Keywords

Frankfurt, September 19, 1946: The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie (German Sociological Association, GSA) held its first Soziologentag (“Sociologists’ Day”) after the end of World War II. The GSA was the first academic society to be re-established in Germany after 1945. The topic of the meeting was “The Current Situation, from a Sociological Point of View.” One was eager to hear what the sociologists had to say about the past years of the National Socialist dictatorship, the war that had been started by Germany, the Holocaust, and the unimaginably high number of deaths. More than 50 million people died during World War II, including more than 26 million from the Soviet Union. Approximately 5.7 million Jews had been killed—for the most part systematically. A total of “about 12 to 14 million people died outside of combat” (Herbert 2018, p. 95). But not only the killings, atrocities, and the war suggested themselves as issues to be addressed at a Soziologentag immediately after the end of the Nazi regime. Also, the question of how it was at all possible that the Nazi dictatorship came about would have been a relevant topic for sociological analyses in 1946. One could have taken up existing studies here, such as Theodor Geiger’s analyses of the middle class. As early as 1932, he analyzed the social structure of the Weimar Republic in Die soziale Schichtung des deutschen Volkes (1932; The Social Stratification of the German People) and discovered an increasing consent of the population to the policies of the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers’ Party or Nazi Party). A number of analyses by emigrants dealing with National Socialism or totalitarianism in general had appeared even before 1945, especially in American exile. Consider, for example, the following: State of the Masses: The Threat of the Classless Society (1940) written by Emil Lederer, who fled from Berlin and was later dean of faculty at the University in Exile; Franz Borkenau’s The Totalitarian Enemy (1939); Fritz Sternberg’s Der Faschismus an der Macht; Ernst Fraenkel’s The Dual State (1941); Erich Fromm’s Escape from Freedom (1941); Eduard Heimann’s Communism, Fascism, and Democracy (1938); The End of Economic Man. A Study of the New Totalitarianism by Peter Drucker; Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno’s Dialektik der Aufklärung (1944, Dialectic of Enlightenment 1972); Adolph Lowe’s The Price of Liberty; Karl Mannheim’s Diagnosis of Our Time (1943); Sigmund Neumann’s Permanent Revolution (1942); Franz L. Neumann’s Behemoth (1942); and Joseph A. Schumpeter’s Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (1942). After all, what was said at the Soziologentag about the dictatorship, the millions of deaths, the Holocaust, and the guilt of the Germans?

1945–1949

The first president of the re-established German Sociological Association after 1945 was Leopold von Wiese. He was still in good contact with his former student Howard P. Becker (1899–1960) as well as with Edward Y. Hartshorne (1912–1946), an officer of the US Army and an expert regarding the German higher education system. Hartshorne had a close cooperation with the sociologist René König (1906–1992) and helped to reopen the universities (Tent 1998). He also was responsible for the denazification and initiating of processes of democratization. His consent was necessary for the re-establishment of the GSA.Footnote 1

The Allies regarded German sociology as a victim of the Nazi regime and as an unencumbered science for two reasons: firstly, because of the high number of emigrated sociologists and secondly, because of the narrative spread by von Wiese that there had been no official sociology in Germany after 1934. However, sociology was not the victim that it presented itself to be. German sociologists such as Andreas Walther and Hans Freyer, who were not forced into exile and who were closely associated with the Nazi regime, had continued to teach and publish. Furthermore, the Nazi regime itself was not anti-sociological: Remember that—as already mentioned in the previous chapter—Hitler almost accepted a sociological professorship in Braunschweig (Dahrendorf 1965, p. 109). In general, however, the regime did not seek particularly close relations to those sociologists who remained in Germany, unless their ideas, theories, and/or empirical results served the political cause of the regime and matched with the political objectives (Turner 1992, p. 8). This was particularly true of applied social research.

Some sociologists used their empirical research skills to advance the regime’s population policy and Nazi eugenics (Nationalsozialistische Rassenhygiene) (Klingemann 1996). Others did not emigrate physically, but went into a form of “inner emigration.” Ferdinand Tönnies and Alfred Weber belonged to this group of sociologists in “inner emigration.” Von Wiese emigrated in neither way. During the Nazi regime, von Wiese had behaved opportunistically. However, by the end of World War II, he understood how to take the chance and present himself as a liberal sociologist of the Weimar Republic.

That the GSA was reactivated immediately after World War II was also due to the fact that the Americans considered sociology important for the re-education, reorientation, and democratization of the Germans. Whether their expectations would be fulfilled was uncertain, since the new president of the association had nothing more to say about the past years of dictatorship, the Holocaust, and the crimes against humanity as: “And yet the plague came on the people from outside, unprepared, as an insidious raid. This is a metaphysical secret that the sociologist cannot touch” (von Wiese 1948, p. 29). The years of the Nazi dictatorship should not be addressed explicitly. They could not even be analyzed because they were—according to von Wiese—metaphysical. Like many other Germans after 1945, von Wiese followed the narrative that the Germans had been “seduced” or “raped” by Hitler (Frei 2012).

Apart from Heinz Maus (1911–1978), nobody dared to object. Maus, who was close to the Frankfurt School and who was later one of the first Germans to write about sociology under National Socialism (Maus 1959),Footnote 2 criticized the silence of the official sociology. At the Soziologentag he read a letter from Max Horkheimer, who wrote from exile that a sociology of terror was what was needed now (Greven and van de Moetter 1981, p. 19). This proposal ebbed away and found no support. Maus’ plan to do his habilitation with von Wiese was then no longer feasible. He was henceforth regarded as someone who fouls his own nest (“Nestbeschmutzer”) (Papcke 1985, p. 194).

The members of the GSA were not prepared to deal with the past (van Dyk and Schauer 2015, p. 143). This they shared with the majority of Germans at that time. The GSA was not even prepared to readmit their former colleagues who were forced into exile. The new statutes of the GSA denied “leading figures from abroad” full membership. In contrast, people with a National Socialist past were to be treated “as liberally as possible” (Borggräfe and Schnitzler 2014, p. 461). Their attitude toward Marxists was not equally liberal; this can be seen from the case of Georg Lukács, whose membership was decisively rejected.

At the time of its re-establishment, the GSA had nothing substantial to say, neither about the National Socialist past, the war crimes, and crimes against humanity, nor about the then “present situation”: the chaotic, miserable, and disastrous conditions in Germany after 1945 (Bessel 2009; Reichardt and Zierenberg 2009). In the destroyed cities, the infrastructure was ailing, the black market and crime flourished, there was a housing shortage and starvation, expellees, displaced persons (former forced laborers, prisoners of war, and survivors of the concentration camps) traversed the country, more than 10 million people fled to West Germany, 9 million forced laborers moved to their respective territories, several million German soldiers were taken as prisoners of war, families were divided. In short, the general conditions as well as the living conditions were catastrophic and anomic; consequently, there was a real need for social planning. Consequently, there were indeed sufficient problems that would have offered themselves for sociological research. But the GSA preferred to deal with “formal-theoretical questions” (van Dyk and Schauer 2015, p. 148) and as an academic circle it remained relatively distanced from the reality of ordinary Germans.

The Allies were confronted with enormous challenges and unfathomable atrocities. The liberation of the concentration camps revealed the full and horrific extent of the Nazis’ extermination policy. How could one re-educate a population capable of such practices to democracy and humanity? Furthermore, the majority of Germans did not see the Allies as liberators. Most Germans experienced liberation as defeat. Official sociology, as it was represented by the GSA, did little to improve the situation. It supported the Americans neither in the process of re-education nor in simply integrating sociology into teacher training (van Dyk and Schauer 2015, p. 148).

Re-education and Research Institutions

Re-education and democratization, therefore, had to rely on sociological expertise other than that of the GSA. Universities and, even more so, non-university research institutions offered alternative sources of expertise. Many newly or re-established institutions and universities, often supported and driven by the US military government, devoted themselves to practice-oriented teaching and research on social processes. Immediately after the war a number of new institutions were founded; for example, the Akademie für Gemeinwirtschaft (Academy of Public Economics) in Hamburg and the Hochschule für Arbeit, Politik und Wirtschaft (University of Labor, Politics, and Economics) in Wilhelmshaven, both served the trade unions to train the next generation. In the French occupation zone there was the Höhere Verwaltungsakademie (later Verwaltungshochschule; Higher Academy of Administration) in Speyer. The first post-war appointments of sociologists took place in these institutions, including professors with a Nazi past (Arnold Gehlen 1947 in Speyer, Helmut Schelsky 1948 in Hamburg).

