Peter von Haselberg

Peter von Haselberg (born November 14, 1908 in Wilhelmshaven ; † October 17, 1994 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German journalist of the 20th century. He is considered to be the discoverer of Elias Canetti , whose work " Die Blendung " he reviewed in 1936 in the Frankfurter Zeitung . After the Second World War he shaped the night program of the NWDR . His contributions were shaped by their thematic range and by Haselberg's wit.

Life

From 1927 to 1933 he studied law, philosophy, sociology and economics in Berlin , Cologne and Frankfurt. When Hitler came to power in 1933, his academic plans came to nothing. His doctoral manuscript submitted to Hans Kelsen ("The State Theory of National Socialism") was returned and destroyed. Due to Minister Rust's decree on the members of socialist student associations, he was de-registered. Haselberg became a volunteer at the “Vossische Zeitung”. In 1934 he was an editor at the Frankfurter Zeitung. In 1936 he began reporting on the Spanish Civil War and attracted the attention of Reich Propaganda Minister Goebbels. This was followed by interrogations by the Gestapo and expulsion from the Reich Press Chamber. He became unemployed and began training in non-alcoholic fruit processing in Plön. In 1937 he emigrated to Argentina. 1938 marriage to Mathilde Merton. In the following years he was a political advisor, business correspondent, author and translator of scientific and fiction books into Spanish and fathered four sons.

In 1949 he returned to Germany and began working as a freelance writer for newspapers, magazines and German radio stations. In addition, he was temporarily managing editor of the Frankfurt student newspaper "Diskus", which he founded on behalf of Horkheimer (then university rector), literary editor for the German book club, Darmstadt and head of an information center of the Max Planck Society , which was in Frankfurt am Main between 1969 and 1971 existed.

In addition to his friendship with Hans Mayer , von Haselberg developed closer relationships with Max Scheler , Nicolai Hartmann , Helmuth Plessner , Leopold von Wiese , Alfred Müller-Armack , Erwin von Beckerath , Max Horkheimer , Paul Tillich , Theodor W. Adorno , Hugo Sinzheimer during his studies and Karl Mannheim on.

Act

Scientifically, he emerged through collaboration in the group study of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research. In 1953 a new version of the study on behavior towards the feeling of guilt appeared as well as studies on the growing effect of the consumer sphere on the organization of society, especially in the suppression of traditional moral, religious and educational norms. These studies are initially based on the work of the American sociologist Thorstein Veblen. Peter von Haselberg translated Veblen's main work “Theory of the Leisure Class” - German “ Theory of the Fine People ” - and made Veblen's work known in Germany.

Haselberg's journalistic activity focuses on radio . In 1000 essays , features , analyzes, comments, reviews, glosses , interviews and discussions, he addressed political questions, cultural developments and controversial discussions of the second half of the 20th century in Germany. The originality of his contributions is based largely on personal acquaintance with important contemporaries .

Works

Topics (selection)

• Total mobilization of language - on Martin Heidegger's book "Holzwege" (1950)
• The flaneur is the idler of progress (1951)
• Is Franz Kafka a German or a Jewish poet? - Conversation with Max Brod (1954)
• Automation: Fears, Hopes, and the Thing Itself (1957)
• Operations research - a new science: the general staff organizes society (1958)
• The White Spot - Self-Portrait of a National Socialist (1962)
• It was a "good war" - eyewitness accounts about America in World War II (1989)

Radio features

• Europe seen from the west - is America moving at the center of the world? - 1951 / NDWR
• What does a city consist of - conversation with the architect Ferdinand Kramer - 1955 / NWDR
• The youth were always like that - 1957 / WDR
• The miserable end - Franz Kafka's protest against the myth of death - 1959 / NDR
• The virtuoso in the labyrinth (Franz Kafka) together with Klaus Wagenbach - 1959 / NDR
• Controlled literature - tradition, working method and face of the book clubs together with Klaus Wagenbach - 1959 / Hessischer Rundfunk
• Is only paid work worth it? - Beyond the limits of our economic policy together with Eberhard Moths - 1977 / NDR
• Die Staatsschreiber - self-portrayal of the federal government - the newest mass medium together with Eberhard Moths - 1978 / WDR
• Who should pay that? - From zero tariff to oil spill - unsecured liability in the event of disasters, together with Eberhard Moths - 1979 / WDR

Fonts

• A novel experiment - review of Elias Canetti's “Die Blendung”, in: Frankfurter Zeitung, April 12, 1936, Literaturblatt, p. 18
• Functionalism and Irrationality - Studies on Thorstein Veblen's “Theory of the Leisure Class”, Frankfurt Contributions to Sociology, Volume 12, European Publishing House, 1962
• Theodore. W. Adorno: About the historical adequacy of consciousness, conversation with Peter von Haselberg, in: Akzente, No. 12, June 1964, Hanser, p. 487 ff.
• The art and the laws of the consumer society, lecture, University of Fine Arts Braunschweig, 1965
• The German Walter Benjamin, in: Merkur 361, 1978, p. 592 ff.
• with Eberhard Moths: At the end of a dictatorship. On the perplexity of economic thinking, Hanser, 1978

literature

• Helene Rahms, "Committed to Enlightenment - On the Death of Journalist Peter von Haselberg", in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , No. 242, October 18, 1994, p. 43
• Monika Boll, night program, intellectual founding debates of the early Federal Republic , Berlin, Hamburg, Münster 2004, p. 68 f. ISBN 978-3-8258-7108-6

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Clemens Albrecht, The intellectual foundation of the Federal Republic, Frankfurt, New York 1999, p. 221 f.
2. ↑ see Chronicle of the KWG and MPG, ISBN 978-3-428-13623-0 , page 935