Alfred von Martin

Alfred von Martin (July 24, 1882-June 11, 1979) was a German historian and sociologist and one of the last representatives of the founding years of German sociology to teach and publish in the Federal Republic of Germany. His diagnoses of the times are based on historical sociology and cultural sociology. Alfred von Martin published academic texts over a period of seventy years. Von Martin was first educated on the family estate by a private tutor, Dr. A. Schlemm, an expert in classical languages and antiquity, who played a vital role in von Martin’s future interests in cultural history and the Renaissance. He transferred to the humanistically-based high school in Görlitz for a few years before taking the final examinations. Von Martin studied History and numerous related subjects at the Universities of Freiburg, Heidelberg, Leipzig, Berlin, Florence and Rome, which concluded with the reception of his PhD at the University of Freiburg in 1912.

German Empire
Alfred von Martin was born into a family of entrepreneurs. His father, Friedrich Martin, was a partner with Hermann Fölsch in the company "Fölsch & Martin," which operated saltpetre works in Taltal (Chile) and had an office in Hamburg. His maternal grandfather, the landowner Otto Roestel, was also active in the saltpetre industry. In the wake of the birth of his son, Friedrich Martin proceeded to acquire a manor in Rothenburg an der Neisse. According to the Genealogical Handbook of the Nobility, he promptly established a Fideicommissum for the estate in the vicinity of Rothenburg Castle. He was elevated to the hereditary nobility in 1907. The aforementioned estate in Upper Lusatia was subsequently assumed by his younger brother Hans von Martin.

Substantial real estate holdings provided Alfred von Martin with a secure financial position for much of his life. Until he commenced his studies at grammar school, he was educated by a private tutor on the estate. After graduating from high school in Görlitz, he pursued a degree in Law and Political Science at the universities of Breslau, Lausanne, Tübingen, and Munich. He completed his first degree in 1906 with a doctorate in law. He then pursued studies in history at the universities of Freiburg (with Friedrich Meinecke), Heidelberg, Leipzig, Berlin, Florence, and Rome. He completed these studies in 1913 with a doctorate (Dr. phil.). During the First World War, in which he served as a lieutenant in the reserves, von Martin was awarded a habilitation in medieval and modern history at the University of Frankfurt am Main in 1915.

Weimar Republic and Third Reich
Following the conclusion of the war, the University of Frankfurt am Main appointed him as an associate professor. He subsequently taught History at the University of Munich from 1924. In 1931, he relocated to the University of Göttingen as an honorary professor and assumed the role of director of the newly established "Sociological Seminar" there.

In light of the prevailing political circumstances, he took a permanent leave of absence from his university duties in 1932 (for which he had received no remuneration as an honorary professor), withdrew to Munich, and went into so-called inner emigration as an independent scholar. In his own words, he had not been prepared to

"to continue lecturing after the abolition of the freedom to teach - all the less so as the teaching assignment was one without material         compensation. In the other case, I would never have taught anything against my convictions, but I might have looked for topics that were as "harmless" as possible; however, I had no reason to get involved in such dodges."

In the years that followed, he studied the Renaissance and Jacob Burckhardt. Even before 1933, his reception of Machiavelli characterized the "faith of the leader" as decadent, with a clear contemporary reference: "Machiavelli himself does not believe in the appointed (but not only 'appointed' by him) savior ... He warms himself (like Hitler again) to the type of the adventurous, daring lansquenets ... This doctor's diagnosis is not wrong, but his etiology is one-eyed. No longer in possession of a healthy idea of what health means, he prescribes the fascist poison as a cure for the sick age: pure political actionism - outside of a genuine order of values". His book Nietzsche und Burckhardt (Munich 1941) was a clear statement against the Nazi regime, which provoked fierce attacks against him in the Nazi press. The first edition of his book Religion in the Life and Thought of Jacob Burckhardt (Munich 1942) was confiscated by the Gestapo, and he probably escaped arrest only by chance. He was in contact with members of the White Rose resistance group, and Hans Scholl was a guest of Alfred von Martin several times in the spring of 1942.

After the Second World War
From 1945, von Martin resumed his publishing activities and sought a position as a university lecturer. As a result of the Second World War, he had lost all his real estate, which had previously made him financially independent. He was no longer able to successfully gain a foothold in university sociology - although he was an honorary member of the German Sociological Association.

Dirk Kaesler characterizes von Martin as follows:

"In keeping with his skeptical attitude, he remained more of a loner at University even after 1945. A consistent theme in his late work was the tension between society and individual freedom."

