Kurt Sontheimer

Kurt Sontheimer (31 July 1928 – 16 May 2005) was a German political scientist and professor at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.

Biography

Kurt Sontheimer was born at Gernsbach in Baden. He studied political science and history in Freiburg im Breisgau, Erlangen, Kansas City and Paris. In 1960, he habilitated at the University of Freiburg with a dissertation entitled Antidemokratisches Denken in der Weimarer Republik. From 1960, he was a professor at the University of Education in Osnabrück. In 1962, he accepted an appointment at the Otto Suhr Institute of the Free University of Berlin. From 1969, until his retirement in 1993, he was professor of political science at the Geschwister-Scholl-Institut of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich.

After his premature retirement, which was preceded by a professorial dispute, Sontheimer taught for two years at the Alfred Grosser Chair at the Institute of Political Science in Paris. From 1968 to 1983, he was also a member of the presidium of the German Evangelical Church Assembly, including its president from 1973 to 1975. From 1980 to 2004, he chaired the jury of the Guard Prize of the Daily Press of the Freedom of the Press Foundation.

Sontheimer died at the age of 76 after a short illness. He is the father of the historian and journalist Michael Sontheimer.

Thought

Sontheimer mainly published studies on the German political system and the country's political culture. With his political statements, he had an impact beyond the university setting. His groundbreaking 1962 study Antidemokratisches Denken in der Weimarer Republik ("Antidemocratic Thought in the Weimar Republic") was preceded by a dispute with Theodor Eschenburg in 1961, who had wanted to prevent its publication by the Munich Institute of Contemporary History.

He dealt with the threat to democracy posed by left-wing and right-wing extremism and was an advocate of parliamentary democracy. His concept of extremism, however, differs significantly from today's common use of the term, as the intended goals of the various radical currents must also be taken into account in an assessment. Movements formerly described as radical left-wing often pursued and successfully realized democratic goals:

But since the agreement of the state-bearing groups on the principles of the existing order cannot be a yardstick for the quality of such an order, but only a status quo formula, extremism and radicalism, as our own history teaches us, is not a priori something negative. Indeed, today's statist center is nothing other than the result of the radical left movements of yesterday and the day before. Since the ruling groups always determine the bandwidth within which they tolerate political views, the content, the political goal, must also always be asked in the case of radical movements and ideologies. (...) This is where political radicalisms differ.

Sontheimer was an SPD member since the 1960s. In 1969, together with Günter Grass, he co-founded a voter initiative calling for the election of the SPD. With the initiative, he traveled through the Federal Republic and campaigned for Willy Brandt. He articulated his rejection of the radical left in the 1976 book Das Elend unserer Intellektuellen.

His 1999 book So war Deutschland nie is considered a balance sheet of his work.

Works

• Thomas Mann und die Deutschen (1961; 2002)
• Antidemokratisches Denken in der Weimarer Republik. Die politischen Ideen des deutschen Nationalismus zwischen 1918 und 1933 (1962)
• Deutschland zwischen Demokratie und Antidemokratie. Studien zum politischen Bewußtsein der Deutschen (1971)
• Grundzüge des politischen Systems der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (1971)
• Das politische System Großbritanniens (1972)
• Die DDR. Politik Gesellschaft Wirtschaft (1972; with Wilhelm Bleek)
• Das Elend unserer Intellektuellen. Linke Theorie in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (1976)
• Die verunsicherte Republik. Die Bundesrepublik nach 30 Jahren (1979)
• Der unbehagliche Bürger. Vom deutschen Umgang mit der Demokratie (1980)
• Zeitenwende? Die Bundesrepublik Deutschland zwischen alter und alternativer Politik (1983)
• Deutschlands politische Kultur (1990)
• Die Adenauer-Ära. Grundlegung der Bundesrepbulik (1991)
• Von Deutschlands Republik. Politische Essays (1991)
• So war Deutschland nie. Anmerkungen zur politischen Kultur der Bundesrepublik (1999)
• Hannah Arendt. Der Weg einer großen Denkerin (2005)

References

• Riccardo Bavaj, "Hybris und Gleichgewicht. Weimars „antidemokratisches Denken“ und Kurt Sontheimers freiheitlich-demokratische Mission". In: Zeithistorische Forschungen 3 (2006), pp. 315–21.
• Wilhelm Bleek, "Kurt Sontheimer. Politikwissenschaft als öffentlicher Beruf". In: Hans Karl Rupp, Thomas Noetzel, eds., Macht – Freiheit – Demokratie. Biographische Annäherungen 2 (1994), pp. 27–43.
• Jürgen Habermas, "Die Bühne des Terrors. Ein Brief an Kurt Sontheimer". In: Merkur. Deutsche Zeitschrift für europäischen Denken XXXI (1977), pp. 944–58.
• Hartmut Jäckel, "Deutschland und die Demokratie. (Nachruf)". In: Die Welt (17. Mai 2005), p. 28.
• Robert Leicht, "Ein Vernunft-Republikaner. Zum Tod des Politikwissenschaftlers Kurt Sontheimer". In: Die Zeit 21 (2005), p. 6.
• Bedrich Loewenstein, Kurt Sontheimers Republik (2013)
• Dieter Oberndörfer, "Sontheimer, Kurt". In: Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB). 24. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot (2010), p. 585.

External links

• Works by Kurt Sontheimer at German National Library
• Works by Kurt Sontheimer at Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek