Wilfried Röhrich

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Wilfried Röhrich (2006)

Wilfried Röhrich (born December 24, 1936 in Darmstadt ) is a German political scientist and professor emeritus at the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel .

Academic positions

After studying political science, sociology and philosophy in Berlin and Frankfurt a. M. and a research stay in the USA on behalf of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, Röhrich received his doctorate in political science under Carlo Schmid in 1964 . His minor studies in sociology and philosophy were shaped by Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno at the Frankfurt School , but also by Leo Strauss from the University of Chicago.

From 1962 to 1964, Röhrich was a research assistant and lecturer with Thomas Ellwein at the Institute for Political Education at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt. During this time he also worked on the first edition of Ellwein's standard work The Government System of the Federal Republic of Germany (Westdeutscher Verlag, 1963). From 1964 to 1966 this was followed by another assistant position at Michael Freund's seminar for science and history of politics at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel.

Thanks to a postdoctoral fellowship from 1966 to 1969, Röhrich completed his habilitation in 1970 in the economics and social sciences faculty of Kiel University. Michael Freund and Eberhard Menzel were the reviewers of his habilitation thesis. Then Röhrich u. a. Representative of a professorship for political science at the University of Hamburg and scientific advisory board of various publishers.

In 1973 Röhrich became associate professor for political science at Christian-Albrechts-Universität, in December 1979 the position was converted into a full professorship (C3). From 1979 to 2001 he was director of the Kiel Institute for Political Science.

During this time, Röhrich gradually expanded his academic spectrum from the history of political ideas to comparative research on democracy and the elite to the socio-economic problem areas of political systems and the new world politics. Finally, he is particularly interested in the power of religions and the fronts of Islamism and jihadism.

Political science understood and understands Röhrich according to its respective object of knowledge as a critical-emancipatory or as a historical-systems-analytical discipline.

From 1980 to 1982 Röhrich was a member of the Standing Committee for Teaching and Studies on the Board of Directors of the German Association for Political Science . At that time, twelve representatives from the federal states worked out the specialist content of the new discipline political science.

From 1981 to 1991 Röhrich was Vice President of the Ferdinand Tönnies Society in Kiel, whose series he edited.

In 1989, Röhrich co-founded the group of Pax professors in various disciplines, which felt obliged to bear the seal of the Kiel University Pax optima rerum and organized several lecture series on peace research with politicians and scientists such as Egon Bahr , Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker , Valentin Falin and Johan Galtung .

For the Pax professors group, Röhrich was - together with the then Prime Minister Björn Engholm - co-organizer of the Kiel Congress Ethics and Politics Today: Responsible Action in the Technical-Industrial World in the auditorium maximum of the university. Discussants were u. a. Karl-Otto Apel, Wolfgang Huber, Hans Jonas and Hans Küng.

From 1992 to 1993 Röhrich was a German founding member for the EuroFaculty pursued by the Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS) at the Baltic Universities of Riga, Tartu and Vilnius with its center in Riga. The EuroFaculty still includes the subjects Economics, Law as well as Public and Business Administration.

Röhrich has spent several research and teaching stays at foreign universities and has undertaken numerous research trips to Latin American and Asian countries and, above all, to countries in the Islamic world, and has published about this in press and books.

Book publications (selection)

