Otto Kirchheimer

Otto Kirchheimer (11 November 1905, Heilbronn – 22 November 1965, Washington, D.C.) was a German jurist of Jewish ancestry and political scientist of the Frankfurt School whose work essentially covered the state and its constitution.

Kirchheimer attended school in Heilbronn and Heidelberg from 1912 to 1924.

He then studied law and sociology in Munich, Cologne, Berlin and Bonn.

In 1928 he completed his studies with a doctorate (Dr. jur., magna cum laude) from the University of Bonn for a thesis titled Zur Staatslehre des Sozialismus und Bolschewismus (On the State Theory of Socialism and Bolshevism).

His doctoral advisor was Carl Schmitt.

Kirchheimer was considered his "favourite student".

From 1930 to 1933, Kirchheimer was an employee of the social democratic journal Die Gesellschaft and lecturer in political science.

His essay from 1930 ''Weimar und was dann?

Entstehung und Gegenwart der Weimarer Verfassung'' (Weimar and then what? Origin and present of the Weimar Constitution), in which Kirchheimer described the Weimar Constitution as an unsustainable foundation of the state, was widely discussed.

Kirchheimer was together with Ernst Fraenkel and Franz Leopold Neumann close to Carl Schmitt.

From 1932 to 1933 he also worked as a lawyer in Berlin.

Kirchheimer had already in his youth a tendency towards socialism.

Later, he became a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany.

During the Weimar Republic, the young Kirchheimer came to prominence with sensational analyses of the relationship between social structures and constitutions.

In 1932 Kirchheimer published an essay entitled Legalität und Legitimität (Legality and Legitimacy) in the socialist journal Die Gesellschaft (Die Gesellschaft, Band 2, Heft 7, 1932).

Carl Schmitt adopted this title for a famous essay of the same name.

He explicitly referred to Kirchheimer.

Schmitt had also repeatedly quoted him elsewhere.

After the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, Kirchheimer emigrated to Paris in 1934.

Here he worked for four years as a researcher in the Institute for Social Research.

He began working with Georg Rusche on Sozialstruktur und Strafvollzug (Punishment and Social Structure).

On 11 November 1937, Kirchheimer emigrated to the United States with his wife Hilde Kirchheimer and his daughter Hanna (born in 1930).

In New York, Kirchheimer continued from 1937 to 1942 his work for the Institute of Social Research as a research assistant in law and social sciences.

At the same time, he was a lecturer at Columbia University.

On December 6, 1938 his German citizenship and that of his wife Hilde and daughter Hanna was officially revoked.

The Rusche-Kirchheimer version of Punishment and Social Structure was published in 1939 as the first English-language publication of the institute.

In the meantime Kirchheimer had broken off contact with his teacher and mentor Carl Schmitt, who had risen to become the "crown lawyer of the Third Reich".

However, the marriage was ended by divorce on May 8, 1941 in Tlaxcala, Mexico.

In 1943, Kirchheimer moved with his second wife, Anne Rosenthal, to Washington, D.C., where their son Peter was born in 1945.

He initially worked part-time for a year (1943 to 1944), then full-time from 1944 to 1952 as a research analyst in the Research and Analysis Branch of the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA.

His intelligence reports were later republished in Secret Reports on Nazi Germany: The Frankfurt School Contribution to the War Effort.

On 16 November 1943 Kirchheimer received American citizenship.

He was a visiting lecturer in sociology at Wellesley College (1943).

He also worked as a lecturer at the American University (1951 to 1952) and at Howard University (1952 to 1954).

Kirchheimer worked as a research analyst at the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA, starting in World War II and continuing to 1952.

From 1952 to 1956 Otto Kirchheimer was head of the Central Europe Section in the State Department.

Kirchheimer left the OSS and accepted a visiting professorship at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research (1954).

The next year he became full professor of Political Science there (until 1961).

Here he wrote his book ''Political Justice.

The Use of Legal Procedures for Political Ends'', which was completed in 1961.