Heinrich Popitz (14 May 1925 - 1 April 2002)
Born in Berlin, Popitz studied philosophy, history and economics in Heidelberg, Göttingen and Oxford. In 1949 he wrote his dissertation on “Young Marx’ Critique of Time and the Philosophy of History” under Karl Jaspers at the philosophical seminar in Basel. Afterwards, he assisted Helmut Schelsky in an industrial sociological research project at the University of Münster. The now classic studies “Technology and Industrial Work” and “The Worker’s Concept of Society” (both published in 1957) emerged from this. In 1957 he gained his doctorate in the Faculty of Law and Political Science at the University of Freiburg and then worked as a private lecturer. In 1959 he gained his professor title at the chair of Sociology at the University of Basel. In 1964 he took over the chair of Sociology at the University of Freiburg which he kept until gaining emeritus status in 1992 – interrupted only by work as a professor at the New School for Social Research in 1971/72. During this time he wrote anthropologically oriented, classic studies on topics such as the history of technology (“Epochs of the History of Technology”, 1989), social norms (“The Normative Construction of Society”, 1980), the social concept of role (“The Concept of the Social Role as an Element of Sociological Theory”, 1967), and on power (“Processes of Power Cultivation”, 1968; “Phenomena of Power”, 1986/1992). The complete estate is available in the Archive.