Talcott Parsons’s Death

Talcott Parsons died in Munich, Germany, during the night of May 7-8, 1979, at seventy-six-and-a-half years of age. ¹ He had returned to his alma mater, the University of Heidelberg, to receive a “golden” doctorate, on the fiftieth anniversary of the acceptance of his dissertation there in 1929, and of the completion of his studies for a DPhil in sociology and economics. Professor Wolfgang Schluchter, the director of the Institute for Sociology at the University of Heidelberg, and a renowned scholar of the sociology of Max Weber, had organized a colloquium in Parsons’s honor, which was attended by a number of leading German sociologists. ² On this occasion, Parsons gave a lecture about “The Relationship of the Theory of Action to Max Weber’s Verstehende Sociologie” ³ He subsequently delivered two invited lectures at the Institute of Sociology of the University of Munich, the second of which took place on May 7. That evening he felt unwell. He died, suddenly and unexpectedly, in the early morning of May 8.