Otto Kirchheimer

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Otto Kirchheimer (German: [ˈkɪʁçˌhaɪmɐ]; 11 November 1905, Heilbronn – 22 November 1965, Washington, D.C.) was a German jurist of Jewish ancestry and political scientist of the Frankfurt School whose work essentially covered the state and its constitution.[1]

Kirchheimer worked as a research analyst at the

CIA, starting in World War II and continuing to 1952.[2]

Biography

Kirchheimer attended school in

Berlin and Bonn. In 1928 he completed his studies with a doctorate (Dr. jur., magna cum laude) from the University of Bonn for a thesis titled Zur Staatslehre des Sozialismus und Bolschewismus (On the State Theory of Socialism and Bolshevism). His doctoral advisor was Carl Schmitt
. Kirchheimer was considered his "favourite student".

From 1930 to 1933, Kirchheimer was an employee of the social democratic journal Die Gesellschaft and lecturer in political science. From 1932 to 1933 he also worked as a lawyer in Berlin.

Kirchheimer had already in his youth a tendency towards socialism. Later, he became a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany. During the Weimar Republic, the young Kirchheimer came to prominence with sensational analyses of the relationship between social structures and constitutions. His essay from 1930 Weimar und was dann? Entstehung und Gegenwart der Weimarer Verfassung (Weimar and then what? Origin and present of the Weimar Constitution), in which Kirchheimer described the Weimar Constitution as an unsustainable foundation of the state, was widely discussed.

Kirchheimer was together with

Franz Leopold Neumann
close to Carl Schmitt. In 1932 Kirchheimer published an essay entitled Legalität und Legitimität (Legality and Legitimacy) in the socialist journal Die Gesellschaft (Die Gesellschaft, Band 2, Heft 7, 1932). Carl Schmitt adopted this title for a famous essay of the same name. He explicitly referred to Kirchheimer. Schmitt had also repeatedly quoted him elsewhere.

After the

Third Reich
".

On 11 November 1937, Kirchheimer emigrated to the United States with his wife Hilde Kirchheimer and his daughter Hanna (born in 1930). On December 6, 1938 his German citizenship and that of his wife Hilde and daughter Hanna was officially revoked.[3] However, the marriage was ended by divorce on May 8, 1941 in Tlaxcala, Mexico. In New York, Kirchheimer continued from 1937 to 1942 his work for the Institute of Social Research as a research assistant in law and social sciences. At the same time, he was a lecturer at Columbia University.

In 1943, Kirchheimer moved with his second wife, Anne Rosenthal, to

New School for Social Research (1954). The next year he became full professor of Political Science there (until 1961). Here he wrote his book Political Justice. The Use of Legal Procedures for Political Ends, which was completed in 1961. From 1960 to 1965 Kirchheimer was Professor of Political Science at Columbia University. From 1961 to 1962 he was also Fulbright Professor at the University of Freiburg
.

On 22 November 1965 Kirchheimer died of a

Dulles Airport
. He was buried at the Jewish cemetery in Heilbronn on January 18, 1966.

Research

Kirchheimer's multifaceted academic work reflects in an almost unique way the political and scientific experiences and conflicts of the Weimar Republic, National Socialism, French and American exile, and the founding and establishment phase of the two new German states of East Germany and West Germany that emerged after 1945. Kirchheimer's contributions mostly arose out of concrete events, which, however, do not remain thematically isolated but contain elements of a comprehensive theory of modern statehood, democracy, the rule of law, modern administration and intermediary organizations.

Kirchheimer began his publishing activities as a young socialist during the Weimar Republic. The focus of his work was the relationship between the constitution and social structure, as well as the analysis of social power relations and their impact on constitutional law. Using various examples, he examined the tension between political "legal order" and economic "power order". Kirchheimer shared with Carl Schmitt the rejection of

parliamentarism
and the criticism of pluralism. Kirchheimer is therefore also counted as part of "left-wing Schmittianism". For Kirchheimer and Schmitt, a parliamentary consensus in the class state was in principle impossible. For both, the majority system was bound to the precondition of homogeneity, because otherwise it was not the parliament that decided on politics, but economic power complexes. Kirchheimer regarded the Weimar Constitution only as an outdated legal mechanism that would inevitably have to fail due to the real balance of power.

After the

National Socialists seized power, the focus of Kirchheimer's work shifted to the analysis of "German fascism". In doing so, Kirchheimer expressly opposed the thesis of the Doppelstaat (dual state), which his comrade-in-arms from the Weimar days, Ernst Fraenkel, had put forward. He also opposed the view of the Frankfurt School (Horkheimer, Adorno), according to which the National Socialists had transformed monopoly capitalism into state capitalism. Similar to Franz Neumann's Behemoth. Struktur und Praxis des Nationalsozialismus 1933–1944
, Kirchheimer claimed politics is determined by the power struggle between different power groups. As with Neumann, Kirchheimer too asserted there can be no structurally unified state authority under National Socialism; the Third Reich thus appeared as a "non-state". According to Kirchheimer (again in Schmittian thinking) the social groups take possession of the state and its functions, which they divide among themselves. This would result in a coexistence and opposition of different power complexes, in which the question of binding decision-making authority would remain open or, in Schmitt, tend towards executive authority.

He is father of the concept of a "catch-all party (Allerweltspartei)". Otto Kirchheimer's conception of the catch-all party was part of his more comprehensive theory of party transformation, encompassing four interrelated political processes. By tracing the development of the catch-all thesis and placing it within the wider context of Kirchheimer's complete work, it is possible to reconstruct a more precise understanding of what Kirchheimer meant by the catch-all concept, which itself remains highly contested. Kirchheimer's anxiety about modern democracy originated with what he saw as the vanishing of principled opposition within parliament and society, and the reduction of politics to the mere management of the state. This leads to collusion of political parties and the state, severing of the societal links of party organisations, and erosion of the classic separation of powers. Vanishing opposition, cartelisation and professionalisation of politics pits citizens against a powerful state, which increases political cynicism and apathy. Kirchheimer's comprehensive approach remains relevant to much of the contemporary debate about the transformation of Western political systems.[4]

Greifswald University
, and the sixth and final volume was published in 2022.

Works

  • Punishment and Social Structure (1939) (with Georg Rusche).
  • Political Justice. The Use of Legal Procedure for Political Ends. Princeton University Press, Princeton 1961.
  • Politics, Law and Social Change. Selected Essays of Otto Kirchheimer. New York, London 1969.
  • Gesammelte Schriften (Collected Writings), 6 vols., Nomos, Baden-Baden 2022.

References

  1. ISBN 978-3-16-146080-7
    .
  2. ISBN 9780691134130
    . Retrieved September 3, 2013.
  3. ^ Deutscher Reichsanzeiger und Preussischer Staatsanzeiger, Nr. 284
  4. S2CID 145308222
    .
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