He was refused permission to return to the University of Göttingen. It was said that he was an unreliable colleague and that he had "disappointed the faculty" by resigning. However, he taught as an outsider in his discipline, first as a lecturer at the Technical University of Munich (1946–1948), then as an associate professor, and finally as a full professor emeritus at the University of Munich (1948–1959). There he administered the newly created chair of sociology until it was filled by Emerich K. Francis after a long period of educational disputes in Bavarian state politics.

During this time he wrote the first systematic description of sociology in the Federal Republic of Germany (1956). After retiring from academic teaching (at the age of 78), he produced a comprehensive work for his old age. His bourgeois-critical way of thinking remained without a successor in university sociology.

In an obituary, Rainer Lepsius wrote of Alfred von Martin

"He consciously placed himself at the service of the values he knew, skeptical of all power and disdainful of the techniques and tactics of conformity, valuing personal independence over institutional influence."

Sociology of the middle classes (entrepreneurs and intellectuals)
Much of Martins's sociological work reads like a preparation for his planned, but never realized, Sociology of the bourgeoisie. Based on his main work, Sociology of the Renaissance (also translated into English, Spanish, Dutch and Japanese), his historical-sociological diagnoses of the period describe the bourgeoisie as the main actor in the dynamics of capitalist development. The Renaissance marked the transition from the static and contemplative way of life of the Middle Ages to the activity of the modern economic man. According to von Martin, the modern Western bourgeoisie appears in two types, that of the entrepreneur and that of the intellectual. He ascribes to both types the same characteristics that did not exist in the Middle Ages: Individuality and rationality.

The emergence of the bureaucratic state and large corporations had reshaped the original type of citizen in terms of his actions and behavior. According to von Martin, World War I marked the final turning point toward a "post-bourgeois society. The post-bourgeois individual had become dependent - to the detriment of his individuality - and this was expressed through the pursuit of advancement within organizations (no longer through independent entrepreneurial activity), through conformism, and through consumerism. The cultural intelligentsia (Bildungsbürgertum) also suffered a loss of importance and was transformed into a purely technical intelligentsia and functionaries.

Criticism of contemporary sociology
This development towards objectification accelerated after the Second World War and also had an impact on sociology's understanding of science. He (Alfred von Martin) emphasized that

"Opposed to all those scientific tendencies which - partly collectivist, partly Americanizing in character - strive for a Sociology in which the human being 'does not exist' or at least only as a given object of quasi-technical social manipulation. The broad factual current tending in this direction is, as a problem complex of contemporary sociology, a topic of particularly heavy weight; but it is precisely today's crisis-ridden threat to personality values that may be seen as a reason to view the social in terms of the human. In and of itself, sociology, as a science, has nothing to do with worldview: 'functionalism', however, also "role play", is (or betrays) a certain worldview, even if one does not know it and would deny it."

Analysis of the class society
In addition to the sociology of the middle classes - and especially the sociology of intellectuals - von Martin was also concerned with the analysis of social class after 1945. In contrast to Helmut Schelsky (and other leading sociologists of the first postwar decades), he denied the existence of a leveled bourgeois society. Although contemporary society had undergone considerable changes compared to nineteenth-century capitalism (forms of organization of enterprises, differentiation rather than standardization of the workforce, social security), he argued that this was not the case:

"The essential moments of class antagonism still exist: the division into those who plan and order "above" and those who obey and execute "below", and the latent conflict of interests with the relationship of domination."

Dealing with National Socialism
Volker Kruse summarizes von Martin's diagnosis of National Socialism in five sentences:


 * The National Socialist dictatorship was only possible because it enjoyed broad acceptance among the population;
 * This acceptance was only possible because the necessary awareness of values was lacking;
 * The lack of awareness of values was the result of a mental confusion among the German intelligentsia, which spread to the entire German people;
 * The intellectual confusion was caused by Hegel, Nietzsche and Spengler;
 * a disposition to extreme political outbursts was ingrained in the German national character.

In contrast to almost all of his colleagues, von Martin actively sought to critically and sociologically examine National Socialism through publications and lectures in the postwar years. He called for the moral commitment of the social scientist, for which he was explicitly singled out by René König among German sociologists.

Reception in sociology
Alfred von Martin's late work represents an "almost forgotten beginning of postwar sociology. With his exclusively humanistic approach to sociology and his systematic, encyclopedic orientation, he was isolated in the academic world from the outset. Other representatives of humanistic sociology, such as Hans Freyer, came from the Leipzig School of Sociology and were far removed from Martin's avowed opposition to German nationalist ideology. He was also out of step with the times in his claim to humanity in the face of specialized science. Nevertheless, as Kruse points out, thirty years later there were no serious errors to be found in von Martin's contemporary diagnostic work on Western postwar society.

