Klaus Hornung

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Klaus Hornung (born June 26, 1927 in Heilbronn ; † December 13, 2017 ) was a German political scientist and journalist .

Life

Hornung grew up in Heilbronn and attended school there. In 1944 he was drafted into the Reich Labor Service . From December 1944 Hornung took part in the Second World War as a Wehrmacht soldier . In 1945 Hornung was taken prisoner by the Americans for a short time. In the summer of 1946 he graduated from high school in Heilbronn. He then studied history , politics, English and German in Tübingen and Munich . In 1955 he received his doctorate with the work The Young German Order : A Contribution to the History of the "New Nationalism" in Germany 1919–1933 for Dr. phil. with Hans Rothfels . After his work in the school service and in the state center for political education in Baden-Württemberg , he became a lecturer in political science at the Reutlingen University of Education in 1962 , where he remained active until its dissolution in 1987. 1974 followed the habilitation in Freiburg with state and army: studies on command and command authority and on the political-military relationship in the FRG . In 1980 he was a visiting professor at the University of Cairo as part of a DAAD program .

From 1987 until his retirement in 1992 he was Professor of Political Science at the University of Stuttgart-Hohenheim . On March 31, 1987, he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon.

Political career

Hornung had been a member of the CDU since 1962 . In the 1960s he was an advisory board member of the Germany Foundation . In 1980 he was a co-founder of the Conservative Action . In 1987 Hornung became a member of the Presidium of the Weikersheim Study Center , and from 2001-2003 he was its President. He was also a member of the political advisory board of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation . In June 1988 he became chairman of the study society for time problems in Bonn, a controversial institution of the " Psychological Defense " (PSV), which was dissolved in October 1990 after a few scandals. In 1990 Hornung became chairman of the Citizens' Action for Germany as a whole . He was a member of the board of trustees of the International Society for Human Rights .

Political thinking

Hornung, a student of Theodor Eschenburg and Hans Rothfels , represented a theory of totalitarianism in the tradition of Ernst Nolte . Hornung initially turned to military-historical and military-strategic issues. In the course of the 1970s he also dealt with Marxism and for a long time published the Political-Pedagogical Manual Lexicon for the Hanns Seidel Foundation . In the 1980s and 1990s he increasingly dealt with the dictatorships and totalitarian manifestations of the 20th century and also wrote texts about the Kreisau Circle , Colonel General Ludwig Beck and the resistance against Adolf Hitler .

In numerous articles he equated Hitler, Stalin , Lenin and others. He appeared in right-wing conservative and new-right media such as Mut , Criticón , Deutschland-Magazin and Junge Freiheit against “the 68ers ”, who, in his opinion, “ conjured up the possible return of the ominous National Socialism with the peculiar result of left- wing fascist anti-fascism ” . He also appeared as a speaker at the State and Economic Policy Society . As a goal he formulated an “ authoritarian consensus”, which must arise from an “intact symbiosis of people , nation , military and democracy”. In 1995 he called the publicly discussed possible extremist and neo-Nazi threat in Germany an "invention of left journalists". The “political class” of Germany should follow the “wake-up call” of the “ Alternative for Germany ” and “end their policy of unconditional European integration and submission to the American-dominated financial markets”, he wrote in October 2014.

Positions

The magazine Mut , which was classified as right-wing extremist by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in the early 1980s, listed Hornung as a "permanent employee" in the imprint in the 1980s. In 1987 he was a consultant for CAUSA Deutschland e. V. A review of the book by Manfred Ritter Sturm auf Europa - A time bomb is ticking was published - allegedly without the knowledge and consent of Hornung - as a publication of the right-wing extremist "Schutzbund für das Deutschen Volk" and, allegedly again without the knowledge and consent of Hornung, in reprinted by the right-wing extremist magazine Nation und Europa .

The Berlin political scientist Hajo Funke claimed in 2002 that Hornung had "played a central mediating role for the extreme right for twenty years." There is "hardly a right-wing extremist cultural association in Germany" "with which Klaus Hornung would not have cooperated".

In his work The Totalitarian Age: Balance of the 20th Century (1993) Hornung formulated a strict rejection and rejection of both National Socialism and Communism.

In an article on political education, Hornung assumes that - in the face of ecological limits and a noticeable loss of credibility in politics - the paradigm of emancipation and self-realization takes a back seat. Instead, the question of social cohesion is becoming virulent. That is why Hornung advocates that political classes encourage students to grapple with the historical dimensions of the political, with texts on the philosophy of democracy and criticism of materialism. Above all, Hornung relies on civic virtues - he does not mention other political measures such as taxation, limits on assets or income.

