HELMUT WAGNER(Boxes number 100's)
Title
HELMUT WAGNER
(Boxes number 100's)
Description
The Wagner Papers consists of more than seventy boxes labeled from 100, containing more than sixty thousand pages of material, including lecture notes, essays (in various stages of completion, from handwritten first drafts to corrected galley proofs), notebooks, correspondence, reviews, translations, copies of published works (books as well as individual essays appearing in contemporaneous periodicals), together with numerous miscellaneous items such as postcards, medical records, clippings, syllabi of classes taught by Wagner at various institutions, and several books from Wagner’s personal library. The Wagner Papers are currently in the process of being numbered and microfilmed, with eight rolls of microfilm available to date.
A considerable portion of the Wagner material serves as a testament to Wagner’s interest in and devotion to the work of Alfred Schutz. As a friend, biographer and former student of Schutz, Wagner established an impressive body of work on his mentor, including a monumental biography of which only an edited version appeared in print. Among the collection’s numerous Wagner essays on Schutz are “Alfred Schutz’s Importance for Sociology,” “Methodology and Research Techniques of Alfred Schutz’s Sociology” and “Social Field and Situational Intersubjectivity: Complementary Polarities in early works of Gurwitsch and Schutz.” The collection also contains Wagner’s analysis of the correspondence between Schutz and Aron Gurwitsch, as well as a detailed commentary on the Schutz-Voeglin correspondence that includes personal reflections by Wagner on Schutz’s style of working, in addition to an historical account of how the work of Gurwitsch and Felix Kaufmann informed the debate between Schutz and Voeglin. Included as well are several meticulously detailed indexes of Schutz’s correspondence (compiled by Wagner), listing Schutz’s correspondents, together with information as to the date and content of the correspondence in question. There are also various drafts of Wagner’s translation of Schutz’s Life Forms and Meaning Structure, including Wagner’s correspondence with the publisher.
In addition to the work on Schutz, the Helmut R. Wagner Papers contain a host of material attesting to the diversity of Wagner’s interests. There are empirical studies (“Management and Labor in a Small Shop”), theoretical works (“Systematic Sociological Theory: Universe or Multiverse?”; “Signs, Symbols, and Interaction Theory”), historical studies (“The Influence of German Phenomenology on American Sociology”), works on the sociology of religion (Church And Authority in Early Lutheranism; Authority and Theocracy in Calvinism; Sociology of Magic and Religion: In the Light of Max Weber’s Theory), and studies of various sociologists whose work was of interest to Wagner (“General Theory of Action Systems: A Critical Appraisal of Talcott Parsons’ Sociology”; “James Mickel Williams: Forgotten Pioneer of Modern American Sociology”; “Max Weber On Social Stratification: Class and Social Order”). There are also several lengthy works on the political and sociological effects of cold war Soviet occupation, such as the two-volume study, The Sovietization of East Germany, and the three-volume The Cultural Sovietization of East Germany. Of biographical as well as scholarly interest are such materials as the Master’s Thesis Wagner submitted to the New School for Social Research (Mannheim’s Historicism: A Study in Sociology of Knowledge [1952]), and Schutz’s personal comments on a proposed chapter of Wagner’s dissertation. And given the growing body of literature on the philosophy of Henri Bergson, Wagner’s analysis of the influence Bergson had on the early work of Alfred Schutz (cf. “The Bergsonian Period of Alfred Schutz” in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Dec. 1977, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 2), together with Wagner’s own book exploring the link between Bergson and phenomenology (A Bergsonian Bridge to Phenomenological Psychology, with Ilja Surba), provide timely insight into some of the earliest investigations of Bergson’s work by American phenomenologists. These and hundreds of other manuscripts are to be found among the in the Wagner Papers at the University of Memphis.
A considerable portion of the Wagner material serves as a testament to Wagner’s interest in and devotion to the work of Alfred Schutz. As a friend, biographer and former student of Schutz, Wagner established an impressive body of work on his mentor, including a monumental biography of which only an edited version appeared in print. Among the collection’s numerous Wagner essays on Schutz are “Alfred Schutz’s Importance for Sociology,” “Methodology and Research Techniques of Alfred Schutz’s Sociology” and “Social Field and Situational Intersubjectivity: Complementary Polarities in early works of Gurwitsch and Schutz.” The collection also contains Wagner’s analysis of the correspondence between Schutz and Aron Gurwitsch, as well as a detailed commentary on the Schutz-Voeglin correspondence that includes personal reflections by Wagner on Schutz’s style of working, in addition to an historical account of how the work of Gurwitsch and Felix Kaufmann informed the debate between Schutz and Voeglin. Included as well are several meticulously detailed indexes of Schutz’s correspondence (compiled by Wagner), listing Schutz’s correspondents, together with information as to the date and content of the correspondence in question. There are also various drafts of Wagner’s translation of Schutz’s Life Forms and Meaning Structure, including Wagner’s correspondence with the publisher.
In addition to the work on Schutz, the Helmut R. Wagner Papers contain a host of material attesting to the diversity of Wagner’s interests. There are empirical studies (“Management and Labor in a Small Shop”), theoretical works (“Systematic Sociological Theory: Universe or Multiverse?”; “Signs, Symbols, and Interaction Theory”), historical studies (“The Influence of German Phenomenology on American Sociology”), works on the sociology of religion (Church And Authority in Early Lutheranism; Authority and Theocracy in Calvinism; Sociology of Magic and Religion: In the Light of Max Weber’s Theory), and studies of various sociologists whose work was of interest to Wagner (“General Theory of Action Systems: A Critical Appraisal of Talcott Parsons’ Sociology”; “James Mickel Williams: Forgotten Pioneer of Modern American Sociology”; “Max Weber On Social Stratification: Class and Social Order”). There are also several lengthy works on the political and sociological effects of cold war Soviet occupation, such as the two-volume study, The Sovietization of East Germany, and the three-volume The Cultural Sovietization of East Germany. Of biographical as well as scholarly interest are such materials as the Master’s Thesis Wagner submitted to the New School for Social Research (Mannheim’s Historicism: A Study in Sociology of Knowledge [1952]), and Schutz’s personal comments on a proposed chapter of Wagner’s dissertation. And given the growing body of literature on the philosophy of Henri Bergson, Wagner’s analysis of the influence Bergson had on the early work of Alfred Schutz (cf. “The Bergsonian Period of Alfred Schutz” in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Dec. 1977, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 2), together with Wagner’s own book exploring the link between Bergson and phenomenology (A Bergsonian Bridge to Phenomenological Psychology, with Ilja Surba), provide timely insight into some of the earliest investigations of Bergson’s work by American phenomenologists. These and hundreds of other manuscripts are to be found among the in the Wagner Papers at the University of Memphis.