Helmut R. Wagner (5 August 1904 - 22 April 1989)
Wagner was born in Dresden. After training at a technical school, he was employed as a teacher in adult education from 1925 to 1932. In 1934 he was forced to leave Germany when he was denationalized following his criticism of the Nazi regime. While living in exile in Switzerland, he occupied himself with socio-scientific studies and worked as a technician in the Swiss Army. After immigrating to the USA in 1941, he initially worked as an instrument mechanic and then began his studies in sociology at the New School for Social Research in 1951. He was especially shaped by Alfred Schütz as well as Carl Mayer and he participated in Mayer’s project “Religion in Germany Today”. After completing his doctorate in 1955, he taught for a short time at the New School and then taught as a professor of sociology at Bucknell University, Pennsylvania from 1956 to 1964. Until 1985, he directed the Department for Anthropology and Sociology at Hobart & William Smith Colleges, New York and after that he held a position as a visiting professor at Boston University. Based on the interpretive sociology of Weber und later under the influence of Alfred Schütz, he was one of the leading representatives of “phenomenological sociology” in America. And finally, as a biographer and editor, he strived to contribute to the understanding, the critical evaluation and the further development of Schütz’s work. A copy of the original, unpublished version of his biography of Alfred Schütz containing around 2500 typescript pages is available in the Archive. In addition to this, large parts of his academic estate are available on microfilm.