Jörg Kammler (†), a Kassel political scientist of the first hour

Kammler belonged to the second generation of the new academic discipline established in Germany after 1945. He represented it in the succession of the conception conceived by Wolfgang Abendroth in Marburg as democratic science. He worked there as an assistant from 1965 to 1967 and  received his doctorate with a thesis on the young socialist theorist Georg Lukács. He was instrumental in the creation of the Marburg "Introduction to Political Science" (6th edition 1982), which at the time was one of the rare attempts at a foundation of political science. He edited with Frank Benseler  the five-volume edition of Georg Lukács' "Poltische Schriften."

A lifelong compelling motive for Jörg Kammler's critical engagement with contemporary German history and with the thoughts and actions of its protagonists was his father's culpably exposed function in the "Third Reich" ("General of the Waffen-SS" and "Head of SS Construction"). It is in this context that his works on National Socialism in Kassel's city history and on resistance to the Nazi regime were written. They are not least documents of a persistent effort to determine the cause of political misanthropy and to explore strategies to combat it.

Text: Hans-Manfred Bock