Kurt Sontheimer

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Kurt Sontheimer (born July 31, 1928 in Gernsbach , Baden , † May 16, 2005 in Murnau am Staffelsee ) was a German political scientist and professor at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich .

Life

Sontheimer studied political science and history in Freiburg im Breisgau , Erlangen , Kansas City and Paris . In 1960 he completed his habilitation at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg with the text Antidemocratic Thinking in the Weimar Republic . From 1960 he was a professor at the University of Education in Osnabrück . In 1962 he followed a call to the Otto Suhr Institute at the Free University of Berlin . From 1969 until his retirement in 1993 he was Professor of Political Science at the Geschwister-Scholl-Institute of the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich.

After his early retirement , which was preceded by a professors' dispute, Sontheimer taught for two years at the Alfred Grosser Chair at the Institute for Political Science in Paris. From 1968 to 1983 he was also a member of the Presidium of the German Evangelical Church Congress , including its President from 1973 to 1975. From 1980 to 2004 he chaired the jury for the Guardian Prize of the German daily press of the Freedom of the Press Foundation .

Sontheimer died at the age of 76 after a brief illness. He is the father of the historian and journalist Michael Sontheimer .

research

Sontheimer mainly published studies on Germany's political system and the country's political culture . With his political statements, he worked beyond the university framework. His study Antidemocratic Thinking in the Weimar Republic of 1962 was groundbreaking . Its publication was preceded by a dispute with Theodor Eschenburg in 1961, who wanted to prevent publication by the Munich Institute for Contemporary History . He dealt with the threat to democracy from left and right extremism and was an advocate of parliamentary democracy . However, his term extremism differs significantly from the use of the term in use today, since the aims of the various radical currents must also be taken into account in an assessment. Movements formerly described as radical left often pursued democratic goals and successfully implemented them:

“But since the agreement of the state-supporting groups on the principles of the existing order cannot be a measure of the quality of such an order, but only represents a status quo formula, extremism and radicalism, as our own history teaches, is not something from the outset Negatives. Today's center that supports the state is nothing other than the result of the radical left movements of yesterday and the day before yesterday. Since the ruling groups always determine the range within which they tolerate political views, radical movements and ideologies must always be asked about the content and the political goal. (...) This is where the political radicalisms differ. "

politics

Sontheimer had been an SPD member since the 1960s . In 1969 he co-founded a voter initiative with Günter Grass that called for the election of the SPD. He traveled through Germany with the initiative and promoted Willy Brandt . He articulated his rejection of the radical left in the book The Misery of Our Intellectuals , published in 1976 .

His book So Was Deutschland , published in 1999, is considered to be a balance sheet of his work.

Works

  • Thomas Mann and the Germans. 1961. Revised. New edition, 2002.
  • Anti-democratic thinking in the Weimar Republic. 1962. 3rd edition, 1992.
  • Germany between democracy and anti-democracy. 1971.
  • Basic features of the political system of the Federal Republic of Germany. 1971.
  • The DDR. Politics - Economy - Society , Hamburg 1972.
  • The Political System of Great Britain , Munich 1972.
  • The misery of our intellectuals. 1976.
  • The insecure republic. 1979.
  • The uncomfortable citizen. On the German way of dealing with democracy , Zurich 1980.
  • Turning point? The Federal Republic of Germany between old and alternative politics , Hamburg 1983.
  • Basic features of the political system of the Federal Republic of Germany. Together with Wilhelm Bleek , 1984.
  • Germany's political culture. 1990.
  • The Adenauer era. 1991. 3rd, updated. 2003 edition.
  • From Germany's republic . 1991.
  • Germany was never like this. Notes on the political culture of the Federal Republic. 1999.
  • Hannah Arendt. The way of a great thinker. 2005, ISBN 3-492-04382-8 .

Awards

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Bleek dedicated his book History of Political Science in Germany to some of his academic teachers (including Sontheimer) (CH Beck, Munich 2002); in it he mentions or cites Sontheimer in numerous places.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ So in the article "Hermann Graml died" by Willi Winkler, published in the Süddeutsche Zeitung on February 7, 2019, p. 13.
  2. ↑ Kurt Sontheimer: Danger from the right - danger from the left. In: Tired of Democracy - New Left and Old Right - Differences and Similarities. Cologne 1970, p. 14.
personal data
SURNAME Sontheimer, Kurt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German political scientist
DATE OF BIRTH July 31, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Gernsbach , Baden
DATE OF DEATH May 16, 2005
Place of death Murnau am Staffelsee