34 Facts About Georg Simmel

Georg Simmel was a German sociologist, philosopher, and critic.

An acquaintance of Max Weber, Georg Simmel wrote on the topic of personal character in a manner reminiscent of the sociological 'ideal type'.

Georg Simmel broadly rejected academic standards philosophically covering topics such as emotion and romantic love.

Georg Simmel wrote extensively on the philosophy of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, as well on art, most notably through his Rembrandt: An Essay in the Philosophy of Art.

Georg Simmel was born in Berlin, Germany, as the youngest of seven children to an assimilated Jewish family.

Georg Simmel, himself, was baptized as a Protestant when he was a child.

Georg Simmel's father died in 1874, when Georg was 16, leaving a sizable inheritance.

Georg Simmel was then adopted by Julius Friedlander, the founder of an international music publishing house known as Peters Verlag, who endowed him with the large fortune that enabled him to become a scholar.

In 1890, Georg Simmel married Gertrud Kinel, a philosopher who published under the pseudonym Marie-Luise Enckendorf, and under her own name.

Georg Simmel had a secret affair with his assistant Gertrud Kantorowicz, who bore him a daughter in 1907, though this fact was hidden until after Georg Simmel's death.

In 1917, Georg Simmel stopped reading the newspapers and withdrew to the Black Forest to finish the book The View of Life.

In 1885, Georg Simmel became a privatdozent at the University of Berlin, officially lecturing in philosophy but in ethics, logic, pessimism, art, psychology and sociology.

Georg Simmel's lectures were not only popular inside the university, but attracted the intellectual elite of Berlin as well.

Georg Simmel nevertheless continued his intellectual and academic work, as well as taking part in artistic circles.

In 1909, Georg Simmel, together with Ferdinand Tonnies and Max Weber, and others, was a co-founder of the German Society for Sociology, serving as a member of its first executive body.

In 1914, Georg Simmel received an ordinary professorship with chair, at the then German University of Strassburg, but did not feel at home there.

Georg Simmel remained at the University of Strasbourg until his death in 1918.

The furthest Georg Simmel has brought his work to a micro-level of analysis was in dealing with forms and interactions that takes place with different types of people.

Georg Simmel focused on these forms of association while paying little attention to individual consciousness.

Georg Simmel believed in the creative consciousness that can be found in diverse forms of interaction, which he observed both the ability of actors to create social structures, as well as the disastrous effects such structures had on the creativity of individuals.

Georg Simmel believed that social and cultural structures come to have a life of their own.

In respect to the notion of "group size", Georg Simmel's view was somewhat ambiguous.

In "The Stranger", Georg Simmel discusses how if a person is too close to the actor they are not considered a stranger.

Georg Simmel was originally asked to lecture on the role of intellectual life in the big city, but he effectively reversed the topic in order to analyze the effects of the big city on the mind of the individual.

The organizers of the exhibition over-emphasized its negative comments about city life, because Georg Simmel pointed out positive transformations.

Georg Simmel believed people created value by making objects, then separating themselves from that object and then trying to overcome that distance.

Georg Simmel found that things which were too close were not considered valuable and things which were too far for people to get were not considered valuable.

Georg Simmel is far from us, insofar as these common features extend beyond him or us, and connect us only because they connect a great many people.

Georg Simmel holds a certain objectivity that allows him to be unbiased and decide freely without fear.

Georg Simmel is simply able to see, think, and decide without being influenced by the opinion of others.

For Georg Simmel, secrecy exists even in relationships as intimate as marriage.

Georg Simmel saw a general thread in the importance of secrets and the strategic use of ignorance: To be social beings who are able to cope successfully with their social environment, people need clearly defined realms of unknowns for themselves.

Georg Simmel argued that not only does following what is in fashion involve dualities so does the effort on the part of some people to be of fashion.

Unfashionable people view those who follow a fashion as being imitators and themselves as mavericks, but Georg Simmel argued that the latter are simply engaging in an inverse form of imitation.