Herbert Franz Schurmann (June 21, 1926 – August 20, 2010) was an American sociologist and historian who was best known for his research and writings about Communist China during the Cold War period. Schurmann taught at the University of California, Berkeley, in the departments of Sociology and History for 38 years. He also served a term as the head of the Center for Chinese Studies. He was an early opponent of the Vietnam War, and was the first American professor to visit Hanoi during the bombing raids there. He co-founded the

Pacific News Service Pacific News Service (PNS) was an American nonprofit alternative news media organization. PNS ceased operations in 2017. The organization was located in Berkeley, California. History PNS was founded in 1969 by historian and sociologist F ...

in 1970 together with author

Orville Schell Orville Hickock Schell III (born May 20, 1940) is an American writer, academic, and activist. He is known for his works on China, and is the Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York. He previousl ...

, serving as editor and commentator, and wrote the weekly "Predictions" column.Egelko, Bob
"Historian and China expert Franz Schurmann dies"
'' San Francisco Chronicle'', August 23, 2010. Accessed August 27, 2010.

Early life and education

Schurmann was born on June 21, 1926, in

Astoria, Queens Astoria is a neighborhood in the western portion of the New York City borough of Queens. Astoria is bounded by the East River and is adjacent to three other Queens neighborhoods: Long Island City to the southwest, Sunnyside to the southeast, ...

, New York, and grew up in

Bloomfield, Connecticut Bloomfield is a suburb of Hartford in Hartford County, Connecticut, United States. The town's population was 21,535 at the 2020 census. Bloomfield is best known as the headquarters of healthcare services company Cigna. History Originally lan ...

. He developed fluency in as many as 12 languages, acquiring them from his Slovenian father who spoke five languages himself, his mother who was an immigrant from Germany, and from the dialects spoken in the

melting pot The melting pot is a monocultural metaphor for a heterogeneous society becoming more homogeneous, the different elements "melting together" with a common culture; an alternative being a homogeneous society becoming more heterogeneous through ...

community where he was raised. He briefly attended

Trinity College Trinity College may refer to: Australia * Trinity Anglican College, an Anglican coeducational primary and secondary school in , New South Wales * Trinity Catholic College, Auburn, a coeducational school in the inner-western suburbs of Sydney, New ...

in nearby Hartford, Connecticut. He was drafted by the United States Army during World War II and was assigned to learn

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

, serving as a newspaper censor during the American

occupation of Japan Japan was occupied and administered by the victorious Allies of World War II from the 1945 surrender of the Empire of Japan at the end of the war until the Treaty of San Francisco took effect in 1952. The occupation, led by the United States w ...

. He befriended

Stefan Brecht Stefan Sebastian Brecht (November 3, 1924 – April 13, 2009) was a German-born American poet, critic and scholar of theatre. Life and career The son of playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht and actress Helene Weigel, Stefan Brecht was born in Ber ...

during his Army service and met

Thomas Mann Paul Thomas Mann ( , ; ; 6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novella ...

and other German émigrés at the California home of Stefan's father

Bertolt Brecht Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a pl ...

. After completing his military service, Schurmann attended Harvard University where he was awarded a Ph.D. in

Asian studies Asian studies is the term used usually in North America and Australia for what in Europe is known as Oriental studies. The field is concerned with the Asian people, their cultures, languages, history and politics. Within the Asian sphere, Asian ...

, which he was able to attend using his G.I. Bill benefits as a veteran.Weber, Bruce
"Franz Schurmann, Cold War Expert on China, Dies at 84"
'' The New York Times'', August 26, 2010. Accessed August 27, 2010.Staff
"PNS Co-founder Franz Schurmann Dies"

New America Media New America Media (NAM) was a multimedia ethnic news agency and a coalition of ethnic media. Founded in 1996 by the nonprofit Pacific News Service, NAM was headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in Los Angeles, New York and Washington, ...

, August 23, 2010. Accessed August 27, 2010.

