Wolfgang Sofsky

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Wolfgang Sofsky (* 1952 in Kaiserslautern ) is a German sociologist , author and essayist .

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At the center of Sofsky's writings is the analysis of the forms of social power, violence and terror. Since then he has devoted himself to the threats to freedom from the politics of security, the destruction of privacy and the various forms of human immorality. Sofsky has often triggered controversial reactions in Germany, while abroad he is counted among the most prominent analysts.

Life

Sofsky studied sociology, philosophy , political science and history , among other things . In 1981 he received his doctorate at the University of Göttingen , and in 1992 he completed his habilitation at the same location. He taught there as an adjunct professor of sociology and was visiting professor at the University of Erfurt in 1999/2000 . He currently lives as a writer, freelance publicist and private scholar near Göttingen. Sofsky writes for the Literary World , the Neue Zürcher Zeitung , the Swiss Month , the Focus , the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , Die Welt as well as for the WDR and the Deutschlandradio Kultur .

Sofsky's thinking is shaped by social phenomenology, the philosophical anthropology of Helmuth Plessner , the sociology of Georg Simmel and the anthropology of Elias Canetti . In 1995 Sofsky wrote about Canetti: “ Mass and power have become indispensable to me. Canetti teaches those who are concerned with understanding what people do to each other to have a clear view. He creates the freedom of thought from which one can start again. His sentences are of crystalline harshness, without irony and contempt, but also without that edifying humanism that plunges the worst into the dim light of false reconciliation. The motto of the book could only be based on the blackest of knowledge, and hope to put an end to power. Everything else is just utopia or ideology, only strengthens the superstition of optimism. "

For his habilitation thesis The Order of Terror he received the Geschwister-Scholl-Prize on November 24, 1993 in Munich . The jury's justification stated: “Since Eugen Kogon's basic account of the SS state (1946), research into and description of the concentration camp as the epitome and center of the Nazi extermination has never ceased. However, attempts to get to a comprehensive explanation of how it worked have been rare. Sofsky undertook this task and presented a work of great analytical power and clarity. Based on the survivors' reports, he describes how the mechanisms of 'absolute' power existentially break people. Space and time, work and social structures lose their orientation function in the 'order of terror'. ” Jan Philipp Reemtsma praised the book in ZEIT .

"The book should become a standard work on the subject of violence - not only in concentration camps."

- Karlheinz Dederke in the FAZ

One of the first critics of the work at that time was Harald Welzer . In Merkur (H. 1/1994) he spoke of a “hermetic” book and called it “stupid in that it lingers in the horror that it claims to describe”.

On September 20, 2015, Sofsky received the Holbach Prize in Edenkoben for his complete works. The jury's reasoning stated: "Wolfgang Sofsky has created an outstanding essayistic work [...] He is the narrator among the essayists and one of their best." In March 2016, Sofsky founded the Holbach Institute for Research into Cultural Power.

Works

Books

Essays

  • Security through normality. Keywords for the analysis of everyday life . In: Frankfurter Hefte 33 (1978) 29-36.
  • On the value of work . In: Frankfurter Hefte 36 (1981) 29-36.
  • End times. Cultural sociological notes on the end of the world . In: Frankfurter Hefte 37 (1982) 59-66.
  • Machine people and society machines . In: Frankfurter Hefte 39 (1984) 54-60.
  • Terrifying city. Stations of modern city criticism . In: The Old City . Quarterly magazine for urban history, urban sociology, monument preservation and urban development 13 (1986) 1–21.
  • Threats. About a method of interaction power (with Rainer Paris). In: Cologne Journal for Sociology and Social Psychology 39 (1987) 15–39.
  • Absolute power. On the sociology of the concentration camp . In: Leviathan 18 (1990) 518-535.
  • Selected . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , March 9, 1995.
  • Time of violence . In: Trutz von Trotha (ed.), Sociology of Violence , Opladen 1997, 102–121.
  • Participate in the power of the dead. About the violence of the masks and their demise in times of conformity . In: SZ, February 8, 1997.
  • The law of slaughter. What type of people is behind the excesses in Algeria, Rwanda and Bosnia? In: Die Zeit, April 2, 1998.
  • Hero, martyr and terrorist rolled into one: the suicide bomber . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung, September 19, 2001.
  • The process of violence . In: Michael Klein (Ed.), Violence - interdisciplinary , Münster 2002, 173–184.
  • The pig, the man. Elias Canetti's poetic zoology . In: SZ, March 20, 2002.
  • How just is vengeance? In: Psychologie Heute 29 (2002), No. 4, 56–61.
  • The halved memory . In: SZ, December 5, 2002, 13.
  • Before the war. An urge, a hesitation, a wait . In: SZ, March 6, 2003.
  • The normal face of evil . In: Die Welt , March 20, 2003.
  • Bounties, headhunting, assassinations. Political murder and the art of war . In: SZ, September 29, 2003, 14.
  • Yes or no! What is so difficult for democracy: the decision . In: SZ, October 8, 2003, 13.
  • Neither a headscarf nor a cross . In: Die Welt, March 18, 2004.
  • In the dungeons of war . In: Die Weltwoche No. 19/2004, May 6, 2004.
  • Everyone keeps their eyes open. The dangers of terrorist prevention . In: SZ, August 1, 2005.
  • The principle of freedom . In: Ulrike Ackermann (ed.), Pleading for an Open Society , Berlin 2007, 40–61.
  • Amok, the intoxication of absolute power . In: Tages-Anzeiger , March 13, 2009.
  • Vengeance and justice . In: Berner Zeitung , May 7, 2011.
  • "The real element". About evil, in: Kursbuch 176, 2013, pp. 34–46.
  • Denial and other processes of ignorance, in: Chaussee. Journal for literature and culture of the Palatinate 34/2015.
  • Scarbo, in: Chaussee. Journal for literature and culture of the Palatinate 41/2018.
  • Homeland. An apolitical view, in: Chaussee. Journal for literature and culture in the Palatinate, 42/2018.
  • The people just watch. Because in the end democracy is oligarchy. , in: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , February 19, 2019.
  • The social is dried up, the values ​​evaporate, the executive takes over: a new era begins. [6] , in: Neue Zürcher Zeitung, March 23, 2020.

Interviews

literature

  • Michael Saager: The future of violence . Wolfgang Sofsky is the hand-to-hand fighter among the sociologists of violence. In: Jungle World No. 52/2002.
  • Martin Endress : Removing the boundaries of the human. On the transformation of the structures of human relation to the world through violence . In: Wilhelm Heitmeyer , Hans-Georg Soeffner (Ed.): Violence. Developments, structures, analysis problems . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-518-12246-0 , pp. 174-201.

Web links

Wikiquote: Wolfgang Sofsky  - Quotes

Literature by and about Wolfgang Sofsky in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ W. Sofsky: ErlesenZerlesen . In: SZ, March 9, 1995.
  2. ↑ Holbach Institute
personal data
SURNAME Sofsky, Wolfgang
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sociologist and publicist
DATE OF BIRTH 1952
PLACE OF BIRTH Kaiserslautern