Iring Fetscher

Iring Fetscher (1922–2014) was a German political scientist and researcher on Hegel and Marxism.^[3][4]

Iring Fetscher
Born	(1922-03-04)4 March 1922 Marbach am Neckar, Germany
Died	19 July 2014(2014-07-19) (aged 92) Dresden, Germany
Political party	Nazi Party (c. 1940 – ?) Social Democratic Party of Germany (1946–?)
Spouse	Elisabeth Fetscher
Academic background
Alma mater	University of Paris University of Tübingen
Influences	Jean Hyppolite[1] Alexandre Kojève[1] György Lukács[2]
Academic work
Discipline	Political science
School or tradition	Frankfurt School Marxist humanism
Institutions	Goethe University Frankfurt
Doctoral students	Moishe Postone
Military career
Service	Wehrmacht
Rank	Officer aspirant

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.^[3] He belatedly published his thesis Hegels Lehre vom Menschen in 1970.^[5][6] He habilitated in 1959 with a dissertation on the political philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.^[7]

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.^[8] 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.^[9]

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.^[10] In 1993, Fetscher was honored with induction into the French Ordre des Palmes académiques.^[11] Fetscher died on 19 July 2014.^{[citation needed]}

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)

See also

• Goethe Plaque of the City of Frankfurt

References

1. Anderson, Kevin (1998). "On Marx, Hegel, and Critical Theory in Postwar Germany: A Conversation with Iring Fetscher". Studies in East European Thought. 50 (1): 11. doi:10.1023/A:1008626805846. ISSN 1573-0948. JSTOR 20099661. S2CID 141508542.
2. Anderson, Kevin (1998). "On Marx, Hegel, and Critical Theory in Postwar Germany: A Conversation with Iring Fetscher". Studies in East European Thought. 50 (1): 2. doi:10.1023/A:1008626805846. ISSN 1573-0948. JSTOR 20099661. S2CID 141508542.
3. Clarissa (2011). Clarissas Krambude: Autoren erzählen von ihren Pseudonymen (in German). novum publishing gmbh. p. 89. ISBN 978-3-99003-914-4.
4. "Zum Tod des Politikwissenschafters Iring Fetscher: Humanist in der Nachkriegszeit - Feuilleton Nachrichten - NZZ.ch" (in German). Retrieved 21 July 2014.
5. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (31 May 1981). The Berlin Phenomenology. Springer Science & Business Media. p. xc. ISBN 978-90-277-1205-9.
6. Hartmut Lehmann; Otto Gerhard Oexle (1 January 1997). Erinnerungstücke: Wege in die Vergangenheit: Rudolf Vierhaus zum 75. Geburtstag gewidmet. Böhlau Verlag Wien. p. 279. ISBN 978-3-205-98824-3.
7. Michael Schlott (1 January 1998). Wirkungen und Wertungen: Adolph Freiherr Knigge im Urteil der Nachwelt (1796-1994): eine Dokumentensammlung. Wallstein Verlag. p. 233. ISBN 978-3-89244-287-5.
8. Tom Rockmore (15 April 2008). In Kant's Wake: Philosophy in the Twentieth Century. John Wiley & Sons. p. 68. ISBN 978-1-4051-5231-0.
9. Leszek Kołakowski (1978). Main Currents of Marxism. Vol. 3: The breakdown. Clarendon Press. pp. 394 and 494. ISBN 978-0-19-824570-4.
10. Iring Fetscher: Die Geiß und die sieben Wölflein. In: Hans-Joachim Gelberg (ed.): Neues vom Rumpelstilzchen und andere Haus-Märchen von 43 Autoren. Beltz & Gelberg, Weinheim 1976, S. 13–16.
11. "Goethe-Universität trauert um Iring Fetscher" (in German). Archived from the original on 10 July 2015. Retrieved 21 July 2014.