Paul Wilhelm Massing

Paul Wilhelm Massing , also Paul W. Massing , (born August 30, 1902 in Grumbach ; died April 30, 1979 in Tübingen ) was a German-American social scientist .

Life

The son of a cadastral inspector attended high school in Bad Kreuznach , then studied economics and sociology at the University of Frankfurt from 1923 , also at the Cologne Commercial College, where he graduated in 1926 with a degree in business administration. In 1927 he studied for a semester at the Sorbonne in Paris . In 1928 he returned to Frankfurt and did his doctorate under Wilhelm Gerloff on The Agricultural Conditions of France in the 19th Century and the Agricultural Program of the French Socialists .

He then worked at the International Agricultural Institute in Moscow until 1931 . After his return to Germany in 1931, he was an active member of the KPD's illegal M apparatus in Berlin and an employee of the Central Committee until 1933 . According to the Enabling Act , he was arrested by the National Socialists , tortured in the Columbia House and then held in a solitary cell in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp for five months . After his release in 1935, he wrote the autobiographical novel Protective Prisoner 880 under the pseudonym Karl Billinger , which he dedicated to all former inmates. After he first left for the USA via Paris , he returned to Germany illegally at times and was active in resistance structures of the KPD. Inwardly, he broke away from the KPD in the course of the Moscow trials . In 1939 he emigrated to the United States, where he and his wife Hede ran a farm in Quakertown for a while. Paul Massing married the social and communication researcher Herta Herzog in 1954 .

After the beginning of World War II , Massing wrote the book Hitler is no Fool about Adolf Hitler , in which he referred to the dictator's dangerous plans for extermination. In 1942 he taught at Columbia University's Social Research Institute in New York City , and from 1948 on he taught political sociology at Rutgers University in New Jersey . In 1949 his important work was published: Rehearsal for Destruction: A Study Of Political Anti-Semitism in Imperial Germany . It appeared in German in 1959, translated and edited by Felix Weil , as the prehistory of political anti-Semitism , with a foreword by Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno . For Massing, political anti-Semitism from 1871 to 1914 was the spiritual prerequisite for the industrially operated extermination of Jews by the German authorities.

In 1977 Massing and Herta Herzog-Massing returned to Grumbach, in 1978 he moved to a nursing home in Tübingen, where he died the following year.

Fonts (selection)

Prehistory of Political Anti-Semitism (1959)

The agricultural situation in France in the 19th century and the agricultural program of the French parties . Berlin: Ebering, 1930 Frankfurt, Wirtsch.- u. social science Diss.
Karl Billinger: Protective inmate No. 880: from a German concentration camp; Novel . Paris: Ed. du Carrefour, 1935
Karl Billinger: All Quiet in Germany . 1935
Karl Billinger: Fatherland . Foreword by Lincoln Steffens . 1935
Karl Billinger: Hitler is No Fool . 1939
Rehearsal for Destruction: A Study of Political Antisemitism in Imperial Germany . Foreword Max Horkheimer , Samuel H. Flowerman. New York: Harper, 1949
- Prehistory of political anti-Semitism . Translation Felix J. Weil. Foreword Max Horkheimer , Theodor W. Adorno . Frankfurt: European publishing company, 1959

literature

Leo Löwenthal , Paul W. Massing . Cologne journal for sociology and social psychology , 31st year 1979, p. 825f.
Massing, Paul . In: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German Communists. Biographisches Handbuch 1918 to 1945. 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 .
Massing, Paul W. , in: Werner Röder; Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933-1945 . Volume 2.2. Munich: Saur, 1983 ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , p. 786f.

Web links

Literature by and about Paul Wilhelm Massing in the catalog of the German National Library
Mark P. Worrell: Es Comes Die Nacht: Paul Massing, the Frankfurt School, and the Question of Labor Authoritarianism during World War II

Remarks

^ Gerloff: finance scientist , monetary theorist, sociologist, June 24, 1880 in Krefeld - July 23, 1954 in Frankfurt; as an author additionally with. Fritz Neumark known
↑ Hede Massing (1900-1981); born Trude; sch. Eisler; sch. Gumperz. Training as an actress; first marriage to Gerhart Eisler , second marriage to Julian Gumperz . In 1929 she met Massing in Frankfurt, they lived together, married in 1936 and separated after the war. Lit .: Michael Buckmiller , The “Marxist Work Week” 1923 and the establishment of the Institute for Social Research . In: Grand Hotel Abgrund , Willem van Reijen , Gunzelin Schmid Noerr (eds.), Junius, Hamburg 1988, pp. 141–182. Here: pp. 141, 143, 174 note 2.

personal data
SURNAME	Massing, Paul Wilhelm
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Massing, Paul W .; Billinger, Karl (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German-American social scientist
DATE OF BIRTH	August 30, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH	Grumbach , Rhine Province , Kingdom of Prussia , German Empire
DATE OF DEATH	April 30, 1979
Place of death	Tübingen , Baden-Württemberg , Federal Republic of Germany

[1] Gerloff: finance scientist , monetary theorist, sociologist, June 24, 1880 in Krefeld - July 23, 1954 in Frankfurt; as an author additionally with. Fritz Neumark known

[2] Hede Massing (1900-1981); born Trude; sch. Eisler; sch. Gumperz. Training as an actress; first marriage to Gerhart Eisler , second marriage to Julian Gumperz . In 1929 she met Massing in Frankfurt, they lived together, married in 1936 and separated after the war. Lit .: Michael Buckmiller , The “Marxist Work Week” 1923 and the establishment of the Institute for Social Research . In: Grand Hotel Abgrund , Willem van Reijen , Gunzelin Schmid Noerr (eds.), Junius, Hamburg 1988, pp. 141–182. Here: pp. 141, 143, 174 note 2.