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Initially the study of Voegelin’s work IN GERMANY developed
slowly. But now there are research centers at the Eric Voegelin
Library of the Friedrich Alexander University in Erlangen, the
political science (staatswissenschaftliche) faculty of the University
of Erfurt, and, in 1990, the Eric-Voegelin-Archiv of the Geschwister-Scholl-Insitut
for Political Science, was founded with the support of the Bavarian
Ministry of Culture, the Ludwig-Maximilians-University, and the
Fritz Thyssen Foundation.
The University of Munich, where Voegelin taught for a decade,
is particularly suited to be the site of a more intensive engagement
with his work: Voegelin founded its institute for political science
which, in many areas, bears the stamp of his influence to this
day. In 1982 the social science faculty transformed Voegelin's
professorial chair into an international guest professorship.
Such scholars as Hans Jonas, Geoffrey Barraclough, George McGovern,
Wjatscheslaw Daschitschew, Juan Linz, and Hermann Lübbe have
been appointed to Eric Voegelin Guest Professorship.
IN
ORDER TO EXTEND and deepen its contacts with international Voegelin
research the archive has received support from a circle of correspondents.
At present this circle includes the following members:
DR. PAUL
CARINGELLA
Palo
Alto/CA, USA
DR. SANDRO CHIGNOLA
Università degli Studi di Verona, Italy
PROF. BARRY COOPER
University of Calgary, Canada
PROF. GUISEPPE DUSO
Università di Padova, Italy
PROF. DANTE GERMINO +
Amsterdam, the Netherlands
PROF. THOMAS HEILKE
University of Kansas, USA
PROF. MANFRED HENNIGSEN
University of Hawai’i, USA
PROF. M. CASTRO HENRIQUES
Universidade Catolica Portuguesa, Portugal
PROF. THOMAS HOLLWECK
University of Colorado at Boulder, USA
PROF.
HENNING OTTMANN
Universität München, Germany
DR. GEOFFREY L. PRICE +
University of Manchester, UK
PROF. ROBERTO RACINARO
Università degli Studi di Salerno, Italy
PROF. ELLIS SANDOZ
Louisiana State University, USA
PROF. PETER VON SIVERS
University of Utah, USA
DR. TASHIO TERAJIMA
Osaka, Japan
PROF. GIANFRANCESCO ZANETTI
Università degli Studi di Bologna, Italy
IN
ORDER TO FACILTATE a deeper scientific engagement with Voegelin's
work the Eric-Voegelin-Archiv is dedicated to the construction
of a supporting infrastructure. The furnishing of an Eric Voegelin
library is well in progress. To date the following materials are
present in the archive:
Primary
Sources
Eric
Voegelin Papers, located in the archives of the Hoover Institute,
on 101 microfilms (biographical documents, correspondence, lectures,
sketches, essays, book reviews, teaching material, dissertations,
newspaper articles, etc.)
Voegelin's independent publications, or their translation into
German
Approximately sixty essays, treatises, and book reviews written
by Voegelin between 1922 and 1985
Lectures, transcribed or recorded, from the period in which he
taught in Munich
Unpublished manuscripts and sketches
English, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Polish translations
of Voegelin's work
Secondary
Sources
The
most important monographs and anthologies devoted to Voegelin's
work and his scholarly interests
Several hundred essays from German and foreign newspapers and
anthologies, above all from the United States, Italy, and the
former West Germany
A comprehensive collection of book reviews on Voegelin's publications
THE CENTRAL FOCUS OF THE ARCHIVE’S WORK is the publication
of Voegelin’s writings, especially the editing and supervision
of translations of his English works into German. This work is
carried out within three series of works, two of which published
by the Fink Publishing House in Munich, and one by the Archive
itself.
THE FIRST, AND THEREFORE THE OLDEST SERIES, Periagoge: Voegelin
Texts, has several points of thematic focus. The first brings
new editions of important works of Voegelin which have been out
of print for many years.-In addition to The Political Religions
(1938/1992) and Science, Politics, and Gnosis (1959/1999), a new
German edition of The New Science of Politics (1959) was published
in 2004. A second thematic focus is devoted to Voegelin’s
posthumously published writings. Among others, these works include
translations of central portions from the several thousand page
long The History of Political Ideas, the original English text
of which was published between 1997 and 1999 in the United States.
