Othmar Spann facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Othmar Spann
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| Born | 1 October 1878 Altmannsdorf, Vienna, Austria-Hungary
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| Died | 8 July 1950 (aged 71) Neustift bei Schlaining, Austria
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| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western Philosophy |
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Main interests
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Notable ideas
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Corporate statism |
Othmar Spann (born October 1, 1878 – died July 8, 1950) was an important Austrian thinker. He was a conservative philosopher, a sociologist (someone who studies how societies work), and an economist (someone who studies how money and resources are used). His strong ideas, which were against liberalism (a belief in individual rights and freedoms) and socialism (a belief in shared ownership and equality), caused a lot of debate in Austria between the two World Wars.
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Early Life and Education
Othmar Spann grew up in Altmannsdorf, a suburb of Vienna, Austria. His father was an inventor. When his mother died early, his father couldn't support the family. So, from age 12, Othmar lived with his grandmother. Her husband was a former soldier, and their military-style home was very different from his father's.
He finished school in 1898. Then, he studied philosophy at the University of Vienna. After that, he studied political science at the University of Zurich and the University of Bern. He earned his doctorate degree in political science in 1903 from the University of Tübingen in Germany.
From 1903 to 1907, Spann worked in Frankfurt, Germany. He studied the lives of workers there. In 1904, he also helped start a newspaper called "Critical Pages for the whole Social Sciences."
On October 17, 1906, Othmar Spann married Erika Spann-Rheinsch, who was a poet. They had two sons, Adalbert and Rafael.
Academic Career and War Service
In 1907, Spann qualified to teach political economy at the Hochschule in Brünn (now Brno, Czech Republic). From 1907 to 1909, he taught there. In 1908, he started working for the central statistics office in Vienna. He helped create a new census for Austria between 1909 and 1910.
In 1909, he became a professor of economics and statistics at the German Technical University in Brno. He stayed there until 1919.
During the First World War (1914-1918), Spann served as a first lieutenant. He was injured in 1914 during the Battle of Lemberg. After recovering, he worked with Russian prisoners and later on a "scientific committee for wartime economy" in Vienna.
In 1919, he became a full professor of economics and social studies at the University of Vienna. He was brought in to offer different ideas from the popular Austro-Marxist views at the university. In 1920, he gave a series of lectures called The True State. These lectures laid out his ideas about a "corporate state," which he called universalism. These lectures were published as a book in 1921. His ideas, which were against democracy and Marxism, became very popular with some student groups.
Spann was well-liked by his students. His lectures were so popular that people would stand in the hallways to listen. He also held summer festivals in the woods where he taught that "the ability to intuit essences was nurtured by jumping over the fire."
Spreading His Ideas
In 1928, Spann joined the Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur (KfdK), a group that promoted German culture. In 1929, he gave a speech in Munich about "the cultural crisis of the present." In this speech, Spann called for an authoritarian corporate state. He saw this as a "third way" between democracy and Marxism. However, he later left the group in 1931 because he disagreed with its leaders.
From 1933, he edited a magazine called Ständisches Leben. He supported the burning of books, but he did not agree with the extreme anti-Jewish views. After 1935, his ideas were increasingly criticized by the Nazis. Between 1936 and 1938, when the Nazi Party was banned in Austria, an illegal printing shop was hidden in his castle.
Spann tried many times to convince those in power to adopt his ideas for an authoritarian corporate state. Around 1930, he also joined the Nazi Party.
Spann's Universalism
Spann's main idea was called universalism (sometimes also called Spannism). It was a way of thinking about society and the economy as a whole, like a living body. He combined ideas from different areas, including politics, social science, and economics. His universalism was based on older ideas, such as Plato's theory of ideas, German mysticism from the Middle Ages, and the philosophy of Romanticism.
Spann believed that the most important goal of universalism was to overcome the idea that society is just a collection of individuals. He thought that society should be seen as an "organic structure," where each person is part of a larger whole. In this view, the group or community is more important than the individual.
His most important work was The True State (1921). In this book, he described a social model based on medieval guilds (groups of skilled workers). This model was structured in a hierarchy, meaning some people had more power than others. Instead of everyone having equal voting rights, leaders would be chosen by other leaders from different groups. Spann believed that people were connected not by the state, race, or language, but by a "spiritual community." He saw this in the German people and their shared heritage. His universalism was against rationalism (thinking based on reason), liberalism, materialism (focus on physical things), and Marxism. It called for society to be reorganized based on different professions and groups (a corporate state).
Notable Students
Othmar Spann taught many students who later became famous, including:
- Oskar Morgenstern
- Friedrich Hayek, who won the Nobel Prize in 1974
- Eric Voegelin
Later Life and Imprisonment
Even though his ideas were somewhat popular at the time, Spann often faced disapproval. In 1938, after Austria was taken over by Nazi Germany (an event called the Anschluss), he was briefly put in prison by the Nazis. He was also removed from his professorship at the University of Vienna, where he had taught since 1919.
He was reportedly held for four months, possibly in the Dachau concentration camp, though records of this are not fully confirmed.
Spann lived a quiet life away from public view until the end of World War II. In 1945, at age 67, he tried to get his university job back. However, he was not allowed to teach again. He died in 1950, feeling disappointed and sad.
Major Works
- Der wahre Staat (The True State, 1921)
- Kategorienlehre (Theory of Categories, 1924)
- Der Schöpfungsgang des Geistes (The Creative Path of the Spirit, 1928)
- Gesellschaftsphilosophie (Philosophy of Society, 1932)
- Naturphilosophie (Philosophy of Nature, 1937)
- Religionsphilosophie auf geschichtlicher Grundlage (Philosophy of Religion on a Historical Basis, 1947)
- Die Haupttheorien der Volkswirtschafts' Lehre (The Main Theories of National Economic Doctrine, 1949)
