Simmel, Georg (1858–1918)

German sociologist

Georg Simmel was born in Berlin, where he lived most of his life. Although he was influential in the founding of German and U.S. sociological associations, Simmel's professional life is often called tragic even as his intellectual life is called joyous and brilliant. Sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920) was convinced that anti-Semitism kept Simmel from gaining a tenured post in the German academies. Other scholars, including Kurt Wolff (1959), argue that the aversion of university officials to the students who overflowed Simmel's classrooms—women, economic minorities, and immigrants—negatively affected the officials' view of him. However, the role that Simmel played in launching the discipline of sociology in both Europe and North America, as well as the modern revival of his writings and ideas, testifies to his historical and ongoing importance.

Simmel wanted to understand human association, why society existed, and whether it was possible to have diverse communities. His attempts to understand the structure of society led him to examine theoretical concepts and everyday practices, including the social actions that bring about unity, connection, inclusion, bonding, shared living, and community. He believed that each person is an active agent who builds, shapes, and reconstructs the social world through the performance of personal and collective daily actions.

A masterful theoretician and teacher, Simmel argued that people build social and physical structures that are analogous to their personal, natural, and divine relationships. He examined the construction of bridges, doors, and windows, and the social rules attached to their use, using these physical features to teach the importance of boundaries. Examining boundaries by telling stories of how people build spiritual and physical environments, he argued that society is created and maintained as an act of faith in the outcomes of submission and transcendence. Simmel believed that people come to love each other through faith and that love without reservation helps to create a good society, complete with jobs, schools, hospitals, and safe neighborhoods. Claiming that he gave them life, his students showered his desk with rose petals.

Simmel believed that the future was going to bring what he called “the coming formlessness,” a dissolution of faith, religion, and religious institutions. This dissolution was in turn eroding the social forms by which people communicated and thus endangering our sense of community. Simmel worried about a future in which people would not be able to look each other in the face and account for their behavior or for the lack of courage and humility that caused it.

Because the university officials would not listen to him, Simmel was unable to call attention to social and national processes that he believed needed to be changed. Although he regretted his inability to construct useful solutions to the problems he observed, Simmel did manage to connect to his audience through his healing stories and hope. As Simmel's contemporary [Page 1249]community-based readers understand, it is with that initial personal connection that community begins its fragile life.