Louis Wirth

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Louis Wirth (born August 28, 1897 in Gemünden im Hunsrück , † May 3, 1952 in Buffalo , New York ) was an American sociologist ( Chicago School ) of German-Jewish descent. He was the 37th president of the American Sociological Association .

Life

After his sister Flora (married Joseph, born August 21, 1896 - September 27, 1952 in Des Moines ( Iowa )) about a year older , Louis Wirth was born in 1897 as the second child of a Jewish family that had lived in the Hunsrück for generations. His younger brother is the cultural scientist Otto Wirth (1905-1991) , who later also trained in the USA . Other siblings were:

  • Fred (Fritz, † February 6, 1976, presumably in Chicago). He was married to Esther Wirth, née Rimsky.
  • Else (born April 3, 1899 - † May 19, 1982, married Bendix)
  • Julius (* around 1902 in Gemünden), last place of residence before entering the USA: Brussels. He arrived on May 10, 1938 at the age of 36 with the SS Nieuw Amsterdam from Rotterdam in Ellis Island .
  • Richard (* around 1901 in Gemünden). His wife's name was Hedwig (* around 1904 in Gemünden).

The father, Joseph Wirth (* December 18, 1866 in Gemünden - † in Chicago ), was a tolerant, politically interested horse dealer, mother Rosalie Lorig (born January 4, 1867 in Butzweiler - † 1948 in Chicago) also came from a family of traders. Gemünden had around 900 inhabitants at the turn of the last century and a long Jewish tradition that goes back at least to the 13th century. The share of almost twenty percent Jews in the population and the synagogue in the village gave Gemünden the nickname "Little Jerusalem" in the area. After the Nazis came to power, the entire Wirth family, insofar as they were still living in Germany, emigrated to the USA against the long-standing resistance of their father at Louis' insistence.

The synagogue in Gemünden was burned down during the Reichspogromnacht on November 9, 1938.

Louis Wirth had already been sent to an uncle in Omaha / Nebraska with his older sister at the age of 14 after graduating from elementary school in 1911 . There he graduated from high school and left Omaha in 1914 at the age of 17 to study medicine at the University of Chicago, which opened in 1892, on a scholarship. However, he soon moved to the world's first Institute for Sociology and Anthropology, established in 1892 under Albion W. Small .

Here he met Robert E. Park , who had initially given lectures on "The Negro in America" since the summer of 1914 on a suggestion by William I. Thomas and shortly thereafter received an appointment to the "Department of Sociology" of the university. In contact with Robert E. Park, Ernest W. Burgess , William I. Thomas and Albion W. Small , Wirth discovered his scientific interest in the forms of social organization and the way of life in modern, urban societies.

In 1919, Wirth left the university with a bachelor's degree and took a job at the "Jewish Charities of Chicago", where he became the "Director of the Delinquent Boys' Division". In his work as a "caseworker" at the "Jewish Charities", Wirth continued the work of William I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki , who, in their study: "The Polish Peasant in Europe and America", primarily looked at the culture and way of life of the Polish Farmers in the countries of origin asked. Wirth, on the other hand, focused more on the way of life of the Polish / Jewish immigrants and their future in America.

In his “ Master of Arts ” thesis “Cultural Conflicts in the Immigrant Family”, submitted in 1925 , Wirth formulates his practical experience as a “caseworker”. In the conflict between ethno-religious traditions and the requirements of a rational, modern society, so his diagnosis, individuals suffer moral and normative disintegration, which leads to crime and misconduct, especially among young people.

After 1925, Wirth taught at the Sociology Department and remained active as an “instructor” without a permanent position until 1928. His promotion to Ph.D. took place in 1926. In 1928 an appointment took him to the southern states at Tulane University in New Orleans . He lived here with his wife Mary Bolton, who came from a Baptist family and whom he married in 1923, and his daughter Elizabeth in 1928 and 1929. In 1930 Wirth received a Traveling Fellowship from the Social Science Research Council (SSRC ), which brought him back to Germany , where he was able to make contact with numerous social scientists and also met Karl Mannheim .

Wirth returned in January 1931 as an "Assistant Professor" back to the University of Chicago, was employed as an "Associate Professor" in 1932 and was appointed professor in 1940. Louis Wirth lived and taught there until he unexpectedly died of heart failure on May 3, 1952 in Buffalo at the "Conference on Community Living".

Scientific work

Influenced by his childhood in rural Gemünden and his experiences in the metropolis of Chicago, equipped with the scientific concepts of the sociology of the Chicago School and his experiences from working with Polish / Jewish immigrants , Wirth came to the conclusion that he had in his doctoral thesis: " The Ghetto ”(1926) has well-established that integration and assimilation are not primarily processes of individual individuals , but that it is rather the values and norms of cultures that have to be assimilated and integrated into the host society , because each individual depends on their culture is shaped sustainably. It is therefore an assimilation of cultures that is required and not primarily the assimilation of individual individuals. In the dissertation “The Ghetto” Wirth also examined the problems of segregated lifestyles in urban areas. Wirth's work does not deal with the historical reconstruction of the Jewish ghetto, but aims at the generalization of typical processes of internal isolation into patterns of social organization.

