Lorenz Jäger

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Lorenz Jäger on the blue sofa at the Leipzig Book Fair 2017

Lorenz Jäger (born June 6, 1951 in Bad Homburg in front of the height ) is a German sociologist , Germanist and journalist . Until 2011 he counted himself to the New Right .

Life

After graduating from high school, Lorenz Jäger studied sociology and German at the Philipps University of Marburg and the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main . According to Jäger in 2009, when he was a student in Marburg there was a “climate of dogmatic Marxism ” that is hardly imaginable today , in which only four professors formed “islands of the blessed”: the sociologist Heinz Maus , the German studies scholar Heinz Schlaffer , the art historian Martin Warnke and the literary scholar Gert Mattenklott . In 1978, Jäger passed the examination to become a sociologist with the Horkheim student Maus.

In 1985 he was in German at the University of Frankfurt with a thesis Messianic criticism: studies on the life and work of Florens Christian Rang to Dr. phil. PhD. He then worked at Kent State University in Ohio . From 1985 to 1988 he taught at Hokkaido University in Sapporo ( Japan ). In 2002 he was a visiting scholar at the Center for Literary and Cultural Research (ZfL) in Berlin and in 2008 a visiting fellow at the German Studies Department of the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages ​​at Stanford University in California.

In 1997 he became editor in the humanities section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . On April 1, 2015, he took over the management of this department until he retired at the end of 2016. He was succeeded by Patrick Bahners . Since 2009 he has also been writing a column on religious topics in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung , the contributions of which appeared in a book in 2010.

He was a juror a. a. the Geschwister-Scholl-Prize and the Theodor-W.-Adorno-Prize .

Lorenz Jäger is married to a Japanese woman, has two children and lives in Frankfurt am Main.

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His biography Theodor W. Adornos , published in 2003, was judged very differently. Hilal Sezgin criticized that the biography was written "spitefully" and contained hardly a friendly word about Adorno. The 3sat culture editor Katharina Kleppe remarked that Jäger collects "all kinds of disrespect" about Adorno. "A little more empathy would have looked good on Lorenz's biography - for the sake of the biographer's ideally balanced neutrality." The dpa reporter stated: "Jäger's critical presentation ultimately means that he hardly leaves a good hair on Adorno. Not only does the author give Adorno critics like Bertolt Brecht a chance to have their say, he also considers the topicality of the pioneer of critical theory to be completely extinguished by the year of his death at the latest. ... With so much distance one might end up wondering why Jäger wrote a book about Adorno in the first place. ”Jäger's biography is“ not very friendly towards the project of a critical social theory ”, stated the philosopher Johan Frederik Hartle . “There are very few traces of solidarity with Adorno's critical theory in his book.” Jörg Lau , on the other hand, called the book a “masterful biography”.

According to the Germanist Mario Scalla, Jäger is intellectually close to the " conservative anti-modernist" Martin Mosebach , whose book Heresy of Formlessness he praised in 2002. He expressed understanding for Marcel Lefebvre , whose path he explained based on the experience with the militant secularism of France. and judged on the lifting of the excommunication of the four bishops of the Pius Brotherhood : "The path of the church to peace with its own tradition has taken in any case, the new decree is a second step after the first of the ' Motu proprio ' for the old mass." The right-wing conservative The weekly newspaper Junge Freiheit praised Jäger's attitude towards the Pius Brotherhood. Jäger's image of Catholicism is strictly dualistic: “There is a Catholicism that refuses to abandon its traditions, and one that is more or less militant with modernization.” He wrote an article on the history of the Freemasons for the Pius Brotherhood , which he also wrote the book Behind the Great Orient. Dedicated to Freemasonry and Revolutionary Movements.

Jäger reviewed the book The Holocaust Industry by Norman Finkelstein positively. He is an opponent of EU membership of Turkey .

