Former Members of the Board
Prof. Dr. Volker Bornschier, Vice-president (President 1983-96)
Academic Vita
Volker Bornschier was born in Witten-Ruhr, Germany, in 1944. Following his MA and PhD studies at the University of Zurich (sociology, economics and social psychology) he finished his habilitation in sociology in 1976 (a post-doctoral qualification required for professorship in German-speaking countries). At the Department of Sociology within the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Zurich, Switzerland, he has taught and undertaken research as a professor since 1981. Since 2009 he is professor of sociology emeritus at the University of Zurich.
He is a founder member of the World Society Foundation and was its president from 1983 - 1996. He is currently serving as vice-president of this organisation, which was established by Peter Heintz to promote worldwide research into many different aspects of world society.
He was director of the Sociological Institute of the University of Zurich from 1997 to 2000 and was actively engaged in various international bodies, organising, for instance, aspects of four World Congresses of Sociology. He also served as a reviewer for social science journals and for research funding agencies.
His academic activities at the University of Zurich, using a team-based approach, were research-oriented and included projects supported in particular by the SNF (Swiss National Science Foundation). Developing young scientific talent has, for decades, been of particular interest to him.
He has produced and published 22 books (including many monographs), some of them with co-authors. In addition he has published 130 articles in leading social science journals, encyclopaedias, and volumes. In 2001 he was awarded a Fritz Thyssen Foundation Prize for one of the best social science essays in the German language published in 2000.
Various of his works have, besides having been published in German and/or English, been translated and published in Chinese, Spanish, French and Italian.
In June 2004 he was honoured by his staff and many international colleagues with an international Symposium, The Future of World Society, held at the University of Zurich, on the occasion of his 60th birthday. On May 14, 2009, he delivered his Farewell Lecture at the occasion of his emeritation (see the pdf of the published version and the press release in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung). He lives in Málaga (Spain), Cortona (Italy) and Zurich (Switzerland).
Prof. Dr. Peter Heintz, Founder of the WSF (†1983)
Prof. Dr. Karl W. Deutsch (†1992)
The Foundation's Board deeply regrets the loss of its member, Professor Karl W. Deutsch, who died in Cambridge , Mass. in 1992. Professor Deutsch became a Board member in 1984 after the death of the Foundation's founder, Professor Peter Heintz in 1983, left a seat vacant. Thus Karl W. Deutsch contributed essentially to the development and identity formation of the Foundation at a time when its activities were as yet hardly consolidated. His unusually wide knowledge and experience also influenced the formulation and application of policy guiding research funding. In Karl W. Deutsch the Board loses a colleague of in ternational repute whose own world citizenship so excellently embodied the image which the World Society Foundation wishes to project.
Prof. Dr. Hans-Joachim Hoffmann-Nowotny (†2004)
Hans-Joachim Hoffmann-Nowotny was Professor of Sociology at the University of Zurich. He received his MA from Cologne University (1966) and his PhD from the University of Zurich (1969). His research interests were focused (1) on international migration and minorities and, more generally, the socio-cultural determinants and consequences of sociodemographic developments, as well as on (2) the sociology of partnership, marriage and the family. Professor Hoffmann-Nowotny also worked intensively in the field of general sociological theory. His research resulted in more than 200 publications, among them several books. Professor Hoffmann-Nowotny was President of the Swiss Sociological Association (1982-1988), President of the Research Committee on Migration of the International Sociological Association (1978-1986) and Member of the Board and Vice-President of the German Association of Population Studies (1982-1986). From 1996 to 2002 he was President of the World Society Foundation. Professor Hoffmann-Nowotny was a corresponding member of the German Akademie für Raumforschung und Landesplanung.
In Memoriam (obituary in the KZfSS by Professor Georg Soeffner)
Prof. em. Dr. Bruno Fritsch (†2009)
Bruno Fritsch, born in Prague in 1926, was Professor emeritus of Economics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. He was author, co-author and editor of more than twenty books. He collaborated for many years with Karl W. Deutsch on basic problems of Political Economy. One among several other results of this collaboration was the jointly written book on Reduction of Complexity (1980). The fourth enlarged and updated edition of Professor Fritsch’s most comprehensive book on “Mensch-Umwelt Wissen” (first edition 1990) was published in 1994. Prof. Fritsch held various appointments as visiting Professor of Economics e.g. in the College of Europe in Bruges (Belgium), in Harvard (Summer School), The Australian National University (ANU), the European University Institute in Florence (Italy) in the University of Sydney (Australia) etc. He was Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin (1982/83). From 1975-1985 he worked regularly during the period of 4 to 6 weeks per year at the Berlin Science Centre on invitation from Karl W. Deutsch.