Kurt Heinrich Wolff

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Kurt Heinrich Wolff (born May 20, 1912 in Darmstadt ; died September 14, 2003 in Newton , Massachusetts ) was a German-American sociologist .

Live and act

Wolff's father was a wine merchant in Darmstadt, he died in 1924. His mother fled to the Netherlands in 1939 and survived the Holocaust there , his sister Gretel escaped to the USA, his sister Hannah was murdered in Auschwitz . After graduating from high school, Wolff studied German , Romance studies , philosophy and sociology for three years in Frankfurt am Main and in Munich; his most important academic teacher was Karl Mannheim . Wolff developed his dissertation on "Intelligence in Darmstadt" together with Mannheim and Norbert Elias in the sociological seminar of the University of Frankfurt. While he was interviewing intellectuals from his hometown Darmstadt for this dissertation project, Hitler came to power and Wolff emigrated to Italy. He continued his studies in Florence and received his doctorate there in 1935 with a thesis on the sociology of knowledge .

In addition to his studies, Wolff worked from 1934 to 1936 as a teacher at the school on the Mediterranean in Recco (Liguria) and then until 1938 at the Colleggio Monte-Mare in Camogli-Ruta and its branch in Ponte di Legno . In 1936 Wolff married Carla Bruck from Berlin, the son of the Carlo couple was born in 1943. The friendship with his college friend Aurelio Pace, historian and father of the artist Joseph Pace, was important during these years .

In 1939 the Wolff couple emigrated to the USA via England (where they only stayed three weeks) and in 1945 received US citizenship. With the help of a niece, Wolff got a job as a research assistant for sociology at Southern Methodist University in Texas in 1939 . Four years later, he received a grant from the Social Sciences Research Council , which enabled him to study at the University of Chicago and do field research in New Mexico . After a year as a sociology lecturer at Earlham College ( Indiana ), he became a professor at Ohio State University in 1952 . In 1959 he moved to Brandeis University ( Massachusetts ), where he taught until 1993 after his retirement in 1982. From 1964 on, Wolff was a member of the Board of Directors of Sociological Abstracts . In 1966/67 he took a one-year visiting professorship at the University of Freiburg i. Br. True.

Wolff also worked as a translator . In particular , he translated works by Georg Simmel into English.

1966–1972 Wolff was chairman of the research committee for the sociology of knowledge of the International Sociological Association , 1972–1979 president of the International Society for the Sociology of Knowledge . Wolff was an honorary member of the German Society for Sociology .

In 1987 the city of his birth Darmstadt awarded him the Johann Heinrich Merck Medal , and in 2002, on Wolff's 90th birthday, Darmstadt commemorated him with a small brochure.

Fonts (selection)

  • Trying Sociology (1974).
  • Surrender and Catch (1976).
  • Attempt to a Sociology of Knowledge (1968).
  • Devotion and concept. Sociological Essays (1968).
  • The personal story of an emigrant , in: Srubar, Ilja (ed.), Exile, Science, Identity. The emigration of German social scientists 1933–1945 , Frankfurt am Main: suhrkamp, ​​1988, pp. 13–22 (here also source), ISBN 3-518-28302-2 .
  • Sociology in the Vulnerable World (1998).
  • o'Loma! (1989).
  • Transformation in the Writing (1995).

literature

  • J. Maier: Wolff, Kurt H. In: Wilhelm Bernsdorf / Horst Knospe (eds.): Internationales Soziologenlexikon , Vol. 2, Enke, Stuttgart, 1984, p. 1262
  • Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss (Eds.), International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933–1945 , Vol II, 2 Munich: Saur 1983 ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , p. 1109

Web links

Wikibooks: Sociological Classics / Wolff, Kurt H.  - Learning and teaching materials

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ He himself writes that he had been a student for three years in 1933: The personal story of an emigrant , in: Srubar, Ilja (ed.), Exile, Science, Identity. The emigration of German social scientists 1933-1945 , Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, ​​1988, p. 13, ISBN 3-518-28302-2
  2. ↑ http://wiki.studiumdigitale.uni-frankfurt.de/SOZFRA/index.php?title=Kurt_H._Wolff
  3. ↑ Hildegard Feidel-Mertz (ed.): Schools in Exile. The repressed pedagogy after 1933 , Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH, Reinbek near Hamburg, November 1983, p. 253, ISBN 3-499--17789-7
  4. ^ Alberto Izzo, Quaderni di Teoria Sociale N.3, Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, Italia, 2003
  5. ↑ Quattrocchi Lavinio February 2012, Joseph Pace Filtranisme, una vita raccontata, intervista, Wobook pp. 17/18
  6. ↑ Kurt H. Wolff on his 90th birthday , four texts, selected and with a dedication and an afterword by Claus K. Netuschil , published by the Magistrat der Stadt Darmstadt, Press and Information Office, Darmstadt, 2002
personal data
SURNAME Wolff, Kurt Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American sociologist
DATE OF BIRTH May 20, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Darmstadt
DATE OF DEATH September 14, 2003
Place of death Newton , Massachusetts