Reinhard Opitz

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Reinhard Opitz (born July 2, 1934 in Beuthen , † April 3, 1986 in Cologne ) was a German publicist and political scientist . He was already politically active as a student, became editor of Konkret magazine in 1958 and, along with Klaus Rainer Röhl and Ulrike Meinhof, was part of the so-called “Konkret Group” in the Socialist German Student Union . From 1960 he became involved in the German Peace Union and from 1965 worked for the Pahl-Rugenstein Verlag . Opitz tried to combine scientific publication activities with his publishing activities. He received his doctorate in 1973, was co-editor of the papers for German and international politics and a permanent contributor to the magazine Das Argument . As a freelance journalist, he occasionally took on teaching positions in the 1980s and from 1984 gave courses at the Cologne School - Institute for Journalism . In his academic work he examined social liberalism , imperialism and fascism as forms of rule of monopoly capitalism .

Life

Reinhard Opitz attended a humanistic grammar school in Halle (Saale) and Leipzig . In 1951 he left the GDR with his family. He first studied German and philosophy at the Free University of Berlin and moved to Tübingen in 1955 . There he joined the Socialist German Student Union (SDS). Opitz founded a student campaign against rearmament in Tübingen in 1956 and received a university disciplinary punishment due to a leaflet from this association. In 1956 he moved back to the Free University. There he was involved in the editorial team of the student courier from which the journal Konkret was created in 1957 . Opitz became their West Berlin editor and became friends with Ulrike Meinhof . Both were members of the KPD and belonged to the so-called “Konkret Group”, which influenced the anti-nuclear movement , the SDS and the Association of German Student Unions. In 1959 the “Konkret Group” was excluded from the SDS.

Opitz, who had lived in Hamburg since July 1958 and was committed to the communist movement and the GDR's policy on Germany , directed his activities towards the German Peace Union (DFU), probably on the instructions of the banned KPD . In 1960 he was a member of the first federal executive committee. From 1960 to 1965 he worked as a press officer for the DFU in Cologne. Within the DFU he tried to work with the bourgeois-democratic forces around the Bund der Deutschen (BdD) or the All-German People's Party and the German People's Newspaper . He is one of the founders of the Association of Democratic Scientists and Scientists (BdWi), was co-editor of the papers for German and international politics in 1972 and a permanent contributor to the journal Das Argument . Later he was also a member of the German Peace Society - United War Opponents (DFG-VK) and worked in the “Neofascism” working group of the Association of Victims of the Nazi Regime - Association of Antifascists (VVN / BdA).

In 1965 Opitz was delegated from the federal office of the DFU to the Pahl-Rugenstein Verlag (PRV), for which he worked initially as a freelance editor and from 1972 to 1979 as a permanent employee. Due to conflicts and political differences, Opitz was delegated back to the DFU, which kept him busy until 1982. Opitz was established in 1973 as "external" at the Faculty of Social Sciences (FB 03) of the University of Marburg (assessor Hans Heinz Holz ) with a policy historical study of the German social liberalism during the Weimar Republic to the Dr. phil. PhD. Attempts to appoint him to a chair in Marburg or Bremen failed at the end of the 1970s. Opitz took up teaching positions at universities and taught from 1984 until his death in the departments of politics, history and social studies at the Cologne School - Institute for Journalism . Nevertheless, he was dependent on financial support from friends in order to be able to work as a freelance publicist.

plant

Opitz initially made a name for himself as a critic of the conception of a "formed society" developed by Chancellor Ludwig Erhard in 1965, in which he saw an authoritarian conspiracy between the " CDU state" and the economy. From then on he investigated problems of monopoly capitalism , in particular the question of how capitalism created a political mass base in order to maintain its rule. He interpreted social liberalism as a specifically political basic direction of monopoly capitalism and examined fascism as a form of rule of state monopoly capitalism . At the same time he dealt with strategic questions for developing oppositional alternatives. With the document collection European strategies of German capital 1900-1945 he dealt in 1977 with the expansion concepts of imperialism . In his last, unfinished work on behalf of the NDR , he dealt with the " Röhm Putsch ". Based on the monopoly group theory developed by Kurt Gossweiler , Opitz wanted to show that two factions of monopoly capital had fought a power struggle here. His work was controversial, and in the early 1980s Opitz broke with the magazine Das Argument , whose political-scientific course he sharply criticized.