A number of new research institutes were established, some of them connected to the universities, others not. In 1946, Otto Neuloh (1902–1993) founded the Sozialforschungsstelle (Social Research Centre) at the University of Münster, which was based in Dortmund. The Social Research Centre was the largest institution of its kind in the 1950s and 1960s. Neuloh saw the Social Research Centre as a kind of clinic for social issues and the researchers as “doctors of social life” (Adamski 2009; Neuloh et al. 1983). The institution benefited considerably from the teaching of empirical methods developed in the USA (Kändler 2016, p. 129), but also from US-American group sociology and urban sociology. From the early 1950s onwards, the Social Research Centre gained considerable attention due to its research on technical developments as well as its sociology of labor, work, organizations, and industry. In addition, a form of municipal sociology, inspired by US community studies, was conducted (Weischer 2004, p. 67).

In 1947, the Forschungsinstitut für Sozial- und Verwaltungswissenschaften an der Universität Köln (Research Institute for Social and Administrative Sciences at the University of Cologne) was re-established. The sociology department was headed by Leopold von Wiese, who, however, did not conduct any empirical research. Also in Cologne, the Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Institut der Gewerkschaften (WWI; Institute of Economics of the Trade Unions) was founded in 1946. From 1951 to 1958, the UNESCO Institute for Social Sciences existed in Cologne. From 1953, it was headed by Nels Anderson (1889–1986), another important university officer, and devoted itself to community studies and population surveys. In addition to the institutions located in Cologne, the Institute for Social Sciences in Darmstadt, initiated by Nels Anderson in 1949, and the Institute for Social Research (IfS), reopened in Frankfurt am Main in the early 1950s, should also be mentioned.

Besides these research institutes, in the different Western occupation zones there were also institutions that were particularly devoted to opinion polls. As early as 1945, the Office of Military Government for Germany, United States (OMGUS) began to conduct numerous opinion polls (OMGUS Surveys 1945–1949, later HICOG-Surveys). Subsequently, opinion research institutes such as EMNID in Bielefeld, Infratest in Munich, the German Institute for Surveys of the People (DIVO), and the Institute for Public Opinion Research in Allensbach, established in 1947 by Erich P. Neumann (1912–1973) and Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann (1916–2010), were founded.Footnote 3

“Americanization”?

All of these institutions and activities promoted the implementation and application of empirical methods. In this respect, empirical research was closely linked to political practice (Kern 1982, p. 233). Since this research was either funded financially and/or supported by methods and methodological consultants from the USA, it was later often referred to as the “Americanization” of post-war West German sociology (Weyer 1986);Footnote 4 some even referred to it as a “successful mission” (Schelsky 1959, p. 55) or a “secular mission” (Plé 1990). However, it is often forgotten that there was a long tradition of empirical social research in the German-speaking countries before World War II (cf. Kern 1982, pp. 19–216). Empirical social research was also pursued under National Socialism (Klingemann 1996), although the protagonists of this empirical “sociology of the people” (Volkssoziologie) often remained in the tradition of the humanities-oriented German sociology before 1933 (Nolte 2000, pp. 131–132). Important empirical sociologists such as Theodor Geiger or the Austrian Paul F. Lazarsfeld (1901–1976) were forced into exile. After this detour, empirical social research returned to Europe, enriched with knowledge from US-American social research (Fleck 2011).

It is evident that the development of sociology and the shift toward practical social research, as can be observed after 1945, could not have taken place without American support. This is even more so the case since the GSA could not have been relied upon in this respect. Just like the GSA, the old and newly founded journals, the Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie (formerly Kölner Vierteljahrshefte ), republished by von Wiese in 1948/1949, and the Soziale Welt (Social World), founded in 1949, were initially not oriented toward empirical research. In addition to American support of empirical research, some of the sociologists who returned from exile saw social research as a tried and tested means of “applied enlightenment” (Dahrendorf ) for the democratization process in Germany.

The re-education by the Allies was not only aimed at denazification, but furthermore to educate the Germans to become democrats (Wehler 2010, p. 960). Higher education policy and science policy were different in the American, British, French, and Soviet occupation zones (Gerhardt 2006, pp. 38–75; Duller et al. 2019, p. 73). It was only when the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in 1949 that the three Western zones became one. Science and university policy became the responsibility of the ministries of education of the federal states. “By the midst of the 1950s the West German university system had reobtained stability” (Duller et al. 2019, p. 73).

Immediately after the war, also the students were occupied with their very survival; most of them had been actively involved in World War II. “This accumulation of formerly active officers and reserve officers at the universities, on the one hand, was seen as a potential threat to the security interests of the victorious powers; on the other hand, the universities were one of those environments where the success or failure of their ‘denazification and democratization policies’ could best be observed” (Fichter and Lönnendonker 2018, p. 31). However, the attitudes of students in the 1950s were predominantly apolitical, with 60% of them saying in a survey that they had “had enough of political sentiments and no longer wanted to know about worldviews” (Jarausch 1984, p. 223). This would change again only in the middle of the 1960s.

From Re-education to Anti-communism

The first phase (1945–1949) of the history of sociology in Germany after World War II was marked by the re-establishment of the GSA, the establishment of social science institutes with empirical orientation, and a scientific policy that focused on re-education (Gerhardt 2006, p. 35). The revival of sociology immediately after the victory of the Allies led to the reactivation of professors from the Weimar Republic (Lepsius 2017d, pp. 92–94): In addition to von Wiese, also Alfred Vierkandt, Alexander Rüstow, Richard Thurnwald, Carl Brinkmann, Alfred von Martin, and Alfred Weber returned to their former positions. However, with the exception of Alfred Weber and a short-term “reprise of Heidelberg sociology” (Lepsius 2017d, p. 93), their activities had little impact. In the following years, neither Alfred Weber nor Alfred von Martin influenced the subsequent discourse; even Karl Mannheim played hardly a role anymore, he died in January 1947, shortly after having appointed as UNESCO representative for the reconstruction of sociology and democracy.

German sociology broke with the history and tradition that it inherited from the times of the Weimar Republic (Kruse 1998, pp. 155–193; Steinmetz 2010)—a break that at the same time meant a turning away from the hitherto powerful historical sociology, especially represented by the sociological tradition of Heidelberg. The strong historical orientation that had been characteristic of sociology in Germany until then (Steinmetz 2017) could not be re-established after 1945 (Steinmetz 2007). Those who were involved in the refoundation of sociology regarded historically oriented sociology as a backward-looking, idealistic undertaking or as a form of philosophy of history. Like most Germans, sociologists did not want to look back, but rather to leave their history behind as far as possible.

There were also continuities with the personnel of the Nazi era, as Klingemann (2009) especially has shown. During the first 15 years after the war, there was a “quantitative balance” (Rehberg 1992, p. 36) between “sociologists who had returned from exile or to whom ‘internal emigration’ can really be attributed” (Rehberg 1992, p. 36) and those who were close to the Nazi regime. René König returned from Swiss exile to Cologne, Max Horkheimer (1895–1973) from the USA to Frankfurt (both in 1949), Helmuth Plessner (1892–1985) from the Netherlands to Göttingen (1951), Arnold Bergstraesser (1896–1964) from the USA to Freiburg (1954), to name but a few.Footnote 5 Sociologists who held positions during the Nazi regime and now taught again were Arnold Gehlen (1947 in Speyer), Helmut Schelsky (1948 in Hamburg), Hans Freyer (1952 in Münster), Karl Valentin Müller (1955 in Nuremberg).Footnote 6 Other former supporters of the Nazi regime initially also found employment at the aforementioned Social Research Centre at the University of Münster in Dortmund (Rehberg 1992, p. 37; Lepsius 2017d, pp. 94–96). The laws that the government under Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer had enforced immediately after the founding of the state benefited many of those who were formerly engaged with the Nazi regime. These were laws that granted former supporters of the Nazi regime impunity and interpreted the legal status of former officials generously (Frei 2012). This contributed to the fact that a number of people who had already made a career during the Nazi regime held high positions, especially in industry, the judiciary, the military, and medicine, but also at universities (Frei 2007).

For the Americans, their general goal was to change soon. Denazification and education for democracy were increasingly replaced by the “primacy of education for anti-communism” (van Dyk and Schauer 2015, p. 148). The foundation of the Freie Universität (Free University; FU) Berlin (1948), a counter-establishment to the traditional Humboldt University, which was then located in the Soviet sector of the city, also fell into this phase. The founding of the FU was a first sign in the institutionalized academic field of the increasing conflict between East and West, which was to have a major impact on Germany.

1949–1958

Crucial for the further course and the second phase (1949–1955) of sociology in West Germany were the sociologists returning from exile; alongside the former NSDAP member Helmut Schelsky, they became the “figureheads of post-war sociology” (Gerhardt 2006, p. 105), who received international recognition, too. This development helped the university-based sociology to reorient itself and to restart successfully. It came to a real “re-establishment” (Lepsius 1978/2017c, 1979/2017d, pp. 94–111), often with support from the USA, which affected personnel, studies, the establishment of research institutes, the formation of the first post-war generation, as well as the differentiation and professionalization of sociology (Gerhardt 2006, pp. 75–101).

