First anniversary of the death of Lord Ralf Dahrendorf

Lord Ralf Dahrendorf, chairman of the board of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation from 1982 to 1987, died one year ago, on the 17th of June, 2009. Given the circumstances of Germany, his was an extraordinary career that demonstrated that, on the one hand, science and politics can exist symbiotically, as well as that Germany can still produce world-class philosophical thinkers.

Born as the son of a social-democrat, Ralf Dahrendorf first made the world notice him as an innovative sociologist, before he started his foray into politics by way of championing education policies during the 1960s. Because of his deep insight into the oeuvre of Karl marx, works, Dahrendorf transformed from a social democrat to a liberal, entered the Free Democratic Party (FDP) and quickly advanced up the ranks to represent his constituency on the regional, as well as on the level of the German Bundestag.

He provided essential theoretical work that paved the way for the famous „change of power“ of 1969, but grew weary of the constraining nature of politics, particularly in his capacity as state secretary in the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs and as EU Commissioner in Brussels. and EU Commissioner. This led him to abandon politics in favour of higher education, becoming head of the London School of Economics in 1974 and later on, of a renowned college of Oxford University.

In the mid-1980s, Dahrendorf became head of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation. Even though he worked tirelessly to promote the interaction of Anglo-Saxon and continental thinking throughout his tenure, during the later years he was drawn more and more to Great Britain, receiving the honour of being ennobled and receiving a seat in the House of Lords.

To honour his memory, the Foundation has created the Lord Ralf Dahrendorf Lecture. This lecture, with the cooperation of the Badische Zeitung as well as the “Zeit-Foundation Ebelin and Gerd Bucerius” and the newspaper DIE ZEIT, took place for the first time on the June 17th, 2010. The themes that were discussed are also an homage to Dahrendorf: He himself had dedicated the later years of his work to inter-religious and intercultural dialogue.