Peter Christian Ludz

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Peter Christian Ludz (born May 22, 1931 in Stettin ; † September 1, 1979 in Traubing ) was a German political scientist and sociologist . He was considered one of the most important actors in GDR research and comparative research on Germany.

Life

Origin, school education, studies

Ludz was the son of a Protestant pastor. From 1937 to 1941 he attended in Berlin elementary school, 1941-1949 high school in Berlin and Ingolstadt . He obtained his Abitur in 1949 at the humanistic grammar school in Berlin-Zehlendorf .

Ludz then studied economics , sociology , philosophy , political science and history at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz , the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich , the Free University of Berlin , the Sorbonne and at the Collège de France .

He passed his diploma in economics in 1953 in Munich . In 1955 he received his doctorate in Berlin with Hans-Joachim Lieber .

Research, teaching, policy advice and location

In 1957 Ludz took up a position as a research assistant at the Institute for Political Science (IfpW) at the Free University of Berlin, which was headed by Otto Stammer . There he dealt for the first time with studies on the GDR . In 1958 he succeeded Ernst Richert as head of the Soviet Occupation Zone department . In 1967 he completed his habilitation in Berlin with the study Party elite in transition - in the Federal Republic of Germany the first habilitation procedure on a GDR topic. In the same year the Free University of Berlin appointed him full professor for the science of politics with special attention to the theory of politics . In 1970 Ludz accepted a call to the newly founded University of Bielefeld , where he worked as a professor of political science and sociology . In 1973 he moved to the Geschwister-Scholl-Institut in Munich . There he took over the Chair of Political Science I , Eric Voegelin's previous Chair .

In 1967/68 Ludz was a member of a commission of the Berlin Senate that wrote an expert report on the state of education, politics and economy in the city. For the government of the Federal Republic of Germany Ludz designed the materials on the state of the nation in 1971, 1972 and 1974 . From 1975 he was a member of the board of directors and the research management of the Science and Politics Foundation . For by Egon Franke guided Minister of Intra-German Relations , he led from 1975 to 1978 the working group for comparative research Germany, who made a four-volume report on the status of the DDR and comparative research Germany. In 1975 Ludz also published the GDR handbook . This reference work found widespread circulation and was published in 1979, shortly after Ludz's death, in its second edition.

Ludz demanded from GDR research a clear orientation towards the postulate that science is free of value judgments . Its own normative orientation is described as a mixture of social-liberal and conservative-technocratic standpoints.

Guest lectures

From 1967 to 1975 Ludz gave many guest lectures at universities in the United States , including Harvard University , Yale University , Princeton University , Stanford University , the University of Michigan , the University of California, Berkeley , the University of Texas at Austin , Washington University in St. Louis , Georgetown University , University of Connecticut , University of New Hampshire , Columbia University , New School for Social Research , City University of New York, and Macalester College . Ludz has also given guest lectures in Great Britain , Denmark , Yugoslavia , Japan , Canada and Chile .

Membership in journalistic bodies

From 1971 to 1978 he was a member of the editorial board of the Politische Vierteljahresschrift . From 1970 he was one of the editors of the publication series Society and Science at Mohr Siebeck Verlag , from 1971 Ludz was one of the editors of the International Journal of Contemporary Sociology . From 1973 he was one of the editors of the International Journal of Sociology , Studies in Comparative Communism and the Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism . In 1979 he was finally appointed to the editorial board of the Cologne journal for sociology and social psychology .

The End

Ludz was seen as a restless person, not caring for his health, who as a scientist placed the highest demands on himself, his colleagues and his students. This rigid academic work ethic sometimes led to sharp conflicts.

In 1975 he suffered a heart attack . On September 1, 1979, he committed suicide, apparently as a result of a severe state of exhaustion.

