Niklas Luhmann:The man with the slip box

He grew up in Lüneburg in the 1930s. After studying law, Niklas Luhmann turned to sociology and developed his comprehensive system theory.

by Simone Rastelli, NDR.de

Niklas Luhmann was born on December 8, 1927 in Lüneburg and grew up in the harbor district, the son of a brewery owner and a Swiss hotelier's daughter. From 1937 Luhmann, who was able to read even before he started school, attended the Johanneum high school. He skipped a grade and attracted the attention of teachers and classmates because of two things in particular:on the one hand, through diligence and a passion for reading, and on the other, through his political opinions. Since he often spends his summer holidays in Switzerland, he comes into contact with views that are frowned upon in Third Reich Germany.

Niklas Luhmann:Ambivalent relationship to the NS regime

Nevertheless, Luhmann is in the Hitler Youth. In an interview with the journalist Wolfgang Hagen (Radio Bremen), he later said about this time that he found the marching and greetings unpleasant and the self-portrayal of the regime disgusting. In a conversation with the social philosopher Detlef Horster, he describes his father's political attitude as economically liberal, averse to both the Social Democrats and the National Socialists, which often causes difficulties for the family. The economic situation of the Luhmanns also deteriorated with the Nazi regime, because the new tax legislation made it difficult to continue the brewery business.

When Luhmann was twelve years old, Germany began World War II. At the age of 17 he was drafted as an air force helper. Even then it was clear to him that Germany would lose the war. But what worries him and his friends far more than victory or defeat is the question of whether the National Socialists would stay after the war was over, "if only because you had to join the party to be able to study," he says in 1977. That Luhmann is actually a member of the NSDAP, only became known in 2007 in a Spiegel article. It remains unclear whether he himself knew of this membership.

The Zettelkasten:No thought is lost

Luhmann experienced the end of the war in American captivity. A year after his release in September 1945, he began studying law in Freiburg. The decisive factor was the desire for order as a direct consequence of the war experiences and mistreatment in captivity.

At the beginning of the 1950s, Luhmann began assembling his famous card boxes. He records every important thought on a piece of paper and over the decades has developed an idiosyncratic number and reference system in which he sorts his notes in relation to each other.

From administrator to sociologist

Luhmann worked as an administrative officer until 1962, including at the Higher Administrative Court in Lüneburg and in the Lower Saxony Ministry of Education. After his marriage to Ursula von Walter in 1960, he took a leave of absence and accepted an advanced training scholarship at Harvard University. There he gets to know the sociologist Talcott Parsons and his structural-functional systems theory - a contact with consequences:From now on Luhmann sees it as his task to develop Parsons' theory into a theory that encompasses all areas of society, a super theory.

After his return to Germany in 1961, Luhmann initially worked as a consultant at the German University for Administrative Sciences in Speyer and until 1968 as a department head at the social research center in Dortmund. At the same time, he did his doctorate and habilitation in Münster with Helmut Schelsky and Dieter Claessens - in just one semester. In 1996, Horster explained his switch from law to sociology as follows:"Even at school, I didn't always deal with what I should have dealt with. I also studied Roman law at university with a sociological background, so compared Greek sales law with Roman law and worked out the social differences."

In 1968 Luhmann was given a chair at the newly founded reform university in Bielefeld. A year before his death he recalled in "The Society of Society":"When I was admitted to the Faculty of Sociology, founded in 1969, I found myself confronted with the request to name research projects on which I am working. My project was then and since :Theory of Society; Duration:30 years; Costs:none."

At the end of the 1960s, Luhmann represented the sociologist Theodor W. Adorno in Frankfurt am Main. There he also gets to know Jürgen Habermas and with him his greatest critic.

In 1977 Luhmann's wife died. Luhmann lives rural and withdrawn in Oerlinghausen. He enjoys being with his children and their "entire youth culture", walking the dog, reading and writing. Thirsty for knowledge and hungry for creativity, he primarily lacks time.

Super theory peppered with nonsense

Students regularly enjoy his hidden, often involuntary humor. In connection with the genetic engineering debate, Hans-Martin Kruckis describes, for example, the "suggestion that genetic engineers should cross apples with the genetic characteristics of fireflies so that the apples can also be picked at night ." In "Universität als Milieu" in 1992, Luhmann admits that he hides "some secret nonsense" in all his books:"I do this with the intention of prompting reflection. But apart from that, it's also my nature."

System theory:Main work "Social Systems"

In 1984 Luhmann published "Social Systems". The 600-page document is considered by many to be Luhmann's main work, but from the author's point of view it is no more than the introduction to the "super theory of society" that he promised. This is followed by elaborations of system theory on the economy, science, law, art, mass media, politics, religion and education, some volumes of which are only published posthumously. "The Society of Society" concludes the 1997 monograph. Overall, Luhmann publishes around 450 essays and a good 70 writings on a wide range of topics.

At the age of 62, Luhmann received the Hegel Prize from the city of Stuttgart and in 1977, four years after his retirement in Bielefeld, the Premio Amalfi, the European Amalfi Prize for Sociology and Social Sciences. At the age of 70, Niklas Luhmann died of blood cell cancer on November 6, 1998 in Oerlinghausen.