Appointment proposal for filling the Chair of Sociology dated February 16, 1951
author: Hans Würdinger
source date: February 16, 1951
language: eng
availability: This work is protected by copyright and may only be reproduced and published with the consent of the rights holder. It may be downloaded for scholarly or private use.

The DeanFebruary 16, 1951 of the----- 44 10 71 App. 232 Faculty of Law and Political Science
To the School Authority of the Hanseatic City of Hamburg, Higher Education Department
Via the President of the University of Hamburg Subject: Filling the Chair of Sociology.

After Professor Mackenroth, Kiel, declined the offer of the Chair of Sociology at the Faculty of Law and Political Science, the Faculty is unable to submit a new three-person proposal. In addition, continued vacancy of this chair can no longer be justified, as teaching cannot be fully realized if this discipline is only held on a substitute basis, if in particular the substitute does not have the opportunity to accept doctoral students.

The Faculty therefore proposes, in agreement with the Faculty of Arts, for appointment as the sole professor Dr. Landshut, (currently) at Pombridge Crescent, London W.11. This proposal is based on the following considerations:

Dr. Landshut is, as the following critical appraisal shows, academically fully established in the field of sociology, although his [work] in part extends considerably into the field of political science. In addition to this, in 1933, Dr. Landshut intended to qualify as a professor [Habilitation] at the local faculty with a thesis entitled “Historical-Systematic Analysis of the Concept of the Economic [“Historisch-systematische Analyse des Begriffes des Ökonomischen”], but, after his thesis had already been approved by the supervisor, he was prevented from completing his Habilitation for political reasons. Therefore, Dr. Landshut’s appointment also represents an act of restitution. Dr. Landshut has also been a visiting professor at the Faculty for two semesters in -2political science and has been working as a lecturer in sociology with good teaching success, as a result of which faculty would very much welcome the appointment of Dr. Landshut. The Faculty of Arts, too, agrees with this appointment proposal unconditionally.

Dr. Landshut was born in Strasbourg in Alsace in 1897, graduating from the Protestant grammar school in 1914 and serving in 1914–1919 as a war volunteer in the field. In the years 1919–1922, he studied law, then (national) economics, philosophy, and sociology at the universities of Freiburg and Cologne, graduating in 1922 with a thesis on the concept of Homo Oeconomicus supervised by Professor Liefmann, studied philosophy under Professor Heidegger in Marburg in 1923, and, after attending the seminars of Alfred Weber and Karl Justus from 1924 to 1925, in 1926 he became an assistant to Professor Mendelssohn Bartholdy at the Institute for Foreign Policy in Hamburg. His Habilitation, initiated in 1932, was interrupted in 1933. Following his emigration, Dr. Landshut lectured at the University of Cairo from 1933 to 1936; in 1936, he became a research associate for sociology at the University of Jerusalem and served as head of the radio broadcasting service for the Middle East. From 1945 to 1948, he was head of the cultural and educational program for German prisoners of war in the Middle East. From 1948 to 1950, he devoted himself to research into the history of the British Parliament and to a thesis on non-Muslim communities in the countries of Islam on behalf of the UN. Since 1950, Dr. Landshut has held a visiting professorship in political science at the Faculty.

The Faculty reports on his academic qualification as follows:

Dr. Landshut published his first major scientific treatise in 1925. It appeared under the title of “On some basic concepts of politics” in Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, volume 54.

This essay already takes as its starting point the particular view of sociological observation that Landshut defines as the fact of people living together. Here Landshut turns to investigations positioned along the lines of political science, as the title of the treatise suggests. However, this is accompanied throughout by socio-philosophical and sociological reflection. -3-In this context, Landshut defines the mutual determinacy of the basic political concepts. From careful methodological considerations, the study proceeds to a very appealing and vividly developed characterization of the concepts of people, state, and nation, initially following Friedrich Julius Neumann. Landshut then [shows] how the concept of the nation took shape in the French Revolution and its legislation, drawing on the teachings of Rousseau, which were again decisive for this. He shows that “the entire political household of our time” is fed by Rousseau’s principles.

Furthermore, public opinion is characterized as the decisive authority in the democratic state. This is done in a critical sociological treatment with independent and sound judgment and view. The third part of the treatise deals with the development of state sovereignty and the raison d’état. Landshut characterizes it as the state omnipotence concerned with itself. The work also demonstrates the author’s erudition regarding the older literature on constitutional law, his knowledge of the sources, his penetrating understanding, and his critical judgment. Even as he himself emphasizes a “predominance of critical discussion” in his treatise, the reader does not perceive this as a deficiency corresponding to the status of the topic.