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Change in industrial society in the GDR

Cover of the third edition of Party Elite in Transition

Ludz's work includes almost 200 titles - not including newspaper articles. He is best known as a GDR researcher. In his habilitation thesis, Ludz assumed a decisive organizational, socio-structural and ideological change in the political leadership of the GDR. This change generated by the dynamics of industrial society can not be adequately captured by the traditional theory of totalitarianism , which Ludz sharply criticized as early as the first half of the 1960s. After Ludz, experts and academically trained cadres pushed into political and economic leadership positions in the GDR and formed an "institutionalized counter-elite" there. This competes with the traditional, tough leadership core around Walter Ulbricht , whom Ludz described as a "strategic clique". According to Ludz, terror and coercion as a means of social rule are increasingly being replaced by a more cooperative style of rule, which Ludz calls “consultative authoritarianism”. Although this work, which went through four editions, one of them in English, and other writings by Ludz steered GDR research in new directions and stimulated empirical and social science studies, Ludz 'thesis applies that the "strategic clique" suffered as a result of the emergence subject-oriented cadre losses of influence, as refuted by the historical development of the GDR.

Other fields of work

In addition to research on the GDR, Ludz's oeuvre contains diverse philosophical, sociological, epistemological , ideological- historical and ideological-critical studies. Again and again Ludz wrote studies on the topics of intelligence , aesthetics , alienation , power , conflict and social change as well as on the connection between aesthetics and politics . He was interested in, among other things, the social history of Masonic lodges and secret societies , the sociology of literature , the political and aesthetic writings of Georg Lukács, or questions of intellectual history from the French late Renaissance and French materialism . He dealt with works by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel , Ludwig Feuerbach and Karl Marx as well as with current positions of Eurocommunism .

Selected editions and writings

Editorships
  • Spengler today. 6 essays . With a foreword by Hermann Lübbe, Beck, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-406-07600-9 .
  • Secret societies (Wolfenbütteler Studies for Enlightenment), Schneider, Heidelberg 1979, ISBN 3-7953-0720-1 .
  • GDR manual published by the Federal Ministry for Internal German Relations. Scientific director: Peter Christian Ludz. With the participation of Johannes Kuppe, 2nd, completely revised and expanded edition, Cologne: Verlag Wissenschaft u. Politics 1979, ISBN 3-8046-8515-3 .
  • Sociology and Marxism in the German Democratic Republic , 2 volumes, Luchterhand, Neuwied 1972.
Monographs
  • The GDR between East and West. Political analyzes 1961–1976 , Beck, Munich 1977, ISBN 3-406-06754-9 .
  • Concept of ideology and Marxist theory. Approaches to an immanent criticism , Opladen, Westdeutscher Verlag 1976, ISBN 3-531-11296-1 .
  • Germany's dual future. Federal Republic and GDR in the world of tomorrow. A political essay , Hanser, Munich 1974, ISBN 3-446-11862-4 .
  • Party elite in transition. Functional structure, social structure and ideology of the SED leadership. An empirical-systematic study (writings of the Institute for Political Science, 21), Westdeutscher Verlag, Cologne [u. a.] 1968.

Commemoration

In 1979, Peter Christian Ludz's widow published a collection of obituaries for the deceased. On January 21, 1981, a scientific memorial session took place at the Social Science Faculty of the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, which commemorated the person and work of Ludz. Kurt Sontheimer , Nikolaus Lobkowicz , Hermann Lübbe and M. Rainer Lepsius gave lectures at this event .

