Theodor Geiger - Life

Life

Geiger grew up in Landshut, Bavaria, showing an interest in Scandinavia and a talent in Scandinavian languages from an early age. The son of a gymnasium teacher, Geiger studied law and political science, first at the University of Munich from 1910–1912, then at the University of Würzburg from 1912 - 1914 where he received his doctorate in law.

In 1914 Geiger voluntarily joined the army ; he served until 1918 and was wounded. Simultaneously he wrote a dissertation on the supervision of criminals, Die Schutzaufsicht, supported by Friedrich Oetker. In 1918 he became a Doctor of Laws.

In 1920 Geiger joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). In the same year he became an assistant at the Statistischer Reichsamt, the statistics office, in Munich, working in the trade statistics department from 1924 to 1933. His home, however, was in Berlin, where he published the magazine Fremde Presse (Foreign Press), with news on the Reich ministry for the army from 1920 - 1929. At the same time he edited the information magazine of the newly-founded Berlin Volkshochschule (adult education centre) where he had begun to work as a teacher.

Geiger taught at Volkshochschule during a time when the institution was largely for the basic academic and cultural education of working class adults. Here he used the opportunity to focus on the social and political consequences of adult education by promoting critical thinking and intellectualism in his students. He eventually became principal but left in 1928 to take up the chair of Sociology at Brunswick Institute of Technology.

Geiger had originally joined the Brunswick University of Technology (Braunschweig) in 1924, progressing from being a visiting lecturer, to an associate professor, and finally becoming a full professor of sociology in 1929; this was the first professorship of the department for cultural studies. Geiger's work is still kept at the "Theodor Geiger Archive" at the university. He worked there until 1933, when, due to his anti-Nazi beliefs, he had to immigrate to Denmark; here he lived until 1943, even obtaining Danish citizenship. In the 1939, he wrote ""Sociologi,"" which was for several decades an important textbook.

In Denmark Geiger began by gaining a scholarship from the Rockefeller Foundation through the "Instituttet for Historie og Samfundskonomie" in Copenhagen; later he gave lectures at the University of Copenhagen. From 1938 - 1940 he was professor of sociology at the University of Århus -- Denmark's first ever professor of sociology. When German troops entered the city in 1940 he was forced to leave, escaping to Odense where he lived with his parents-in-law for the next few years. In 1943 he fled once again to Sweden where he stayed for three years. Here he gave lectures at the Universities of Stockholm, Uppsala and Lund. When the war ended in 1945, Geiger immediately returned to Århus, taking up his position as professor of sociology once more. His first step was to found the university institute for research into societies, the first institute of its kind in Scandinavia.

From 1948 to 1952, Geiger published the series Nordiske Studier i Sociologie (Nordic Studies on Sociology) with Torgny Torgnysson Segerstedt, Veli Verkko and Johan Vogt. In 1949 he was a co-founder of the International Sociological Association.

On 16 June 1952, Geiger died on the return trip from Canada to Denmark on board the ship "Waterman".