The focus of the Periagoge series is on the German translation
of Voegelin’s Order and History. This work, edited by Peter
J. Opitz and Dietmar Herz and planned for ten volumes, began to
appear in the Winter of 2001 and was completed in the Spring of
2005. The individual editors are internationally recognized experts
on Voegelin’s work: Jan Assmann, Jörg Jeremias, Friedhelm
Hartenstein, Jürgen Gebhardt, Thomas Hollweck, Manfred Henningsen,
Paul Caringella, and Gilbert Weiss.
IN THE YEAR 2000 a second series of writings of important works
on Voegelin was inaugurated under the name, Periagoge: Voegelin-Studies.
The first work in this series was a study by Gilbert Weiss, Theory,
Relevance, and Truth. A Reconstruction of the Correspondence between
Eric Voegelin and Alfred Schütz (1938-59). Other works have
followed: the international standard bibliography, Eric Voegelin:
International Bibliography 1921-2000, by Geoffrey Price, for many
years director of the Centre for Voegelin Studies at the University
of Manchester, a study of the founding of the study of political
science at the university of Munich by Thies Marsen, Between “Reeducation”
amd Political Philosophy, Christian Schwaabes’s study, Freedom
and Reason in Unreconciled Modernity. Max Weber's Critical Decisionism
as a Challenge to Political Liberalism, and Michaela Rehm’s,
Dialecticians of the Enlightenment. Rousseau’s Bourgeois
Profession of Faith.
SINCE 1996, financially supported by the Eric-Voegelin-Archiv
e.V. and the Luise Betty Voegelin Trust, the archive has published
a series of Occasional Papers under the editorship of Peter J.
Opitz and Dietmar Herz. In addition to printing smaller works
of Voegelin, previously unpublished or works no longer in print
(lectures, treatises, and correspondences), the series serves
as an international forum for the engagement with Voegelin’s
philosophy. Thus contributions to this series appear in the major
western languages. The great resonance which the Occasional Papers
have found is demonstrated by the fact that more than forty publications
by German, American, and Italian authors have since appeared-
A FURTHER TASK of the archive is the organisation of scholarly
conferences. In the first decade of its work the archive sponsored
a number of international Eric Voegelin symposia which brought
scholars from various countries together for lectures and the
exchange of ideas on the various aspects of his work. Several
of these symposia served as a scholarly accompaniment to the ongoing
edition of Order and History, others were devoted to more general
philosophical themes.
AS
A SUPPLEMENT to scholarly conferences the archive organizes individual
lectures: among the lecturers of the past years were Guiseppe
Duso (University of Padua), Gilbert Weiss (University of Salzburg),
Dante Germino (University of Amsterdam), Günter Winkler (University
of Vienna), and William Thompson (Duquesne University, Pittsburgh).
A
SPECIAL LECTURE SERIES was inaugurated in the Winter of 1995 under
the title of “Meetings with Eric Voegelin”. Its primary
purpose is to provide younger scholars with a forum where their
work and research can be presented and discussed. Beginning in
2005 internationally renowned scholars will be invited to hold
an annual Eric Voegelin Memorial Lecture.
EVEN BEFORE THE COMPLETION OF ONE OF THE ARCHIVE’S MOST
IMPORTANT PROJECTS, the German edition of Voegelin’s Order
and History, the archive began to direct its activities to a second
important theme: research into the connection between politics,
culture, and religion. Voegelin had very early pointed to the
centrality of this connection and, in a number of studies, beginning
with the cosmological empires of the Near East to the totalitarian
empires of the 20th century, had analysed their structure. The
intention to investigate further developments in the relationship
between politics, culture, and religion (i.e., further derailments)
in the 21st century emerges naturally from the tradition of these
studies. The central focus is on three material complexes: the
relationship of politics and religion in the pluralistic democracies
of the West, the effects on Western societies caused by the growing
immigration from non-Christian civilizations, and the problems
that have occurred between civilizations as the result of the
renaissance of religion in many non-western societies. The archive
is engaged in an intensive international cooperation for research
into these problems. Thus, in the Spring of 2004 and at the archive’s
initiative, an international research network was founded consisting
of scholars from German, Austrian, and Italian universities, and
from various other scholarly organizations.
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