Walter Lippmann

This article deals with the journalist Walter Lippmann; on the German lawyer see Walter Lippmann (lawyer) .

Walter Lippman around 1920

Walter Lippmann (born September 23, 1889 in New York , † December 14, 1974 in New York) was an American journalist and publicist . He is considered the most widely read and influential political writer of the 20th century in the United States. His work Public Opinion of 1922 is considered a fundamental work of journalism, media studies , political science, and social psychology .

His later view of the limited role of journalism in democracy contrasted with that of John Dewey and led to what later became known as the Lippmann-Dewey Debate about the value of public opinion.

He was also an influential figure in the genesis of ordoliberalism . The Colloque Walter Lippmann from 1938 is considered crucial for the development of neoliberalism .

Life

Origin and education

Lippmann was born on the Upper East Side of New York as the only child of Jewish parents of German origin and grew up, as his biographer Ronald Steel writes, in a "gilded Jewish ghetto". His father Jacob Lippmann was a rentier who had become wealthy through his father's textile business and his father-in-law's property speculation. His mother, Daisy Baum, who, like her husband, originally came from an economically modest background, had graduated from the renowned Hunter College . The wealthy and influential family belonged to the upper class of society, cultivated contacts in the highest circles and regularly spent the summer holidays in Europe for cures. The family was oriented towards the Reformed Jews, and they visited the Emanu-El temple . Lippmann was emotionally distant from both parents, he had closer ties to his maternal grandmother. The family's political orientation was republican.

Walter Lippmann, 1914

From 1896 Lippmann attended the Sachs School for Boys, then the Sachs Collegiate Institute, an elitist and strictly secular private school in the German high school tradition attended mainly by children of German-Jewish families, headed by the classical philologist Dr. Julius Sachs, a son-in-law of Marcus Goldmann from the Goldman Sachs family . Classes consisted of 11 hours of Ancient Greek and 5 hours of Latin per week .

At the age of 17, Lippmann began studying literature, history, philosophy, and economics at Harvard University . He was not a member of the prestigious clubs that excluded Jews from membership, but was of Phi Beta Kappa . His academic teachers included George Santayana , William James, and Graham Wallas (1858-1932), leaders of the Fabian Society and co-founders of the London School of Economics . He finished his studies shortly before the master’s exam.

He became personally acquainted with William James and Graham Wallas. William James became aware of him through his literary essays and invited him to his tea parties. Graham Wallas dedicated his work The great Society to him .

Journalistic, journalistic and political activity

In 1910 he worked on a series of articles in Lincoln Steffens ' Everybody's Magazine, in which the corruption within the monopolistic banking structure was presented mainly by JP Morgan. The scandal that ensued contributed to the creation of a parliamentary committee and resulted in the law establishing the central bank .

In his socialist beginnings, Lippmann was the managing director of a socialist mayor and a member of the Socialist Party of America .

In 1913 his first work " A Preface to Politics " appeared, in which he applied psychoanalytic methods to questions of political theory. The work received the attention of Sigmund Freud and Theodor Roosevelt . Freud published a positive review, Roosevelt called him the most brilliant young man in America.

In the following work “ Drift and Mastery ” from 1914 he already propagated an expertocracy as an alternative to liberal, socialist and conservative political models. A managerial elite based on scientific knowledge should lead the state. " The Stakes of Diplomacy " appeared in 1915 : In it he calls for US hegemony and the influence of American corporations through international consortia.

In 1914 Lippmann, Herbert Croly and Walter Weyl (1873-1919) founded the left-wing magazine The New Republic .

During the First World War , Lippmann became an advisor to US President Woodrow Wilson and helped shape his 14-point program . In 1916 he campaigned for Woodrow Wilson, who won the majority with an isolationist position, but worked like Lippmann towards entering the war. After the Zimmermann dispatch , the USA declared war on Germany in 1917. The political slogans of fighting for democracy and to make the world safe for democracy , were from Lippmann. In 1919 he was an opponent of the Versailles Treaty with Wilson.

Lippmann led the Inquiry research team in the Committee of Inquiry into the First World War, from which the Council on Foreign Relations emerged in 1921 , in which he played an influential role. 1932–1937 he was director of the Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relations.

