Ralf Dahrendorf

“I am getting the impression, Herr Dutschke, that there are not only nerds in politics, but also nerds in protest movements.” Ralf Dahrendorfs legendary verbal sparring with Rudi Dutschke in January 1968 at the height of the student revolt is the opening scene of the first biography of perhaps the most important German intellectual of his generation after Jürgen Habermas. Based on extensive research, Franziska Meifort sketches out the great liberal’s life and world of ideas. Sociology professor, education reformer, FDP politician, an EC commissioner, director of the London School of Economics and, finally, a Lord and member of the Upper House of the British Parliament—with breathtaking virtuosity, Ralf Dahrendorf kept starting brand new chapters in his life. From the influence of his father’s resistance and his own experience in jail from 1944-45 to his late writings and opinions, this biography shows the inner structure of a public intellectual, who pledged himself passionately to democracy and sticked to his own interpretation of liberalism. Franziska Meifort is a research assistant at the Institute for History at the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg. In 2016, her dissertation on Ralf Dahrendorf received the Wolf Erich Kellner Memorial Prize.