Landshut published a second work in the form of a comprehensive essay entitled (“Critique of Sociology. Freedom and equality as the original problem of sociology” [“Kritik der Soziologie. Freiheit und Gleichheit als Ursprungsproblem der Soziologie“] (Munich, 1929, pp. VIII and 159) in 1929. In this work, the author showed his credentials in the fundamental questions of sociology with a methodologically, intellectual-historically and social-historically thorough and well-founded work, indeed making a significant critical contribution to these questions. In a very independent way and genuinely academic and original impartiality, he presented the problem of sociology in its development, treating sociology critically in its questionability. In this way, the work leads to a critical examination of the representatives of the major schools of sociology, not in a historical treatise on ideas, but in a systematic critique that goes back further in each case. Thus the treatise begins with a discussion of Max Weber. In this context already, the author’s own view of the tasks of sociology emerges when Landshut writes opposed to Weber’s version: “As a matter of fact, the reality of life as soon as we try to contemplate the way in which it immediately confronts us – -4by no means such a well-ordered and orderless juxtaposition and succession of an infinite multiplicity and after all – or precisely because of this – it never confronts us, but we always find ourselves in the midst of it and all the more so because we exist ourselves with this reality and represent this life.”

Landshut joins the Diltheysian critique of that sociology, which sees in the representation of the singular a mere raw material for abstraction, but he finds the way to a sustainable sociological question and method – even though the second positive part of this treatise was no longer written and the realization of that part is still outstanding in detail. It would go too far to delve into detail here on the discussion of Simmel, Spann, Marx, Mannheim, Lorenz von Stein, and Hegel. In reference to Lorenz von Stein, Landshut finds the “source of the social problematic” in the question of the fulfillment of human destiny. Equality and freedom then appear as basic prerequisites and determinants of human existence. After Landshut raised the question of the significance of freedom and equality in connection with the destiny of the human being – in reference to L. Stein – the discussion returns to treating the topic along the lines of the history of ideas.

Landshut has furthermore distinguished himself in another related field in an outstanding scholarly manner, by coming to the fore as editor and interpreter of the early writings of Karl Marx and with a small but excellent biography of Marx.

With the publication of Karl Marx’s early writings (by Kröner Publishers under the title of “Historical materialism “ [Der historische Materialismus]. 2 vols., Leipzig, 1932), Landshut has earned special merit. Above all, it was here that Marx’s important early work entitled The German Ideology [Die deutsche Ideologie] was published for the first time, while the large-scale Marx-Engels edition by the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow published only part of it in 1932.

The introduction to the volume was penned by Landshut and proves the author to be a foremost expert on the development and the roots of Karl Marx’s intellectual system. The same emerges in the short biography of Karl Marx, which Landshut wrote in 1932 for Colemann’s Biographies.

-5-Among Landshut’s more recent works, which appeared abroad after his emigration in 1934, faculty have available in manuscript a German version of an extensive treatise on communal settlement in Palestine. In the introductory sections of this work, the nature of such communal settlements of communist living communities in small spheres is portrayed and examined in particular with reference to the communist foundations that took place in America in the nineteenth century. It is aptly recognized as a condition of their existence that a religious idea was needed to keep these communities viable. Landshut comes to the conclusion that “mere communism as such is not an idea that could serve as the basis for a community.” He shows which ideas became decisive in the Jewish communal settlements that have emerged in Palestine in recent decades. The investigation shows the same unbiased and genuinely academic approach as the author’s earlier works. The seminal sociological inquiry, which here too emerges in the empirical investigation, allows the author to gain access to the actual social and functional problems of such communities. This treatise thus presents itself as a successful attempt at applying the sociological method in empirical investigation.

Another work from recent years that was available to us is a paper written in the service of caring for German prisoners of war in the Middle East between 1945 and 1948 towards political education in the prison camps. Entitled “Political A B C” [“Politisches A B C”], it deals in outline, under the key words of aristocracy, democracy, separation of powers, liberalism, power and law, human rights, and so on, with the basic questions of political constitutions and political life. The sections are comprehensible, vivid and yet not written in a falsely popular way. They shed a favorable light on Landshut’s teaching ability, which makes even difficult questions understandable without simplifying them. Though this writing is again oriented along the lines of political science, nevertheless Landshut’s previously [discussed] larger treatises fully furnish proof of scholarly work and qualification in the actual fields of sociology.
Würdinger
(Würdinger)