UNESCO Institute for Social Sciences

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The UNESCO Institute for Social Sciences in Cologne was an independent research facility that was established in 1951 on the initiative of the leading UNESCO employee and later Nobel Peace Prize laureate Alva Myrdal and existed until 1958. The director of the institute was Jan Juriaan Schokking from the Netherlands , research director was initially Conrad M. Arensberg (professor of sociology at Columbia University ), then from 1953 Nels Anderson , who came from the Chicago School of Sociology .

The founding was preceded by efforts by Max Horkheimer (Frankfurt), René König (Cologne), Helmut Schelsky (Hamburg), Otto Neuloh (Dortmund) and Dolf Sternberger (Heidelberg) to pull the financially strong institute to its own place. Due to the emphasis on already existing university institutes, the alternative location was soon Frankfurt or Cologne. The Frankfurters tried to influence the American donors through Herbert Marcuse , but the decision was made in favor of Cologne because, in addition to the university , the city of Cologne and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia were committed to the project and supported it materially and financially.

According to Erwin K. Scheuch , it was the task of the institute, at which he was a research assistant for some time, to teach Germans about empirical social research , so the first research was community studies. This also includes the Euskirchen study by Renate Mayntz . In addition to Mayntz (from 1953 to 1957) and others, Gerhard Wurzbacher (from 1952 to 1954) and Erich Reigrotzki (from 1951 to 1957) worked at the institute. Reigrotzki evaluated the first large population survey in the Federal Republic there.

In 1960 the building and inventory of the previous UNESCO Institute were transferred to the newly founded Institute for Political Science and European Affairs at Cologne University.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Stephan Moebius : René König and the "Cologne School". A sociological-historical approach . Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2015, ISBN 978-3-658-08181-2 , p. 85 f.
  2. ↑ Johannes Weyer : West German Sociology 1945 - 1960. German continuities and North American influence . Duncker and Humblot, Berlin 1984, ISBN 978-3-428-05679-8 , p. 379.
  3. ↑ a b Erwin K. Scheuch , It didn't have to be sociology, but it was better that way . In: Christian Fleck (Ed.), Paths to Sociology after 1945. Autobiographical Notes . Leske and Budrich, Opladen 1996, ISBN 978-3-8100-1660-7 , pp. 199–224, here p. 208.
  4. ↑ Clemens Albrecht , From Consensus in the 1950s to Camp Formation in the 1960s: Horkheimer's Institute Policy . In: Clemens Albrecht, Günter C. Behrmann , Michael Bock , Harald Homann and Friedrich Tenbruck (eds.), The intellectual foundation of the Federal Republic. A history of the impact of the Frankfurt School . Campus, Frankfurt am Main / New York 2007, ISBN 978-3-593-38544-0 , pp. 132–168, here p. 154.
  5. ↑ a b The history of the Institute for Political Science. The beginnings of political science in Cologne , University of Cologne.
  6. ↑ M. Rainer Lepsius : The sociology after the Second World War. 1945 to 1967. In Cologne journal for sociology and social psychology, German sociology since 1945 , special issue 21/1979, pp. 25–70, here p. 35.