  • The state of freedom. On the political philosophy of Spinoza , Melzer, Darmstadt 1969.
  • Social contract and civil emancipation. From Hobbes to Hegel , Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1972.
  • Robert Michels . From the socialist-syndicalist to the fascist creed , Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1972.
  • (Ed.) Democratic elite rule. Traditional holdings of a social science problem , Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1975.
  • Revolutionary syndicalism. A contribution to the social history of the labor movement , Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1977.
  • Politics as science. An introduction , Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag 1978.
  • Political Sociology , W. Kohlhammer (Urban-Taschenbuch), Stuttgart 1977, Italian edition: Sociologia politica , Società editrice il Mulino (La nuova scienza), Edizione italiana a cura di Franco Cazzola, Bologna 1980.
  • Representative democracy. Ideas and interests , Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1981.
  • Politics and Economy of World Society. The international system , 2nd, completely revised edition with the assistance of Karl Georg Zinn, Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1983.
  • Politics as science. An overview , 2nd completely revised edition with the participation of Wolf-Dieter Narr , Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1986. Serbo-Croatian edition: Politika kao znanost , Jedan pregled, Biblioteka Politika Misao, Informator Verlag (Uvodna studija Jovan Mirić), Zagreb 1989.
  • The democracy of the West Germans. History and political climate of a republic , CH Beck (BsR-Taschenbuch), Munich 1988.
  • (with Johan Galtung, Dieter S. Lutz): Survival through partnership. Thoughts on a peaceful world . Leske + Budrich, Opladen 1990.
  • (Ed. With Björn Engholm ): Ethics and Politics Today. Responsible action in the technical-industrial world , Leske + Budrich, Opladen 1990.
  • Elites and the Ethos of Democracy , CH Beck (BsR-Taschenbuch), Munich 1991.
  • The political systems of the world , CH Beck (BsR-Wissen), Munich 1999; 6th, updated edition, Munich 2017. Spanish edition: Los sistemas políticos del mundo , Alianza Editorial, Madrid 2001.
  • Rule and emancipation. Prolegomena of a Critical Political Science , Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2001.
  • The US and the rest of the world. A critical essay , Verlag LIT, Berlin / Munich 2002.
  • The Power of Religions Conflicts of Faith in World Politics, Verlag CH Beck (BsR-Taschenbuch), Munich 2004; 2nd, completely revised edition: The power of religions. In the area of ​​tension in world politics , Munich 2006. Korean edition: ByBooks, Seoul 2007.
  • Return of cultures. The new powers in world politics , Nomos Verlag, Baden-Baden 2010.
  • Political Theories on Civil Society. From Hobbes to Horkheimer , Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2013.
  • The politicization of Islam. Islamism and Jihadism , Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2015.
  • Fronts of Jihadism. The Islamic State, al-Qaeda and the Syria conflict . LIT publishing house, Berlin / Münster 2016.
  • Conflicts of Faith. Judaism - Christianity - Islam , Verlag LIT, Berlin / Münster 2017.
  • Karl Marx and his theory of the state. For the 200th birthday of the philosopher , Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2018.
  • Power and domination. The political class, elites and the autocrats, Verlag LIT, Berlin / Münster 2019

Festschriften for Röhrich

  • Rethinking Democracy , ed. by Carsten Schlüter-Knauer, Duncker & Humblot Publishing House, Berlin 1997 (with contributions from Ulrich Beck, Klaus von Beyme, Lars Clausen, Björn Engholm, Iring Fetscher, Wolfgang Kersting, Wolf-Dieter Narr and Peter von Oertzen).
  • Globalization and National Sovereignty , ed. by Dieter S. Lutz , Nomos Verlag, Baden-Baden 2000 (including contributions by Wilfried Freiherr von Bredow, Hans-Peter Dürr, Horst Fischer, Knut Ipsen, Beate Kohler-Koch, Bassam Tibi, Norbert Walter and Michael Wolffsohn).
  • Politics as Science , edited by Michael Take, Verlag Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2006 (with contributions from Hans-Herbert von Arnim, Egon Bahr, Johan Galtung, Martin Kriele, Claus Leggewie, Anton Pelinka, Dieter Senghaas and Karl Georg Zinn) .

Further literature

  • Katia H. Backhaus: Two professors, two approaches. Political Science in Kiel on the Way to Pluralism (1971–1998). In: Wilhelm Knelangen , Tine Stein (ed.): Continuity and controversy. The history of political science at the University of Kiel . Klartext Verlag, Essen 2013, pp. 427–474, ISBN 978-3-8375-0763-8

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf.: Carsten Schlüter-Knauer: Das Wort vor, S. 5, in: ders. (Ed.): Over-think democracy. Festschrift for Wilfried Röhrich, Berlin 1997,
  2. ↑ See: Carsten Schlüter-Knauer: Das Wort vor, p. 5.
  3. ↑ See Katia Backhaus, Two Professors, Two Approaches. Political Science in Kiel on the Way to Pluralism (1971–1998). In: Wilhelm Knelangen and Tine Stein (eds.), Continuity and Controversy. The history of political science at the University of Kiel . Essen 2013, pp. 427–474, here p. 450.
  4. ↑ See: Carsten Schlüter-Knauer: Das Wort vor, p. 6 f.
  5. ↑ See: Carsten Schlüter-Knauer: Das Wort vor, p. 6.
personal data
SURNAME Röhrich, Wilfried
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German political scientist
DATE OF BIRTH December 24, 1936
PLACE OF BIRTH Darmstadt