Hans Heinrich Gerth (24 April 1908 - 29 December 1978)
Born in Kassel, he studied in Heidelberg with Karl Jaspers, Emil Lederer, Alfred Weber and Karl Mannheim in particular; in London and Frankfurt am Main with Paul Tillich and Adolph Loewe. He worked as an assistant at the University of Kiel after his promotion in 1933. From 1934 to 1935 he worked as a journalist at the Berliner Tagblatt, as the Berlin Correspondent for the Chicago Daily News and as a freelancer for the Berliner Tagblatt and the Frankfurter Zeitung from 1936-37. In 1938 he immigrated to the US via England. There he taught sociology at the University of Illinois and subsequently at the University of Wisconsin until 1940. He was especially dedicated to translating the works of Max Weber and worked with C. Wright Mills. In the meantime he held visiting professorships at various American universities as well as in Frankfurt am Main and Tokyo. He returned to Germany in 1971 and worked as a professor for sociology in Frankfurt am Main until 1975. The collection of source material in the Archive consists of copies, the originals of which are in possession of Mrs Gerth. It consists of notes and assignments from Gerth’s years of study, taken from Mannheim’s “Liberalism Seminar” amongst others. A collection of Gerth’s newspaper articles is also available. The organisation of these materials was supported by research funds of the University of Konstanz. An index is available.