Summary
The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie (DGS), the academic society of the nascent German sociology of which Franz Oppenheimer was a founding member and in whose forum he contested the interlinking of sociology with racial theory; its meeting minutes are among the primary sources of Zionism and Cosmopolitanism: Franz Oppenheimer and the Dream of a Jewish Future in Germany and Palestine (Zionism and Cosmopolitanism: Franz Oppenheimer and the Dream of a Jewish Future in Germany and Palestine, PDF p.12, p.34-35).
Details
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Oppenheimer prominently challenged those endorsing the interlinking of sociology with racial theory, and his objections before the First World War were heeded and debated by his scientific colleagues, not only by a Jewish audience (PDF p.34).
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At its first Soziologentag (Frankfurt, 1910) Ploetz’s talk on “race” and “society” met great reservations and race science was officially barred from academic sociology before the First World War with the endorsement of Tönnies, Weber and Simmel; at the second (Berlin, 1912), devoted to people and nation in relation to race, state and language, Oppenheimer was the only speaker to take up race, clashing with Werner Sombart (PDF p.70, p.81-83).
Related pages
Zionism and Cosmopolitanism: Franz Oppenheimer and the Dream of a Jewish Future in Germany and Palestine, Franz Oppenheimer