Helmut Schelsky Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description

Helmut Schelsky, (b. 14 October 1912 in Chemnitz (Saxony/Germany), d. 24 February 1984 in Münster (North Rhine-Westphalia), has been a very gifted German sociologist, the most influential in post-war Germany, well up into the 1970s.

Biography

Helmut Schelsky turned to social philosophy and even more to sociology, as elaborated at Leipzig University by Hans Freyer (the "Leipzig School"). Having earned his doctorate 1935 (thesis [tr.]: The theory of community in the 1796 natural law by Fichte), he got 1939, at the University of Königsberg (now: Kaliningrad/Russia), his post-doctoral degree (in German universities: "Habilitation"; thesis [tr.]: The political thought of Thomas Hobbes). Called to arms 1941, he did not take up his first chair of Sociology at the (then German) University of Strasbourg, 1944. After the fall of the 'Third Reich' in 1945, he joined the German Red Cross and built up its "Suchdienst" (special service to find displaced persons, mainly children). In 1949 he became a Professor at the Hamburg "Hochschule für Arbeit und Politik", in 1953 at Hamburg University, and in 1960 went to Münster University. There he headed what was then the biggest West German "Centre for Social Research" ("Sozialforschungsstelle", at Dortmund). 1970, he was called to be the first Rector of the newly founded University of Bielefeld (creating by the way the first and only German full "Faculty of Sociology", and the "Centre of Interdisciplinarian Research" ("Zentrum für Interdisziplinäre Forschung" [ZiF] at Rheda), planned to be a 'German Harvard'). In spite of all, his new university changed very much, due to the years of student unrest all over Europe and North America, so he returned to Münster in anger, in 1973, for another five years. All his life being a busy and successful publisher and editor, he wrote still several books, against the utopian way to approach Sociology, as fostered by the Frankfurt School, and on Sociology of Law. Anyhow, he died a broken man, 1984.

Schelsky and German Sociology

The "Leipzig School" (the social philosopher Hans Freyer, the anthropologist Arnold Gehlen, the philosopher Gotthard Günther), rich of talents of a first generation, was of strong theoretical influence on Schelsky. But, Freyer dreamt as well of building up a sociological think tank for the 'Third Reich' - quite differently to most other sociologists, e. g. to the (outspoken) anti-Hitlerian Ferdinand Tönnies (Kiel University) and to Leopold von Wiese (Cologne University), and to the emigrants (e. g. to Karl Mannheim, and to the up and coming René König, Paul Lazarsfeld, Norbert Elias, Theodor Adorno, Rudolf Heberle, and Lewis A. Coser). Freyer's ambitions failed miserably, the nazi power elite monopolizing ideology, but helped the talented (and former nazi) student Schelsky in his first carreer steps.

Nevertheless, after Second World War, no longer a nazi, he turned out to be a star of applied sociology, due to his great gift of anticipating social and sociological developments to come. He published books on the theory of institutions, on stratification, on sociology of family, on sociology of sexuality, on sociology of youth, on Industrial Sociology, on sociology of education, and on the sociology of the university system. At Dortmund, he made the Social Research Centre a West German focus of empirical and theoretical studies, being especially gifted to find and attract first class social scientists, e. g. Dieter Claessens, Niklas Luhmann and many more. It helped very much that he was an outspoken liberal professor, without ambition to create adherents - a rare bird among German mandarins. Furthering the "Habilitation" of 17 sociologists (outnumbering in this any other professor in the Humanities and Social Sciences), having anticipated the boom in sociological chairs at German universities, and manning them, he was professionally even more successful than the outstanding remigrants René König (Cologne) and Otto Stammer (Berlin) - the Frankfurt School starting to be of influence only after 1968. He was able to design the University of Bielefeld as an innovative institution of highest academic quality, both in research and in thought. But, his own university 'deserting' his ideas hit him hard. His further books, criticizing ideological sociology (very much acclaimed now by conservative analysts) und on sociology of law (quite of influence in the Schools of Law) kept up his reputation as an outstanding thinker, but fell out of grace with younger sociologists. Moreover, his fascinating analyses, being of highest practical value, lost just because of their actuality; and only by 2000 did new sociologists start to read him again.

Selected Bibliography

1. Zur Stabilität von Institutionen ([tr.] On stability of institutions, 1952)
2. Wandlungen der deutschen Familie in der Gegenwart ( [tr.] The change of present German families, 1953, 4th ed. 1960)
3. Soziologie der Sexualität ([tr.] Sociology of sexuality, 1955, 21st ed. 1977)
4. Die sozialen Folgen der Automatisierung ([tr.] The social outcome of automation, 1957)
5. Schule und Erziehung in der industriellen Gesellschaft ([tr.] School and education in industrial society, 1957, 5th ed. 1965)
6. Die skeptische Generation ([tr.] The sceptical generation (on youth), 1957, 7th ed.1975)
7. Ortsbestimmung der deutschen Soziologie ([tr.] Where to place German sociology, 1959)
8. Einsamkeit und Freiheit. ([tr.] Solitude and liberty (on the rôle of university), 1963, 2nd ed. 1973)
9. Die Arbeit tun die andern. Klassenkampf und Priesterherrschaft der Intellektuellen ([tr.] Let others work. Class struggle and clerical rule of the intellectuals, 1975, ext. 3rd ed. 1977)
10. Die Soziologen und das Recht ([tr.] The sociologists and the law, 1980)

(This contribution is very much indebted to the German Wikipedia.)

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