Iring Fetscher

Iring Fetscher (4 March 1922 – 19 July 2014) was a German academic, political scientist and researcher on Hegel and Marxism.^[1][2]

Fetscher was born at Marbach am Neckar, and was brought up in Dresden. After World War II he studied at Tübingen and Paris, receiving a doctorate in 1950.^[1] He belatedly published his thesis Hegels Lehre vom Menschen in 1970.^[3][4] He habilitated in 1959 with a dissertation on the political philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.^[5]

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.^[6] Kołakowski, while taking Fetscher to be a distinguished historian of Marxism with a critical but positive attitude, does not see him as of the Frankfurt School more than notionally.^[7]

In 1976, he published his own rather different version of the fairy tale The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids by the Brothers Grimm, known as a fairy tale called, Die Geiß und die sieben Wölflein (English version as "The Goat and the Seven Young Wolves"), which is part of the children's book Update on Rumpelstiltskin and other Fairy Tales by 43 Authors, which is compiled by Hans-Joachim Gelberg, illustrated by Willi Glasauer, and published by Beltz & Gelberg. In 1993, Iring Fetscher was honored with induction into the French Order of Academic Palms (Ordre des Palmes Académiques).^[8]

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 Weinheim 1976.
• Neugier und Furcht. Versuch, mein Leben zu verstehen. Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1995, ISBN 3-455-11079-7. (Autobiography)

Notes

1. Clarissa (2011). Clarissas Krambude: Autoren erzählen von ihren Pseudonymen (in German). novum publishing gmbh. p. 89. ISBN 978-3-99003-914-4.
2. "Zum Tod des Politikwissenschafters Iring Fetscher: Humanist in der Nachkriegszeit - Feuilleton Nachrichten - NZZ.ch" (in German). Retrieved 21 July 2014.
3. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (31 May 1981). The Berlin Phenomenology. Springer Science & Business Media. p. xc. ISBN 978-90-277-1205-9.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. Leszek Kołakowski (1978). Main Currents of Marxism. Vol. 3: The breakdown. Clarendon Press. pp. 394 and 494. ISBN 978-0-19-824570-4.
8. "Goethe-Universität trauert um Iring Fetscher" (in German). Retrieved 21 July 2014.