Central Positions and “Schools”

It was a new generation that determined the institutionalization and the further course of sociology in Germany. In particular, three central positions or “schools” emerged (Lepsius 2017c, p. 81; Sahner 1982; Moebius 2018a),Footnote 7 each with its own institutes and journals: René König was appointed professor in Cologne, succeeding Leopold von Wiese, Max Horkheimer was appointed professor of sociology and philosophy in Frankfurt am Main, and Helmut Schelsky became professor of sociology at the Akademie für Gemeinwirtschaft in Hamburg, which was founded after the war. Cologne, Frankfurt, and Hamburg, these three locations determined the sociological field of the post-war period until the 1960s, even though sociologists were also appointed elsewhere.Footnote 8 The three positions of this “initial constellation” (Lepsius 2017c, p. 82) were quite contrary (also in their political orientations), although all three emerged out of the tradition of a philosophical and humanities-oriented sociology of the 1920s.

René König in Cologne

René König, who had returned from exile in Zurich, represented a decidedly empirical sociology, which he positioned in the tradition of Auguste Comte and Émile Durkheim.Footnote 9 For him, applied sociology was a critical and enlightening tool for the formation of a liberal and democratic society. According to König, “sociology should be nothing but sociology” (1967, p. 8). With this dictum he distinguished his position from the other dominant positions at the time: Sociology was not social philosophy or cultural criticism, as it was for Horkheimer and Adorno (1903–1969), nor was it a philosophical-anthropological meta-perspective and interpretational science, as it was for Schelsky. For König, sociology is “the scientific-systematic treatment of the general orders of social life, their laws of movement and development, their relations to the natural environment, to culture in general and to the individual areas of life, and finally to the social-cultural person of mankind” (König 1967, p. 8). As Clemens Albrecht (2013, p. 387) has pointed out, König’s sociology moved between structural-functionalist ethnology, French theory of the Durkheim School, American social research, and the analysis of social problems; in addition, it was influenced by the broad tradition of German sociology of the interwar period that had become visible in Alfred Vierkandt’s famous Handwörterbuch der Soziologie (Concise Dictionary of Sociology) of 1931. However, it was König’s orientation of sociology as an empirical-analytical and independent discipline that was crucial for the further course of sociology in West Germany. This orientation found many disciples and supporters and prevailed over time, so that today this empirical orientation belongs to the general compulsory program in sociological studies (Moebius and Griesbacher 2019).

It was also König who made sociology in Germany international again. He was one of the co-founders of the International Sociological Association (ISA), and, as secretary of the ISA, he organized the World Congress in Zurich in 1950. From 1962 to 1966 he served as president of the ISA. In the early 1950s, König intensified his American contacts while on a trip to the USA financed by the Rockefeller Foundation. And he urged his students too, to internationalize. Although König himself did not conduct empirical social research, he was its main supporter. He himself had written his doctoral dissertation on realistic literature in France, and worked on sociology of the family, on community sociology, and on fashion. In 1952, with the help of Paul F. Lazarsfeld and Robert K. Merton (1910–2003), he published a reader on interviews. Thanks to the support of his co-workers Erwin K. Scheuch (1928–2003), Dietrich Rüschemeyer (*1930), and Peter Heintz (1920–1983), this was later extended to two much-read volumes on applied social research (König et al. 1952, 1956). In 1958, König published a dictionary of sociology that was translated into many languages (König 1967). Over 400,000 copies were sold. The book became one of the best-selling academic books and contributed significantly to the popularity of sociology from Cologne. Since 1962, König also published a multi-volume handbook on empirical sociology (Handbuch der empirischen Sozialforschung, 14 volumes), which itself very well demonstrated an increased professionalism and differentiation of sociology. Furthermore, in 1955, König succeeded von Wiese as editor of the renowned Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie , which he renamed to Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie (KZfSS, Cologne Journal of Sociology and Social Psychology). In particular, the special issues of the journal were to pave the way for a further differentiation of sociology into specialized sociologies or so-called Bindestrichsoziologien (“hyphen-sociologies”).Footnote 10 This differentiation also had an impact on the GSA. It led to the establishment of various sections of the GSA and was thus also crucial for the institutionalization of sociology.

All these endeavors, especially the quantitative empirical social research and the positivist orientation promoted by König, contributed to the consolidation of sociology in West Germany and defined what in the next decades professionalism in sociology should mean. With his empirical orientation, the Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie , and with the support of his students, who further developed and strengthened this orientation in the sociological field (for instance Scheuch, Peter Atteslander (1926–2016), or the sociologist of family Rosemarie Nave-Herz (*1935)Footnote 11), König formed what was later called the Cologne School of sociology. It was this kind of sociology that then later prevailed in the sociological field as the mainstream of sociology (Moebius 2015; Moebius and Griesbacher 2019). But what were the alternatives?

Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno in Frankfurt

A second thought collective was the Frankfurt School. In 1949, Horkheimer was appointed to a dual chair of philosophy and sociology in Frankfurt am Main, and in 1953 Adorno was appointed associate professor of philosophy and sociology. After 1945, the central representatives of the Frankfurt School and its principal concept of “Critical Theory” were Horkheimer and Adorno, but also the exiled Herbert Marcuse, with whom there were still contacts to the USA, and Jürgen Habermas (*1929), who in 1956 became an employee at the Institute for Social Research (IfS) and assistant to Adorno (Müller-Doohm 2014, p. 103; Wiggershaus 2001, p. 597).

After Horkheimer and Adorno had returned from exile in the USA, they rebuilt Critical Theory in Frankfurt. On the theoretical side, the Dialectic of Enlightenment, written by these two sociologists in California, was central. The book was inspired by Georg Lukács’ analysis of the downside of Enlightenment, which he described as the rule of instrumental reason. This meant, for example, increasing formalization, quantification, and mathematization, but also the degeneration of culture and art to mere entertainment, a process that was induced by the culture industry (Kulturindustrie). Still in the process of working on the Dialectic of Enlightenment, the multi-volume Studies in Prejudice was developed. The volumes edited by Horkheimer and Samuel H. Flowerman (1912–1958) and financed by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) were published in 1950. They introduced the Institute for Social Research (IfS), which reopened in 1951, to the American methods of empirical social research and fostered Horkheimer’s hope for a “combination of European ideas and US-American methods” (Wiggershaus 2001, p. 456). The Institute for Social Research (IfS) endeavored to conduct empirical social research in West Germany, and carried out research on opinions and the atmosphere in organizations. One common feature of the Cologne School and the Frankfurt School was the attempt to help shape the social culture of the young Federal Republic through sociology and empirical social research. Horkheimer even tried to persuade König to cooperate with the IfS and in the “development of research methods” (Albrecht 1999, pp. 157 f.). König, in turn, praised the Institute’s major empirical study on the Gruppenexperiment (group experiment) (Pollock and IfS 1955). This study aimed at ascertaining the attitudes of Germans on the persecution of the Jews, German guilt, occupying powers, and democratic forms of government through group discussions. The result was depressing and alarming. Most of the Germans largely tried to deny their complicity in the Nazi regime. This coincided with measures taken by the newly elected government under Konrad Adenauer that, for example, granted a broad amnesty to Nazi perpetrators. The group experiment, which was a further development of the group discussion by Kurt Lewin (1890–1947), later became a widely used method in qualitative social research in Germany.

At the beginning of the 1950s, there was a proximity between König and the sociologists in Frankfurt, motivated by a joint effort to come to terms with the past in a critical manner. In the early 1950s, Adorno still proposed that sociology should no longer stick to its orientation toward the humanities, but that it should finally turn into an empirical science (Nolte 2000, p. 264). In contrast to König, however, at the end of the 1950s this interest of the Frankfurt School in empirical research increasingly gave way to a social-philosophical, Marxist-inspired analysis of social conditions, which increasingly saw empirical research as a positivist reification, as it had been criticized in the Dialectic of Enlightenment. Initially latent differences between the Cologne School and the Frankfurt School eventually turned into struggles for the power of definition and of representation in the sociological field.

In addition to the Frankfurt School, there was another Marxist-oriented branch of the social sciences in Germany, the so-called Marburg School (Peter 2019). The head of this school was Wolfgang Abendroth (1906–1985), who had been in resistance during the Nazi regime. Besides Abendroth, Heinz Maus (since 1960) and Werner Hofmann (1922–1969) (since 1966) determined the character of the neighboring Institute for Sociology and contributed a lot to the formation of this school. In contrast to Frankfurt, in Marburg the focus was not on the manipulation of consciousness, but on political-economic analyses of the antagonistic class structure and the labor movement as a constructive factor and oppositional force in the process of promoting democracy. Also in contrast to Adorno and Horkheimer, in Marburg the proximity to the labor movement was explicitly sought (Peter 2019, pp. 66–81).