Wirth is primarily present in sociology as a pupil of Robert E. Park on his classic essay "Urbanism as a Way of Life" from 1938 (German: " Urbanität als Lebensform", 1974) and thus especially present in urban sociology . In terms of content, however, in contrast to the thinking of his mentor Park, Wirth's work is more about the theoretical conception of a sociology of modernity that asks about the possibilities and forms of social integration and social participation under the conditions of permanently heterogeneous , urban lifestyles in modern societies. In his contributions to Chicago, the city in which he lived and worked for decades, he was not concerned with the city itself, but for Wirth the city was the research laboratory of modernity. Chicago was exemplary for the cities and the cities for the modern. A theory-led empirical research had to find a place where one could get hold of modern society, if one was not only to speculate about modern society.

In search of research- leading approaches and adequate theories for the knowledge and design of modern society, Wirth dealt with the findings of US social science and the concepts of the philosophy of pragmatism as well as with the German social science, to which he came due to his origin and mother tongue had immediate access. Wirth found some interesting approaches in the work of German sociologists , but no theory in the sense of what he considered necessary or what sociological theory imagined.

He highlighted Georg Simmel's work: “The Big Cities and Spiritual Life” (1903) and Werner Sombarts : “The Jews and Economic Life ” (1911) as significant for the recognition of the change in social lifestyles caused by urbanization . Simmel, however, as Wirth sums up, never developed a system and Max Weber's sociology is an unfinished work that is of little benefit to sociology as an independent discipline.

The two theoretical conceptions that decisively influenced Wirth's sociology, much more so than the sociology of Simmel and Ferdinand Tönnies , as it is mostly claimed, were the philosophy of pragmatism of John Dewey and the sociology of the early Chicago school. Confronted with the skepticism of Dewey's pragmatism and Thomas's disorganization theory on the one hand, and the optimism of Park's theory of evolution of a goal-oriented higher development on the other, Wirth transformed the optimism of the Jewish conception and Park's teleology by means of the action-related perspective of pragmatism into the possibilities of free and voluntary design of modern societies urban lifestyles.

The transition from the evolutionist and scientific concepts, as represented by Park, to a sociology of the modern age is comprehensible in Wirth's transformation of Park's human ecology to the sociology of knowledge , as it is also clear in Wirth's introduction to Karl Mannheim's work “Ideology and Utopia” (1936) becomes. Shortly after Park's death in February 1944, Wirth explicitly dealt with the human ecology of Parks in 1945 in a concluding, pointed demarcation, in a work that bears the same title as the work published by Park in 1936: "Human Ecology". In terms of content, based on William I. Thomas, John Dewey and Karl Mannheim, Wirth leaves nothing to do with this demarcation from human ecology. The social and cultural conditions are decisive for the way of life in modern society. The sociology of knowledge is therefore considered Wirth than explicitly sociological version of human ecology in modern society.

Wirth's perspective can be regarded as innovative within the social sciences in particular because Wirth was one of the first sociologists to recognize the permanence of cultural heterogeneity and plurality in modern societies and, on this basis, turned to the investigation of possible forms of social integration. Wirth thus combines Parks' claim to describe social development within the framework of legal developments with the openness and design of contingent living conditions in modernity, as Dewey put it. From this, Wirth creates a concept that defines the regularity and order in modern urban societies in the regularities of cultural and social lifestyles and the collective action that is shaped by them.

Throughout his life, Louis Wirth has dealt with the question of how binding norms and values ​​arise in culturally plural societies consisting of a large number of heterogeneous individuals , and how a partial consensus can be formed that enables joint action. Wirth argued that no social group could exist in the long term without a minimal consensus, because agreement in at least some basic values ​​and norms was a condition of collective action. A society that loses the capacity for collective action, therefore, falls into a state of social disorganization.

Louis Wirth has designed a sociological concept that locates the patterns of social organization and integration of modern, heterogeneous society in the communicative processes of discursive consensus building. Participation of the citizens in all areas of society is necessary for the necessary design of the complex living environments in modern times. Comprehensive participation thus forms an indispensable social basis for democracy . For Louis Wirth, modern society was not based on traditional customs, but on conscious, reflective and permanent design based on common norms, values ​​and goals. A consensus on the goals to be achieved, argues Wirth, can only be achieved through unconditional communication between all those involved. Binding values ​​and norms require direct participation in order to come about. It is participation in an activity that generates interest, point of view, value and meaning , not the propagation of moral norms and values. In order to shape the complex structure of modern society, however, according to Wirth, it is necessary that people not only have freedom , but also the responsibility and decision-making authority for all matters that affect them. In terms of content, Wirth's thinking was largely shaped by John Dewey , a founder of the American philosophy of pragmatism, and the work of William I. Thomas, one of the most important members of the Chicago School. The so-called Thomas theorem was a starting point for his sociological research. When people, as Thomas put it, define a situation as real, its consequences are real.

