Niklas Luhmann

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Lore & Background

Niklas Luhmann was born in Lüneburg, Free State of Prussia, where his father's family had been running a brewery for several generations. He entered the Gymnasium Johanneum at Lüneburg in 1937. In 1943, he was conscripted as a Luftwaffenhelfer in World War II and served for two years until, at the age of 17, he was taken prisoner of war by American troops in 1945. After the war Luhmann studied law at the University of Freiburg from 1946 to 1949, where he obtained a law degree, and then began a career in Lüneburg's public administration. During a sabbatical in 1961, he went to Harvard, where he met and studied under Talcott Parsons, then the world's most influential social systems theorist. In later days, Luhmann dismissed Parsons' theory, developing a rival approach of his own. Leaving the civil service in 1962, he lectured at the national Deutsche Hochschule für Verwaltungswissenschaften (University for Administrative Sciences) in Speyer, Germany. In 1965, he was offered a position at the Sozialforschungsstelle an der Universität Münster (Social Research Centre of the University of Münster), led by Helmut Schelsky. From 1965/66 he studied one semester of sociology at the University of Münster. Two earlier books were retroactively accepted as a PhD thesis and habilitation at the University of Münster in 1966, qualifying him for a university professorship. In 1968/1969, he briefly served as a lecturer at Theodor Adorno's former chair at the University of Frankfurt and then was appointed full professor of sociology at the newly founded Bielefeld University, Germany (until 1993). When asked about his research plan, he said, 'The theory of modern society. Duration 30 years. No costs.' He continued to publish after his retirement, when he finally found the time to complete his magnum opus, Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft (literally, 'The Society of Society'), which was published in 1997, and has been translated into English as Theory of Society (volume I in 2012 and volume II in 2013).

Reader's Guide

Luhmann's systems theory focuses on three topics, which are interconnected in his entire work: systems theory as societal theory, communication theory, and evolution theory. The core element of Luhmann's theory pivots around the problem of the contingency of meaning, and thereby it becomes a theory of communication. Social systems are systems of communication, and society is the most encompassing social system. Being the social system that comprises all (and only) communication, today's society is a world society. On his general theory he developed a social theory, which describes modern society as a global society that is characterized by an internal differentiation into various autonomously working functional areas such as politics, law, economics, science, religion and art. According to Luhmann, their operations can not be coordinated centrally. Much of Luhmann's work directly deals with the operations of the legal system and his autopoietic theory of law is regarded as one of the more influential contributions to the sociology of law and socio-legal studies. Luhmann is probably best known to North Americans for his debate with the critical theorist Jürgen Habermas over the potential of social systems theory. Luhmann's theory is sometimes dismissed as highly abstract and complex, particularly within the Anglophone world, whereas his work has had a more lasting influence on scholars from German-speaking countries, Scandinavia and Italy. Luhmann himself described his theory as 'labyrinthine' or 'non-linear', and claimed he was deliberately keeping his prose enigmatic to prevent it from being understood 'too quickly', which would only produce simplistic misunderstandings.

Did You Know?

• Luhmann was conscripted as a Luftwaffenhelfer in 1943 at age 15 and was taken prisoner of war by American troops in 1945 at age 17.
• Two of his earlier books were retroactively accepted as a PhD thesis and habilitation at the University of Münster in 1966, qualifying him for a university professorship.
• When asked about his research plan, Luhmann said: 'The theory of modern society. Duration 30 years. No costs.'
• His magnum opus, Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft, was published in 1997 and later translated into English as Theory of Society (volume I in 2012, volume II in 2013).
• Luhmann wrote more than 70 books and nearly 400 scholarly articles on subjects including law, economy, politics, art, religion, ecology, mass media, and love.