Helmut Schelsky in Hamburg and Münster

Besides König and Adorno and Horkheimer, it was especially Helmut Schelsky (1912–1984) who was an important figure in West German sociology, especially with respect to its public perception. Schelsky, a former member of the NSDAP (see Schäfer 2017, p. 25), became a kind of “star” and “public intellectual” (Schäfer 2015) of the FRG. Now, after World War II, he fully committed himself to the democratization of Germany (Schäfer 2017, p. 56). He also coined the central terms by which the Germans formed their conception and perception of their own society. One of these concepts was, for example, the thesis of a nivellierte Mittelstandsgesellschaft (leveled middle-class society) that was first put forward in 1953 (Schäfer 2000). It was directed against Marxist interpretations of society as a class society and suggested both that more and more people were rising from the lower classes to the middle class and that an increasing number of people were descending from the upper class to the middle class. Even though the thesis was controversial, and after all turned out not to be true, it shaped the self-image and perception of the German society (Schäfer 2000). Other research in the 1950s dealt with sociology of youth, family, generations, and sexuality. In 1955, together with Gehlen, Schelsky published the first sociological textbook in the Federal Republic of Germany, titled Soziologie. Ein Lehr- und Handbuch zur modernen Gesellschaftskunde (Sociology. A Text- and Handbook on Modern Social Studies). Some of Schelsky’s books were particularly well received; among them were Die skeptische Generation (1957, The Skeptical Generation), Soziologie der Sexualität (1955, Sociology of Sexuality), and Ortbestimmung der deutschen Soziologie (1959, Localization of German Sociology) (Schäfer 2015, p. 2; Wöhrle 2015).

Without having to abandon his conservative roots, he [Schelsky ] participated in a creative way in the founding of institutions (Bielefeld University, Centre for Interdisciplinary Research/ZIF) and for almost three decades proved to be a key contributor to the debate in the social sciences. Until the 1970s he was present in the feuilleton and in political discourses, but then lost the openness and tolerance he had shown during the first two decades of his career. [...] His polemical interventions put him on the track of ‘anti-Sociology,’ without him stopping the pursuit of sociology himself. (Schäfer 2015, p. 2)

In Hamburg, Schelsky developed his research on the empirical sociology of the family, youth, education, and organizations. Immediately after the war, he had acquired extensive knowledge of the state of research in the USA and UK at the American Reading Room (Karlsruhe) , which was of benefit to his interpretations. As a university lecturer, Schelsky was influential due to the numerous habilitations and doctorates which he supervised (Schäfer 2015, pp. 20–21). Since 1961 he had been editor of the journal Soziale Welt (Social World). Many of those he supported also later became professors, among them Lars Clausen (1935–2010), Ralf Dahrendorf (1929–2009), Hans Paul Bahrdt (1918–1994), Heinrich Popitz (1925–2002), and Niklas Luhmann (1927–1998). Schelsky’s appointment to a professorship at the University of Münster in 1960, a position involving the management of the Sozialforschungsstelle an der Universität Münster zu Dortmund (Social Research Centre at the University of Münster in Dortmund), contributed significantly to his role as an academic mentor (Wöhrle 2019).

At the beginning of the 1950s, the different perspectives, power relations, and conflicts were still not really pronounced. The predominant focus was on joint efforts to establish and reorient sociology and to analyze social problems. Academic cooperation was formed between Cologne and Frankfurt as well as with political interest groups. König, Horkheimer, and Adorno, for example, shared their experiences of exile and were interested in a critical reappraisal of the past (Moebius 2015, p. 13).

The coalitions between the three “schools” often shifted. Nevertheless, one consensus prevailed until the mid-1950s: All shared their appreciation of empirical social research and attributed a central role in the democratization of Germany to empirical research. The common hopes were not only academically but also politically motivated. These hopes were directed at employing sociology to prevent a relapse into totalitarianism and to modernize Germany. König and the Frankfurt-based sociologists in particularly criticized the restorative policies of Chancellor Adenauer.

Social Processes and Problems of the 1950s

In the 1950s, there was a kind of “generation consensus” (Bude 2002, p. 413). This “consensus” was partly the result of a similar perception of social processes and problems, which had to be reflected and analyzed sociologically. Which processes and problems were these? Initially, these were the industrial and social structural changes that were now noticeable, as well as political change. In 1949, a “foundation of two states” took place (Wolfrum 2006a, p. 11): In the West, the first elections to the German Bundestag were held in August, and in the Soviet occupation zone the German Democratic Republic (GDR) was founded in October 1949. Konrad Adenauer became Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and Bonn its capital. The High Commissioners of the three Western Allies, who had replaced the previously ruling military governors and who held control rights until 1955, were based on the opposite side of the Rhine to Bonn, on the Petersberg. In addition to rebuilding the political system of the Federal Republic, it was also important to revive the economy. This happened in such a successful manner that it was later referred to as deutsches Wirtschaftswunder (German Economic Miracle). The “miracle” of the economic boom, observable not only in Germany, was based on various preconditions (for the following see Wolfrum 2006a, pp. 71–74): As early as 1948 there had been a currency reform in the Western zones. The starting point of the economy too was not as bad as one might think. The collapse of the economy in 1945 had primarily been due to the “paralyzed transport sector” (Abelshauser 2011, p. 68). The fixed assets of the industry, however, had not really been affected in its substance; in fact, it had grown till 1945 (Abelshauser 2011, pp. 68–69). In addition, there was the American Marshall Plan. The Marshall Plan, officially called the European Recovery Program, was a major economic recovery program consisting of loans, raw materials, food, and goods. The Korean war was also a contributing factor. Since the USA could no longer sufficiently supply the world markets due to its own increased demand, Germany, among others, was able to fill this gap and expand its export power. Between 1950 and 1955, the gross national product grew by about 9% annually (Recker 2009, p. 32). In addition, work was restructured. Since the mid-1950s, so-called Gastarbeiter (guest workers) were recruited from Italy, and later from other countries such as Turkey, Portugal, and Yugoslavia, in order to counter the shortage of personnel in the labor market (Herbert and Hunn 2003). The incipient Wirtschaftswunder further led to an increase in consumption and leisure behavior. The symbol of this “miracle” was the successful VW Beetle, which was sold for the millionth time in 1955.

The economic boom was also praised as an achievement of the concept of the “social market economy” (Soziale Marktwirtschaft), introduced by Ludwig Erhard, the Minister of Economic Affairs, who was inspired by the economist and sociologist Alfred Müller-Armack (1901–1978) and the so-called Freiburg School of ordoliberalism. Material prosperity grew faster than expected. This contributed to the stabilization of the new political system. The victory at the 1954 FIFA World Cup, the so-called Miracle of Bern, strengthened the spirit of optimism as well as a new “sense of unity” among the Germans. However, despite these positive developments, Germany was not a society of the “leveled middle class” (Schelsky ), because the income and lifestyle of the various classes still varied very considerably (Wolfrum 2006a, p. 74).

In 1955, Germany joined NATO. There were controversial debates about Western integration and remilitarization. The government of Adenauer took the criticism of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD ) as an occasion to lead a trial against the party. In 1956, the KPD was banned. A “bipolar party system” (Recker 2009, p. 27) established itself. The CDU (Christian Democratic Union of Germany) and the SPD (Social Democratic Party of Germany) then set the tone. Of the small parties, only the liberal-oriented FDP (Free Democratic Party) was able to assert itself, and over the following years, it formed alternating coalitions with both of the major political parties. The first elected government of the FRG, led by Adenauer (CDU ), was a coalition government with the FDP. Adenauer’s way of governing the new Federal Republic, rigidly according to his interests, soon led to the label “Chancellor Democracy,” and his extended period in office—from 1949 to 1963—came to be known as the “Adenauer era.”

Socially and culturally, the 1950s was a controversial era (for the following see Wolfrum 2006a, p. 103–107). On the one hand, old elites, strongly conservative values, and old-fashioned moral beliefs still prevailed, which were later identified with the restorative “Adenauer era”; but on the other hand, there were already sporadic cultural innovations in film, art, and music. In particular, the “American way of life” conveyed by the mass media provoked fascination among young people. Nevertheless, in most people, as well as in some sociologists such as Adorno or Gehlen, the new “mass culture” provoked cultural criticism and cultural pessimism.

World War II had brought about a structural change in the family, many men were dead, the women on their own. “The experiences of fleeing, expulsion, everyday hardship, and deprivation, of death, injury, rape, and the loss of relatives and friends shaped at least an entire generation” (Wolfrum 2006a, p. 103). In the 1950s, displaced persons and refugees could still be seen in the streets. There was also still a shortage of housing and fields of debris in the cities. Industrialization led to increasing urbanization and changes in the communities. As far as the former Nazi regime was concerned, there was “communicative silence” (kommunikatives Beschweigen, as the philosopher Hermann Lübbe said in 1983) and a general mood of repression (not only in the psychological sense) of National Socialism, which was furthered by the Adenauer government both politically and legally (cf. Frei 2012).

