Robert Weiß (political scientist)

Robert White (* 17th July 1946 in Senftenberg as Robert Levy ) is a German political scientist .

Life

He is the son of the journalist Hans Weiß (1912–1992) and Hildegard Levy.

After graduating from high school in Frankfurt (Oder) and completing his military service in Berlin , Weiß studied history and scientific socialism at the Karl Marx University in Leipzig . He then worked there as an assistant and senior assistant. In 1976 he received his doctorate from Leipzig University with a thesis on political theories in Marxism .

In 1983, Weiß moved to the Academy for Social Sciences at the Central Committee of the SED , Institute for Scientific Socialism. In 1983 he became head of the research area “Political System”, later “Comparison of Political Systems in Socialist Countries”. In 1983 he completed his habilitation (Dr. phil. Habil. - in the GDR since 1969 under the name Dr. sc. Phil.) With a thesis on political theory. During this time he published on political science and comparative theory problems.

Weiß did pioneering work in the GDR not only in the preparation of a Marxist political science, but also in particular with regard to the institutionalization of comparative systems research, which in the GDR up to that point had indicated that this was a recourse to "bourgeois structuralism " , Was rejected.

In preparation of the SED-SPD document " The dispute between ideologies and common security ", Weiß acted as a consultant for the authors. In the turning point 1989/1990 he was together with Wolfgang Berghofer , Michael Schumann and others in the preparation of the special party congress of the SED on 8/9. and 16./17. December 1989 involved, on which Gregor Gysi became party chairman of the party renamed SED-PDS.

After 1990 Robert Weiß worked for a short time at the Brandenburg-Berlin Institute for Social Science Studies. He then worked as a project manager in the Historical Commission of Berlin and in the Kautsky-Bernstein Circle. From 2000 until his retirement, Weiß worked as a freelance lecturer at educational institutes in Berlin.

Publications

• About the nature, content and structure of the political and social conditions. A contribution to methodological problems of scientific communism . University of Leipzig, Section Marxist-Leninist Philosophy / Scientific Communism, Dissertation A, 1976.
• Chronicle of a breakdown. The "hot" autumn 1989 and its consequences in the countries of the Warsaw Pact . Dietz-Verlag, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-320-01615-6 .
• with Manfred Heinrich: The round table: bankruptcy administrator of "real" socialism: analysis and comparison of the work of round tables (= reports of the Federal Institute for Eastern Studies and International Studies 1991, 4). Federal Institute for Eastern and International Studies, Cologne 1991.

literature

• Lothar Mertens : Red think tank? The Academy for Social Sciences at the Central Committee of the SED . Lit Verlag, Münster 2004, ISBN 3-8258-8034-6 , p.?.
• Rolf Reissig: Dialogue through the Wall: The controversial rapprochement between the SPD and SED . Publisher: Campus Verlag; Edition: 1 (August 19, 2002), ISBN 3593370662 , p.