ABSTRACT
A general view of the evolution of German sociology from 1949 to the present can be brought to light with two poignantly formulated statements: 1) academic sociology developed in the period 1949–1990 into a ‘key discipline’ for the changing society of the new Federal Republic, and this continued even beyond this point in time, when the two parts of Germany were unified; 2) the process of shaping their intellectual craftsmanship and research streams by the sociologists of the German Federal Republic can be considered as a remarkable episode of both European and international sociology.
Sociology became a ‘key discipline’ (‘Schlüsselwissenschaft’, Kruse 2006) of a whole society as a result of a longing for a science that was expected to give clues on what a sorely needed new course might look like. No other modern European society had ever before gone through a comparable experience of self-endangerment. And no other modern people had ever been overwhelmed to such an extent by the perception that they have been a threat and thus had exposed other societies to high risks. In spite of being a rather unknown field, with no strong standing in higher education, sociology was regarded by the German general public and the politicians in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, and at the beginning of the Cold War, as the intellectual medium by which Germany could achieve stability as a civil society, in terms of both structural and ideational factors that would exert an influence on everyday practices. In this context, sociologists working in Germany had to cope with a double challenge originating from two earth-shattering historical developments, which had to be taken seriously into account if they wanted their discipline to deliver sensible answers to the current social and political affairs: the recent historical experience of the ‘German disaster’ caused by National Socialism with its ascent to power in 1933, and the contemporaneous events of the establishment of the German Democratic Republic as a socialist state since 1949, which was a Soviet system on German soil. For the younger generation of Germans, who had been socialized as sociologists after the Second World War, and the biographies of whom were defined by the experience of National Socialism it was easy to accept the juxtaposition of democratic society to the Soviet system (Kernig 1966–1972). The alternatives that this tense confrontation, especially visible in Germany, implied were demonstrated particularly in West Berlin and in West Germany as a result of the identification 343with American sociology, a trend that had prevailed for several years. Sociology was pushed into a game of choices between alternatives originating from East–West ideological tensions which often defined the yardsticks. Sociology entered the German scene of academic competition as a newcomer, and had to find its place among disciplines such as history, philosophy (with its component of ethics), economics, law and education. These were read at universities and thus have been regarded traditionally as the carriers of self-consciousness of European societies. It was an advantage that there was no strain from competition with these more traditional disciplines. In this sense sociology acquired in the young Federal Republic an unprecedented value as a cognitive field that facilitated the social and political orientation of both the elites and the general public.
Through this role the stage was set for those who were to stimulate the development of separately owned streams of academic courses within higher education. All in all, and from a point of view of the disciplinary history, German sociology of the second half of the twentieth century can be assessed as a success story with significance within both European and international sociology. This can be seen from the various research topics, its methodological consciousness, and from the plurality of theory construction within its confines. This performance can be made apparent with a longitudinal (diachronic) comparison with the definitely high-performance period of the classics (1880–1920, Tönnies, Weber, Sombart, Simmel) and with the period of the 1920s (Scheler, von Wiese, Mannheim, Horkheimer, Geiger). We can easily reach a similar conclusion with a synchronic comparison with sociologies of other nations, such as the USA, France, England, Italy (as can be inferred from the contributions in Lepenies 1981). One reason for this German performance is perhaps that societies of these nations were not under pressure to cope with comparable challenges. The sociology of the German Federal Republic was constantly facing a crisis caused by the above-mentioned double challenge that had to be worked up without losing the ground under its feet. The programmatic and obsessive ‘quest for reality’ (Schelsky 1965), by charging ahead at a fast pace, was a strong driver towards achieving high standards of methodological, technical and theoretical refinement. Since the 1950s, West German sociology had become a university-based exercise conducted by technically highly trained researchers dedicated to the recurrently self-regenerating and continuous observation of a large, profoundly rattled modern society, overwhelmed by insecurity concerning its standing in Europe and in the World (Lüschen 1979; Lepsius 1984; Rehberg 2010).
