Werner Ziegenfuß

Werner Ziegenfuß (born October 16, 1904 in Essen , † July 12, 1975 in Berlin ) was a sociologist , author and university professor .

Life

Ziegenfuß was the son of Friedrich Heinrich Ziegenfuß from Rethem an der Aller , co-designer of the " Fat Berta " at Krupp in Essen. The mother died on June 14, 1963 in Berlin. After graduating from the Wettiner Gymnasium in Dresden on March 9, 1923, he studied law , political science and philosophy at the University of Hamburg from 1923 to 1924 , and sociology and ethnology at the University of Berlin from 1924 to 1927, and completed his studies on December 16, 1926 the doctorate to Dr. phil. summa cum laude .

Scientific career

From 1927 to 1928 Ziegenfuß worked on a habilitation thesis and from 1928 to 1933 was senior assistant at the Philosophical Department of the University of Berlin. He joined the NSDAP on May 1, 1933 , but in 1933 he was arrested twice for political reasons. On October 30, 1933, he began work on the Philosophical Lexicon , which became a valued reference work for philosophers. His habilitation was denied for political reasons. In 1935 he switched to the Sociological Seminar of the University of Hamburg as a research assistant . From 1936 he headed the education system of the consumer associations in the Reich Association of German Consumer Cooperatives , before he worked as a freelance researcher in Berlin from 1939 to 1940. From 1940 to 1942 Werner worked in the business education seminar at the business school in Berlin. It was during this time that his habilitation in business education at the Berlin Business School fell on July 16, 1941. On March 19, 1942 he was appointed lecturer in business education. In addition to teaching at the business school in Berlin, he worked from January 1942 to April 1943 as a research assistant in the department for economic propaganda of the information department of the Foreign Office . In 1943 he was called up for military service in France and Pomerania , but was able to continue teaching at times. From June to September 1944 he worked again in the cultural policy department of the Foreign Office, then was drafted again. On May 25, 1945 he was released from the military hospital in Schwerin .

After the end of the war he worked in various places (e.g. Hamburg , Lüneburg, Grimma ) on the Philosophenlexikon, before he became an employee of the East Berlin publishing house Volk und Wissen in 1947 . On November 19, 1947, he was exonerated in the denazification proceedings. In addition to working on the Philosophenlexikon, which appeared in two volumes in 1949 and 1950, he also worked on the series “Lebendige Sociologie”. Until 1952 he taught at the TU Berlin as a private lecturer and the German University of Politics , Berlin, before he was appointed full professor of sociology at the Nuremberg Commercial College on July 21, 1952 . There he taught until 1956, where he was dismissed from service on October 29, 1956 after a reprimand for an official offense by the Bavarian Service Criminal Chamber in Ansbach (February 13) by judgment of the Bavarian Service Criminal Court in Munich . The reason for his release were alleged homosexual behavior.

Impoverishment and suicide

1955-1956 his handbook of sociology appeared . In 1959 he took part in a training course for spray painters , worked as an insurance agent and was then unemployed. In 1960 he earned his living as a packer in a bookshop, a construction worker in the Berlin Zoological Garden and an unskilled worker in screen printing. After a collapse at the Berlin Westkreuz S-Bahn station on April 2, 1961, he requested the restoration of civil service rights and suffered a heart attack on August 13, 1962 , which made him unable to work. On January 23, 1963, the application to retain the title of professor was rejected, which would have given him at least some income in the form of a pension. It was not until May 1, 1972, that he was granted a disability pension .

On July 12, 1975 Werner Ziegenfuß committed suicide by falling out of a window in Berlin . He was cremated on July 24, 1975. The urn was buried on May 25, 1976 in the family grave - on the mother's side - at the Johannesfriedhof in Dresden .

Fonts (selection)

• The phenomenological aesthetics, presented critically according to principles and previous results. (= Dissertation ), Noske, Borna / Leipzig 1928. Also: A. Collignon, Berlin 1928.
• From the cultural state of the Germans. A. Collignon, Berlin 1931.
• Try about the essence of society . Buske, Leipzig 1935.
• Eugen Hauer, Werner Ziegenfuß, Gertrud Jung: Philosophers lexicon. Mittler, Berlin 1937. Deliveries 1–6 (no longer published).
• The cooperative economy. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1939.
• Man and the design of the economy. An investigation into the intellectual and social connections between economy and education. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1943.
• Theater and society. Key note, Potsdam 1946.
• Augustine. Christian transcendence in society and history. de Gruyter, Berlin 1948.
• Gerhart Hauptmann . Poetry and social theory of bourgeois humanism. de Gruyter, Berlin 1948.
• Lenin . Sociology and Revolutionary Action in Political Events. de Gruyter, Berlin 1948.
• The cooperatives. de Gruyter, Berlin 1948.
• The bourgeois world . de Gruyter, Berlin 1949.
• Overcoming the taste. Key note, Potsdam 1949.
• Philosophers' Lexicon. Concise dictionary of philosophy by persons. Written and edited by Werner Ziegenfuß with the assistance of Gertrud Jung. de Gruyter, Berlin 1950, ISBN 978-3110028966 .
  • Philosophers' Lexicon. Volume 1, A-K. de Gruyter, Berlin 1949.
  • Philosophers' Lexicon. Volume 2, L-Z. de Gruyter, Berlin 1950.
• Jean Jaques Rousseau . Palm & Enke, Erlangen 1952.
• The human being as a society and the company. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1953, ISBN 978-3428017430 .
• Social philosophy . Basic features of the theory of the essence and knowledge of society. Enke, Stuttgart 1954.
• Handbook of Sociology. First half. Enke, Stuttgart 1955.
• Handbook of Sociology. Second half. Enke, Stuttgart 1956.

Scientific legacy

The scientific estate was handed over to the sociologist Heinrich Stieglitz by will . For this purpose, he set up the Werner Ziegenfuß archive at the University of Regensburg .

literature

• René König : Werner Ziegenfuß (October 16, 1904 - July 12, 1975) , Nekrolog in Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie , Vol. 28 (1976), Issue 1, pp. 188 ff.
• Rüdiger Lautmann , The death of a sociologist: Note about Werner Ziegenfuß , in: Ders., The compulsion to virtue: d. social Control d. Sexualities , Frankfurt / M .: Suhrkamp, ​​1984, ISBN 978-3-518-11189-5 , pp. 184-189.
• Heinrich Stieglitz: Obituary for Werner Ziegenfuß , in Sociology , year 1976, issue 2, p. 122 f.
• Heinrich Stieglitz: Ziegenfuß, Werner , in Wilhelm Bernsdorf, Horst Knospe (Hrsg.): International sociologist lexicon. Vol. 2, 2nd edition, Stuttgart: Enke, 1984, pp. 952 ff.,
• Christian Tilitzki, The German University Philosophy in the Weimar Republic and in the Third Reich, Part 1, Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2002, p. 647 ff.
• Ziegenfuss, Werner. Sociologist (1904–1975) , in: Bernd-Ulrich Hergemöller , man for man. Biographical lexicon on the history of love for friends and male sexuality in the German-speaking area , completely revised edition in two volumes, Volume 2, Münster: LIT-Verlag, 2010, p. 1311 f.
• Johannes Hürter (Red.): Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871 - 1945. 5. T - Z, supplements. Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service. Volume 5: Bernd Isphording, Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger: Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2014, ISBN 978-3-506-71844-0 , p. 366 f.

Web links

• Literature by and about Werner Ziegenfuß in the catalog of the German National Library