Ossip K. Flechtheim

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Ossip Kurt Flechtheim (born March 5, 1909 in Nikolajew , Russian Empire , † March 4, 1998 in Berlin ) was a German university professor and author . The lawyer and political scientist was one of the founders of futurology in Germany.

Life

Flechtheim was the son of the bookseller Hermann Flechtheim (1880–1960) from the Brakel entrepreneurial family Flechtheim and his wife Olga, geb. Farber (1884-1964). The family moved back to Münster in Westphalia in 1910 , the home of their father, who was the managing director of the grain wholesale company M. Flechtheim & Comp. was active, and later to Düsseldorf . Both parents were members of the Jewish community . Nevertheless, Ossip Flechtheim was not interested in religion. As a non-denominational humanist , he became a member of the German Freethinker Association in West Berlin after the Second World War . V. (later Humanistic Association of Germany ). His uncle Alfred Flechtheim was a well-known art dealer.

After graduating from the Hindenburg School (today Humboldt-Gymnasium Düsseldorf ), which he passed in 1927, he was drawn to the KPD . Due to the ideological tightness of this party, he resigned in 1931 after five years and a trip to Moscow . Flechtheim studied law and political science at the universities in Freiburg im Breisgau , Paris , Heidelberg , Berlin and finally Cologne . From 1931 to 1933 he completed his legal clerkship at the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court . In 1934 he was able to work with Carl Schmitt in Cologne with his work on Hegel's criminal law theory for Dr. jur. PhD. The necessary book edition could only be published abroad (Rohrer-Verlag, Brno 1936).

Persecution and emigration

After taking power , he was dismissed from the public service in 1933 because of his membership in the resistance group Neu Beginnen and his Jewish descent. In 1935 he was imprisoned for a total of 22 days, only barely escaping the National Socialists . He went via Belgium to Switzerland , where, thanks to a scholarship, he was able to continue his scientific studies at the Institut Universitaire des Hautes Etudes Internationales , which is affiliated to the University of Geneva , and graduated in 1939 with a diploma. Because Flechtheim had been expatriated during this time , the University of Cologne also revoked his Dr. degree (recorded for April 14, 1938).

In 1939 he emigrated to the USA , where he initially worked at Horkheimer's Institute for Social Research at Columbia University in New York City . There he learned a. a. Erich Fromm , Herbert Marcuse and Isaac Asimov know. He later worked as a lecturer and finally as a professor at various universities. In December 1942 he married Lili Therese Faktor, the daughter of the former editor-in-chief of the Berliner Börsencurier . Their daughter Marion Ruth was born on September 26, 1946.

Until 1943 he taught at the University of Atlanta . When many of his black students were drafted into the military, he moved to Colby College and as an assistant professor at Bates College ( Maine ).

During the Second World War , he joined the US Army. In 1946 he returned to Germany as Lieutenant Colonel for a few months as head of section and office at the Office of the US Chief Prosecutor for War Crimes in Berlin. From 1947 to 1951 he continued his profession as a university lecturer in the United States. In 1948 his work on Die KPD in the Weimar Republic was published , with which he was awarded a doctorate in 1947 at the University of Heidelberg. phil. received his doctorate. He also applied for the renewal of his Cologne legal doctorate, which the faculty granted according to the protocol of April 10, 1947.

Activity as a university lecturer in Berlin

From 1952 to 1959 he was a full professor at the German University of Politics . Through the integration of the facility into the Free University of Berlin in 1959, he received a C4 professorship for political science at the Otto Suhr Institute there , which he held until his retirement in 1974.

Formation of futurology

Flechtheim coined the term “ futurology ” as a systematic and critical treatment of questions about the future as early as 1943 in the USA. In 1968 an article appeared in the Neue Rundschau with the title Futurology - Possibilities and Limits , which was later repeatedly used , in which he discussed pioneers such as Karl Marx and contemporaries such as Leszek Kołakowski , Robert Jungk and Herbert Marcuse . In 1970 he finally published his work Futurology: The Struggle for the Future . In it he criticized both future research in the West and prognostics in the real socialist states as technocratic and, on the other hand, set a model of the "liberation of the future". The representation of the future in state planning is based on the ideal of objectivity of the natural sciences and accordingly relies exclusively on precisely this expertise. In the critical counter-movement, on the other hand, the “development, internationalization and democratization of futurology” is the prerequisite for a democratization of society.

Political commitment

He was a co-founder of the left-liberal Republican Club in Berlin, was a member of the SPD for ten years (until 1962) and from 1981 of the Greens . He published a large number of books and newspaper articles (including in the Frankfurter Rundschau and in Die Zeit ) , was a founding member and vice-president of the International League for Human Rights , a member of the PEN Club , in the Council of Peace Researchers and in the Board of Trustees of the German Society for Peace and Conflict research . The pacifist OK Flechtheim actively supported the International of War Resisters . On August 9, 1985, in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , he replied to the question of what he hated most: “Inhumanity” and the war between people.

He died on the eve of his 89th birthday in his adopted home Berlin. His grave is in the Dahlem cemetery in Berlin, next to those of his political friends Brigitte and Helmut Gollwitzer and Rudi Dutschke .

Awards and honors

In 1979 he refused to accept the Grand Cross of Merit in a letter to Federal President Walter Scheel on the grounds that too many Nazis had received it. In 1981 Flechtheim took over the honorary chairmanship of the Berlin Institute for Future Studies and Technology Assessment . This independent and non-profit research institute was founded in 1981 to establish scientific future research in Germany.

In May 1986 he was awarded the Fritz Bauer Prize by the Humanist Union . In 1989 he was honored with an honorary doctorate from the Free University of Berlin and the Ernst Reuter Medal from the Berlin Senate .

