Ratzenhofer, Gustav (1842–1904)

Abstract

Besides Ludwig Gumplowicz, the Viennese‐born Gustav Ratzenhofer is the best‐known representative of the so‐called Austrian Struggle or Conflict School. After only a few years of formal schooling and an apprenticeship as clockmaker (his father's business), Ratzenhofer entered the Austrian Army in 1859. In a highly successful military career he rose to the position of a lieutenant field marshal and, a few years before his retirement, was also appointed president of the military supreme court in Vienna. During his time in the army Ratzenhofer acquired a first‐hand knowledge of the national struggles which were increasingly besetting the Austro‐Hungarian Empire. His political worldview was marked by a tension between the commitment to the liberal ideals of the revolution of 1848 and the conviction that a strong, centralized state was needed to counteract the centrifugal forces in the Habsburg monarchy. Before Ratzenhofer turned to sociology he had written numerous treatises on military history and strategy (e.g., Ratzenhofer 1881) and had also provided an in‐depth analysis of the peculiar political nature of the Habsburg monarchy (Renehr 1877–8). In 1893 he published his first explicitly sociological work, the three‐volume Wesen und Zweck der Politik , followed shortly thereafter by Die sociologische Erkenntnis (1898) and by the posthumous work Soziologie: Positive Lehre von den menschlichen Wechselbeziehungen (1907), which contains a number of anti‐Semitic and racist remarks. Ratzenhofer was mainly self‐taught and remained on the margins of Viennese academia throughout his life. One of his few scientific allies in Austria was his fellow‐countryman Ludwig Gumplowicz, who assumed the role of a mentor and made his name known in the international sociological community. Ratzenhofer died in 1904 on his return trip from the St. Louis Congress of Arts and Sciences where he had presented a sociological paper.