Wolfgang Pohrt

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Wolfgang Pohrt (* May 5, 1945 ; † December 21, 2018 ) was a German social scientist and political publicist .

Life

Pohrt studied sociology , psychology , politics and economics in Frankfurt am Main and Berlin . 1976 appeared in the Frankfurter syndicate authoring and publishing company his dissertation theory of use-value or on the transience of the historical conditions under which alone the capital use value sets with which he at the University of Bremen to Dr. phil. had received a doctorate . From 1974 to 1980 he was assistant at the chair for sociology at the University of Lüneburg .

From 1980 to 1987, Wolfgang Pohrt worked as a freelance journalist. During this time, numerous contributions were made for radio stations ( DLF , WDR , SFB , SWF , NDR ) as well as newspapers and magazines ( the daily newspaper , specifically , Frankfurter Rundschau , Die Zeit , Der Spiegel , Kursbuch , Die Wochenzeitung / Zurich, Express / Vienna, Telos / St. Louis , International Herald Tribune / Paris)

From 1988 to 1990 Pohrt was, according to his own statement, "at a small commercial institute ... a universal talent for writing reports, evaluating data, constructing questionnaires and much more"; this included u. a. Surveys in large estates, among young people, children and foreigners.

Subsequently, from 1990 to 1994, on behalf of the Hamburg Foundation for the Promotion of Science and Culture (founded by Jan Philipp Reemtsma in 1984 ), as a “social theorising privateer” (Pohrt), he carried out a research project entitled Mass Consciousness in a Phase of Change ; The methodological model was The Authoritarian Personality by Theodor W. Adorno u. a. The results of this research effort appeared in three volumes: The Path to Inner Unity. Elements of mass consciousness FRG 1990 (Konkret Literatur Verlag 1991); The year after. A report on the pre-war period ( Edition Tiamat 1992); Hard times. News from the permanent state (Edition Tiamat 1994).

Project work and accompanying research organization (multimedia, e-commerce, video-on-demand) followed from 1994 to 1995 at the Academy for Technology Assessment , Stuttgart. From 1995 to 1996 he worked again for the Hamburg Foundation for the Promotion of Science and Culture; this time with research on banding. From 1998 to 2000 Pohrt was involved in a project with surveys among youth house visitors and sample surveys in a larger urban area.

From 2000 to 2002 he supervised projects on knowledge management , content management and corporate culture at the Ludwigsburg University of Applied Sciences , a university for public administration and finance . At the same time, he had a teaching position at the Stuttgart Media University and dealt with knowledge management in public administration. From the beginning of 2004 Pohrt was the operator of the Ich-AG “Sozialwissenschaftlicher Service Dr. Wolfgang Pohrt ”, which offered surveys, evaluations and the like. This I-AG was dissolved again after a while.

Pohrt died in December 2018 at the age of 73 as a result of a stroke that caused him to withdraw from the public eye in 2014. Since the death of his wife in 2004, he had hardly appeared in public except with books.

The small Berlin publisher Edition Tiamat , with which Pohrt has published almost all of his books since 1984, has been requesting subscriptions since May 2019 for an eleven-volume Pohrt work edition that is published every six months . This is intended to make out of print titles accessible again.

Controversy

Wolfgang Pohrt saw anti-Semitic and anti-American tendencies in the German left in the 1980s and early 1990s , which was a central motif of his writings at that time. Already with the article Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Frieden , which appeared in Die Zeit in October 1981 , he accused the peace movement of anti-Americanism and described it polemically as a “German national awakening movement”.

Pohrt suggested an anthology about the relationship of the German left to anti-Semitism when Alice Schwarzer described the journalist Henryk M. Broder as a “militant Jew” and forbade the employees of Emma from dealing with Broder. The anthology planned by Pohrt did not materialize, however.

Pohrt's attitude to the Second Gulf War in 1991 sparked controversy . At that time, in an article in the magazine, he specifically pleaded (3/91) that Israel should answer Iraqi poison gas attacks with the atom bomb if necessary.

His appearance on September 30, 2003, in the run-up to the 13th anniversary of German reunification , at a panel discussion with Henryk M. Broder , to which the Berlin Alliance against Anti-Semitism and Anti- Zionism had invited, caused renewed controversy . There Pohrt took the view that the dangers of xenophobia and anti-Semitism in Germany would be exaggerated “by all media corporations and by all influential groups” “with the aim of later being able to carry out the so-called Agenda 2010 unmolested , a program to make the poor poor”. His résumé on this question was: “People need social control , and there is currently too little of it for foreigners in Germany.” The renaissance of an aggressive German nation-state was also denied by Pohrt: the Germans would not be able to do this at all they would rather have to take care of pension and dentures due to their age structure. As a result of the discussion of his appearance in Berlin, Pohrts book FAQ arose in which he - in the meantime referred to by Robert Kurz as an "anti-German gymnastics father" - distances himself from the anti-Germans . Racism and anti-Semitism are no longer consensus, but their criticism. State funding for this criticism serves to conceal the social question.