In 1994 Hornung signed the “ Berlin Appeal ”, warning of the resurgence of socialism. In 2005, together with other journalists, he initiated the "Appeal May 8, 1945 - Against Forgetting" published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , which called for people to remember on this date in the spirit of Theodor Heuss that “we are both redeemed and destroyed in one have been". In 2001 he co-signed another appeal; this was directed against the discharge of the conservative first lieutenant in the reserve, Götz Kubitschek , from the Bundeswehr. In 2006 he signed the “Appeal for Press Freedom” of the weekly newspaper Junge Freiheit against its exclusion from the Leipzig Book Fair . In 2010 Hornung was one of the first signatories of the action to stop the left trend against the "abandonment of Christian-conservative and market-economy positions" at the CDU.

Fonts (selection)

  • The Young German Order (1958)
  • Totalitarian rule in the 20th century (1980)
  • Totalitarian rule. Texts and literature (in: Politics and Sociology 3)
  • Courage to turn (1985)
  • The totalitarian age. Balance of the 20th Century (1993) ISBN 3-548-33203-X .
  • The fascinating mistake. Karl Marx and the Consequences (1978) ISBN 3-451-07645-4 .
  • Ways out of the dead ends. Experience of History - Defense of Freedom (2002) ISBN 3-9807644-1-9 .
  • Alternatives to Hitler: Wilhelm Groener - Soldier and Politician (2007) ISBN 978-3902475411 .
  • Reason in the Age of Extremes. The Conservative Position (2012) ISBN 978-3-941750-85-2 .
  • Freedom or Despotism: The Experience of the 20th Century (2015) ISBN 978-3873364950 .

literature

  • Hans Filbinger , Heinz Karst (ed.): Identity and future of the Germans. Klaus Hornung on his 65th birthday (= European Forum, 8). Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al., 1992, ISBN 3-631-44939-9 .
  • Klaus Hornung . In: Kürschner's German Scholars Calendar 2003. 19th edition. Volume I: A - J. Bio-bibliographical directory of contemporary German-speaking scientists . KG Saur, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-598-23607-7 , p. 1397.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Obituary notice in the Reutlinger General-Anzeiger , December 16, 2017, accessed on December 19, 2017.
  2. ↑ Office of the Federal President.
  3. ↑ a b "We have to approach mothers and brides" . Der Spiegel 20/1989, May 15, 1989, pp. 34–50, here p. 47.
  4. ↑ Epoch , III / 2000
  5. ↑ Extremism: Further to the right . In: Der Spiegel 22/2001, May 28, 2001, p. 20.
  6. ↑ Klaus Hornung: AfD wake-up call . Letter to the editor in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , October 31, 2014, p. 15.
  7. ↑ Journal Forum for Spiritual Guidance No. 3, 1988, p. 37.
  8. ^ Klaus Hornung: Storm on Europe - A time bomb is ticking . In: Criticón (1990) 118, March / April, pp. 85-87.
  9. ↑ German Bundestag : Printed Matter 13/1459 of 19 May 1995th
  10. ^ Wolfram Wette: Filbinger - a German career . 2006, p. 139.
  11. ↑ Klaus Hornung: What holds our society together? In: Siegfried Schiele, Herbert Schneider: Is the Beutelsbach Consensus Sufficient? Wochenschau-Verlag, Schwalbach, 2006, ISBN 978-3-87920-384-0 , pp. 128-142.
  12. ↑ Against forgetting. (pdf) Institute for State Policy, archived from the original on September 26, 2007 ; accessed on July 3, 2019 .
  13. ↑ 28.09.01 / Appeal to the Bundeswehr: Against the dismissal of conservative soldiers / The "Götz Kubitschek case". Retrieved July 1, 2019 .
  14. ↑ nz: Celebrities stand up for “Young Freedom”. Archived from the original on January 13, 2014 ; accessed on January 2, 2013 (in Netzeitung , February 7, 2006).
  15. ↑ Charter 2017 - an appeal for freedom of opinion and art . In: Conservo . October 19, 2017 ( wordpress.com [accessed November 28, 2018]).
  16. ↑ 17.02.06 / Thank you! / A victory for freedom of the press / JUNGE FREIHEIT prevails. Retrieved July 1, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Hornung, Klaus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German political scientist and author
DATE OF BIRTH June 26, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Heilbronn
DATE OF DEATH December 13, 2017