Remembering Niklas Luhmann

November 6, 2023 marks 25 years since the passing of the sociologist and social theorist Niklas Luhmann. Luhmann was born in Lüneburg in 1927 and went on to become one of the most eminent sociologists of the second half of the 20th century. After being conscripted at the age of 17, Luhmann served in the Second World War and was taken prisoner by American forces in 1944. After the war, he studied law and worked as a civil servant. In 1960, Luhmann received a scholarship to study at Harvard University, where he came into contact with Talcott Parsons and his structural functionalist theories of social systems, which would become highly influential on Luhman’s own articulation of systems theory as a framework of sociological analysis. In 1997, he published his magnum opus, Theory of Society.

Luhmann passed away in Oerlinghausen in 1998. Suhrkamp has published more than 40 books by Luhmann, including key works published during his lifetime and posthumous editions titles edited from his literary remains. The most recent of these was The Limits of Administration, published in 2021. In 2024, a collection of previously unpublished lectures on systems theory will be published under the title Sociology Among Attendees.

For more information on any of Luhmann’s works, contact the Rights Manager for your region.