Peter Brokmeier

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.

Peter Hermann Brokmeier (born March 2, 1935 in Brebach-Fechingen near Saarbrücken ) is a German political scientist.

After studying sociology and political science in Frankfurt and Berlin , Brokmeier received his doctorate in 1971 at the then Technical University of Hanover and habilitated there (cumulatively) in 1974 for "Science of Politics". In 1980 he was appointed professor in Hanover and retired in 2000. His main focus was political theory and the history of ideas ; he is particularly concerned with Hannah Arendt .

Life

Peter Brokmeier was born as the second son of Friedrich and Marga Brokmeier. In 1935, when he was born in Saarland, the family, committed to social democracy, first moved to Strasbourg and one year later to Nice , after more than 90 percent of the electorate had decided in a referendum for the Saarland to be incorporated into the National Socialist German Reich.

The Vichy regime , which was cooperating with the National Socialist aggressor, ordered the internment of German emigrants during World War II , including Friedrich Brokmeier for a short time in April 1941. After the seriously ill father was released from the Les Milles camp , the family returned to Germany with the help of the Nansen Pass . Peter Brokmeier went to elementary school in Detmold for four years .

While his father was appointed mayor of Neunkirchen (Saar) shortly after the French surrender in 1945 , Peter Brokmeier visited the Birklehof rural school home in the Black Forest, which was characterized by freedom and humanism in 1947. In 1952, when he was seventeen, he began an apprenticeship as a typesetter . Politically, he joined the so-called Trotskyists . A little later he moved to his father in Neunkirchen and was able to take his Abitur at the Ludwigsgymnasium (Saarbrücken) in 1955 . He then completed an apprenticeship as a bookseller and then worked at Georg Thieme Verlag in Stuttgart.

Since 1960 Brokmeier studied German , philosophy and sociology in Frankfurt a. a. with Theodor W. Adorno . In the same year he joined the Socialist German Student Union (SDS) in Frankfurt. At first he was close to the Frankfurt School .

In 1962 he married Ulrike Straßer, also an employee of Thieme-Verlag. The couple have a daughter. A little later he took up a degree in political science a. a. with Richard Löwenthal and Ernst Fraenkel in Berlin , which he completed with a thesis on the writings of Eduard Bernstein . At this time he found his future university career: political theory , history of ideas and the history of the 20th century with a focus on socialism / communism .

In 1967 he worked at the International Documentation Center for Research on National Socialism and its aftermath and observed the euthanasia process in Frankfurt am Main. A little later, the institute dissolved. Then he got a job as a specialist in the research center for youth issues in Hanover. Here Brokmeier put the focus on the social science investigation of the youth in the GDR . From 1970 he was a lecturer at the seminar for science of politics at the Technical University of Hanover , the forerunner of the University of Hanover . In mid-1971 he received his doctorate with the dissertation Education and Society in the GDR. Karl Marx 's theory of the universality of man and its application in polytechnical education.

A little later he got a job at this seminar as an academic advisor to Jürgen Seifert . In addition to researching the GDR, he focused on the history of political thought ( Aristotle , Machiavelli , Rousseau , Hegel , Clausewitz , Max Weber and others). In the summer of 1974 Brokmeier completed his habilitation in the subject of political science . He did not have to write a habilitation thesis; instead, he could submit various scientific publications (cumulative habilitation ).

From then on Brokmeier taught as a private lecturer and was appointed to the Academic Senior Council in April 1975. With this activity he acquired the title of Apl in August 1978. (unscheduled) professors . In 1980 he became a professor of political science without a chair, a position he held until his retirement in 2000. Brokmeier occasionally holds seminars on the philosophical theory of politics there.

Act

Hannah Arendt's political philosophy has played a major role in Brokmeier's publications since 1980, especially Arendt's concept of totalism and its reference to National Socialist rule . He advocates the thesis that Arendt consciously chose this reference as a generally valid, albeit very specific example. It is not the social-scientific analysis of the Nazi regime that Arendt dealt with, but rather the negative utopia of modernity manifesting itself as growing alienation and depersonalization , a process that has lasted for centuries, which in principle affects all countries on earth, but using the example of development Germany in the first half of the 20th century can be examined particularly clearly. This is where the “mischief of modernity” appears in a particularly pure form, the <crystallization form> (Arendt). According to Brokmeier, getting to the bottom of this phenomenon is the basic philosophical motive in Hannah Arendt's thinking.

Brokmeier sees the term totalitarianism formulated after Arendt as not closed. He differentiates between two different forms, which he calls totalitarianism of " mass society " and totalitarianism "ad hoc". While the latter could be overcome on an institutional level, the former would remain the unsolved problem of the present, because the undercurrent of mass society, which is driving us towards worldlessness and alienation, so postulates Brokmeier, repeatedly comes to the surface. Such a totalitarianism is latently present in Germany today, but not manifest. Brokmeier traces this back to rudiments of the term “Weltsinn” coined by Arendt.

