Editing Helmut Schelsky (section)

==Biography==
Schelsky was born in [[Chemnitz]], [[Kingdom of Saxony|Saxony]]. He turned to [[social philosophy]] and even more to sociology, as elaborated at the [[University of Leipzig]] by [[Hans Freyer]] (the "[[Leipzig school (sociology)|Leipzig School]]"). Having earned his doctorate in 1935 (thesis [tr.]: ''The theory of community in the 1796 [[natural law]] by [[Johann Gottlieb Fichte|Fichte]]''), in 1939 he qualified as a lecturer ("''Habilitation''") with a thesis on the political thought of [[Thomas Hobbes]] at the [[University of Königsberg]]. He was called up in 1941, so did not take up his first chair of Sociology at the (then German) [[Reichsuniversität Straßburg]] in 1944.

After the fall of the [[Third Reich]] in 1945, Schelsky joined the [[German Red Cross]] and formed its effective ''Suchdienst'' (service to trace down missing persons). In 1949 he became a professor at the [[Hamburg]] "Hochschule für Arbeit und Politik", in 1953 at [[Hamburg University]], and in 1960 he went to the [[University of Münster]]. There he headed what was then the biggest West German centre for social research, in [[Dortmund]].

In 1970, Schelsky accepted the position of a professor of sociology at the newly founded [[Bielefeld University]], which created the only German full "Faculty of Sociology", as well as the "Centre of Interdisciplinarian Research" ("Zentrum für Interdisziplinäre Forschung" [ZiF] at [[Rheda, Germany|Rheda]]), planned to be a 'German Harvard'. However, his new university changed very much, due to the years of student unrest all over Europe and North America, so Schelsky returned to Münster in anger in 1973 and stayed there for another five years. He wrote several more books, against the [[Utopianism|Utopian]] way to approach Sociology, as fostered by the [[Frankfurt School]], and on the [[Sociology of Law]]. 

He died in [[Münster]] in 1984.