Hans Freyer

Hans Freyer, born July 31 1887 in Leipzig, died January 18 1969 in Ebersteinburg near Wiesbaden, was an important, controversial conservative German sociologist and philosopher.

Life

Freyer began studying theology, national economics, history and philosophy in Greifswald in 1907, with the aim of becoming a Lutheran theologian. A year later he moved to Leipzig, where he initially took the same courses, but then gave up the theological parts. He gained his doctorate in 1911. His early works on the philosophy of life had an influence on the German youth movement. In 1920 he qualified as a university lecturer, and in 1922 he became a professor at the university of Kiel. In 1925, moving on to the University of Leipzig, Freyer founded the university's sociology department. He led the department until 1948. In Leipzig, he developed a branch of sociology with a strongly historical basis, the Leipzig School. From 1938 to 1944 Freyer was the head of the German Institute for Culture in Budapest. Freyer was Protestant and married Kthe Lbeck; they had four children together. After the Second World War, Freyer's position in Leipzig, now in the Soviet occupation zone, became untenable, and in 1948 he took up a position in Wiesbaden at the Brockhaus publishing company. He took up lecturing again for only another three years, from 1953 to 1955, at the University of Mnster and for a short time in 1954 in Ankara where he helped set up an institute for sociology.

Works

In Der Staat (1926), Freyer identified three stages of history which repeated themselves in a cycle: Glaube, Stil and Staat (belief, style, the state). These were partly, although not openly, based on Ferdinand Toennies' Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (community and society). The last stage, Staat, was the ideal state for society: "the essential quality of the state (...) was its ability to forge living humanity with all its forces into a unity". In 1929 Freyer wrote Soziologie als Wirklichkeitswissenschaft (Sociology as a "Science of Reality") (using Max Weber's term). This looked into the origins of sociology, saying that it came from the philosophy of history; that it had emerged from people's attempts to understand the connections between the past and the present. In Freyer's view, sociology was needed as a science to understand why changes in society had happened and, based on these findings, to help transform society. He saw Karl Marx as linking the philosophy of history to sociology. Freyer's 1931 article Die Revolution von Rechts studied freedom, saying that people should only be free if they were part of a common will; that individual freedom should be limited for the sake of the community.

List of works

  • Antus. Grundlegung einer Ethik des bewuten Lebens, 1918
  • Die Bewertung der Wirtschaft im philosophischen Denken des 19. Jahrhunderts, 1921
  • Prometheus. Ideen zur Philosophie der Kultur, 1923
  • ''Theorie des objektiven Geistes. Eine Einleitung in die Kulturphilosophie", 1923
  • Der Staat, 1925
  • Soziologie als Wirklichkeitswissenschaft. Logische Grundlegung des Systems der Soziologie, 1930
  • Einleitung in die Soziologie, 1931
  • Die Revolution von rechts, 1931
  • Herrschaft und Planung. Zwei Grundbegriffe der politischen Ethik, 1933
  • Pallas Athene. Ethik des politischen Volkes, 1935
  • ber Fichtes Machiavelli-Aufsatz, 1936
  • Die politische Insel. Eine Geschichte der Utopien von Platon bis zur Gegenwart, 1936
  • Vom geschichtlichen Selbstbewutsein des 20. Jahrhunderts, 1937
  • Gesellschaft und Geschichte, 1937
  • Machiavelli, 1938
  • Weltgeschichte Europas, 2 Bnde, 1948
  • Theorie des gegenwrtigen Zeitalters, 1955
  • Schwelle der Zeiten. Beitrge zur Soziologie der Kultur, 1965
  • Entwicklungstendenzen und Probleme der modernen Industriegesellschaft, in: Industriegesellschaft in Ost und West, Mainz
  • Herrschaft, Planung und Technik. Aufstze zur Soziologie, published and introduced by Elfriede ner, 1987
   

See also

Further reading

  • Theory of Objective Mind: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Culture. By Hans Freyer, translated and with an introduction by Steven Grosby. 1998
  • The Other God that Failed : Hans Freyer and the Deradicalization of German Conservatism by Jerry Z Muller, 1988 ISBN: 069100823X

External links

Freyer, Hans

 

<< PreviousWord BrowserNext >>
heritage tourism
hating alison ashley (film)
haizhu
human adaptation to space
giovanni sartori
monsters of the midway
park19
barotropic
bjrnar andersen
hou hanshu
life table
battle of toro
list of fleets and major commands of the royal navy
empires in arms
mitch seavey
rachael scdoris
album of the year (album)
chad ginsburg
symbios logic
the miniatures page
bombastium
f.w. holiday
battle of muunilist
king for a day... fool for a lifetime
lyuh woon hyung
current tax payment act of 1943
john forster (chief justice)
bearcat voice
evolution and the theory of games
west quay
diana jones
list of squadrons and flotillas of the royal navy
giesing
mel ferrer
de re publica
stretching (body piercing)
media institution
john d. loudermilk
melody time
bobby helms
the adventures of ichabod and mr. toad
buddy knox
quality management
toni fisher