The Life of Ludwig Gumplowicz

Ludwig Gumplowicz who was born in Cracow in 1838 and died in Graz in 1909 is generally considered as one of the early classics of sociology and, therefore, he is mentioned in every comprehensive study of the history of this discipline. Nevertheless the current state of research concerning the life and work of Gumplowicz shows considerable gaps and many questions remain unanswered; the objective of this research was to fill these gaps as much as possible and thus to provide the basis for a scientific biography. The following topics and problems have been dealt with. -the main interest of the newer literature on Gumplowicz is aimed at finding the proper place of his sociological approach within the history of ideas. His work falls into the tradition of positivism considering social life primarily as a struggle between different social groups and, hence, his work marks the beginning of a sociological conflict theory. One is reminded of Comte, Spencer, Durkheim and Simmel. -one of the results of the project, however, is to show that in order to understand the thinking of Gumplowicz it is not possible to limit one`s perspective to the history of sociology. The fact that Gumplowicz was able to formulate a sociological program of his own was mainly due to his occupation with systems of jurisprudence and political philosophy prevailing around the middle of the 19th century in the German speaking area (e.g. Ahrens, Bluntschli, Mohl, Stein). Besides he was mainly influenced by the ethnological writings of Bastian. -Gumplowicz lived in Cracow till 1875 where he worked as a lawyer and journalist. In 1868 his attempt to get the venia legendi at the University in Cracow failed. In order to understand his intellectual development it was necessary to take his Polish writings into account which so far have only been partially dealt with. In this context "The Eight Letters from Vienna" as well as his articles in the newspaper "Kraj" are of central importance. These Polish writings were then compared with his German written works between 1875 and 1885 in which he developed his sociological theory. For the first time now it is possible to delineate the continuities and discontinuities in his thinking. -As a result of this project it is now possible to specify the sociological type of thinking of Gumplowicz. Contrary to his claim that his sociology signified a break with past traditions of social thinking Gumplowicz remained not only a "child" of the 19th century but was also incapable of giving due importance to those developments which are central for the analysis of modernity. -During his time in Graz Gumplowicz also published several articles in Polish which were partly of political, partly of scientific nature. From the way he addresses his different audiences one can draw conclusions concerning his political and national ideas. He shows himself as somebody who supports Polish independence from the bottom of his heart but at the same time cannot conceive the break-up of the Hapsburg Empire. -Through the meticulous study of 1500 pages of archival documents, mainly from Polish sources, one can now accurately reconstruct how Gumplowicz tried to establish his sociology with the help of scientific networks and the support of his disciples. Especially the voluminous correspondence enlarges our knowledge about the history of the discipline.