Flechtheim was a long-time member of the Humanist Association of Germany (HVD). In 2003, the HVD launched the Ossip K. Flechtheim Prize in his honor. The prize is awarded every two years for outstanding commitment to the promotion of education, tolerance and self-determination in our society and is endowed with 2,500 euros. The 100th birthday of OK Flechtheim was honored by the Humanist Association of Germany and the magazine Graswurzelrevolution .

Fonts

Books

  • The Communist Party of Germany in the Weimar Republic. Bollwerk-Verlag Karl Drott, Offenbach 1948.
  • One world or none? Contributions to politics, political science and philosophy. (Collection Res novae. Vol. 32), European Publishing House , Frankfurt am Main 1964.
  • World communism in transition. Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, Cologne 1965.
  • Bolshevism 1917–1967. From the world revolution to the Soviet empire. Europa-Verlag, Vienna 1967.
  • Futurology . The fight for the future. Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, Cologne 1970.
  • Contemporary history and future politics. Hoffmann and Campe , Hamburg 1974, ISBN 3-455-09108-3 .
  • with Rudzio , Vilmar , Wilke : The DKP's march through the institutions. Soviet Marxist strategies of influence and ideologies. Fischer-TB, Frankfurt am Main 1980, ISBN 3-596-24223-1 .
  • Karl Liebknecht as an introduction. (SOAK Introductions, 19). Junius, Hamburg 1985, ISBN 3-88506-819-2 .
  • Can the future still be saved? The mega-crisis of our time and its seven challenges. Campe 1987. Heyne 1989, ISBN 3-453-03750-2 .
  • with Egbert Joos: looking for a better world. Biography, interview, article. Dietz, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-320-01622-9 .

Essays

  • Moscow 1931 - Moscow 1964. In: H. Bethke, W. Jaspert (ed.): Moscow, Leningrad today: reports and impressions from a trip. Voice publishing house, Frankfurt 1965, p. 34.
  • Introduction to: Karl Liebknecht: Thought and Action. Writings, speeches, letters on the theory and practice of politics. Edited by OK Flechtheim. Ullstein, 1976, ISBN 3-548-03282-6 .
  • From Hegel to Kelsen. Legal theoretical essays. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1963 (collection of articles).

Editing

literature

Web links

proof

  1. ↑ Eberhard Fromm: Father of Futurology - Ossip K. Flechtheim . In: Berlin monthly magazine ( Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein ) . Issue 3, 1999, ISSN  0944-5560 , p. 50-57 ( luise-berlin.de ).
  2. ^ Mario Kessler: Between History and Futurology. Ossip K. Flechtheim. In: Axel Fair-Schulz, Mario Kessler (Hrsg.): German Scholars in Exile. New Studies in Intellectual History. Lexington Books, Lanham MD et al. a. 2011, ISBN 978-0-7391-5023-8 , pp. 173-211, here p. 174.
  3. ↑ See: Mario Keßler: Ossip K. Flechtheim. Political scientist and future thinker (1909–1998). 2007, p. 74.
  4. ^ At the "Office of the US Chief of Counsel for War Crimes (OCCWC)" in the "Document Center Berlin", see The judgment in the Wilhelmstrasse trial. The official wording of the decision in case no. 11 of the Nuremberg Military Tribunal against von Weizsäcker and others, with differing reasons for the judgment, corrective decisions, the basic legal provisions, a list of court officials and witnesses. With introductions by Robert MW Kempner and Carl Haensel . Published with the assistance of CH Tuerck. Bürger Verlag, Schwäbisch Gmünd 1950, p. XIX.
  5. ↑ All additions and corrections (December 31, 2012) according to: Elke Kochann, Kerstin Theis: Dr.jur 'Ossip K. Flechtheim. In: Margit Szöllösi-Janze , Andreas Freitäger: “Doctoral degree withdrawn!” Withdrawal of academic titles at the University of Cologne from 1933 to 1945. Kirsch, Nümbrecht 2005, ISBN 3-933586-42-9 , pp. 78–83.
  6. ↑ Ossip K. Flechtheim: Futurology - Possibilities and Limits. In: Neue Rundschau , issue 2/1968, pp. 294–315.
  7. ↑ Wolfram Beyer : Ossip K. Flechtheim - for a different policy , in: W. Beyer (Ed.): Internationale der Kriegsdienstgegner *innen - 1947–2017, contributions to history. Verlag Edition AV Lich 2017, pp. 79–88 Here specific IDK activities of Flechtheim are named.
  8. ^ Letter of June 19, 1979 see Mario Kessler: Between History and Futurology. Ossip K. Flechtheim. In: Axel Fair-Schulz, Mario Kessler (Hrsg.): German Scholars in Exile. New Studies in Intellectual History. Lexington Books, Lanham MD et al. a. 2011, ISBN 978-0-7391-5023-8 , pp. 173–211, here p. 194 + note 174 Google Books ( Memento of the original from December 19, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and still Not checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.books.google.de
  9. ^ Siegfried Heimann (ed.): Ossip K. Flechtheim. 100 years. Humanistic Association of Germany - Landesverband Berlin, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-924041-29-8 .
  10. ↑ Wolfram Beyer : 100 years of Ossip K. Flechtheim, memories of a liberal socialist. In: Grassroots Revolution . No. 341, September 2009, p. 17.
personal data
SURNAME Flechtheim, Ossip K.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Flechtheim, Ossip Kurt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer, political scientist and founder of futurology in Germany
DATE OF BIRTH March 5, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Mykolaiv , Ukraine
DATE OF DEATH March 4, 1998
Place of death Berlin