Sociological Reflections on Contemporary Problems

While social processes such as industrialization or the structural change of the family were considered relevant by all sociologists, their reflections on and analyses of these phenomena were quite diverse. For example, the protagonists of the “schools” (König , Horkheimer, Adorno, and Schelsky) were equally interested in the sociology of the family as well as in industrial sociology and municipal sociology. “Family” was a socially highly relevant topic after the war because, on the one hand, families were threatened by the war and the death of many men, and on the other hand, they were perceived by many as one of the few spaces of “retreat and reconciliation” (Conze 2009, p. 187). Even if they shared their perception of the family as highly relevant, there were significant differences in the sociologists’ evaluation of this relevance of the family. König and Schelsky, for example, regarded the family as a force for social integration, while Adorno considered it as an institution for internalizing authoritarian behavior.

Concerning the general orientation of sociology in the 1950s, many lamented a “lack of theory” (Dahrendorf 1974, p. 112). There were certainly theoretical positions: König was oriented toward Durkheim and Parsons, Schelsky toward philosophical anthropology, and the Frankfurt-based sociologists toward Marx, Weber, and Lukács. But these orientations were not of primary importance and only gained importance in the following years. Not the theory, but issues such as family, youth, social stratification, and municipal organization were in the foreground. However, even more than these topics, industrial sociology was at the center of sociological research in the 1950s (Dahrendorf 1974, p. 106; Schmidt 1980).

Due to the rapid process of industrialization after 1945, industrial sociology experienced a veritable boom. Three research groups stood out (Kern 1982, pp. 236–237): (1) In 1957, two studies were carried out at the Social Research Centre Dortmund, theoretically based on phenomenology and philosophical anthropology and methodologically based on qualitative research. These were the studies Technik und Industriearbeit (Technology and Industrial Work) and Das Gesellschaftsbild des Arbeiters (The Social Image of the Worker) by Heinrich Popitz, Hans Paul Bahrdt, Ernst August Jüres (1920–2012), and Hanno Kesting (1925–1975). Their main focus was on questions about the change in industrial work through new mechanization and on whether workers think of themselves as members of a common class. Already some years before, studies on collieries had been carried out by the Social Research Centre Dortmund. (2) At the Institute of Economics of the Trade Unions, a quantitative study on worker participation by Theo Pirker (1922–1995), Siegfried Braun (1922–2002), and Burkart Lutz (1925–2013) was carried out in 1955. (3) Also in 1955, at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, Ludwig von Friedeburg (1924–2010), Manfred Teschner (1928–2019), and Friedrich Weltz (*1927) used group discussions and interviews to examine the atmosphere in companies. These research projects have established an independent industrial sociology in Germany. As Gert Schmidt (1980) pointed out, this kind of industrial sociology differed from the studies conducted in the USA, for example, by focusing less on a microanalysis of “human relations”—a kind of sociology of business. Instead, by concentrating on the tradition of Max Weber and Karl Marx, these research groups focused on processes of rationalization, technical progress, and structural change and they took a historical-interpretative perspective (Schmidt 1980, p. 268).

It was such research in which the next generation of sociologists acquired its methodical skills and trained as sociologists. One of the members of this next generation, Ralf Dahrendorf, however, criticized this predominant orientation of sociology toward areas such as industry, businesses, families, youth, and municipal organization. He asked whether this was not a renunciation of the idea of creating a more comprehensive picture of society, an “anxious withdrawal from the unresolved whole of the society we are living in?” (Dahrendorf 1974, p. 116)

The Role Debate

It was also Dahrendorf who, at the end of the 1950s, provoked one of the first major controversies within “German post-war Sociology” (Fischer 2010; Moebius 2018b) and thus brought theory back into the focus of sociological attention. This controversy became known as the Role Debate. In 1958, with the support of Schelsky, Dahrendorf became professor in Hamburg. That same year, the 29-year-old professor Dahrendorf published a text entitled “Homo sociologicus” in the Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie . Thereby, he caused a long-lasting controversy within sociology. Central in this controversy was a critique on Talcott Parsons. Dahrendorf (1958/2017) criticized the image of humans and of society that was inherent in the structural functionalist’s version of the homo sociologicus and that—according to Dahrendorf—did not take into account social change and conflicts. Beyond his critique on Parsons, he also sharply attacked role theory and in this way made role theory known in Germany. He claimed that this sociological view reduces human beings to their roles. Although humans are alienated by society, beyond society humans are still free. Dahrendorf’s thesis, which is reminiscent of Georg Simmel, is that individuality cannot be entirely reduced to social processes, there’s always a non-sociated part of the individual. During the following years, the debate revolved around the relationship between society and individual freedom. König ([1961/1962] 2002, p. 24), for instance, turned against the mutual maneuvering-out of individual freedom and society. According to König, the individual can only become free through living together with others. Other critics of the controversy, which lasted into the mid-1970s, were Arnold Gehlen, Helmut Schelsky, Helmuth Plessner, Heinrich Popitz, Hans Paul Bahrdt, Dieter Claessens (1921–1997), Friedrich Tenbruck (1919–1994), later on Peter L. Berger (1929–2017) and Thomas Luckmann (1927–2016), Frigga Haug (*1937) as well as Hans Peter Dreitzel (*1935), and Hans Joas (*1948) (Fischer 2010, pp. 80 f.). None of them agreed with Dahrendorf’s position. Through the role debate, sociological pioneers such as Simmel or George Herbert Mead (1863–1931) were (re)discovered within German-speaking sociology, and the reception of Erving Goffman (1922–1982) began. The debate also had an effect on society. The role concept was widely received and enabled sociology to connect with a broader non-academic public (Fischer 2010, p. 82).

The “Civil War” in West German Sociology

The aforementioned consensus between König, Schelsky, Horkheimer, and Adorno, the “founding constellation” (Lepsius 2017c, p. 83), dissolved at the end of the 1950s (Nolte 2000, pp. 264–267). Field-specific dynamics increasingly picked up speed. Attempts to demarcate, secure, and expand one’s own position as well as the associated distinctions became increasingly apparent (Rehberg 1986, pp. 11–22; Schäfer 1996, pp. 385–387). Academic and political disagreements alternated. To put it simply, there were three political positions: left (Horkheimer /Adorno ), liberal (König , Plessner), and conservative (Schelsky ). The slumbering, latent lines of conflict between the leading sociologists now broke out openly. As Gunther Ipsen referred to it, there was a veritable “civil war” in sociology (Weyer 1986, p. 287).

Already in 1950/1951, but increasingly in 1958/1959, there were intense conflicts (Weyer 1984a, pp. 79–87; Weyer 1986). The most severe conflict revolved around the question of which organization should represent sociology in Germany. On the one hand, there was the German Sociological Association (GSA), which belonged to the International Sociological Association (ISA). On the other hand, there was the German section of the Institut International de Sociologie (IIS), founded in 1893 by René Worms and revived in 1949 by the Italian fascist Corrado Gini (1884–1965). The IIS understood itself as opposed to the ISA and as the only legitimate professional representation. The German section of the IIS was founded in 1951 and right from the beginning it housed sociologists who had been active in Germany during National Socialism (Weyer 1986, pp. 292–297). Even if in the GSA, too, there were people who had been active during the Nazi regime, the German section of the IIS understood its role more and more as a reservoir of sociologists who had been committed to the “Third Reich.” Present at the founding meeting were, for example, Gunther Ipsen, Arnold Gehlen, Karl Valentin Müller, Helmut Schelsky, Kurt Stegmann (1901–1962), and Wilhelm Brepohl (1893–1975). Hans Freyer became their speaker (Weyer 1984a, pp. 81–82). Their aim was to oppose the “Americanization” of sociology. They also wished for a conservative turn in the GSA, which, however, did not occur. On the contrary, due to the change of the executive board of the GSA in 1955, when Helmuth Plessner was elected as the new president, a conservative turn of the GSA seemed increasingly unlikely (Weyer 1986, p. 298).

