Marx on Campus: A Short History of the Marburg School

Lothar Peter, Prof. Dr. phil. (1942), completed his Ph.D. at the University of Marburg under Wolfgang Abendroth and Heinz Maus. He taught sociology at the University of Bremen until 2005, and has published numerous articles and books on the subject.

• PrefaceAbbreviationsIntroductionIngar Solty1 Abendroth School or Marburg School?1 What Constitutes a School of Thought?2 Why the ‘Marburg School’?2 First Phase: Gradual Formation, 1950 to the Mid-1960s1 Social and Political Context2 Wolfgang Abendroth (1906–85)3 Students, Doctoral Candidates, Staff3 Second Phase: Emergence of an ‘Epistemic Community’, Mid-1960s to Early 1970s1 Social and Political Context2 Werner Hofmann (1922–69)3 Heinz Maus (1911–78)4 Abendroth, Hofmann, and Maus’s Understanding of Marx and Marxism5 The Marburg and Frankfurt Schools: ‘Social Critique’ or ‘Artistic Critique’?6 Dominance of the Marxist Paradigm4 Third Phase: Continuity and New Challenges. Abendroth’s Retirement to the Early 1980s1 Social and Political Context2 The Political Sociology of Worker Consciousness and the Trade Unions (Frank Deppe)3 The History of German Social Democracy (Georg Fülberth and Jürgen Harrer)4 Studying Fascism (Reinhard Kühnl)5 The Political Sociology of Latin America (Dieter Boris)6 External Pressure, Administrative Interference, Difficult Encounters7 A Controversial History of the Trade Unions8 Theoretical Conflict: The Identity of Marxism5 The Marburg School since the 1980s1 A Premature Farewell2 A Contribution to Constitutional Law (Peter Römer)3 Marburg in the Historikerstreit (Reinhard Kühnl)4 Activities and Interactions in the Academic Sphere6 Fourth Phase: From the ‘Epochal Rupture’ of 1989–90 to the Early 2000s1 Social and Political Context2 Confronting the ‘Epochal Rupture’ (Georg Fülberth)3 Reacting to a Changed Situation4 Excursus: A Conversation between Ulrich Beck and Frank Deppe on the State of Political Opposition in Germany7 Scholarly Focuses since the 1990s1 Research Activity and a New Conflict2 Social Movements in Latin America (Dieter Boris)3 Capitalism and Kapitalistik (Georg Fülberth)4 Political Thought from the Late Nineteenth to the Early Twenty-First Century (Frank Deppe)8 ConclusionBibliographyIndex

“Peter’s Marx on Campus is notable as the first appearance of a book in English dedicated to the Marburg School [...] The aim of the volume is, as Peter puts it, ‘to remedy this circumstance by describing for the reader how the Marburg School helped to keep the critique of capitalism and society alive during a period in (West) German history when such critique earned its proponents more outrage, scorn, and rejection than it did reputation or public recognition’ [...] The book successfully shows the Marburg School to be a genuine ‘epistemic community’ and provides a useful account of its development, summarizing key works and the career arcs of its major figures."—Bo Harvey, in: Marx & Philosophy Society, 7 February 2023.