Vol. 34, 2000, pp. 61-75.
  • "He wasn't like that ...": On January 25, 1942, Adolf Hitler personally released Amalia Hoisl, inmate No. 2054, from the Comthurey satellite camp in Ravensbrück . Interview with Amalia Hoisl in the summer of 1997, 1998 and 1999 in Klagenfurt and Guttaring, Carinthia. In: S. Ganglmaier (Hrsg.): Documentation archive of the Austrian resistance. Vienna, Yearbook 2000, pp. 45–86.
  • Jochen Fahrenberg, John M. Steiner: Adorno and the authoritarian personality. In: Cologne journal for sociology and social psychology. Volume 56, 2004, pp. 127-152.
  • Encounters and insights from an Auschwitz survivor. In: Manfred Mayer, Friends of the Memorial for the Freedom Movements in German History (Hrsg.): ... and we stopped being human: The way to Auschwitz, with 170 previously unpublished image documents from the Wolfgang Haney collection, on behalf of the Federal Archives . Schöningh, Paderborn 2005, pp. 88-91, ISBN 978-3-506-72886-9 .

literature

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personal data
SURNAME Steiner, John Michael
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czech-American sociologist and Holocaust researcher
DATE OF BIRTH August 3, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Prague
DATE OF DEATH May 6, 2014
Place of death Novato , California