Gemeinschaft

Ferdinand Toennies

Toennies's work Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (Community and Society) contains the most influential discussion of these terms for German sociological theory. His description of a community is summarized as follows.

According to Toennies, communities are based upon organic relationships, whereas societies presuppose ideal relationships, by which he does not mean that relationships in a society cannot get improved, but that they are dependent on contracts, which were made between individuals.

The basic constituent of a community is the family, and the family analogously turns up at all levels of a community. The most basic relationships of a family are the following: First, mother-child relationship; second, husband-wife relationship; and third, the relationship between brothers and sisters. As a consequence,Toennies holds that if one studies a house, then one studies a community. A house consists of three layers, the inner, with husband and wife; the descendants and their spouses; and the outer sphere, which involves others. The next-larger group of a community is the clan, or the large family, which involves all distant relatives and relatives of relatives. It is structured analogously to the family, and so is the town, and the city. In this context, Toennies does not refer to really large cities, as it is difficult to uphold a family-like, organic structure in these.

Besides discussing the various levels of a community, Toennies further explains what it is that allows [Page 1029]men to form close bonds. It is obvious for him that blood, location, and spirit or character are especially important for men. The best communities are therefore based upon these aspects. These three aspects are closely interconnected, and they correspond to the human relationships of relatives, neighbors, and friends. With one's relatives, one shares the blood, with one's neighbors the location, and with one's friends the character. Family, friendship, and neighborhood are reached best by means of conventional sociability, which one can find in houses, towns, and cities.

Yet there are other relationships as well that are important for men, like that which one has in a guild, a brotherhood, or a religious community. In all of these, people share something that is particularly valuable for them, something basic to their character. In all of these groups, people form certain hierarchies, and the student, or anyone on a lower level, has respect for the dignity of the more advanced, the master of the respective profession. Here,Toennies employs the term dignity in a traditional sense. Dignity, Wuerde in German, is related to worth (Wert), and only someone special can be worthy and can have value. Nowadays, the term, particularly in Germany, is mostly used in a much wider sense, whereby it is attributed to all human beings. Toennies not only refers to the dignity of spirit, but expands the concept to other areas as well. Any kind of superiority, Toennies calls dignity. He distinguishes further between a dignity of age, strength, and spirit or wisdom. The superior do not abuse their superiority, but as Toennies stresses, within a bodily-organic relationship, there is an instinctual naive tenderness of the strong toward the weak, a generous will to help and protect them.

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