In 1929 he succeeded in mediating between the Vatican and Mexico and avoiding renewed intervention by the USA.

Lippmann had easy access to decision-makers in the United States and was strictly against communism . The spy ring around Jacob Golos used his secretary Mary Price to find out Lippmann's sources or the facts on which he was working.

After 1945 he coined the terms cold war , reeducation . He was a critic of the Truman Doctrine , also with regard to the Vietnam War.

For 35 years he was a columnist in several major press media ( New York Herald Tribune )

In 1932 Lippmann was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters , 1947 to the American Philosophical Society, and 1949 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In 1958 and 1962, Walter Lippmann received the Pulitzer Prize , once for his column Today and Tomorrow and once for his 1961 interview with Nikita Khrushchev , for which he had traveled to the Soviet Union.

Private life

Lippmann was married twice, the first time from 1917 to 1937 to Faye Albertson (March 23, 1893 - March 17, 1975). Faye Albertson was the daughter of Ralph Albertson, a pastor in the Congregational Church. He was one of the pioneers of Christian socialism and the social gospel movement in the sense of George Herron . While studying at Harvard, Walter often visited the Albertsons' estate in West Newbury, Massachusetts, where they had established a socialist cooperative, the (Cyrus Field) Willard Cooperative Colony. Lippmann was sued by Faye Albertson and culpably divorced; Faye Albertson married Jesse Heatley after their divorce in 1940.

In 1938 he married Helen Byrne Armstrong, daughter of James Byrn (died February 16, 1974). She divorced that same year from Hamilton Fish Armstrong, editor of Foreign Affairs , a close friend of Lippmann's. The friendship and collaboration in Foreign Affairs for the next 35 years ended with the love affair with Armstrong's wife.

Lippmann was very discreet in personal matters. No correspondence with his first wife has come down to us. He seldom dealt with his personal past.

Media and propaganda

In 1920, Lippmann and Charles Merz found in a study entitled A Test of the News that the New York Times' coverage of the October Revolution did not meet the standard of neutral reporting, which is essential for the opinion of citizens in a democracy. With A Test of the News he published the first systematic long-term investigation into the reporting of a press organ regarding objectivity and neutrality. In Liberty and the News (1920) he radically questioned the relationship between education and opinion. Everyone lived only from knowledge from “second, third or fourth hand” and from headlines.

Find today groundbreaking and on reading lists is his record of public opinion ( Public Opinion , 1922). The background to this was also the role of broadcasting and product advertising. His thesis is that public opinion is made through the media, not through responsible citizens (as the leading US philosopher John Dewey , Democracy and Education , imagined). Rather, the “flock of citizens” must be governed by a ruling class with the support of experts. Citizens are overwhelmed by the necessary comprehensive information. First of all, this is an elite theory skeptical of democracy . The font was also groundbreaking for stereotype research . Lippmann understands the term stereotypes as "solidified, schematic, objectively largely incorrect cognitive formulas that have a central role in facilitating decision-making in processes of coping with the environment". He also coined the term gatekeeper for journalists . The gatekeepers would decide what is withheld from the public and what is passed on. "Every newspaper, when it reaches the reader, is the result of a whole series of selections". The fact that the selection rules for journalists who are in the same position largely coincide results in a consonance of reporting that acts like a confirmation to the audience ( everyone says it, so it has to be right ) and installs the stereotype-supported pseudo-environment described above in the audience's minds. This also reduces the importance of school education, which has little influence on opinion-forming. It was not reading and discourse that gave rise to opinions, but communication in codes and stereotypes.

Economic order

Lippmann criticized the failure of the harsh critics of classical liberalism. The reformed liberalism that it propagated was supposed to maintain the market, but regulate it. But he criticized the state interventionism of the New Deal in The Good Society (1937).

In 1938 the French philosopher Louis Rougier organized a colloquium at the Institut International de Coopération Intellectuelle in Paris , which later became known under Lippmann's name and was intended to discuss the theses of his work An Inquiry into the Principles of the Good Society , published in 1937 . There, the German sociologist and economist Alexander Rustow coined the term neoliberalism . One of the topics was the development of liberalism, which had fallen behind in the face of the failure of neoclassical economic theory during the Great Depression and the rise of totalitarian systems. Lippmann himself moved away from the ideas presented in the colloquium after 1938.