Thorsten Thaler, deputy editor-in-chief of Junge Freiheit, wrote about Jäger: “Lorenz Jäger is one of the small bunch of those in the German journalism community who rarely mince words when it comes to describing facts or highlighting their own position ; his texts are among the most interesting and best that the FAZ's features section still has to offer after various personal bloodshed. "

In 2006 Jäger published a cultural history of the swastika . The historian Bernd Buchner, a student of Helmut Berding , was appalled: “Jäger's book is a swastika apology. He does not even bother to describe the ethnic pair of opposites 'Aryans' - 'Jew', which the National Socialists happily picked up on, as what they are, namely as historically and scientifically untenable. "Jäger creates" the impression that I regret it he made the symbol taboo after the Second World War and would like a kind of revival. "

In 2009, Jäger criticized the decision not to award the Hessian Culture Prize to the writer and Islamic scholar Navid Kermani or to revoke this award on the front page of the FAZ . He is a critic of the American neoconservatives and the anti-Islamic German blog Politically Incorrect , which he accuses of " middle-class extremism ".

In 2012 his book Signatures des Schicksals was published by Matthes & Seitz .

Regarding the theses of the historian Ernst Nolte , who sparked the historians' dispute in 1986 , Jäger said in a Focus interview that he “quietly prevailed with the core of his argument”. In January 2013, Jäger published an article on Nolte's 90th birthday in the FAZ .

In 2017 Jäger's biography about Walter Benjamin was published . Micha Brumlik criticized in the taz that Benjamin was denied being German, which, according to Jäger, was more than “education and […] nationality”, and brought his “pseudophilosemitic” interpretation close to the anti-Semitic stereotype of Jewish Bolshevism .

Jäger occasionally writes articles for the Catholic newspaper Die Tagespost .

Distancing from the New Right

As recently as 2005, Jürgen Habermas described him as "well-known to the FAZ Feuilleton editorial staff on the right".

On October 5, 2011, Jäger published his article Adieu, Kameraden, Ich bin Gutmensch in the FAZ , with which he distanced himself from the New Right : “No, I'm no longer there, please count me out. It was a good time, these past ten years of rights, I admit it. But above all, it was comfortable. ”This article received different ratings.

Götz Kubitschek from the right-wing magazine Sezession comments with reference to a linguistic image of Gottfried Benn :

"Jäger never understood the seriousness of the situation, he never understood our seriousness and never exposed the white, tough roots of the orange: the conviction that for us Germans there is a 'we' and a 'not-we'."

The right-wing Junge Freiheit complained about Jäger's "smug, ironic attitude [...], which is good form in his left-liberal environment". The left newspaper , on the other hand, suspected that Jäger had “serious motives”, but criticized his assumption that conservatism had “become an ideology [...] of war sellers”. In truth, he always was.

