Review article: Recent studies in German political thought

This article was translated by Christopher Mobley.

Stirk seeks to consider both Austrian and German thinkers. However, his treatment of the two countries is not equal, and is increasingly less so as he approaches the current period.

Stirk’s mention of the successive views upheld by Carl Schmitt is generally more precise than that of other authors. Stirk has written a noteworthy book on Schmitt. P. M. R. Stirk (2005) Carl Schmitt: Crown Jurist of the Third Reich. On Preemptive War, Military and World Empire. Lewiston, NY: E. Mellen Press.

See Peter M. R. Stirk (2006) Twentieth-Century German Political Thought, pp. 26-8, 58. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Georg Jellinek (1851-1911) was close to Max Weber, and the intersections between their interpretations of the state and politics are numerous, despite the differences in point of view (legal theory for Jellinek, sociology for Weber, although the latter was trained as a jurist).

See Stirk (n. 4), pp. 93-4.

Regarding Helmut Schelsky, notably his early period, see the section of this review on Michael Greven’s work.

Stirk (n. 4), pp. 138-43.

Niklas Luhmann ( 2000) Die Politik der Gesellschaft. Suhrkamp : Frankfurt am Main.

Ulrich Beck ( 1997) The Reinvention of Politics. Cambridge : Polity.

However, it is fair to mention that criticism of the parliamentary republican regime and the reign of political parties is also found in other western countries, particularly France.

Hugo Preuss ( 1860-1925), a jurist who specialized in public law, was the main writer of the Weimar Republic’s constitution.

Othmar Spann (1878-1950) is a conservative Austrian philosopher, sociologist and economist, theorist of the corporatist state. His name is mentioned on several occasions by both Stirk and Greven, which is an indication of the strong influence of the thinking of this author, who is now largely forgotten but was widely known during the Weimar years and up to the period immediately following the Second World War. This influence is a symptom of a persistent corporatist ideal of society, inspired by the traditional organization in orders (Stände), which continued through the first half of the 20th century.

The Fundamental Law (Grundgesetz) was not called the Constitution in order to mark the temporary nature of the BRD and to reserve the possibility of reunification with East Germany. Nevertheless, the name remained unchanged after the reunification in 1990.

Gerhard Leibholz (1901-82), jurist, was an influential member of the Constitutional Court of Karlsruhe from 1951 to 1971.

Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, born in 1930, is a jurist and philosopher of law. He was a member of the Constitutional Court of Karlsruhe from 1983 to 1996. He is considered a disciple of Carl Schmitt, even though he does not share the latter’s political options (Böckenförde is a social democrat).

Dolf Sternberger (1907-89) was professor of political science at Heidelberg from 1962 to 1972. He coined the expression Verfassungspatriotismus (constitutional patriotism), which he used as early as 1947 to contest the right’s monopoly on patriotism, and which Habermas used in the mid-1980s as part of the ‘historians’ quarrel’ (Historikerstreit) (see Stirk (n. 4), pp. 183-4).

Opladen: Leske u. Budrich.

Alfred Weber (1868-1958) was a sociologist, like his older brother Max. His most famous writings are in the field of the philosophy of culture as much as sociology. Greven summarizes three texts published between 1946 and 1947, the most important of which is Abschied von der bisherigen Geschichte (1946): ‘Farewell to [European] History’.

Zygmunt Bauman (1989) Modernity and the Holocaust . Cambridge: Polity.