Fonts

Standalone fonts

  • Theory of Use Value. About the transience of the historical presuppositions under which capital alone sets use value . Syndicate, Frankfurt a. M. 1976, extended edition: Edition Tiamat, Berlin 1995.
  • Sale. From the final solution to its alternative , pamphlets, etc. Essays. Rotbuch, Berlin 1980.
  • Final destination. On the rebirth of the nation , pamphlets and essays. Rotbuch, Berlin 1982.
  • Roundabout, turning point. On the nation's menopause and the left in the conflict of feelings , pamphlets and glosses. Edition Tiamat, Berlin 1984.
  • Tribal awareness, cultural nation. Pamphlets, essays, features . Edition Tiamat, Berlin 1984.
  • Zeitgeist, Ghost Time, Commentaries & Essays . Edition Tiamat, Berlin 1986.
  • A touch of mink. Comments on the chronic crisis . Edition Tiamat, Berlin 1989
  • The secret agent of discontent. Balzac . Looking back at the modern age . Edition Tiamat, Berlin 1984, extended edition 1990, 3rd edition 2012
  • The way to inner unity. Elements of mass consciousness FRG 1990 . Konkret-Literatur-Verlag, Hamburg 1991.
  • The year after. A report on the pre-war period . Edition Tiamat, Berlin 1992.
  • Hard times. News from the permanent state . Edition Tiamat, Berlin 1994.
  • Brothers in Crime. The people in the age of their superfluity. About the origin of groups, cliques, gangs, rackets, gangs . Edition Tiamat, Berlin 1997, 2nd edition Berlin 2000.
  • FAQ . Edition Tiamat, Berlin 2004.
  • Violence and politics. Selected speeches & writings . Edition Tiamat, Berlin 2010.
  • Capitalism forever. About crisis, war, revolution, evolution, Christianity and Islam . Edition Tiamat, Berlin 2012.
  • The very last stand. About universal capitalism, communism as an episode and humanity as an amoeba . Edition Tiamat, Berlin 2013.
  • The expulsion from paradise - a year later . Hochroth, Vienna 2013.

Collaboration & Editing

  • Wolfgang Pohrt (Ed.): Science policy - by whom, for whom, how. Priorities in research planning . Hanser , Munich 1974.
  • Klaus Bittermann (Ed.): Together we are unbearable. Reunification and its consequences . Edition Tiamat , Berlin 1990.
  • The old traffic regulations. Documents d. RAF. With contributions by W. Pohrt, K. Hartung, G. Goettle, J. Bruhn, KH Roth, K. Bittermann . Edition Tiamat , Berlin 1986.

Literature on and about Wolfgang Pohrt

  • Klaus Bittermann: The intellectual troublemaker. In: Wolfgang Pohrt: violence and politics . Selected speeches & writings. Edition Tiamat, Berlin 2010, pp. 425–438.
  • [Klaus Bittermann]: The lone fighter. David Hellbrück in conversation with Klaus Bittermann about Wolfgang Pohrt . In: Klaus Bittermann: Some of my best friends and enemies . Edition Tiamat, Berlin 2020, pp. 355–383.
  • Kolja Lindner: Rien ne va plus - Wolfgang Pohrts “Theory of Use Value” . In: Money - Value - Capital. On the 150th anniversary of the writing of Marx's economic manuscripts 1857/58 . Outlines of the Critique of Political Economy (= Contributions to Marx-Engels Research / New Series 2007), Hamburg 2007 ( Argument ), pp. 212–246.
  • Ingo Elbe : Crisis Diagnoses. The historical decay of the theory of revolution (on Wolfgang Pohrt). In: I. Elbe: Marx in the West . The new Marx reading in the Federal Republic, 2nd edition, Berlin 2010, pp. 546-564.
  • Roland Kaufhold : “Relief for Auschwitz. Palestine, Israel and the Germans ”. On the death of the great, angry polemicist Wolfgang Pohrt, haGalil, December 27, 2018: http://www.hagalil.com/2018/12/pohrt/

Web links

Wikiquote: Wolfgang Pohrt  - Quotes

Conversation with Pohrt

obituary

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jakob Hayner: Klaus Bittermann: "Wolfgang Pohrt has been with me all my life". In: Provider. Stadtwerkstatt newspaper. June 2018, accessed on December 22, 2018 : "... and Wolfgang Pohrt was born on the same day as Marx "
  2. ↑ Malte Lehming: Poet and Polemicist: Wolfgang Pohrt died. In: Tagesspiegel. December 21, 2018, accessed December 21, 2018 .
  3. ↑ Christof Meueler: Against the applause. In: New Germany. December 22, 2018, accessed December 21, 2018 .
  4. ↑ We mourn our friend and author Wolfgang Pohrt. In: edition-tiamat.de. December 22, 2018, accessed December 22, 2018 .
  5. ^ Wolfgang Pohrt - Works in 11 volumes. Edition schedule and subscription , Edition Tiama, accessed July 21, 2019
  6. ↑ Wolfgang Pohrt: One people, one empire, one peace . In: Die Zeit , No. 45/1981
  7. ↑ Alice Schwarzer and Tolerance . In: Tagesspiegel
  8. ↑ Klaus Bittermann: The intellectual troublemaker . In: Wolfgang Pohrt: violence and politics . Berlin 2010, p. 435 f.
  9. ↑ See Dietmar Dath's event report. In: FAZ , October 2, 2003.
  10. ↑ See Pohrt: Zoff in the old people's home . In: Ders .: FAQ . Berlin 2004, pp. 9-18.
  11. ↑ Manfred Dahlmann: Critical Theory at the End? - About the antinomies of total socialization in Stefan Breuer and Wolfgang Pohrt . In: Initiative Socialist Forum, Freiburg.
    Excerpt from Pohrt's     theory of utility value .
  12. ^ National Socialism and the concentration camp system - excerpt from the sale. From the final solution to its alternative by Pohrt.
  13. ↑ Florian Beck: Pohrt, Wolfgang - Brothers in Crime . Reviewed April 26, 2004.
personal data
SURNAME Pohrt, Wolfgang
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German social scientist and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH May 5, 1945
DATE OF DEATH December 21, 2018