Iring Fetscher

Iring Fetscher (1922–2014) was a German political scientist and researcher on Hegel and Marxism.

Fetscher was born on 4 March 1922 at Marbach am Neckar, and was brought up in Dresden. After the Second World War he studied at Tübingen and Paris, receiving a doctorate in 1950. He belatedly published his thesis Hegels Lehre vom Menschen in 1970. He habilitated in 1959 with a dissertation on the political philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

From 1963 to 1988 Fetscher was Professor of Political Science and Social Philosophy at the Goethe University Frankfurt. He is identified with the "second generation" of the Frankfurt School, along with Jürgen Habermas, and Alfred Schmidt. Leszek Kołakowski, while taking Fetscher to be a distinguished historian of Marxism with a critical but positive attitude, did not see him as of the Frankfurt School more than notionally.

In 1976, he published his own version of The Wolf and the Seven Young Goats by the Brothers Grimm, Die Geiß und die sieben Wölflein ('The Goat and the Seven Young Wolves '), as part of the children's book Update on Rumpelstiltskin and other Fairy Tales by 43 Authors compiled by Hans-Joachim Gelberg, illustrated by Willi Glasauer, and published by Beltz & Gelberg. In 1993, Fetscher was honored with induction into the French Ordre des Palmes académiques. Fetscher died on 19 July 2014.

Major works

 * Von Marx zur Sowjetideologie. Wiesbaden 1956. (22 editions until 1987.)
 * Rousseaus politische Philosophie. Zur Geschichte des demokratischen Freiheitsbegriffs. Neuwied, Berlin 1960.
 * Der Marxismus. Seine Geschichte in Dokumenten, 3 vols., München 1963–1965.
 * Marx and Marxism. New York: Herder & Herder, 1971. (Translation of Karl Marx und der Marxismus, 1967.)
 * Die Geiß und die sieben Wölflein (The Goat and the Seven Young Wolves) in Update on Rumpelstiltskin and other Fairy Tales by 43 Authors, compiled by Hans-Joachim Gelberg, illustrated by Willi Glasauer, published by Beltz & Gelberg, Weinheim 1976.
 * Neugier und Furcht. Versuch, mein Leben zu verstehen. Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1995, ISBN 3-455-11079-7. (Autobiography)