SOCIOLOGY TRANSFORMED SERIES EDITORS: JOHN HOLMWOOD · STEPHEN TURNER Sociology in Germany A History Stephan Moebius Sociology Transformed Series Editors John Holmwood School of Sociology and Social Policy University of Nottingham Nottingham, UK Stephen Turner Department of Philosophy University of South Florida Tampa, FL, USA The feld of sociology has changed rapidly over the last few decades. Sociology Transformed seeks to map these changes on a country by country basis and to contribute to the discussion of the future of the subject. The series is concerned not only with the traditional centres of the discipline, but with its many variant forms across the globe. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14477 Stephan Moebius Sociology in Germany A History Printed with the funding of the Austrian Academy of Sciences Stephan Moebius Sociology University of Graz Graz, Steiermark, Austria Sociology Transformed ISBN 978-3-030-71865-7 ISBN 978-3-030-71866-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71866-4 © The Author(s) 2021. This book is an open access publication. Open Access This book is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence and indicate if changes were made. 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Neither the ­publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and ­institutional affliations. Cover illustration: © Melisa Hasan This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First, I would like to mention and thank in particular Antonia Schirgi and Frithjof Nungesser. From the beginning, they accompanied this book project and were an indispensable help for the translations of the manuscript. I thank Peter Kenny very much. He proofread the manuscript and greatly improved the readability of the text. For insightful suggestions and comments on the text and on the history of sociology in Germany in general, I especially would like to thank Lothar Peter, who sparked my enthusiasm for the history of sociology, and Gerhard Schäfer, who shared his encyclopedic knowledge of the history of sociology in Germany. Special thanks also to Frithjof Nungesser, Antonia Schirgi, Andrea Ploder, Christian Dayé, and Tanja Paulitz and to the editors Stephen Turner and John Helmwood for helpful comments and suggestions. However, none of them is responsible for remaining defects. Such defects can, of course, occur, since the history of science is always a kind of self-interpretation of the author, so the author can never completely detach himself from his position in the social and academic feld. I thank Sabine List for her help in compiling the bibliography and Wolfgang Mayer for preparing the index and providing further corrections. I am also grateful to the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) for funding the open access publication of this book. My special thanks also go to my wife, Julia Schäfer, and my children Caspar and Mira, who in the last years probably learned more about the history of sociology than they wanted to. v CONTENTS 1 Introduction 1 2 Sociology in Germany: From the Beginnings to 1945 7 Sociology in the German Reich 9 Sociological Pioneers in the German Reich: Tönnies, Simmel, Weber 11 Sociology Between Explaining and Understanding 14 The Werturteilsstreit 16 Social Science Infrastructure Around 1900 (Journals and Professional Organizations) 18 The “Ideas of 1914” and World War I 20 Sociology in the Weimar Republic 22 Sociological Centers and Actors in the Weimar Republic 25 Cologne 26 Heidelberg 27 Berlin 30 Hamburg 31 Leipzig 31 Frankfurt am Main 32 Braunschweig 34 Institutionalization Through Sociological Journals in the Weimar Republic 36 The Soziologentage and the Sociology of Knowledge Dispute 37 vii viii COntents Sociology During the Nazi Regime 40 “Inner Emigration,” Exile, and Sociologies in the Service of National Socialism 45 3 Reconstruction and Consolidation of Sociology in West Germany from 1945 to 1967 49 1945–1949 50 Re-education and Research Institutions 53 “Americanization”? 54 From Re-education to Anti-communism 56 1949–1958 58 Central Positions and “Schools” 58 René König in Cologne 59 Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno in Frankfurt 61 Helmut Schelsky in Hamburg and Münster 63 Social Processes and Problems of the 1950s 65 Sociological Refections on Contemporary Problems 67 The Role Debate 69 The “Civil War” in West German Sociology 70 1959–1968 71 Positivism Dispute 72 Generational Change 75 The Transformation of the Sociological Field 78 4 Ups and Downs of Sociology in Germany: 1968–1990 85 “1968” 85 Late Capitalism or Industrial Society? 88 Critical Theory and the Protests of “1968” 89 New Research Institutes 91 New Universities 92 The Habermas-Luhmann Debate 94 The Debate on Theory Comparison 97 Anti-sociology 99 Social Crises 100 Differentiation and New (Qualitative) Methods in the “Great Age” of Empirical Social Research 103 The Establishment of Women’s Research and Gender Studies 107 COntents ix Historical Self-refections in the Transition from the 1970s to the 1980s 112 The Theory Boom of the 1980s 113 Processes of Differentiation and Pluralization in the Face of Social Change 119 5 Sociology in the German Democratic Republic 123 “Sociology—is that really necessary? We have excellent statistics, excellent statistics!” 127 Separation from “Bourgeois” Sociology 128 The Institutionalization of Marxist-Leninist Sociology 129 Marxist-Leninist Sociology on Its Way to a Normal Science? 133 The Characteristics and Role of Sociology in the GDR 137 6 Sociology in Germany After 1990 141 Refections on Transformations in the Social Sciences 145 Why Do We Need Sociology Today? 150 The Gender Turn in Feminist Sociology 151 The Reception of New Theories of Capitalism 154 Key Social Problems in the Early 1990s: Unemployment, Poverty, Right-Wing Extremism, and Racism 155 The Red-Green Government and the Political Challenges Around 2000 157 Sociology and National Socialism: New Debates and New Research 162 Current Trends and Debates 163 Bibliography 173 Index 209 ABOUT THE AUTHOR Stephan Moebius is Full Professor of Sociological Theory and Intellectual History at the University of Graz and full member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. He is the speaker of the History of Sociology section of the German Sociological Association (DGS). xi CHAPTER 1 Introduction This book deals with the history of sociology in Germany from late nine- teenth century to the present day. Starting with the sociology in the German Reich, the processes of institutionalization in the Weimar Republic, and the deep rupture caused by National Socialism, the follow- ing history focuses especially on the period after 1945. It presents the intellectual, institutional, and confict-laden courses and trends of the his- tory of sociology in Germany in its economic, political, social, and cultural contexts. However, this book presents only a brief history of sociology in Germany. Given the long, complex, and extremely infuential tradition of sociology in Germany, it would actually may require a multi-volume proj- ect. Therefore, this book provides more of an introductory overview, which nevertheless deals with the most important institutional develop- ments, controversies, actors, theories, and methods of post-war sociology in Germany. Crucially, this book does not deal with “German sociology,” a phrase used in the literature to characterize a specifc kind of sociology, which has served National Socialism. My presentation is based on the methodology for the history of sociol- ogy developed by Lothar Peter in his 2001 contribution to the Jahrbuch für Soziologiegeschichte (Yearbook on the History of Sociology). Taking Wolf Lepenies’ introduction to the four-volume edition of Geschichte der Soziologie (1981; The History of Sociology) and Dirk Kaesler’s (1984) study of early German sociology as his point of departure, Peter (2001, © The Author(s) 2021 1 S. Moebius, Sociology in Germany, Sociology Transformed, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71866-4_1 2 S. MOEBIUS 2015) outlined a methodological research design geared specifcally to history-­of-­sociology analyses. At the heart of such analyses is the analytical distinction of three major dimensions of research in the history of sociol- ogy: the cognitive dimension, the social dimension, and the dimension of its history of impact and discourse. The general framework for research on the history of sociology frst of all involves contextualizing, by refer- ence to historical reality and social history, the ideas, theories, methods, instruments, institutions, actors, and history of impact to be analyzed. In other words, the object of research must frst be considered in the broader context of the societal (economic, political, social, and cultural) processes at the time of its emergence.