Publications

  • The big plan of the CDU: The "Formierte Gesellschaft" , in: "Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik", vol. 9, 1965; Special print “Arguments at the moment” 17, 5th edition.
  • Basic questions of oppositional alternative and strategy , in: "Alternatives of the Opposition", edited by Friedrich Hitzer and Reinhard Opitz, Pahl-Rugenstein, Cologne 1969, pp. 395–406
  • Theses on the concept of fascism , in: “Neofascism in the FRG. Analyzes - Arguments - Documentations ”, Röderberg, Frankfurt am Main 1971, pp. 25–28
  • How do you fight fascism? In: “Fascism. Origin and prevention. Materials on the Fascism Discussion ”, Röderberg, Frankfurt am Main 1972, pp. 46–64
  • German social liberalism 1917–1933 , Pahl-Rugenstein, Cologne 1973
  • On the emergence and prevention of fascism , in: "Das Argument", H. 87, 1974, pp. 543-603
  • (Co-author): Anti-fascist politics today. Fascism and Militarism / Experiences and Lessons , in: "Antifascist Politics Today [...]", Röderberg, Frankfurt am Main 1975
  • (Ed.) European strategies of German capital 1900–1945 , Pahl-Rugenstein, Cologne 1977
  • On the history of the development of the totalitarianism theory , in: Frank Deppe u. a., “Marxism and the Labor Movement. Josef Schleifstein for his 65th birthday ”, Verlag Marxistische Blätter, Frankfurt am Main 1980, pp. 106–122
  • Dimitrov's definition of fascism and its significance for the current fascism discussion , in: “Speeches and contributions. International colloquium of the Marx-Engels-Foundation [...] on the occasion of the 100th birthday of Georgi Dimitroff ”, Verlag Marxistische Blätter, Frankfurt am Main 1982, pp. 116–125
  • Fascism and Neofascism , Verlag Marxistische Blätter, Frankfurt am Main 1984 + Akademie-Verlag, [East] Berlin 1984
  • Fascism and Neofascism , 2 vols., 1: German Fascism until 1945 , 2: Neofascism in the Federal Republic , Pahl-Rugenstein, Cologne 1988
  • Jews out - Turks out - democracy out. On the history and topicality of reactionary and fascist strategies , [document] in: "1999 - Journal for Social History of the 20th and 21st Century", Vol. 1, 1989, pp. 84-100
  • Bitburg 1985 and May 8, 1945 , in: "Z - Zeitschrift Marxistische Erneuerung", H. 122, 1995, pp. 9-18
  • Ilina Fach / Rainer Rilling (eds.): Liberalismus - Faschismus - Integration , 3 vols., I: Liberalismus * Integration , II: Faschismus , III: Die ´Röhm-Affäre , BdWi-Verlag, Marburg [December] 1999

About Reinhard Opitz

“[...] Marxist political scientist, fascism theorist, political polemicist and music and art lover with encyclopedic interests. VVN , specifically , SDS , DFU or BdWi stood for the stations of his political life . He published in magazines and publishers such as Röderberg and Pahl-Rugenstein, in Argument, the Forum Wissenschaft, the DVZ / die tat, the Marxist papers and the papers for German and international politics, of which he was editor for many years [...] One of the most important Marxist publicist in the Federal Republic and perhaps the most astute fascism theorist on the German left. "

- UTOPIA creative

"Unemployed, outside of the established scientific institutions and marginalized in traditional political apparatuses of the West German left, Opitz continued to work scientifically until his death [...] in his Cologne apartment until the end, particularly on his book on" Neofascism "published in 1984, which as his main work can count. "

- compartment / rilling [ed.]

“We will miss his never-ending sentences, the constant tension as to whether he is still throwing his wildly moving glasses in a high arc into the audience, the joy of his alert, interested in everything radical way of thinking, his unwavering political steadfastness. [...] Nevertheless, the sharpness and relentlessness of his scientific thinking had its price: a self-deprecating, often mischievously captured, sometimes almost asocial bizarre behavior and behavior, which was conveyed through the astonishing seriousness with which everything and every thorough intellectual Was subject to assessment. "

- Rainer Rilling (obituary)

literature

  • Richard Albrecht , Reinhard Opitz 'thesis of the falsification of consciousness. 30 years later , in: Topos - International Contributions to Dialectical Theory , H. 24, 2005, pp. 124–146;
  • Richard Albrecht, social science is not as beautiful as art . But it does just as much work , in: “SUCH LINGE. From the communist trial in Cologne to google.de. Social science research on the long, short and new century ”, Aachen 2008, pp. 5–18.
  • Richard Albrecht, From the History of German Social Liberalism to the Genetic Fascism Theory. Reinhard Opitz´ thesis of the falsification of consciousness . In: Background, 25 (2013) II, pp. 13–31; free online version
  • Phillip Becher and Jürgen Lloyd, The Overlooked Classic. The study "Fascism and Neofascism" by the social scientist Reinhard Opitz was published 30 years ago . In: Junge Welt, April 12, 2014, p. 10
  • Georg Biemann, children's pictures for a companion. On the biography of the publicist and political scientist Reinhard Opitz , in: Forum Wissenschaft, H. 1, 1998, pp. 50–54.
  • Ilina Fach / Rainer Rilling (eds.), Foreword to: "Liberalism * Fascism * Integration. Edition in three volumes" […], 1999, here: Volume 1, 1999, pp. 11-18.
  • Jean Kremet, Between Faithfulness and Knowledge. By someone who did not want to be co-opted [...] , in: Jungle World , March 29, 2000
  • Thomas Lühr: Reinhard Opitz Papers. 1954-1986 (-2000) 1954-1986. Finding Aid . International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam.
  • Marxist sheets issue 1–2012, 50th year, with the main topic "Strategies of German capital. In memory of Reinhard Opitz"

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Thomas Lühr: Reinhard Opitz Papers. 1954-1986 (-2000) 1954-1986. Finding Aid . International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam.
  2. ^ UTOPIE Kreativ , H. 118, 2000: 805
  3. ↑ Fach / Rilling [ed.], Foreword to the edition in three volumes [1999], here volume 1: 12 f.
  4. ↑ Rainer Rilling, A Wake Up, Radical Thinking. Reinhard Opitz is dead, in: "Deutsche Volkszeitung / die tat", No. 15, April 11, 1986, p. 3
  5. ↑ extended, free network version (2004)
  6. ↑ http://soziologischer.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/richard-albrecht-reinhard-opitz-sozialliberalismus-faschismus-2013.pdf
  7. ↑ jungle-world.com ( Memento from January 29, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ^ Neue Impulse Verlag ( Memento of February 6, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Opitz, Reinhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German political scientist and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH July 2, 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH Bytom
DATE OF DEATH April 3, 1986
Place of death Cologne