Career

During the late 1950s, Schurmann spent two years exploring

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...

on horseback, where he documented a blue-eyed, blond-haired tribe that descended from the invasions by Genghis Khan, a history that he recounted in his 1962 book ''The Mongols of Afghanistan: An Ethnography of the Moghôls and Related Peoples of Afghanistan''. He was an early opponent of the Vietnam War, founding the Berkeley Faculty Peace Committee in 1965 and visiting North Vietnam with author and political activist Mary McCarthy in 1968. In 1967, Schurmann signed a letter declaring his intention to refuse to pay taxes in protest against the U.S. war against Vietnam, and urging other people to also take this stand. His major work '' Ideology and Organization in Communist China'' was published in 1966, just as Mao's Cultural Revolution was starting, and was revised and enlarged in 1968 and 1971. A widely influential analysis, the book applied the sociological insights of

Max Weber Maximilian Karl Emil Weber (; ; 21 April 186414 June 1920) was a German sociologist, historian, jurist and political economist, who is regarded as among the most important theorists of the development of modern Western society. His ideas prof ...

to interviews Schurmann conducted in Hong Kong with refugees and wide reading in Chinese newspapers and documents. The book demonstrates how Mao Zedong's "dialectical conception of Chinese society" structured his organizational approach to the Chinese Communist Party and the government. The book argued that a "consistent yet changing ideology" created a web of organization which covered and penetrated all aspects of Chinese society, building from the 1930s.''Ideology and Organization in Communist China'' (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966; revised and enlarged, 1968, 1971 He edited the three-volume series ''The China Reader'' with

, a student of his who became an author and China expert in his own right. Together with Schell, he established the Pacific News Service in 1970, with the goal of providing Americans with more detailed coverage of news from Asia and Latin America. The service created

in 1996, a multimedia ethnic news agency and a coalition of

ethnic media Ethnic media is media fashioned with a particular ethnic minority group or ethnic minority community in mind. Definition Academic Yu Shi tenders an operational definition for ethnic media: “Ethnic media are often regarded as media ''by and fo ...

organizations. His 1974 work ''The Logic of World Power'' provided a summary of international relations following World War II. ''The Foreign Politics of Richard Nixon'', a book he wrote in the 1970s about the U.S. President's role in foreign affairs, was published in 1987. Schurmann wrote hundreds of columns for Pacific News Service about the development and goals of

militant Islam Jihadism is a neologism which is used in reference to "militant Islamic movements that are perceived as existentially threatening to the West" and "rooted in political Islam."Compare: Appearing earlier in the Pakistani and Indian media, W ...

. He was able to read written Arabic and would refer to Arabic-language press in his reporting.

Death

He died at age 84 on August 20, 2010, at his home in San Francisco due to complications of

Alzheimer's disease Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease that usually starts slowly and progressively worsens. It is the cause of 60–70% of cases of dementia. The most common early symptom is difficulty in remembering recent events. As ...

and Parkinson's disease. He and his wife of 42 years, journalist Sandy Close, had two sons.

Publications

* ''Economic Structure of the Yuan Dynasty'', 1956 *''The Politics of Escalation in Vietnam,'' with Peter Dale Scott and Reginald Zelnik. Fawcett, 1966. *''Ideology and Organization in Communist China'', 1968 *''Imperial China: The Decline of the Last Dynasty and the Origins of Modern China, the 18th and 19th Centuries''. 1967. (with

). First in The China Reader series. *
Republican China: Nationalism, War, and the Rise of Communism, 1911-1949''
(with

). 1967 Second in The China Reader series. *''Communist China: Revolutionary Reconstruction and International Confrontation, 1949 to the Present'' (with Orville Schell) (1968). Third in The China Reader series. * ''China: An interpretive history, from the beginnings to the fall of Han'', with Joseph R. Levenson, 1969 * ''People's China: Social experimentation, politics, entry onto the world scene 1966 through 1972'', (1974). *
The Logic of World Power: An Inquiry into the Origins, Currents, and Contradictions of World Politics
'' Pantheon, 1974. *''The Foreign Politics of Richard Nixon: The Grand Design'', Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1987. *
American Soul
' (a personal narrative). 2001.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Schurmann, Franz Historians from New York (state) American sociologists American tax resisters Mongolists American foreign policy writers American male non-fiction writers News agency founders American anti–Vietnam War activists University of California, Berkeley faculty Harvard University alumni Trinity College (Connecticut) alumni United States Army personnel of World War II United States Army soldiers Writers from San Francisco People from Astoria, Queens People from Bloomfield, Connecticut Neurological disease deaths in California Deaths from Parkinson's disease Deaths from dementia in California Deaths from Alzheimer's disease 1926 births 2010 deaths Asian studies Activists from California Historians from California Historians from Connecticut