He belonged to the ordoliberal wing that stood opposite the market fundamentalist wing of Hayek , which Lippmann rejected, as did the Mont Pèlerin Society , which Hayek founded. In 1955 he published The Public Philosophy .

philosophy

Lippmann was elected President of the American Philosophical Society in 1947 . A philosophical contribution was his early support for Dewey's pragmatism against European idealism and the function of philosophy as an aid to life. It has only an experimental character, is no place for ultimate truths.

reception

Lippmann is the main character Felix Leitner in the novel The House of the Prophet (1980) by Louis Auchincloss .

See also

• Colloque Walter Lippmann
• The public opinion
• The Phantom Public

Works (selection)

• A Preface to Politics . Mitchell Kennerley, 1913. Audiobook available . ISBN 1-59102-292-4
• Drift and Mastery . University of Wisconsin Press, 1914. Full text available ISBN 0-299-10604-7
• The Stakes of Diplomacy . New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1915.
• The political scene . New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1919.
• Liberty and the News . New York: Harcourt, Brace & Howe, 1920.
• A Test of the News with Charles Merz . The Republic, August 1920.
• Public opinion . New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1922. Audiobook available .
• (German: The public opinion . Rütten & Loening, Munich 1964. Reprint Brockmeyer 1990. New edition Westend 2018, ISBN 978-3-86489-223-3 ) (also as online text )
• The Phantom Public . Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1925. ISBN 1-56000-677-3
• Men of Destiny . New York: The Macmillan Company, 1927.. Excerpts available .
• American inquisitors . New York: The Macmillan Company, 1928.
• A Preface to Morals . London: George Allen & Unwin , 1929. ISBN 0-87855-907-8
• Interpretations, 1931-1932 . New York: The Macmillan Company, 1932.
• The United States in World Affaira, 1931 . New York: Harper & Bros, 1932.
• The United States in World Affairs, 1932 . New York: Harper & Bros, 1933.
• The Method of Freedom . New York: The Macmillan Company, 1934.
• Interpretations, 1933-1935 . New York: The Macmillan Company, 1936.
• The Good Society . New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1937. ISBN 0-7658-0804-8
• US Foreign Policy: Shield of the Republic . Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1943.
• US War Aims . Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1944.
• The Cold War . New York: Harper & Row , 1947. ISBN 0-06-131723-3
• The Public Philosophy , with William O. Scroggs. New York: New American Library, 1955. ISBN 0-88738-791-8
• The Coming Tests With Russia . Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1961. LCCN  61-014950

literature

• Frank Deppe (2003): Political thinking between the world wars , Hamburg, VSA-Verlag.
• McAllister, Ted V. (1996): Revolt against modernity: Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin & the search for postliberal order : Lawrence, Kansas, University Press of Kansas. ISBN 0-7006-0740-4 .
• Riccio, Barry D. (1994): Walter Lippmann - Odyssey of a liberal . Transaction Publishers. ISBN 1-56000-096-1 .
• Steel, Ronald (1980): Walter Lippmann and the American century . Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 0-7658-0464-6 .
• Reinhoudt, Jurgen, Audier, Serge, The Walter Lippmann Colloquium: The Birth of Neo-Liberalism , Palgrave Macmillan, 2018
• Walter Ötsch and Silja Graupe: The forgotten Lippmann - politics, propaganda and the market. In: Walter Lippmann: Public opinion. How it is created and how it is manipulated. Frankfurt / Main 2018, pp. 9–53

Web links

• Literature by and about Walter Lippmann in the catalog of the German National Library
• Newspaper article about Walter Lippmann in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
• Walter Lippmann in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Walter Lippmann in the Freedom Lexicon