The conflict became even more serious when the German section of the IIS wanted to hold a congress in Nuremberg in 1958, in competition with the GSA. Against the objection of Schelsky, Plessner and König tried to prevent the congress. Schelsky then withdrew from the GSA. Furthermore, he was disappointed because he himself had ambitions of becoming president of the GSA. He openly broke with König. Students of König, in turn, accused Schelsky of a continuing influence of NS ideologies in his work. König also criticized Schelsky for opening the Social Research Center to völkisch-sociologists such as Ipsen, Müller, and Karl-Heinz Pfeffer. The escalation of the dispute and the end of the former cooperation, at least at a personal level, between König and Schelsky, was prompted by the appointment of Karl-Heinz Pfeffer to Münster (Weyer 1984a, p. 85). Even Schelsky had previously referred to Pfeffer as a “convinced Nazi,” but nevertheless supported his appointment. König tried to prevent the appointment, but failed.Footnote 12

The controversy described above shows that the debates of those engaged in the process of refounding sociology after 1945 revolved not only around the institutional development of sociology. It was not only about science policy, organizations, or chairs. Behind this was “usually also a dispute about the intellectual profile of the discipline” (Nolte 2000, p. 240) and a conflict about coping with the past. Thus, the “civil war” was also of crucial importance for the question of how West German sociology dealt with the role of sociology in National Socialism (Nolte 2000, pp. 239–244.).Footnote 13

1959–1968

What remained of the controversy over GSA and IIS? The GSA was eager to take the conflicting political and ideological ideas to another level. The hope was to mitigate the political and methodological contrasts and to lead them in a scientific direction that would be beneficial for the further institutionalization of the GSA. Attempts were made to “objectivize the conflicts at the level of a theory of science and an internal workshop of the GSA was convened in Tübingen in October 1961 that initiated the so-called Positivism Dispute” (Weyer 1984a, p. 86).

Positivism Dispute

A result of the “civil war in sociology” was the Positivism Dispute (Dahms 1994, pp. 320–403; Ritsert 2010).Footnote 14 The beginning of the dispute goes back to a workshop in March 1957 (Link 2015; Demirović 1999, pp. 761–770), to which Adorno had invited outstanding social scientists. “The persons who met in Frankfurt on March 1, 1957 represented the difficult social constellations in the West German social sciences of the post-war period, with two conflicting parties particularly noteworthy: those returning from exile, such as Adorno, and those ‘left at home’ during the Nazi regime, such as Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann. Some of them had become involved with the regime or had come to an arrangement with it, others had been persecuted by the Nazis. Both knew about the past of the other group” (Link 2015, p. 103). The meeting in Frankfurt marked the break with the “empirical consensus” of the consolidation phase of sociology in West Germany, because now “past political differences as well as the profound epistemological differences between the individual actors resurfaced” (Link 2015, pp. 126–127).

The successor of Plessner and newly elected president of the GSA in 1959, Otto Stammer (1900–1978) from Berlin, wished to overcome the conflicts. He invited leading representatives of the various positions to a further meeting in October 1960 (cf. Demirović 1999, p. 799): Adorno and Horkheimer, König, Freyer, Gehlen, Schelsky, Dahrendorf, and Carl Jantke (1909–1989), as well as Bergstraesser, Wilhelm Emil Mühlmann (1904–1988), and Plessner. However, also this meeting was not a success and fully revealed the dissent (cf. Demirović 1999, pp. 799–804). In addition to the political disagreements, there were also methodological points of conflict. The question was, whether sociology should rather have a philosophical or empirical character (Strubenhoff 2017, p. 6). Although most of the sociologists of that generation were also philosophically trained and continued to pursue philosophy (Plessner , for example, was also president of the German Philosophical Association in 1950), others, like König, endeavored to detach sociology strictly from its philosophical roots and to bring it closer to economics.

Finally, it was agreed to hold a meeting in Tübingen in October 1961. Dahrendorf was to lead the discussion. He chose his former teacher from the London School of Economics (LSE), Karl Popper (1902–1994), as the main speaker, who was to give a lecture on the “Logik der Sozialwissenschaften” (“The Logic of the Social Sciences”). The co-lecture was to be given by Adorno. Dahrendorf held the slightly “fanciful” assumption that moral and political differences could be dealt with by a discussion of methods (Dahms 1994, p. 323). Positivism was primarily understood as the orientation of the social sciences toward scientific methods. Already in earlier years, Adorno and Horkheimer had criticized these methods as “objectification.” The dispute itself, however, was less about positivism per se. Popper himself was not even a positivist but a Critical Rationalist (Dahms 1994, pp. 325–337). In fact, Popper explicitly opposed positivism and the idea to model the social sciences after the natural sciences (Dahms 1994, pp. 341–343). According to him, science starts off from problems, not from collecting data.

The dispute was rather about fundamental problems of a theory of science and Werturteilsfreiheit (freedom from value judgements). So, a controversial point was that Adorno did not want to limit critique to methods alone, but also wanted it to be understood as a critique of society. Popper and Adorno also differed in their theoretical argumentation: Popper defended deduction as the principle of theoretical statements, Adorno the principle of dialectic (Ritsert 2010, p. 113). However, the positions between Adorno and Popper were not so far apart. They agreed in their critique of Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge as well as of scientism. Nevertheless, they did not get along. Actually, they talked past each other.

It was only afterwards that the lectures were perceived as a dispute and a controversy over the relationship between theory and emancipatory practice (Demirović 1999, p. 810). On the one hand, this was related to the publication of the lectures in 1969: Adorno wrote an excessively long introduction that annoyed Popper. On the other hand, the next generation, students of Popper and Adorno, joined in: Hans Albert (*1921) and Jürgen Habermas. Habermas described Popper as a positivist; Adorno followed him in his introduction and criticized that the positivists would only describe the status quo of society and thus affirm it. He argued that this was also ideological, even if Critical Rationalism actually claimed that it was not ideological. According to Adorno, it was not enough to establish facts; one had to interpret them and reflect upon them philosophically. Therefore, society cannot be explored by scientific methods alone. Society was not so unanimous, was not a thing, but contradictory, always to be seen in larger contexts. Adorno shifted the debate: If it was initially about the relationship between theory and practice, now the focus was on the distinction between theory and empirical research. The positions of Popper and Habermas, in turn, were not as far apart as Habermas’ statements suggested (Giddens 1985, p. 99; Strubenhoff 2017).

As a result, the Positivism Dispute led to the peculiar effect that sociologists working in behavioral theory tried to refer to Popper, something that proved not only untenable but also relatively fruitless (Schmid 1993, p. 53). Other approaches that argued in Popper’s “line” (Schmid 1993, p. 54), such as rational choice theory, were more successful. Sociologists that focused on empirical social research, in particular the Cologne school, were more likely to support positions they associated with Popper. The sociologists in Frankfurt, especially Adorno, who had also pushed empirical research in the 1950s, turned their attention increasingly to theory and philosophical reflection of society as an antagonistic totality.

The differentiation between theory and empirical social research forced by the Frankfurt School revealed new similarities between the left and conservatives: Interestingly, a similar shift from empirical social research to theory could also be observed in Schelsky’s conservative position. He used this theoretical position to highlight the specific approach of German sociology. Thus, he demanded more theory in the tradition of German philosophy against an “American-Austrian” analytical and logical-empiricist style. Referring to Kant, he described his orientation as a “transcendental theory of society” (Schelsky 1959, p. 95). By this he understood a kind of meta-perspective, which was not in opposition to other theories or to empirical social research, but was intended to be a kind of instance of meta-reflection (Wöhrle 2019, pp. 252–253). He vehemently opposed the accusation that German sociology would become provincial if it did not orient itself toward developments in American sociology. For him, emulating the USA would implicitly recognize its dominant model character and thus lead to an explicit provincialism of sociology in Germany (Schelsky 1959, p. 26).

The controversies described were key moments in the consolidation of sociology in Germany and of a “process of self-understanding in German sociology” (Matthes 1978, p. 19; Schmid 2004, p. 24). They shaped a good part of the discussions over the following decades and demonstrated that the sociological field continued to differentiate itself. In 1959, in an analysis of the state of sociology, Schelsky concluded as follows: “There is no common, binding scientific basis for the discipline […] in the German sociology of today […]. It is therefore understandable that today every sociologist in Germany would soon regard every other sociologist as ‘not a real sociologist’” (Schelsky 1959, pp. 24–25).

As we shall see, the Positivism Dispute led to further major controversies which shaped the sociological field since the end of the 1960s (Moebius 2018b): first the debate carried out under the headline “late capitalism or industrial society?” (Spätkapitalismus oder Industriegesellschaft?), later the “Habermas-Luhmann debate,” and subsequently the “debate on theory comparison” (Theorienvergleichsdebatte) in the mid-1970s (Kneer and Moebius 2010). The effects of these debates can still be observed today (Greshoff 2010, p. 210; Greshoff et al. 2007), as we will see at the end of this book.