In addition, Carl von Clausewitz and Niccolò Machiavelli were important to Peter Brokmeiers teaching and research. In addition, there were studies on the poetic and essayistic work of Ernst Jünger , which significantly influenced him in bringing together the two guidelines of his thinking - totalitarianism and the concept of politics.

Brokmeier is a member of the following scientific associations: since 1976 in the Leibniz Society, Hanover; since 1978 in the German Association for Political Science , Osnabrück; since 1988 in the Leibniz Society, Isernhagen and since 1990 in the German Society for Research into Political Thought , Münster.

Fonts

Essays

  • On the importance of Sohn-Rethels for a materialistic theory of transition societies , in: PW Schulze (Ed.): Transition Society. Form of rule and practice using the example of the Soviet Union , Frankfurt am Main 1974, pp. 115–148.
  • Communism in formation history , in: Society formations in history , in: Argument -Sonderband , AS 32, Berlin (West) 1978, pp. 163-189.
  • Clausewitz or The Principle of War and Its Counter Forces , in: Düsseldorfer Debatte '' , Vol. 1, Heft 2, 1984, pp. 3–12.
  • The Metamorphoses of Politics and Saint-Simons Question , in: Düsseldorfer Debatte , Heft 12, 2nd year, 1985, pp. 19–24.
  • Destroy history. Reflections on organized mass murder under German fascism , in: Düsseldorfer Debatte , Vol. 3, Heft 10, 1986, pp. 27–39
  • Can Marxism establish institutions? , in: G. Göhler (Ed.): Basic questions of the theory of political institutions. State of research - problems - perspectives , Opladen 1987, pp. 229–241
  • Institutions as ideological apparatus in Spinoza in: G. Göhler / K. Lenk / H. Münkler / M. Walther (eds.): Political institutions in social upheaval. Contributions to the history of ideas on the theory of political institutions , Opladen 1990, pp. 276–292.
  • Political theory and military action. Carl von Clausewitz and the critical analysis of the second Gulf War in: Jürgen Seifert u. a .: Logic of Destruction , Frankfurt am Main / Hannover / Heidelberg 1992, pp. 81–88.
  • Institutions as the organon of the political. Attempt to form a concept following H. Arendt , in: G. Göhler (Hrsg.): Die Eigenart der Institutions. On the profile of political institutional theory , Baden-Baden 1994, pp. 167–186.
  • Hannah Arendt's reflections on Germany in the post-war period , in: M. Buckmiller, J. Perels (eds.) Opposition as a driving force of democracy. Balance sheet and perspectives of the second republic. Jürgen Seifert on his 70th birthday , Hanover 1998, pp. 41–50.
  • From the spirit of inner emigration in: “Les Carnets Ernst Jünger . Revue du Center de Recherche et de Documentation Ernst Jünger ”, issue 7/2002, ntpellier 2003, pp. 51–69

Lectures, statements

  • Wolfgang Abendroth and Marxist thinking in: Dialectics 11. Truths and Stories - Philosophy after '45. Cologne 1986, pp. 237-242.
  • The space of the political in the revolution of 1789 , in: Annals of the international society for dialectical philosophy, Societas Hegeliana, Vol. VII, 1990, pp. 120-124.
  • Difficulty exploring icebergs. Reply to JPReemtsma , “The 'Signature of the Century' - a cataleptic fallacy? “, In: Mittelweg 36 , 2nd year, issue 5, 1993, pp. 27-29.
  • About the importance of political institutions in the work of Hannah Arendt , in: Die Welt des Politischen. Hannah Arendt's impulses for current political theory , documentation of a conference v. 27.-29. October 1995. H.-P. Burmeister, Chr. Hüttig (Ed.): Loccumer Protocols 60/95, Rehburg / Loccum 1996, pp. 101-109.
  • Development conditions of the GDR society , in: Kritische Justiz , Heft 4, 1972, pp. 331–348.
  • The contradiction between the political and the social. On the political philosophy of H. Arendt in: 10th Leutherheider Forum: The social question in Europe for a century - before the year 2000 Adalbert Foundation Krefeld, July 17-20, 1997. Protocol, pp. 101-104.
  • On the legitimation of rule by Dante Alighieri , lecture at a symposium of the Philosophical Seminar of the University of Hanover from February 26th to 28th, 2002, in: Günther Mensching (Ed.) Violence and its Legitimation in the Middle Ages , Würzburg 2003, pp. 248-265

Editions

  • With Peter W. Schulze u. a. (Ed.): Transitional society, form of rule and practice using the example of the Soviet Union. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1974, ISBN 3-436-01923-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Peter Brokmeier: Institutions as Organon des Politischen (1994) and On the Legitimation of Rule with Dante Alighieri (2003).
personal data
SURNAME Brokmeier, Peter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Brokmeier, Peter Hermann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German political scientist
DATE OF BIRTH March 2, 1935
PLACE OF BIRTH Brebach-Fechingen near Saarbrücken