René König (5 July 1906 – 21 March 1992) was a German sociologist. He was very influential on West German sociology after 1949.

Biography

Born in

Magdeburg Magdeburg (; ) is the Capital city, capital of the Germany, German States of Germany, state Saxony-Anhalt. The city is on the Elbe river. Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor, Otto I, the first Holy Roman Emperor and founder of the Archbishopric of Mag ...

, he 1925 took up Philosophy, Psychology, Ethnology, and Islamic Studies at the Universities of Vienna and Berlin. He gained his doctorate (''Dr. phil.'') 1930 at the Berlin University. As an enemy of the Nazis, he could not obtain his post-doctoral degree (''Habilitation'') in the Reich, so he emigrated to Switzerland in 1937 and passed the examination at the university of

Zürich Zurich (; ) is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich. , the municipality had 448,664 inhabitants. The ...

, 1938. By then, he was strongly influenced by

Émile Durkheim David Émile Durkheim (; or ; 15 April 1858 – 15 November 1917) was a French Sociology, sociologist. Durkheim formally established the academic discipline of sociology and is commonly cited as one of the principal architects of modern soci ...

, Maurice Halbwachs, and Marcel Mauss. 1949, he was called to the chair of

Sociology Sociology is the scientific study of human society that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of Interpersonal ties, social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. The term sociol ...

at Cologne University, where he built up what was to be known later as the "Cologne School" (''Kölner Schule'') and established the '' Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie''. He never left this university, in spite of several calls, and became Professor Emeritus in 1974, dying at

Cologne Cologne ( ; ; ) is the largest city of the States of Germany, German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with nearly 1.1 million inhabitants in the city pr ...

1992. He never gave up cultural studies writing the first sociology of fashion, but at the same time he was a German pioneer of empirical methods, as against the ideological biases of many contemporal colleagues. He played as well an important role in the

International Sociological Association The International Sociological Association (ISA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to scientific purposes in the field of sociology and social sciences. It is an international sociological body, gathering both individuals and national sociol ...

. He was the fifth president of ISA (1962-1966). Besides, he was en engaged liberal writer and essayist, and translated the novelist Giovanni Verga from the Italian into German. The René König Society (''René-König-Gesellschaft'') is publishing a complete edition of his writings.

References

1906 births 1992 deaths German sociologists Commanders Crosses of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany German male writers Presidents of the International Sociological Association {{germany-academic-bio-stub