Generational Change

As the Role Debate and the Positivism Dispute had already shown, by the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s, an institutional and generational change could be observed. This generational change in the 1960s (Siegfried 2003) was accompanied by a profound change in the education system (Kenkmann 2003), especially with respect to higher education. New universities were founded and others re-established. Whereas there were 14 universities in 1949, there were 62 universities in Germany in 2000 (see Lundgreen et al. 2008, p. 69). In the Western European and North American countries, the number of students increased considerably. In Germany, too, this was due to the economic upswing and educational reforms. These developments brought about significant changes in West German sociology: Together with the changing spirit of this time, sociology experienced a tremendous boom. At some universities, sociology could be studied as a major or a separate diploma for the first time. The first diploma course in sociology took place in Frankfurt in 1954/55 and shortly afterwards in Berlin in 1956. More and more students wanted to study sociology, so that it became a hugely popular fashion subject, a so-called Massenfach in the 1960s (Lepsius 2017d, p. 120). The number of sociology chairs rose from 12 in 1955 to 25 in 1960 (Nolte 2000, p. 251). Between 1961 and 1969 the number tripled (Bude and Neidhardt 1998, p. 405). In 1960, sociology was taught at 17 universities and there were about 150 academic sociological positions, by 1970 there were already 900 positions (Lepsius 2017e, p. 197). On the one hand, this boom was advantageous for the discipline. It spurred differentiation and specialization. On the other hand, the boom brought about problems. The development and expansion of the discipline required a considerable amount of time and resources for organization and administration (Lepsius 2017e, p. 198; 2017d, p. 119), at the expense of research.

The number of assistant positions grew, too, so that sociology was no longer only marked by the full professor (Ordinarius) of sociology at a university. The role of the professor, the “German Mandarin” (Fritz Ringer), was transformed from that of a scholar (Gelehrter) to a mere expert (Fachmensch) in sociology. Sociology was transformed due to the increasing demand for empirical social research.

The GSA also changed. This became evident at the 14th Soziologentag in Berlin in 1959. The meeting of the GSA was no longer a discussion group of scholars, but a congress of specialists, focusing on specific fields of sociology. Already in the mid-1950s, “expert committees” had been founded, which were called “sections” (Sektionen) from the 1970s onwards. In addition to industrial sociology, sociology of religion, and issues of education and training, a committee for ethnosociology was also involved in the congress. Further committees that were founded in the 1950s and 1960s dealt with methods of empirical social research, the family, youth, organizations, Eastern Europe, and mass communication (Borggräfe 2018). The foundation of these expert committees or sections entailed a further differentiation, specialization, and professionalization of the discipline.

The congress offered the next generation of sociologists a stage. Some of the members of this generation were elected to the executive board of the GSA: Hans Paul Bahrdt, Ralf Dahrendorf, and Heinrich Popitz. “The transition from the ‘founding generation’ to the ‘post-war generation’ was thus initiated” (Lepsius 2017d, p. 111). In addition to Dahrendorf, Popitz, and Bahrdt, Erwin K. Scheuch, Renate Mayntz (*1929), Jürgen Habermas, and Niklas Luhmann should also be mentioned as important figures of the new generation.Footnote 15

Ralf Dahrendorf studied in Hamburg and at the London School of Economics (LSE). He obtained his first PhD with a thesis about Marx, supervised by Josef König (1893–1974) and Siegfried Landshut, and his second PhD at the LSE (Meifort 2017, pp. 50–57), studying with Thomas H. Marshall (1893–1981) and completing his degree with his study Unskilled Labour in British Industry (1956). Dahrendorf attended the seminars of Karl Popper with great intensity. Together with a fellow student at the LSE, David Lockwood (1929–2014), a prominent theorist of social stratification, he became more and more interested in conflict theory.

Dahrendorf ’s rapid career accelerated in 1958 when, at the age of 29, he received a call for a chair in sociology at the Akademie für Gemeinwirtschaft in Hamburg. One year later, he was on the board of the GSA (1967–1970 its president). In 1960, Dahrendorf was appointed to a chair in Tübingen, and in 1966 he received a call to a professorship at the University of Konstanz, which he had co-founded. He then entered politics and became a member of the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP ). From 1974–1984, he was director of the LSE. He was awarded numerous prizes and honorary titles, including the English nobility title of “Lord.” In addition to role theory, one of Dahrendorf’s main focuses was conflict theory. He was also one of the central mediators between Anglo-Saxon and German sociology. His book Gesellschaft und Demokratie in Deutschland (1965; Society and Democracy in Germany, 1967) became a sociological bestseller. Dahrendorf was also actively involved in education policy. In 1965, he entered in the discussions about expanding the education sector and pleaded for education to be acknowledged as a civil right.

Heinrich Popitz had initially worked at the Social Research Centre Dortmund, where, in the 1950s, Popitz and Hans Paul Bahrdt produced the much-respected publications in industrial sociology mentioned above. Popitz became professor in Basel (Switzerland) in 1959 and in Freiburg in 1964 (cf. Bröckling 2014). The main focus of his work was then no longer sociological research on industry, but rather norms, roles, and phenomena of power. His sociological perspective was founded in philosophical anthropology and shaped the profile of sociology in Freiburg for many decades (Eßbach 2014, p. 63).

Bahrdt was Plessner’s successor in Göttingen in 1962. In addition to industrial sociology and sociology of bureaucracy, his main areas of research were urban sociology and sociology of science. He also made insightful contributions to the sociology of culture, everyday life, the family, and the environment. Bahrdt became president of the Soziologisches Forschungsinstitut Göttingen (SOFI, Sociological Research Institute Göttingen), which was founded in 1968. The institute was increasingly dedicated to industrial sociology, sociology of work, and educational sociology (Baethge and Schumann 2018; Brückweh 2019). From this research context, further classics of industrial sociology in Germany emerged: Industriearbeit und Arbeiterbewusstsein (1970, Industrial Work and Worker Consciousness) as well as Das Ende der Arbeitsteilung? (1984, Limits of the Division of Labour?) by Horst Kern (*1940) and Michael Schumann (*1937).

Erwin K. Scheuch, previously professor at Harvard, was appointed professor in Cologne in 1964 and from that time onwards increasingly influenced sociology there (Knebelspieß and Moebius 2019). It was he who further expanded quantitative social research in West Germany. At the same time, however, significant conflicts between Scheuch and König arose that intensified in 1968 due to their different assessments of the student protests. In the following years it was not so much König’s wide and diversified understanding of sociology, but rather Scheuch’s liberal-conservative view of sociology as a positivist, and in particular, quantitatively oriented science that for a long time shaped the perception of the Cologne School (Moebius 2015).

The Transformation of the Sociological Field

The sociological field of the 1960s, and even more so of the 1970s, was increasingly shaped by the generation just mentioned—by sociologists who had been students, assistants, or staff members of König, Schelsky, Adorno, Horkheimer, Stammer, Abendroth, or Plessner after 1945.Footnote 16 The sociological “schools” became more differentiated and diversified, sociology as a whole more institutionalized and academicized. The “schools” were not so strongly divided in this generation of the so-called Forty-fivers themselves (Moses 2007, p. 55; Bude and Neidhardt 1998, p. 408). At the end of the war, the members of this generation had been between 15 and 25 years old. Most of the younger ones still had to go to war as anti-aircraft auxiliaries (Flakhelfer). They were already old enough to come face-to-face with the horrors of war, but still young enough to actively shape the new beginning of Germany (Moses 2007, p. 57).

What the sociologists of this generation had in common, despite all their differences, was that they saw sociology as a means of social self-orientation and enlightenment. They had often acquired sociological knowledge and practice individually, coming from disciplines like philosophy or economics. Interestingly enough, despite ideological differences, their education often started with Marx. However, it was not a matter of neo-Marxism, but of a kind of “de-dramatization” of Marx (Bude and Neidhardt 1998, p. 409), of working out the sociological content of Marx (Lepsius 2017d, p. 120). Among other things, the potentials of conflict theory and the theory of alienation were elaborated.

International exchange programs that allowed this generation to gain experience abroad, mostly in the USA, were also of crucial importance (Gerhardt 2006, p. 77). It was René König, in particular, who sent his students to the USA, where they came in contact with new theories, such as structural functionalism, and with new methods. The younger generation turned its attention primarily to empirical research. The focus was less on general interpretations of the world or utopian ideologies than on specific objects and problems. The position was described by many of this generation as a “need for reality” and “applied enlightenment” (Bude and Neidhardt 1998, p. 410; Sahner 2000). As a result, sociology became increasingly involved in political processes such as educational reform. It acted as a consultant to politics and institutions and often provided data and vocabulary for the interpretation of social processes (Bude and Neidhardt 1998, p. 410).

