ABSTRACT
Nels Anderson, scholar and researcher at the University of Chicago in the 1920s, is well known for his Master’s thesis The Hobo. The Sociology of the Homeless Man, published in Chicago in 1923 (Anderson 1923). He is mentioned primarily in publications dealing with the American history of sociology, urban studies, the history of urban studies, qualitative social research and what is called the (first) Chicago School of Sociology. 2 Nearly unknown, however, is the fact that he contributed substantially to the revival of German sociology after World War II when he worked in the context of the United States Military Government Program for German Reeducation and its successor, the Reorientation Program of the United States High Commission for Germany. In the late 1940s, during his assignment to the Military Government and the United States High Commission, he masterminded the Darmstadt Community Survey, which was the first and maybe most comprehensive community survey ever in occupied Germany and, later, the Federal Republic of Germany. 3 After leaving the United States High Commission, he continued his work in the Federal Republic of Germany, when he became the research director of the UNESCO Institute for Social Sciences in Cologne, where he stayed until 1960. 4
