Strangeness as home. Georg Simmel in Berlin

Abstract

Georg Simmel is the sociologist of the city. He spent almost his entire life in Berlin where he tried to make an academic career at his home town university. He had from early on remarkable success and published a number of classical books, most well-known among them his “Philosophy of Money.” But the intellectual merits did not translate into professional success. In Berlin he remained a “Privatdozent”—a teaching person without salary—and an “Extraordinarius”—a professor not remunerated. Simmel’s status inconsistency—a globally famous philosopher and sociologist yet without a full professorship—expressed an interesting meritocratic formula: failure by success. Simmel could endure this complicated fate only by putting on a mask which made strangeness his home. This thesis is developed in three steps: First, by looking on young Simmel who combined intellectual success with critical reception, in short: philosophe maudit. Secondly, by referring to his private life and life style as far as this can be reconstructed at all because Simmel turned all matters private into a secret. Thirdly, by discussing his predominate topics (city, prostitution, sociability, secret, and the stranger) we try to show how he made his personal existence possible philosophically, sociologically, and psychologically.