Johann Max Emanuel Plenge | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1874-06-07)7 June 1874 |
| Died | 11 September 1963(1963-09-11) (aged 89) |
| Philosophical work | |
| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Hegelianism,nationalism |
| Main interests | Sociology |
Johann Max Emanuel Plenge (7 June 1874 – 11 September 1963) was a Germansociologist. He was professor of political economy at theUniversity of Münster.
In his book1789 and 1914, Plenge contrasted the 'Ideas of 1789' (liberty) and the 'Ideas of 1914' (organisation). He argued: "Under the necessity of war, socialist ideas have been driven into German economic life, its organisation has grown together into a new spirit, and so the assertion of our nation for mankind has given birth to the idea of 1914, the idea of German organisation, the national unity of state socialism".[1] To Plenge, as for many other German nationalists and socialists,organization meant socialism and a planned economy (central direction). He regarded the war between Germany and England as a war between opposite principles, and believed that the "struggle for victory were new forces born out of the advanced economic life of the nineteenth century: socialism and organization".[2]: 127
Plenge was born into a prominent patrician family inBremen. In the early 1890s he studied atLeipzig University underKarl Lamprecht andKarl Bucherer. He then studied underHeinrich Dietzel at theUniversity of Bonn, receiving his doctorate in 1897. Around 1900 he visitedBrussels andParis, completingGründung und Geschichte des Credit Mobilier (Foundation And History ofCrédit Mobilier), which he submitted as his habilitation thesis. At this time he also developed an interest in the work ofHenri de Saint-Simon, the Frenchutopian socialist. He was also influenced byJohann Karl Rodbertus,Lorenz von Stein andHouston Stewart Chamberlain.[3] He took an 18-month study tour of the United States from 1903–1905.
Plenge set up the Research Institute for Organisational Studies and Sociology. In 1921, coffee manufacturerLudwig Roselius financed the institute with 250,000 Reichsmark capital stock, 30,000 Marks for basic purchases, and another 100,000 Reichsmark for the first five years of operation.[4] Plenge developed acult of personality around himself, placing a bronze bust of himself in the institute.[5] PhilosopherJosef Pieper became his student and then his assistant, although he was threatened with dismissal when he did not show the required degree of hero worship for Plenge.[5]
Plenge was Ph. D. advisor ofKurt Schumacher and an ancestor of today's right-wing tendency in SPD, theSeeheimer Kreis. Plenge had a strong influence; the Marxist theorist and SPD politicianPaul Lensch, along nationalistic lines.
Friedrich Hayek discusses Plenge in his most popular bookThe Road to Serfdom (1944).
Later his socialist views became verynationalistic, and he is regarded one of the most important intellectual forebears ofNational Socialism (Nazism).