Individual evidence

1. ^ Ronald Steel: Walter Lippmann and the American Century . Routledge, 2017, ISBN 978-1-351-29975-6 ( com.ph [accessed August 30, 2019]).
2. ^ Elliot King, Jane Chapman: Key Readings in Journalism . Routledge, 2012, ISBN 978-1-135-76767-9 ( com.ph [accessed August 29, 2019]).
3. ^ Doris Appel Graber: The politics of news: the news of politics . CQ Press, 1998, ISBN 978-1-56802-412-7 ( com.ph [accessed August 29, 2019]).
4. ^ John Durham Peters, Peter Simonson: Mass Communication and American Social Thought: Key Texts, 1919-1968 . Rowman & Littlefield, 2004, ISBN 978-0-7425-2839-0 ( com.ph [accessed August 29, 2019]).
5. ^ John Gray Geer: Public Opinion and Polling Around the World: A Historical Encyclopedia . ABC-CLIO, 2004, ISBN 978-1-57607-911-9 ( com.ph [accessed August 30, 2019]).
6. ^ Walter Ötsch and Silja Graupe: The forgotten Lippmann policy, propaganda and market. In: Walter Lippmann: Public opinion. How it is created and how it is manipulated. Frankfurt / Main 2018, p. 11.
7. ^ Barry D. Riccio: Walter Lippmann: Odyssey of a Liberal . Transaction Publishers, 1994, ISBN 978-1-4128-4114-6 ( com.ph [accessed December 20, 2019]).
8. ^ A Dwight History Lesson | Dwight School New York. Retrieved December 19, 2019 (American English, the school renamed Franklin School during World War I. https://www.dwight.edu/about/history/a-dwight-history-lesson ). 
9. ^ A Dwight History Lesson | Dwight School New York. Retrieved December 20, 2019 (American English). 
10. ↑ Walter Lippmann in the Notable Names Database (English)
11. ↑ CFR: "Continuing the Inquiry" History of the CFR
12. ^ Members: Walter Lippmann. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed April 10, 2019 . 
13. ↑ Member History: Walter Lippmann. American Philosophical Society, accessed December 14, 2018 . 
14. ↑ Nikodem Skrobisz: Lippmann, Walter - Freedom Lexicon . Retrieved on August 23, 2019 (German). 
15. ^ ^{A b} The Walter Lippmann Papers. Part 1: Selected Correspondence, 1906-1930 (Reels 1-39). From the holdings of the Manuscript and Archives Division of Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. Primary Source Microfilm an imprint of the Gale Group Primary Source Microfilm an imprint of the Gale Group. ISBN 1-57803-280-6
16. ↑ Iaácov Oved: Two Hundred Years of American Communes . Transaction Publishers, 1987, ISBN 978-1-4128-4055-2 .
17. ↑ Kenneth S. Lynn: The Air-Line to Seattle . University of Chicago Press, 1984, ISBN 978-0-226-49833-1 ( com.ph [accessed December 24, 2019]).
18. ↑ Gerald Gunther: Learned Hand: The Man and the Judge . OUP USA, 2011, ISBN 978-0-19-537777-4 ( com.ph [accessed December 24, 2019]).
19. ↑ James Srodes: On Dupont Circle: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and the Progressives Who Shaped Our World . Catapult, 2012, ISBN 978-1-61902-093-1 ( com.ph [accessed December 24, 2019]).
20. ↑ Tom Goldstein: Killing the Messenger: 100 Years of Media Criticism . Columbia University Press, 2007, ISBN 978-0-231-11833-0 ( com.ph [accessed December 23, 2019]).
21. ^ ^{A b c} Jürgen Oelkers: John Dewey and pedagogy . Beltz, 2009, ISBN 978-3-407-85886-3 , pp. 212-230 .
22. ^ R. Bergler, B. Six: Stereotypes and prejudices . In: CF Graumann (Hrsg.): Sozialpsychologie , Volume 7, 2nd half volume, Göttingen Verlag für Psychologie, 1972. Quoted from: Dörte Weber: Gender construction and social psychology. Theoretical model and analysis in studies of the nursing profession. Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften Wiesbaden, 2005, p. 115.
23. ^ Lippmann Walter: Public opinion. Rütten + Loening, Munich.
24. ↑ Marcus Klöckner: "We live in a society that is permeated by propaganda and manipulation". Walter Ötsch on the US propagandist Walter Lippmann and neoliberalism. In: Telepolis . August 8, 2018, accessed August 12, 2018 . 
25. ^ Barry D. Riccio: Walter Lippmann: Odyssey of a Liberal . Transaction Publishers, 1994, ISBN 978-1-4128-4114-6 ( com.ph [accessed December 24, 2019]).