Publications

Monographs

Editorships

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. See Lorenz Jäger: Secret Marburg. On the death of the literary scholar Gert Mattenklott. In: FAZ. October 6, 2009, p. 27.
  2. Dr. Lorenz Jäger , zfl-berlin.org, accessed on August 16, 2016.
  3. Lorenz Jäger of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung to teach at Stanford , dlcl.stanford.edu, accessed on August 16, 2016.
  4. FAZ, March 12, 2015, p. 11.
  5. News from the editorial team , In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of May 11, 2017, p. 2.
  6. Hilal Sezgin : A child prodigy grows up. On his 100th birthday, three very different temperaments try to paint a picture of Adorno's life, intellect and personality . In: Frankfurter Rundschau . August 20, 2003.
  7. 3sat.de
  8. Biographies compete for the "correct" picture of Adorno. In: Südkurier . September 11, 2003.
  9. The ubiquitous Teddie . Theodor W. Adorno for the hundredth. In: literaturkritik.de. No. 9, September 2003.
  10. Lorenz Jäger: Adorno - A political biography
  11. Mario Scalla: pity. Martin Mosebach saves the king. In: Friday. November 2, 2007; see. z. B. Lorenz Jäger: The dignity of a German revolutionary. In: FAZ. No. 251, October 29, 2007, p. 33; Lorenz Jäger: The modernity of Martin Mosebach. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. November 24, 2007, p. 1.
  12. perlentaucher.de
  13. ^ Church, Struggle and Laicism.
  14. ^ Pius Brotherhood: Mass and Dimensions . The Pius Brotherhood is one of the traditionalist forces within the Catholic Church. Their opposition to the development after the Second Vatican Council had led to their excommunication. Now Pope Benedict XVI. it repealed, although a bishop in its ranks had denied the Holocaust . In: faz.net . January 26, 2009.
  15. Without blinkers. In: Young Freedom. February 20, 2009.
  16. Lorenz Jäger: Passions. In: FAZ. No. 178, August 4, 2003.
  17. Lorenz Jäger: Background to Freemasonry in Politics. ( Memento of December 5, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) In: pius.info. November 2, 2012.
  18. Lorenz Jäger: The suspicion. Finkelstein's moment: Dispute over the “Holocaust Industry”. In: FAZ. August 19, 2000; Lorenz Jäger: The answer. Norman G. Finkelstein and the Jewish Claims Conference. In: FAZ. August 26, 2000; Lorenz Jäger: Finkelstein II. “Commentary” also criticizes the compensation policy. In: FAZ. August 31, 2000; Lorenz Jäger: Wrong readers. The buck is about: Finkelstein, for the others. In: FAZ. September 13, 2000.
  19. See Lorenz Jäger: On all maps apart. Europe and Turkey: The illogic of the accession negotiations. In: Claus Leggewie (ed.): Turkey and Europe. The positions . Frankfurt am Main 2004; Lorenz Jäger: Right to clarity. Who pulls the emergency brake? Angela Merkel in Turkey. In: FAZ. February 17, 2004, p. 33. In the last article, Jäger warns: "An accession of Turkey, which would allow its citizens the free choice of residence in Europe, would be nothing less than a cultural catastrophe".
  20. ^ Thorsten Thaler: Cold put . Inglorious role: Ernst Nolte and the "FAZ". In: Young Freedom. January 18, 2008.
  21. hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de
  22. Lorenz Jäger: Lammert: Case Kermani a state spokesman. In: FAZ. No. 113, May 16, 2009, p. 1.
  23. Lorenz Jäger: The military-ideological complex. In: International Politics. 5, May 2008, pp. 52-61.
  24. View of the article on the signatures of fate on the by Matthes & Seitz , accessed on January 9, 2013.
  25. Lorenz Jäger: “A frivolous question” . The non-fiction author Lorenz Jäger describes the historical fate (and the aesthetic value) of the swastika. In: Focus. No. 7, 2007. See also Lorenz Jäger: On the style of historical knowledge. To the question to which fascism wanted to give an answer: Ernst Nolte on his 85th birthday. In: FAZ. January 11, 2008; Lorenz Jäger: 1923 - the decisive year of an era (Deutschlandradio, September 1, 2006).
  26. Lorenz Jäger: Ernst Nolte. Think annihilation. A philosophizing historian in conflict. In: FAZ. January 7, 2013, p. 32.
  27. ^ Lorenz Jäger: Walter Benjamin. The life of an unfinished. Rowohlt, Berlin 2017.
  28. Micha Brumlik: Biography about Walter Benjamin. In the world civil war . In: taz of March 11, 2017 ( online , accessed March 18, 2017).
  29. Jürgen Habermas: In an unmistakably aggressive tone . For a current occasion: memories of the "Szondi Affair" in Frankfurt. In: FAZ. July 12, 2005.
  30. ^ A b Lorenz Jäger: Adieu, comrades, I am a do-gooder . In: FAZ. No. 231, October 5, 2011, p. 29.
  31. Götz Kubitschek: Were we "comrades", Lorenz Jäger? on: sezession.de , October 10, 2011, accessed January 5, 2019.
  32. ^ The dropout ( memento of November 16, 2011 in the Internet Archive ). In: Young Freedom. October 13, 2011.
  33. Conservatives abolish themselves. Tageszeitung, taz.de, published on October 6, 2011, accessed on January 9, 2013.