Obituary: Herbert Hörz: Humanist and Marxist

“The potential of a Marxist theory is far from exhausted, and the humane vision of an association of free individuals with social justice and ecologically compatible behavior remains an ideal of active action,” Herbert Hörz was convinced to the end. This certainty inspired his protest when self-confident politicians in the unifying Germany trumpeted “Marx is dead, Jesus is alive!” and Marxist chairs and institutes were eliminated in the connected eastern part of the country. And he also became unemployed.

Hörz also represented this view when, with the transition into the new millennium, many leftists said goodbye to Marxist analysis in order to create new thought constructs and instructions for action using bits and pieces taken from bourgeois ideology. Which did not bring them the success they had hoped for, but rather accelerated their disappearance into marginality. When man has a choice, he chooses the original, not the copy.

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Born in Stuttgart in the blackest year in Germany, 1933, and starting school, the son of a single mother initially grew up with his uncle and aunt. After his mother married, he moved to Erfurt, where he passed his high school diploma and then studied at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena to study philosophy. He passed his exams with distinction and his subsequent doctorate at the Humboldt University in Berlin with summa cum laude. His doctoral thesis dealt with the “uncertainty relations” of Werner Heisenberg, the founder of quantum mechanics, with whom he later maintained correspondence during his time as director of the Munich Max Planck Institute for Physics. Hörz himself completed his habilitation at the East Berlin Alma Mater with a thesis on “Philosophy and Quantum Mechanics”.

“Philosophical problems of the natural sciences” should become his guiding and life theme. This was also the name of a chair founded in 1959 at the Humboldt University, where Hörz began his scientific career, which he continued from 1972 at the Academy of Sciences of the GDR and which earned him national and international merits. Which is why he was allowed to work at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy in the mid-nineties – as the undisputed expert in the edition of the works of the polymath Hermann von Helmholtz.

At that time, contrary to the loss of solidarity among West German colleagues, with whom people had exchanged opinions and respected each other during German two-statehood, the Leibniz Society had been constituted as the legal successor to the learned society of the liquidated GDR science academy, of which Hörz was of course a member and of which he finally even served as president (1998 to 2006).

Hörz vehemently opposed the verdict of “cadre philosophy,” although he also critically reflected on philosophizing in the East German state, particularly complaining about interventions and instructions “from above.” He himself had his first experiences with dogmatic scolding in the mid-1950s when he was working on his first Helmholtz work. In retrospect, he divided the history of GDR philosophy into several phases: profiling, hope and repression, stabilization of power, apology and system implosion. At the end of the 80s he self-critically declared her failure. However, Hörz never made a secret of the fact that, despite recognizing the discrepancy between ideal and reality as well as “despotic elements of the party and state dictatorship”, he was completely committed to the “socialist experiment” of the GDR. And, as I said, he was certain until the end: “The search for a humane society continues.”

For Hörz, science and political partisanship were not mutually exclusive. Retiring to an ivory tower was not his thing. In an article for this newspaper, for example, he asked: “What were scholars like Herbert Marcuse, Franz Neumann and Otto Kirchheimer looking for in the secret service and government apparatus of the USA? Didn’t they violate the scientific rationality criterion of objectivity in this way? Are the search for truth and political advice compatible?” A complex and complicated question. However, the answer to this can only be clear and unequivocal if – as in this specific case he mentioned – it was a matter of uniting all forces against an inhumane, inhumane, barbaric system like the Hitler dictatorship.

Hörz was a dialectician of the best classical school. His credo was to apply dialectics non-dogmatically and in a reality-oriented manner and thus promote recognition of our world as it is and as it can become. He saw materialistic dialectics as the “thinking instrument for shaping the future,” as one of his book titles promised. Of course it has to be combined with true humanism. Such a formidable combination would be a guarantee of overcoming the current challenges of climate change, ecology and sustainability in order to ensure the survival of humanity.

Herbert Hörz died on June 8th. The Marxist-humanist philosopher leaves behind his legacy “human criteria” and “humor offers,” which also and especially include social-ecological responsibility and which are beneficial to read and take to heart.

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