[Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker - supporter of the concept of the East German movement in favor of self-organization during the political turning point 1989/90].

Abstract

The luminosity of Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker's holistic thinking in the former German Democratic Republic (DDR) is reviewed. Broad-minded academics sought, in accordance with the modern paradigm of self-organization, beyond the ideological template for ways out of the dead end of incrustations of society and innovation blockages under the constraints of a dictatorship. Right after the fall of the wall, Weizsäcker willingly backed a "community of free researchers for self-organization" (Freie Forschungsgemeinschaft Selbstorganisation, FFGSO). This group, conceived as a nonpartisan "think tank" of civil activism, is also discussed. At a number of its meetings Weizsäcker debated the dangers of ideologically influenced science. The effectiveness of the dual leadership at his own Starnberg Institute, for instance, was stymied by the tensions arisen out of such conflicting aims. Against the voluntaristic anticipations of the mainstream in sociology, precisely that system proved to be more viable that was meant to be overcome: faulty and purportedly futureless capitalism. Weizsäcker repudiated social prognoses made in the absence of rules for their falsification resp. verification. Weizsäcker acted as a leading figure at the FFGSO's Potsdam conference, opened on 30 Mar. 1990, on the "DDR--and afterwards?". Its intention was in order to trigger a nationwide discussion of scientific scenarios in designing German unification in the face of gross practical disparities between East and West Germany. The Trust Agency inspired by the FFGSO at the Round Table between opposition and old government was supposed to transfer the national public property "Volkseigentum" of the DDR into private property of the East German citizens, to enable them to realize a role as subject through self-organization. At the group's request, Weizsäcker mediated the readiness by the Lutheran World Federation to assume the role of ombudsman in anticipation of conflicts of interest within the Trust Agency in processing the total assets of an entire country. Weizsäcker also opened contacts with competent earlier fellows from his Starnberg institute on practical cooperative projects at the beginning of the 1990s.