Participation and responsibility for the community were not only a rhetorical formula for Wirth, but also a practical obligation for his own engagement in society. In addition to his professorship, which he held at the University of Chicago from 1940 until his untimely, sudden death in May 1952, he was temporarily president of the American and international sociological society. He has fulfilled his social responsibility in particular as a member and chairman of countless organizations and committees for urban and regional planning and in his work at UNESCO . As a co-initiator of a radio program for NBC , he tried to convey scientific knowledge to a broader public .

Wirth dealt in an innovative way for the first time in the tradition of the Chicago School of Sociology with the conditions of social order and social integration in urban civilizations and designed a sociology of modernity in the middle of the last century .

Fonts

  • The ghetto . Chicago 1928.
  • Preface to "Ideology and Utopia", by Karl Mannheim . In: E. Shils, L. Wirth (eds.): Ideology and Utopia, by Karl Mannheim. New York 1936, pp. XIII-XXXI
  • Types of Nationalism. In: AJS . Vol. 41, no. 6, May 1936, pp. 723-737.
  • The Urban Mode of Life. In: New Horizons in Planning. Chicago 1937, pp. 23-30.
  • Urbanism As A Way of Life. In: AJS. 44, 1938, pp. 1-24.
    • German: Urbanity as a way of life. In: U. Herlyn (Ed.): City and social structure. Munich 1974, pp. 42-66.
  • Social Interaction: The Problem of the Individual and the Group. In: AJS. Vol. 44, May 1939, pp. 965-979.
  • Ideological Aspects of Social Disorganization. In: American Sociological Review. Vol. 5, no. 4, 1940, pp. 472-482.
  • The Urban Society and Civilization. In: Louis Wirth (Ed.): Eleven Twenty Six: A Decade of Social Science Research. 1940, pp. 51-63.
  • Morale and Minority Groups. In: AJS. Vol. 47, no. 3, November 1941, pp. 415-433.
  • The Present Position of Minorities in the United States. In: Studies in Political Science and Sociology. Philadelphia 1941, pp. 137-156.
  • Race and Public Policy. In: Scientific Monthly. Vol. 58, April 1944, pp. 302-312.
  • Group Tension and Mass Democracy. In: American Scholar. Vol. 14, No. 2, 1945, pp. 231-235.
  • Human Ecology. In: AJS. Vol. 50, no. 6, May 1945, pp. 483-488.
  • The Problem of Minority Groups. In: Ralph Linton (Ed.): The Science of Man in the World Crisis. New York 1945, pp. 347-372.
  • A Sociologist Looks at the Community. In: Louis Wirth u. a. (Ed.): Community Planning for Peacetime Living. Stanford, Calif 1946, pp. 3-89.
  • American Sociology 1915-1947. In: AJS. Index to Volumes 1-52, 1895-1947. Chicago 1947, pp. 273-281.
  • Ideas and Ideals as Sources of Power in Modern World. In: L. Bryson et al. a. (Ed.): Conflicts of Power in Modern Culture. NY 1947, pp. 499-508.
  • Consensus and Mass Communication. In: American Sociological Review. Vol. 13, no. 1, February 1948, pp. 1-15.
  • World Community. World Society, and World Government. In: Quincy Wright (Ed.): The World Community. Chicago 1948, pp. 9-20.
  • The Significance of Sociology. In: International Social Science Bulletin (UNESCO). Vol. 3, no. 2, Summer 1951, pp. 197-202.

posthumous - anthologies

  • Elizabeth Wirth Marvick, Albert John Reiss (Eds.): Community Life and Social Policy. Chicago / London 1956.
  • Albert John Reiss (Ed.): On Cities and Social Life. Chicago / London 1964.

literature

  • Albert J. Reiss jr .: Introduction, Sociology as a Discipline. In: Albert John Reiss (Ed.): On Cities and Social Life. Chicago / London 1964.
  • Roger Allen Salerno: Louis Wirth: A Bio-Bibliography. New York / Westport / London 1987.
  • Wolfgang Vortkamp: Participation and Community : Louis Wirth's Sociology of Modernity in the Tradition of the Chicago School . In: social world. Vol. 49, No. 3, 1998, pp. 275-294.
  • Wolfgang Vortkamp: Participation and social integration in heterogeneous societies. Louis Wirth's conception of social organization in the tradition of the Chicago school . Opladen 2002, ISBN 3-8100-3069-4 .

Individual evidence

  1. Fred (Fritz) Wirth's obituary notice, Chicago Sun-Times , February 7, 1976
  2. ^ According to the Ellis Island passenger list; he was not mentioned on the obituary notice.
  3. "Not applicable is the - z. B. in a book by W. Vortkamp from 2003 - stated assumption that Lorig's mother came from a rabbi or scholarly family. ”( Gregor Brand: Louis Wirth - American sociologist. Son of a Jew from Butzweiler , Eifel newspaper, August 24th 2016) Rosalie Lorig's father was the merchant Alexander or Abraham Lorig (born March 8, 1829 in Butzweiler ).