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Otto Kirchheimer: Capitalist State, Political Parties and Political Justice

Frank Schale, Lisa Klingsporn and Hubertus Buchstein

Biographical Sketch childhood and the first years after the Nazis came to power in 1933. Otto Kirchheimer worked at the exiled was born on November 11, 1905 into a Frankfurt Institute of Social Research in German-Jewish family in Heilbronn, a small Paris and New York between 1934 and 1943. city in the south-western German state of This was a crucial period of time for Württemberg. He was the youngest of six chil- Kirchheimer, as well as for the Frankfurt dren born to his parents, Julius and Frederike School in general.1 John H. Herz and Erich Kirchheimer. Both his mother and his father Hula have rightly stated that Otto Kirchheimer died during his childhood and teenage years. ‘was no systematic thinker’ (Herz and Hula, Thanks to the family money he inherited, he 1969: ix). The wide intellectual range of his could be sent to excellent private boarding work does not rest on an overarching theo- schools. Although he was not religious as a retical basis. Kirchheimer’s focus was rather teenager, Kirchheimer enthusiastically joined on current political problems. Nevertheless, the socialist German-Jewish youth movement the originality of his Weimar writings, his Die Kameraden in 1919. The experiences and contributions to the work of the Institute, his friends he made there awakened his inter- analyses of changes in party systems and est in philosophical questions, as well as in his reflections on political justice have stimu- socialism and communism. As for many left- lated a persistent interest in his work and an leaning, politically organized youth at the ever growing body of secondary literature on time, renowned Marxist authors such as Rosa both sides of the Atlantic. Luxemburg and Max Adler proved formative As is the case for many émigrés, knowl- to his political outlook. edge of Otto Kirchheimer’s biography is Supported by his parents’ inheritance, fragmentary.2 This is particularly true for his Kirchheimer studied philosophy, history,

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sociology and law from 1924 to 1928. He desperately tried to find work as a journal- began his studies with the Neo-Kantian phi- ist and translator. He joined a group of young losopher Karl Vorländer in Münster. During academics including Walter Benjamin and this time he joined the German Social Arkardij Gurland who were supported for Democratic Party (SPD) and became active various lengths of time through small research in its youth movement (Jungsozialisten). contracts from the Société Internationale de In 1925 he moved to Cologne to take classes Recherches Sociales. In 1934 he was taken with the sociologist Max Scheler and then to on to the payroll of the exiled Institute on a to study law and constitutional theory part-time basis to research criminal law and with Rudolf Smend and Hermann Heller. criminology. Given the political situation in Smend encouraged him to move to Bonn in Europe, Kirchheimer prepared to emigrate order to study with Carl Schmitt. Despite to the United States. Due to his ties to the their diametrically opposed views, the Institute, his papers were accepted by the polemically minded Schmitt relished the dis- US immigration agency and he arrived at cussions with the young Kirchheimer, who Ellis Island in 1937. In New York, he found a quickly became a sort of leftist Wunderkind home with and his group, and in Schmitt’s Bonn circle (Mehring, 2011; Franz Neumann offered him a part-time con- Breuer, 2012: 111–41). Under Schmitt’s tract at the Institute, which was now loosely supervision, Kirchheimer completed his affiliated with Columbia University. doctoral thesis on constitutional theories in Wit