LANDSHUT, SIEGFRIED

LANDSHUT, SIEGFRIED (1897–1968), German Marxian scholar and sociologist. Born in Strasbourg, Landshut studied economics, philosophy, and social science and became assistant lecturer at the University of Hamburg in 1927, but immigrated to Palestine in 1933, where he did research at the Hebrew University. In 1951 he was reinstated as a professor of sociology and political science at the University of Hamburg. Landshut edited the early writings of Marx under the title Karl Marx: Die Fruehschriften (1932) and a selection from the writings of Tocqueville under the title A. de Tocqueville: Das Zeitalter der Gleichheit (1954). In his early work, Kritik der Soziologie (1929), he considers liberty and equality as the initial sociological concepts, derived from the thought of the 18^th century and transformed in the 19^th century by Marx. The disappearance of societal diversification and the fusion of the state with society, according to Landshut, have rendered all traditional institutions highly questionable. Landshut also wrote a biography of Karl Marx which was included in Coleman's Kleine Biographien (1932), Gemeinschaftssiedlungen in Palaestina (1934), and Jewish Communities in the Muslim Countries of the Middle East (1950).

add. bibliography:

R. Nicolaysen, Siegfried Landshut – Die Wiederentdeckung der Politik (1997); R. Nicolaysen, Polis und Moderne – Siegfried Landshut in heutiger Sicht (2000); J.M. Krois, G. Lohse, and R. Nicolaysen, Die Wissenschaftler – Ernst Cassirer, Bruno Snel, Siegfried Landshut (1994).

[Werner J. Cahnman /

Bjoern Siegel (2^nd ed.)]