The market for sociological publications was also changing. In addition to the journals Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie and Soziale Welt , other journals and handbooks were published (or re-launched): the journal Sociologus , originally founded by Richard Thurnwald (starting in 1951); the series Frankfurter Beiträge zur Soziologie (Frankfurt Contributions to Sociology) (from 1955 on); the Lehr- und Handbuch der Soziologie (Text- and handbook of Sociology) edited by Gehlen and Schelsky (1955); the special issues of the Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie (since 1956), Soziologie (Lexicon of Sociology) by König (1958), the multi-volume Handbuch der empirischen Sozialforschung (Handbook of Empirical Social Research), also published by König (starting in 1962); various other book series and periodicals of individual institutes and expert committees (Holzhauser et al. 2019). The world of publishing also began to focus on sociological publications. The Luchterhand publishing house in particular should be mentioned here. Between 1959 and 1977, Luchterhand published the series Soziologische Texte (Sociological Texts), edited by Heinz Maus, Friedrich Fürstenberg (*1930), and Frank Benseler (*1929). In this series, numerous translations were published that made German sociologists familiar with the work of international sociologists, such as Émile Durkheim, Maurice Halbwachs (1877–1945), Lucien Goldmann (1913–1970), Talcott Parsons, C. Wright Mills (1916–1962), and George H. Mead. In the 1960s, Marxist authors such as Abendroth, Lukács, and Marcuse were increasingly published here, as were other writings that became central to the protests of 1968 (Römer 2018, p. 491). In the 1960s, the Suhrkamp publishing house also began publishing sociological books, which had a decisive influence on the intellectual debates in the Federal Republic of Germany and which rose to become one of the most renowned German publishing houses in the social sciences and humanities.

As mentioned, for many members of the new generation, their first contact with sociology was with industrial sociology. At the beginning of the 1960s, other topics emerged and became important, too. This was also a result of social developments: Between 1963 and 1969 there were political turbulences and several changes of government. In October 1962, the magazine Der Spiegel had reported that in the case of an attack by the Warsaw Pact, West Germany could not defend itself and that the strategy of the Minister of Defense, Franz Josef Strauß (CSU ), was going in the wrong direction. The Minister of Defense then ordered the arrest of the journalists as well as the occupation and search of their office by the police. The protests against this attack on the freedom of the press led to a crisis in the government. Ludwig Erhard (CDU ) became the new Chancellor. The protests also led to an increasing politicization of the youth, which I will discuss in more detail in the next chapter. In 1966, Kurt Georg Kiesinger (CDU ) was elected Chancellor by 340 of 447 members of the Bundestag, in a grand coalition of CDU and SPD, and Willy Brandt (SPD ) became Vice-Chancellor. Thus, a former member of the NSDAP (Kiesinger ) and a resistance fighter (Brandt ) faced each other. As a result of the grand coalition, the opposition had hardly any significance in parliament. Especially the academic youth, the students, expressed unease about this situation. Together with pacifist, Christian, and socialist groups, they formed a movement that considered itself an “extra-parliamentary opposition” (Außerparlamentarische Opposition, APO) and made itself increasingly heard, especially in the years around 1968.Footnote 17

The economic upswing, which lasted until 1966, had visible consequences for the social mobility and the purchasing power of large groups of the West German population. One sign of the new prosperity was, for example, the incipient growing popularity of individual tourism. West Germany was in transition toward a service economy. It was increasingly integrated in the international Western community (Conze 2009, pp. 227–330; Wolfrum 2006b, pp. 97–101). Consumption and youth were significantly influenced by this. Commerce and counter culture merged at times (Schildt 2007, p. 53). Western-inspired youth cultures, such as the hippies, and the reception of rock and pop music developed. The Beatles’ performance in Hamburg’s “Star Club” in 1962 was legendary. In the field of art as well as in film, new developments began, see for example the New German Cinema (directors were among others Alexander Kluge, Wim Wenders, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder). Inspired by the historical avant-garde (Dada, Surrealism), protest art was developed; but there was also the revaluation of “mass culture,” Pop Art, and Fluxus. Germany also grew on the whole: There was a veritable baby boom, so that in the 1960s Germany grew by 5 million people to 61 million.

The education sector had also undergone changes. These changes were stimulated by the increasing economic demand for scientific and technical knowledge. However, an OECD study confirmed that in international comparison in terms of its education policy Germany was a developing country. Critics like Dahrendorf, for example, declared that in Germany there was an “education catastrophe” (Picht 1964; Kenkmann 2003, pp. 403–407). In particular, children from working-class families, children from the countryside, and girls were disadvantaged. At the heart of the debates was also the justified assumption that education increasingly determined the social status of individuals. Discussions about education were not only about improving the education system; rather, some debates were concerned more with economic growth and a victory in the Cold War, also in the field of education. Still others linked the “educational revolution” with a reform of the entire society.

The number of students doubled between 1965 and 1975. From 1965 onwards, the higher education system expanded increasingly. The expansion of the education sector was also motivated by the idea that social development could be the result of scientific and rational planning (Ruck 2003, pp. 376–378). There was a real “planning euphoria” (Herbert 2014, pp. 805–809; Ruck 2003), which also led to the expansion of academic institutions. “The belief in progress based on science and technology was a strong bond between East and West. That the future could be planned, that prosperity could be increased indefinitely, and that the prospects were bright, were widespread certainties both here and there, albeit under the condition that the respective model of order would gain the upper hand” (Herbert 2014, p. 825).

The expansion of the education system led to a veritable expansion of higher education that again led to the founding of numerous new universities (Kenkmann 2003) and also boosted sociology of education.Footnote 18 Furthermore, the expansion of education (Bildungsexpansion) had an impact on the publishing field, the number of inexpensive study books and textbooks, now often available in paperback format, rose rapidly (Römer 2018, p. 493). The expansion of education benefited especially children of employees and women of the middle classes. The proportion of female students grew successively: in 1960 their proportion was 28%, in 1970 36% and in 1989 41% (Wolfrum 2006b, p. 101; see also Frevert 2003, p. 650).

For the majority of the new generation of sociologists the preferred topics were now in line with social developments: social stratification and social inequality (with a focus on unequal educational opportunities), social mobility, public opinion, education, social policy, social planning, conflict, leisure and consumption, youth, and urban life (Nolte 2000, p. 267).

Until 1965, full employment prevailed in West Germany. In 1966/1967, however, there was an economic downturn. The prime objective of the grand coalition formed in 1966 was to overcome the economic crisis. Economic growth, to which citizens had already become accustomed, declined due to a lack of private and public investment. The unemployment rate increased. Industrial work increasingly became a field of political action that required sociological analysis. As a result, industrial sociology experienced a comeback that lasted well into the 1970s (Schmidt 1980, p. 271).

From the mid-1960s onwards, as Paul Nolte has shown, alongside the already mentioned industrial sociology it was political sociology, sociological theory, and the “rediscovery” of the pioneers that became central sociological topics (Nolte 2000, p. 268). Concerning the pioneers: Max Weber in particular experienced a renaissance, which has made him the central figure of German sociology up to this day: In 1963, there was a special issue of the Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie on Weber. Books on Weber were published. The Soziologentag of 1964 in Heidelberg was held in honor of Weber’s 100th anniversary. Speakers included Parsons, Ernst Topitsch (1919–2003), Raymond Aron (1905–1983), Herbert Marcuse, Reinhard Bendix (1916–1991), Georges Friedmann (1902–1977), and Adorno, who had been elected as the new president of the GSA in 1963. The “Forty-fivers” were also actively involved in this.Footnote 19

One topic that was not, or only marginally, dealt with in the 1960s was still National Socialism. Nevertheless, it would have seemed quite obvious to deal with the Nazi past. There would have been occasions to do so: In 1961, the internationally noted trial of Adolf Eichmann, a key figure in the organization of the Holocaust, took place. 1963 saw the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials against former personnel of the Auschwitz concentration camp. However, the majority of Germans were not interested in coming to terms with the past; parts of the judiciary had delayed the trials, and dealing with National Socialism was seen as a kind of “disturbance of the peace.” Far-right philosophy was still widespread and provided the breeding ground for the founding of the neo-Nazi party NPD (National Democratic Party of Germany) in 1964. This was directed against the Gastarbeiter (guest workers) brought into the country, but also against communism and “Americanism.” The increasingly politicized students were also detested by the right-wingers. The past of the Nazi regime and the lack of Vergangenheitsbewältigung would have been sufficient material for sociological research. However, a sociology of National Socialism remained absent, although the student movement and the university reform brought the discussion about the Nazi regime and the Nazi past into focus. But other important events did not come into sociological focus either, such as the separation of Germany, which was literally cemented by the construction of the Berliner Mauer (Berlin Wall) in 1961.

However, the common orientation of sociologists toward the “applied enlightenment,” the renaissance of the founders and pioneers of sociology, and the further differentiation into special sociologies should not obscure the fact that the sociological field at the end of the 1960s was still permeated by struggles and tensions. Everyone agreed that sociology had an enlightening role. But their understanding of enlightenment differed significantly. While theoreticians such as Jürgen Habermas associated the enlightenment with a decidedly critical and emancipatory perspective on society, others, such as Niklas Luhmann, saw the enlightenment as observation and self-reflection, as an enlightenment of the enlightenment. Moreover, the tensions in the sociological field that came to light again openly toward the end of the 1960s were not only related to the increasing differentiation and the struggles for interpretative power, but also to the increasing politicization of students (Siegfried 2018, p. 17)—a politicization that found its visible expression in the protests around 1968.