Manfred Wolfson

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Manfred Wolfson (originally: Manfred Wolfsohn , born May 31, 1923 in Berlin , † 1987 in California ) was a German-American sociologist and researcher on National Socialism .

Life

Manfred Wolfson was born as the eldest son of the pharmacist Willy Wolfsohn and his wife Alice in Berlin. Due to an early death of his parents, Wolfson grew up with his maternal grandmother. In 1939 , the then 15-year-old orphan emigrated with his brother Klaus to the United States , where he received American citizenship in 1943 . He was now called "Wolfson" in American spelling. Shortly afterwards, Wolfson returned to Europe with the US Army . Among other things, he worked for the intelligence service of the American occupiers in Germany. During the Nuremberg trial of the main war criminals , he examined the system of rule of the National Socialists and their representatives as "Chief Research Analyst". The results of this research were also the focus of his subsequent political science degree at the University of Chicago and his dissertation presented in 1965 at the University of California, Berkeley under the name The SS Leadership .

Manfred Wolfson became known in specialist circles for his research on the rescuers of persecuted Jews . For this purpose, between 1965 and 1967 he interviewed around 40 randomly selected people in Germany who had saved German Jews from persecution in the Nazi state , sometimes at risk of death. During his stay in Germany, Wolfson worked as a visiting assistant professor at the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research and was supported in his research not least by Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer . The evaluation of the research had to be interrupted several times, among other things because Wolfson had to accept gainful employment in order to make a living in the United States. He could no longer implement his intention to process the research for educational purposes, because six months after the death of his wife in 1986 he died in 1987 as a result of a traffic accident. The documents of his helper research were made available to the University of St. Gallen by his daughter Deborah Wolfson and formed the basis for Emil Walter-Busch's project there: The political ethics of German rescuers of persecuted Jews 1938-1945: Reconstruction and secondary analysis of Manfred's unfinished survey study Wolfson, 1964-1969 .

Wolfson had started his research on helper workers under the thesis that people who had helped Jews at the time must have enjoyed a non-authoritarian upbringing and were oriented towards positive role models, i.e. were an alternative to the “ authoritarian personality ” according to Adorno. This assumption was not confirmed in his investigations. In fact, around 75 percent of the rescuers had been brought up to be authoritarian. "Quite a few of them turned out to be perfect specimens of this ostracized species, as highly conservative and prejudiced contemporaries, as perfect 'authoritarian personalities' ..." There was hardly any character or attitude between the individual helpers, they also came from all social classes and from all walks of life all social milieus. The willingness to help arose from very different motives.

Publications

Dissertation:

  • The SS Leadership . Department of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley 1965.

Articles (selection):

  • "Two approaches to political decision-making", Associated Students' Store , University of California, 1958.
  • "Constraint and Choise in the SS Leadership," The Western Political Quarterly , University of Utah, 1965.
  • “The resistance against Hitler. Sociological sketch about rescuers (rescuers) of Jews in Germany ”, in: From politics and contemporary history . Supplement to the weekly newspaper “Das Parlament” from April 10, 1971 B 15 (1971), pp. 32–39.

literature

  • Peter Schneider: “'Better dead than cowardly'”, in: Der Spiegel , 37/2001, Hamburg.
  • Emil Walter-Busch: "Origin and results of Manfred Wolfson's rescuer study (1945–1975)", in: Beate Kosmala / Claudia Schoppmann (ed.): Survival in the underground. Help for Jews in Germany 1941–1945 . Solidarity and Help for Jews in the Nazi Era, Vol. 5, Berlin 2002.
  • Emil Walter-Busch: “In memory of Manfred Wolfson (1923–1987)”, in: Beate Kosmala / Revital Ludewig-Kedmi: Verbotene Hilfe. German rescuers during the Holocaust . Book and CD-ROM. Pestalozzianum publishing house at the Zurich University of Education. Auer Verlag, Donauwörth 2003.
  • "A pioneer in rescue research: Manfred Wolfson". Short biography, in: Beate Kosmala / Revital Ludewig-Kedmi: Verbotene Hilfe. German rescuers during the Holocaust . Book and CD-ROM. Pestalozzianum publishing house at the Zurich University of Education. Auer Verlag, Donauwörth 2003.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Emil Walter-Busch: "In memory of Manfred Wolfson (1923-1987)", in: Beate Kosmala, Revital Ludewig-Kedmi: Verbotene Hilfe. German rescuers during the Holocaust . Donauwörth 2003.
  2. ↑ "A Pioneer in Rescue Research: Manfred Wolfson". Short biography, in: Beate Kosmala, Revital Ludewig-Kedmi: Verbotene Hilfe. German rescuers during the Holocaust . Donauwörth 2003.
  3. ↑ Willi Mernyi : Civil courage - or social courage . Script of the VÖGB (Association of Austrian Trade Union Education), 2011.
  4. ↑ Peter Schneider: "'Better dead than cowardly'", in: Der Spiegel , 37/2001, Hamburg.
personal data
SURNAME Wolfson, Manfred
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wolfsohn, Manfred (original name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American sociologist and Nazi researcher
DATE OF BIRTH May 31, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH 1987
Place of death California