The Golden Age of Phenomenology at the New School for Social Research, 1954-1973 by Lester Embree

Author:Lester Embree [Embree, Lester]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780821422045
Publisher: Ohio University Press
Published: 2017-01-15T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

HELMUT WAGNER

Wagner and the New School

George Psathas

Helmut Wagner (1904–1989) was of the old school: a scholar trained to explore deeply and intensively into the field in which he was reading and researching, to provide detailed examinations of the works of major figures in such a way as to make them understandable to others, to bring this work to the attention of other scholars, and in the process to demystify the field itself.

In the course of decades of writing and teaching, he achieved most of his goals, although he did not live to see his work on the fourth volume of Schutz’s Collected Papers come to publication. After preparing from 1974 to 1979 in manuscript form an extended intellectual biography of Schutz, he had to reduce the manuscript considerably in order to be able to publish Alfred Schutz: An Intellectual Biography in the University of Chicago Press Heritage of Sociology series.1 This work in my view stands as a model in its field by bringing Schutz’s life, his training, and the influences on him to a clearer understanding.

His training at the New School and his work with other German-trained scholars enabled him to achieve the professional goals he had set for himself. I was always impressed with his dedication and consistency, his thorough and careful research, and his selfless desire to bring phenomenology to sociology in the most detailed and vigorous way that he could.

Helmut was born in Dresden, Germany, in 1904 and received much of his education there, graduating from a four-year technical college where he received training in fields in which he could later earn a living. He also undertook studies in the social sciences. He was a critic of developments in Germany and was soon declared “an enemy of the state,” lost his citizenship, and had to leave Germany in 1934. He moved to Switzerland and found employment with the Swiss armed forces, which had use for his technical skills. At the same time, he pursued his interest in the social sciences and later emigrated to the United States to earn his living as a toolmaker. However, in 1951 he enrolled at the New School for graduate study and his life was transformed. He met and studied with Alfred Schutz and Carl Mayer while there, but it was Schutz who attracted him the most and whose work he was destined to continue to study and write about for the rest of his academic life. He studied sociology, social psychology, and philosophy, earning his MA in 1953 and his PhD in 1955.

He taught for a short time at the New School before accepting a position at Bucknell University, where he remained from 1956 to 1964. He then moved to Hobart and William Smith Colleges, where he taught and administered until his retirement in 1985. There he also served as chairman of the Department of Anthropology and Sociology.

We became acquainted during this latter time and began to pursue common interests in phenomenology, hoping to introduce this perspective into our respective studies.

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