Commitment to ecumenism and political Christianity
Alfred von Martin was a devout Christian of the Protestant denomination and an advocate of Una Sancta (One Holy Church). He became a member of the High Church Union in 1922 and was its second chairman in 1923/24. With the High Church Union, he pursued the goal of strengthening a sacramental and Catholic understanding of the church within Protestant churches. This endeavor is expressed in the formula "Evangelical Catholicity". Due to increasing disputes with a "Prussian group", he left the High Church Union together with the entire "Catholic group" in the fall of 1925 and founded the "High Church Ecumenical Alliance" with Karl Buchheim. Von Martin became editor of the new association's magazine "Una Sancta", which was published from 1925 to 1928. The magazine was then renamed "'Religious Reflection", in which he also published. Finally, von Martin converted to the Roman Catholic Church.

In 1922, he was elected to the board of the Catholic Center, in which there were efforts to develop the party into an interdenominational Christian party. He later left the Center.

Publications (selection)

 * Über die Frage des Beginnes der Legislaturperiode des deutschen Reichstages und des preußischen Landtags. Breslau 1906 (at the same time: legal dissertation).
 * Coluccio Salutatis' Traktat „Vom Tyrannen". Eine kulturgeschichtliche Untersuchung. Freiburg im Breisgau 1913 (at the same time: philosophical dissertation).
 * Mittelalterliche Welt- und Lebensanschauung im Spiegel der Schriften Coluccio Salutatis. Oldenbourg, Munich/Berlin 1913.
 * Coluccio Salutati und das humanistische Lebensideal. Ein Kapitel aus der Genesis der Renaissance. Teubner, Berlin/Leipzig 1916; Reprint of the 1916 edition, Gerstenberg, Hildesheim 1973, ISBN 3-8067-0121-0.
 * Romantischer Katholizismus und katholische Romantik. In: Hochland 23 (1925), p. 323–327.
 * Soziologie der Renaissance. Zur Physiognomik und Rhythmik bürgerlicher Kultur. Enke, Stuttgart 1932; Second, modified and enlarged edition, Knecht, Frankfurt am Main 1949; 3rd edition, Beck, Munich 1974, ISBN 3-406-04906-0; 4th edition: Soziologie der Renaissance und weitere Schriften, edited of Richard Faber and Christine Holste, Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2016, ISBN 978-3-658-10448-1, therein pp. 1-116: Sociology of the Renaissance (London 1944); span.: Sociología del Renacimiento (1970, ²1977, ³2005).
 * Nietzsche und Burckhardt. Reinhardt, Munich 1941 (4th edition, Erasmus-Publisher, Munich 1947).
 * Die Religion in Jakob Burkhardts Leben und Denken. Eine Studie zum Thema Humanismus und Christentum, Reinhardt, Munich 1942; 2nd, enlarged edition as: Die Religion Jacob Burckhardts. Eine Studie zum Thema Humanismus und Christentum. Erasmus-Publisher, Munich 1947.
 * Geistige Wegbereiter des deutschen Zusammenbruchs (Hegel, Nietzsche, Spengler). Bitter, Recklinghausen 1948.
 * Geist und Gesellschaft. Soziologische Skizzen zur europäischen Kulturgeschichte. Knecht, Frankfurt am Main 1948.
 * Der heroische Nihilismus und seine Überwindung. Ernst Jüngers Weg durch die Krise. Scherpe-Publisher, Krefeld 1948.
 * Ordnung und Freiheit. Materialien und Reflexionen zu Grundfragen des Soziallebens. Knecht, Frankfurt am Main 1956.
 * Soziologie. Die Hauptgebiete im Überblick. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1956.
 * Mensch und Gesellschaft heute. Knecht, Frankfurt am Main 1965.
 * Im Zeichen der Humanität. Soziologische Streifzüge. Knecht, Frankfurt am Main 1974, ISBN 3-7820-0324-1.
 * Macht als Problem. Hegel und seine politische Wirkung. Academy of Sciences and Literature, Mainz 1976, ISBN 3-515-02378-X.
 * Die Krisis des bürgerlichen Menschen. Selected and edited by Richard Faber and Christine Holste. Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2019, ISBN 978-3-658-21572-9.

Genealogy/Vita

 * Gothaisches Genealogisches Taschenbuch, Alter Adel und Briefadel, Justus Perthes, Gotha. Editions of 1927, 1929, 1940 (at the same time: Nobility Register of the German Nobility Association).
 * Hans Friedrich von Ehrenkrook, Friedrich Wilhelm Euler: Genealogisches Handbuch des Adels (GHdA). B: Briefadel, Volume 1 (= Gesamtreihe GHdA. Volume 9), C. A. Starke, Glücksburg/Ostsee 1954, p. 284 f. ISSN 0435-2408.