Sigmund Neumann
Sigmund Neumann ( born May 1, 1904 in Leipzig, † October 22, 1962 in Middletown, Connecticut ) was a German political scientist and sociologist.
Life
Sigmund Neumann was born the son of the Jewish couple Jakob Neumann and Anne Lifshitz. He studied at the universities of Heidelberg, Leipzig Grenoble and history, economics and social sciences. With his work on " The Stages of Prussian conservatism ", which went back to an idea Alfred Weber, he received his doctorate in 1927 with Hans Freyer in Leipzig. In 1930 he married Anne Kuritzkes ( 1904-1954 ); from the marriage went forth a daughter.
Following Neumann went to the German School of Political Science in Berlin. There he first took over the management of the newspaper clipping archives and from the winter semester 1929/30, also teaching. In 1930 he moved to Berlin Community College and was its director. From 1931 he was, together with Albert Salomon and Alfred Martin Editor of Series " Sociology of Contemporary Issues". After the transfer of power to the Nazis he emigrated to London and worked at the Royal Institute of International Affairs and at the London School of Economics. In 1934 he went to the USA and took over at Wesleyan University initially a lectureship in sociology and in 1944 the Department of Social Sciences. From 1943 to 1945 he was a staff member of the Office of Strategic Services. As a visiting professor he has also taught at Yale, Harvard, Columbia University and at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
In 1949 he returned, though not permanently, to Germany and strongly supported the rebuilding of political science, which he, like the American occupation authorities, understood as democracy science, in his opinion - emigrants as Eric Voegelin, who first interpreted as " science of order ", it looked different - should be given high importance in the field of political education. His teaching places a visiting professor were the Ludwig- Maximilians- University of Munich and the Free University of Berlin. Both universities awarded an honorary doctorate from Neumann. It first since 1949 for the American military government followed the development of the West German political science, he joined the American Ford Foundation a mediation role in the supervision of projects, so the construction of a building for the new German School of Political Science ( from the Otto - Suhr Institute was born).
Neumann was considered to be extremely popular with colleagues and students, in contrast to other immigrants as Ernst Fraenkel, the value laid against the young graduates, as in earlier times at a distance. Neumann was in contact with many scientists and politicians of his time, who were often as he fled after the Nazi seizure of power because of their ethnicity or because of political persecution and later (temporarily) returned to Germany: Hannah Arendt, Waldemar Gurian, Theodor Heuss, Karl Loewenstein, Alfred von Martin, Albert Salomon.
Already Drawn from his cancer, he came one last time to Germany, where he held the lecture series "Democracy in Changing Society" opened at the FU Berlin in May 1962. His auspicious lecture was entitled " The Democratic Decalogue. Government organization in society change" and became his democratic theory legacy that was more than just basic features of a modern theory of pluralism, which are brought into this early period commonly associated with other names in connection.
Awards
Discount
In September 2007, the German National Library acquired his estate by living in the U.S. subsidiary.
Writings (selection )
- The stages of the Prussian conservatism. A contribution to the political and social image of Germany in the 19th century. 1930
- The German parties. Beings and change after the war. 1932
- Permanent Revolution. The Total State in a World at War. 1942 German translation: Permanent Revolution. Totalitarianism in the age of international civil war. Edited by Gerhard Besier and Ronald Lambrecht. Lit, Berlin, 2013, ISBN 3-643-12046- X ( review ).