Lothar Brock

Lothar Brock (born January 30, 1939 in Lauenburg in Pomerania ) is a German political scientist .

Life

Brock experienced the last days of the Second World War with his mother and three siblings in cellars and air raid shelters in Danzig . This was followed by two years in a Danish internment camp , in which the two younger siblings died after his father had previously been killed in his hometown.

Brock grew up with mother and brother ( Bazon Brock ) in Wilstermarsch and Itzehoe , spent a year as an exchange student in the USA in 1955/56 and began studying law at the University of Social Sciences in Wilhelmshaven and Saarland University in 1958 .

Under the influence of Ernst Fraenkel and Richard Löwenthal , Brock switched to political science at the Free University of Berlin . After completing his studies, Brock went to the Inter-American Human Rights Commission in Washington, DC for two years on a scholarship from the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in 1963. He then completed his doctorate with Gilbert Ziebura at the Free University of Berlin, where he also qualified as a professor in 1978 in political science.

After a stopover at the TU Braunschweig , Brock was appointed to the Goethe University in Frankfurt for political science with a focus on international relations . From 1981 to 2005 Brock was also a research group leader of the research group "Democratization and Inner Social Peace" at the Hessian Foundation for Peace and Conflict Research .

Since his retirement in 2004 he has been a guest researcher in his research group at PRIF and as a senior professor in teaching at Goethe University. 2013–2014 Lothar Brock was a Fellow at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg “Political Cultures of World Society - Center for Global Cooperation Research” (Duisburg, Essen, Bonn). In addition, Brock is a member of the ethics committee of the German Association for Political Science, Liaison Professor of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation and a member of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) . Numerous students attend his courses at Goethe University, in which Brock particularly deals with the effectiveness of international law (including the responsibility to protect). He supervises numerous student theses, dissertations and habilitation procedures as a contact, advisor and reviewer.

His research and teaching areas in the field of international relations and world governance include North-South politics, resource use, rural development and human rights in the third world , liberal peace theory, democracies and peace, democratic wars.

Lothar Brock stayed in North America ( USA , Mexico ), Latin America , West Africa , the Horn of Africa , South Asia and Central Asia for research purposes and as part of project support . It is internationally networked for research purposes and is present at the conferences of the International Studies Association (ISA) or the European International Studies Association (EISA).

Lothar Brock is married and has two sons and grandchildren.

Act

Since completing his studies, Brock has been involved in both political and scientific research in the field of peace and conflict research . He played a key role in the development of peace and conflict research at the Free University of Berlin, was a member of the council of the German Society for Peace and Conflict Research and the Working Group for Peace and Conflict Research, of which he was a member of the board, temporarily as chairman, for several years. As a member of the Council of the International Peace Research Association, he temporarily represented the Western Europe region. Since 2013 Lothar Brock has been chairman of the Advisory Board of the Development and Peace Foundation (SEF), which was founded in the early 1990s for Willy Brandt from the Nobel Peace Prize money . Since 2011 Brock has been a member of the board of the Association of German Scientists (VDW eV), which was founded in 1959 by Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker and other scientists and in the declaration of the Göttingen eighteen people spoke out against atomic armament of the Bundeswehr.

At the Hessian Foundation for Peace and Conflict Research, the focus is on academic work in the areas of pan-European peace, peace and development, as well as peace, democracy and international law. Together with Anna Geiß and Harald Müller, Brock played a key role in conducting research on the wars of democracies.

In the 1990s, Brock founded the World Society research group at the Goethe University in Frankfurt and the TU Darmstadt together with Mathias Albert and Klaus Dieter Wolf. At the international level, he works with a Danish-American research group on the subject of fragile states . As a member of the International Review Panel, Brock accompanied a major Swiss project on sustainable resource management ( NCCR) for over twelve years .

Church development cooperation was a second focus of work. Brock was head of the EKD Chamber for Sustainable Development for many years , head of the peace and development section in the dialogue program of the Joint Conference on Church and Development (which later resulted in regular reports on the German government's arms export policy) and a member of the international advisory board of the Evangelical Development Service.

Publications (selection)

• Why do we need the United Nations today? Balance sheet and perspectives of the world organization. In: From politics and contemporary history, 66th year, 10–11 / 2016, 3–10.
• Fragile States. Violence and the Failure of Intervention, Cambridge (UK): Polity 2012 (together with Hans Henrik Holm, Georg Soerensen and Michael Stohl).
• Democratic Wars. Looking at the Dark Side of Democratic Peace, Houndmills: Palgrave 2006 (ed., Together with Anna Geis and Harald Müller ).
• Civilizing World Politics. Society and Community Beyond the State, Lanham etc .: Rowman and Littlefield 2000 (ed., Together with Mathias Albert, Klaus Dieter Wolf).
• World Society Research Group (Albert, Mathias / Brock, Lothar / Schmidt, Hilmar / Weller, Christoph / Wolf, Klaus Dieter): World Society: Identifying a “Phantom”, in: Politische Vierteljahresschrift 37: 1, 1996, pp. 5–26.
• From “Humanitarian Intervention” to “Responsibility to Protect”: War experience and development of international law since the end of the East-West conflict, in: Fischer-Lescano, Andreas / Gasser, Hans-Peter / Marauhn, Thilo / Ronzitti, Natalino (eds. ), Peace in freedom. Festschrift for Michael Bothe on his 70th birthday, Baden-Baden 2008: Nomos, pp. 19–32.
• Protecting People. Responsibility or Threat ?, in: Brozoska, Michael / Kron, Axel (eds.): Overcoming Armed Violence in a Complex World. Essays in Honor of Herbert Wulf. Opladen and Farmington Hills: Budrich Uni Press 2009, pp. 223-242.
• Violence and law in north-south relations, in: Engel, Ulf / Jakobeit, Cord / Mehler, Andreas / Schubert, Gunther (eds.): Navigieren in der Weltgesellschaft. Festschrift for Rainer Tetzlaff. Münster: Lit-Verlag 2005, 257-270.

literature

• Albert, Mathias / Moltmann, Bernhard / Schoch, Bruno (ed.): The delimitation of politics. International Relations and Peace Studies. Festschrift for Lothar Brock, Frankfurt: Campus 2004.
• Chojnacki, Sven / Namberger, Verena: Peace - or being a constitutive concept of misery, in: Leviathan 39, 2011, pp. 333–359.
• Reichwein, Alexander: Lothar Brock - the peace researcher on his 70th birthday, in: UniReport Goethe University Frankfurt am Main 1/2009, vol. 42, p. 26.
• Von Bredow, Wilfried: Inventory, archive maintenance and expansion of the field of vision, in: Journal for Peace and Conflict Research, 1: 1, 2011, pp. 155–162.

Web links

Literature by and about Lothar Brock in the catalog of the German National Library