Thomas Aage heart

Thomas Aage Herz (born April 20, 1938 in Norrköping , Sweden, † November 25, 1995 in Cologne ) was Professor of Sociology at the University of Siegen .

Life

Herz spent his school days in Sweden, Brazil and Australia and graduated from high school in Sweden in 1959. His father Hermann Herz had emigrated to Brazil from Vienna in 1938. The family later returned to Sweden after a period in Sydney . From 1959 to 1960 Thomas Herz completed his military service there and from May to November 1960 was a volunteer in the 8th Swedish UN Battalion in Gaza and the Congo.

From 1961 to 1967, Herz studied sociology , especially with René König , and graduated with a degree in economics in the social sciences . He continued his studies in the subjects of sociology, social psychology and economics and received his doctorate on July 6, 1973 under Erwin Scheuch with a thesis on the subject of social conditions for right-wing extremism in the Federal Republic of Germany and the United States. From 1967 to 1977 he held a scientific assistant position at the central archive for empirical social research at the University of Cologne .

From 1977 until his death on November 25, 1995, he taught as a professor of sociology with a special focus on empirical social research at the University of Siegen. During this time he held visiting professorships at the European University Institute in Florence, at the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme in Paris, at the Department of Sociology at the University of Houston , Texas, and at Connecticut College in New London.

From 1966 until his death Thomas Herz was married to the judge Ruth Herz . They have two children: Manuel Herz and Daniela Herz.

In 2014, the German Society for Sociology awarded the Thomas A. Herz Prize for Qualitative Social Research , donated by Claudia and Trutz von Trotha for the first time .

Work areas

In his early work using quantitative methods of empirical social research, Thomas Herz devoted himself to questions of social inequality and changing values in the Federal Republic of Germany. In his later work, also in connection with a DFG project, he increasingly dealt with political culture. He coined the term “basic narrative”, which has become important in the context of research on collective memories. The focus of his research was on the changes in political culture after 1945, which he investigated on the basis of publicly conducted conflicts about the Nazi past.

Publications (selection)

• Social Conditions for Right-Wing Extremism in the Federal Republic of Germany and in the United States. Meisenheim and Glan 1975.
• Europe in public opinion. On the political mobilization in Germany and France between 1962 and 1977. Bonn 1978.
• Job mobility in the Federal Republic. Frankfurt am Main 1979 (together with Maria Wieken-Mayser).
• Classes - Strata - Mobility. Stuttgart 1983.
• Annual volumes of the documentation Empirical Social Research ed. Together with Hagen Stegemann (from 1968–1976).
• The change of values ​​in western industrial societies. In: Cologne journal for sociology and social psychology. Volume 31, 1979, pp. 282-302.
• Thomas Herz and Michael Schwab-Trapp: Contested past. Discourses on National Socialism since 1945. Opladen 1997.
• Change of values: immunization and isolation (answer to Inglehart). In: Cologne journal for sociology and social psychology. Volume 33, 1981, pp. 197-198.
• Values, socio-political conflicts and generations. A review of post-materialism theory. In: Journal of Sociology. Volume 16, 1987, pp. 56-69.
• Just a historians' dispute? The sociologists and National Socialism. In: Cologne journal for sociology and social psychology. Volume 39, 1987, pp. 560-570.
• Political conflicts, changes in values ​​and modernization. In: Heinz Otto Luthe and Heiner Meulemann (eds.): Value change - fact or fiction? Frankfurt and New York 1988, pp. 48-72.
• Values ​​and change in values ​​in Israel. In: Rainer Albertz and Gerhard Hufnagel (eds.): 40 years of Israel. Balance of a utopia. Bochum 1989, pp. 140-169.
• Far right parties and society's reaction. In: Social science information. Volume 20, 1991, pp. 236-240.
• Political culture in the new state. A criticism of current research. In: PROKLA. Journal of Critical Social Sciences. 23rd year, issue 91, no. 2, pp. 231–250.
• The "basic narrative" and the Nazi past. To change the political culture in Germany. In: Thomas A. Herz and Michael Schwab-Trapp (eds.): Contested past. Discourses on National Socialism since 1945. Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1997, pp. 249–265.

Footnotes

1. ↑ DGS website (accessed May 23, 2014)
2. ↑ See Thomas A. Herz: The "basic story" and the Nazi past. To change the political culture in Germany. In: Thomas A. Herz and Michael Schwab-Trapp (eds.): Contested past. Discourses on National Socialism since 1945. Opladen 1997, pp. 249–265 and Michael Schwab-Trapp: Legitimatorische Diskurse . The discourse on the war in Yugoslavia and the change in political culture. In: Trutz von Trotha (ed.): Sociology of violence. Opladen and Wiesbaden 1997, pp. 302–326.