Carl Joachim Friedrich

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
"Carl Friedrich" redirects here. For other uses, see Carl Friedrich (disambiguation).

Carl Joachim Friedrich (

political theorist. He taught alternately at Harvard and Heidelberg until his retirement in 1971. His writings on state and constitutional theory, constitutionalism and government made him one of the world's leading political scientists in the post-World War II period. He is one of the most influential scholars of totalitarianism
.

Biography

Early years in Germany: 1901–1936

Born on June 5, 1901, in

University of Heidelberg, where he graduated in 1925, having also attended several other universities and even put in a brief stint working in the Belgian coal mines. Carl and his family were Protestants.[2]

Friedrich's family had strong ties to the United States. His brother, Otto Friedrich, went on to become an industrialist prominent in the German rubber industry. Both brothers lived and studied in America on and off immediately after World War I, but Carl elected to remain in the United States and Otto to return to Germany. They temporarily broke off relations during the 1940s because of Otto's allegiance to the Nazi party and prominent role in German industry during the Third Reich, but they reestablished contact after the end of World War II.

In the 1920s, while a student in the United States, Carl founded, and was president of, the

Hitler
came to power in 1933, he decided to remain in the United States and become a naturalized citizen.

An expert on

grass-roots movements
.

Harvard University: 1936–1941

Friedrich was appointed Professor of Government at

Fascist regimes resettle in the United States. He persuaded one of them, the pianist Rudolf Serkin, to give a concert at his farm in Brattleboro, Vermont, an event which led to the establishment of the Marlboro Music Festival.[citation needed
]

Friedrich, who was arguably the most knowledgeable scholar in his field (of German Constitutional history) of his time, was endowed with a healthy self-regard. Indeed, some of his colleagues at Harvard regarded him as a "somewhat hubristic person who was overly confident of his own abilities."[3]

World War II and Cold War: 1941–1984

Friedrich had joined the ranks of Harvard scholars who despised

constitutional democracy.[4]

Friedrich was determined to put Harvard University into the service of the

Japanese empire.[5] When the United States entered World War II Friedrich helped found the School of Overseas Administration to train officers in military government work. Between 1943 and 1946 Friedrich served as the director of the school and was a member of the executive committee of the Council for Democracy, which worked to convince the American people of the necessity for fighting totalitarianism and published pamphlets on liberal democracy
. [6]

In 1946 the Military Governor of Germany, General

taxation, education, and cultural policy. To this end, Friedrich also enshrined in the constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany that the members of the upper house (Bundesrat would be appointed by the parliaments of the federal states (Landtag).[8]

Friedrich's constitutional vision for a new German identity was based on active participation in democratic institutions, where citizens invested in democracy to secure their own

political theory, democracy, and communism. This course program was in 1949 adopted by the University of Marburg, the University of Cologne, and the University of Hamburg.[10]

In 1947 Friedrich and his Harvard colleagues launched a course program on

US diplomats on European history and politics before they were sent overseas.[13]

In the 1950s Friedrich had the opportunity to put his ideas of a virtuous federalism again into practice when he acted as constitutional advisor for Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Israel. Friedrich also participated in a project to draft a constitution for the establishment of a European Political Community (EPC), which ultimately failed.

President of the Federal Republic of Germany.[citation needed] Upon his retirement in 1971 Friedrich became emeritus professor.[18] He later taught at the University of Manchester and Duke University, among others.[citation needed
]

Professor Friedrich's many students included such noted political theorists as

Judith Shklar and Benjamin Barber
.

He died on September 19, 1984, in Lexington, Massachusetts.

Ideas

Friedrich's concept of a "good democracy" rejected basic democracy as totalitarian. Some of the assumptions of Friedrich's theory of totalitarianism, particularly his acceptance of Carl Schmitt's idea of the "constitutional state", are viewed as potentially anti-democratic by Hans J. Lietzmann. Schmitt believed that the sovereign is above the law. Klaus von Beyme sees the main focus of Friedrich's theories as the "creation and preservation of robust institutions". This can be seen as influencing his work on the creation of Germany's States' constitutions.

Bibliography

  • THE NEW BELIEF IN THE COMMON MAN. By Carl J. Friedrich. 345 plus xii pp. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. $3. 1942.
  • The Philosophy of Kant, Editor with editor's introduction [Kant's moral and political writings] (New York: Random House/Modern Library [#266], 1949).
  • CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT AND DEMOCRACY (rev. ed.), by Carl J. Friedrich. Ginn and Company, Boston. 1950. Pp. xvi, 688.
  • The Age of the Baroque: 1610–1660 (New York: Harper & Row, 1952).
  • Der Verfassungsstaat der Neuzeit [revised German edition of 'Constitutional Government and Democracy'] (Berlin, 1953).
  • The Philosophy of Hegel, edited with an introduction (New York: Random House/Modern Library, 1953).
  • Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy. Co-authored by Carl J. Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956. Second edition 1965.
  • The Philosophy of History by Hegel, trans. J. Sibree, new introduction by C.J. Friedrich (Dover, 1956). ("[H]e revolutionized the sciences of man, of culture and society, and neither the humanities nor the social sciences have ever been able to think and talk again in the naive and simple terms that characterized them before Hegel wrote.")
  • Totalitäre Diktatur (The Totalitarian Dictatorship). (Stuttgart, 1957).
  • Man and His Government: An Empirical Theory of Politics (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963).
  • Tradition and Authority (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972).
  • The Pathology of Politics: Violence, Betrayal, Corruption, Secrecy, and Propaganda (New York: Harper & Row, 1972).

Notes

  1. ISBN 9781009043458
    .
  2. ISBN 9780691231600
    .
  3. ^ Edmund Spevack, Allied Control and German Freedom: American Political and Ideological Influences on the Framing of the West German Basic Law (Grundgesetz) (Munster: Verlag), p. 192.
  4. ISBN 9780691173825
    .
  5. ISBN 9780691173825
    .
  6. ISBN 9780199606238
    .
  7. ISBN 9780195369922
    .
  8. ISBN 9780691173825
    .
  9. ISBN 9780691173825
    .
  10. ISBN 9780691173825
    .
  11. ISBN 9780691173825
    .
  12. ISBN 9780691173825
    .
  13. ISBN 9780691173825
    .
  14. ISBN 9780199606238
    .
  15. ISBN 9780199606238
    .
  16. ISBN 9780313319570
    .
  17. ISBN 9780313319570
    .
  18. ISBN 9780199606238
    .

References

  • Hans J. Lietzmann, Von der konstitutionellen zur totalitären Diktatur. Carl Joachim Friedrichs Totalitarismustheorie (From Constitutionalism to Totalitarian Dictatorship: Carl Joachim Friedrichs' Totalitarianism Theory). Alfred Söllner, Ed. Totalitarismus. Eine Ideengeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts (Totalitarianism: A History of 20th Century Thought). (1997).
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Carl_Joachim_Friedrich&oldid=1209916732"