attachment

literature

  • Hubertus Buchstein : ideology and empiricism. The attempt to reconstruct the intellectual profile of Peter C. Ludz , in: Ralf Rytlewski (Hrsg.): Politics and society in socialist countries. Results and problems of socialist country research , ( Politische Vierteljahresschrift , special issue 20), Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1989, pp. 121–147, ISBN 3-531-12104-9 .
  • Johannes L. Kuppe: Peter Christian Ludz. On the function of ideologies in the past and present , in: Hans Karl Rupp, Thomas Noetzel (Ed.): Macht, Freiheit, Demokratie. Biographische Approachungen , Vol. 2: The second generation of West German political science , Schüren, Marburg 1994, pp. 111–127, ISBN 3-89472-100-6 .
  • Ursula Ludz: Peter Christian Ludz. 1931–1979 , self-published, Feldafing 1981.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Information on origin, school education and university education according to Munzinger archive and Ursula Ludz: Peter Christian Ludz. 1931-1979 , p. 81.
  2. ^ Peter Christian Ludz: Party elite in transition. Functional structure, social structure and ideology of the SED leadership. An empirical-systematic study , Westdeutscher Verlag, Cologne [u. a.] 1968.
  3. ↑ Information on the professional career according to the obituary written by Ilse Spittmann in: Germany Archive , vol. 12, issue 10 (October 1979), reprinted in Ursula Ludz: Peter Christian Ludz. 1931-1979 , pp. 50-56.
  4. ↑ Jens Hüttmann: GDR history and its researchers. Actors and economic trends in West German GDR research . Metropol, Berlin 2008, ISBN 3-938690-83-6 , p. 244.
  5. ↑ See Ursula Ludz: Peter Christian Ludz. 1931-1979 , pp. 82-86.
  6. ↑ See Ursula Ludz: Peter Christian Ludz. 1931-1979 , p. 82.
  7. ↑ See Kurt Sontheimer's obituary in: Politische Vierteljahresschrift , Vol. 20, Issue 4, December 1979, p. 401 f., Reprinted in Ursula Ludz: Peter Christian Ludz. 1931–1979 , self-published, Feldafing 1981, pp. 45–49. See also Johannes L. Kuppe: Peter Christian Ludz. On the function of ideologies in the past and present , p. 115 f.
  8. ↑ Information on the infarction according to Johannes L. Kuppe: Peter Christian Ludz. On the function of ideologies in the past and the present , p. 116. On exhaustion at the end of life see, for example, Ilse Spittmann's obituary in: Germany Archive , vol. 12, issue 10, October 1979, reprinted in Ursula Ludz: Peter Christian Ludz. 1931-1979 , pp. 50-56.
  9. ^ Johannes L. Kuppe: Peter Christian Ludz. On the function of ideologies in the past and present , p. 111.
  10. ↑ Peter Christian Ludz: Totalitarianism or Totality? (For research into Bolshevik systems of society and rule ). In: Soziale Welt , 12, 1961, pp. 129–145. Peter Christian Ludz: Open questions of totalitarianism research . In: PVS , 2, 1961, no. 4, pp. 319–348, reprinted in Bruno Seidel, Siegfried Jenkner (ed.): Ways of totalitarism research . Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1968, pp. 466-512. Peter Christian Ludz: Draft of a sociological theory of totalitarian societies . In: Derselbe (ed.): Studies and materials on the sociology of the GDR ( Cologne journal for sociology and social psychology , special issue 8), Westdeutscher Verlag, Cologne [u. a.] 1964, pp. 11–58, reprinted in Bruno Seidel, Siegfried Jenkner (Hrsg.): Ways of totalitarism research . Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1968, pp. 466-512.
  11. ↑ See also the overview fight of the elites . In: Der Spiegel . No. 1 , 1968 ( online ). and Jens Gieseke: The SED party elite between change and persistence. Peter Christian Ludz 'modernization theory . In: Jürgen Danyel, Jan-Holger Kirsch, Martin Sabrow (eds.): 50 classics of contemporary history . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 3-525-36024-X , pp. 110-113.
  12. ↑ For the span of the work see Johannes L. Kuppe: Peter Christian Ludz. On the function of ideologies in the past and present , p. 111 and Hubertus Buchstein: Ideologie und Empirie , p. 121 f.
  13. ↑ Ursula Ludz: Peter Christian Ludz. 1931-1979 . Self-published, Feldafing 1981.
  14. ↑ In addition Jens Hüttmann: GDR history and its researchers. Actors and economic trends in West German GDR research . Metropol, Berlin 2008, ISBN 3-938690-83-6 , pp. 195-198.
personal data
SURNAME Ludz, Peter Christian
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German political scientist and sociologist
DATE OF BIRTH May 22, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH Szczecin
DATE OF DEATH September 1, 1979
Place of death Traubing