Welcome to the Carl Schmitt Gesellschaft e.V.

The Carl Schmitt Gesellschaft e.V.cares for the memory of Carl Schmitt in the sense of a historical-critical accompaniment and primarily publishes unpublished testimonies and documents. The company emerged in 2010 from the Carl-Schmitt-Foundation, which was founded in 2007 with the support of the city of Plettenberg.

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Current notes and information:

Network

10 September 2024

List of guests in Schmitt’s private house between 1938 and 1943 with index of names. [networks]

Network

24 July 2024

List of recipients of books and offprints in the period 1947 to 1974 [Networks]

New Research Literature

3 July 2024
Bibliography of new publications by or on Carl Schmitt (2nd half of 2023): [Research]

Carl Schmitt's Library

16 June 2024
Carl Schmitt’s library comprised an estimated 6000 volumes in 1945. [Reconstruction of the catalogue]

Annual Edition

12 December 2023
‘Marvellous solitude’. Carl Schmitt’s hikes in and around Plettenberg. [to the editions]

Carl Schmitt Lectures Volume 6

23 November 2023
Brendan Simms writes about Carl Schmitt’s concept of Großraum in the Nazi era and the afterlife of the concepts in the Cold War. [to the publisher’s site]

Andreas Höfele

Carl Schmitt and Literature

523 pages, 2022

Print: <978-3-428-18608-2>, geb., € 49,90
E-Book: <978-3-428-58608-0> € 44,90

Andreas Höfeles book is the first complete account of Carl Schmitts dealings with literature. It reconstructs the intellectual biography of the controversial constitutional lawyer in the light of the most important literary authors, works, and figures in the various phases of his long life. Schmitt was friends with poets, he wrote about literature and also wrote literary texts himself. Above all, however, literature was an indispensable resource of thought for him throughout his life. The book describes the political and personal constellations that shaped Schmitt’s approach to literature and in which he found resonance. It shows that literature is not a side show of Schmitt’s thought. It is a mirror and repeatedly a central frame of reference for Schmitt’s view of contemporary history and for the mythical exaggeration of his own role in it.

Further information and references for ordering the book from Duncker und Humblot.

Ingeborg Villinger

Gretha Jünger und die Sache selbst. (Gretha Jünger and the Thing Itself.)

A portrait with Carl Schmitt

Carl Schmitt Lectures, Volume 5

106 pages, 2022
Print: <978-3-428-18625-9> €24.90 E-Book: <978-3-428-58625-7> €22.90

»Gretha Jünger and the Thing Itself. A Portrait with Carl Schmitt«: Gretha Jünger influenced the relationship between Carl Schmitt and Ernst Jünger. Before 1945, the tensions in this triad shaped Schmitt’s relationship to the NS regime. In the post-war era, their conflicts revealed deeper ideological splits. These changed the triadic relationship, since Gretha Jünger, with her view of the world was closer to Carl Schmitt than her husband. Nonetheless Carl Schmitt broke off contact with her in 1953, which is discussed in dazzling detail here for the first time.

Further information and instructions for ordering the book from Duncker und Humblot.

Carl Schmitt
Gesammelte Schriften (Collected Writings)
1933–1936

With additional contributions from the time of the Second World War

X, 572 pages, 2021
Print: <978-3-428-15762-4> born, € 99.90 E-Book: <978-3-428-55762-2> € 89.90

On March 24, 1933, the Reichstag passed the law »To Eliminate the Distress of the People and the Reich«, the so-called Enabling Act. The basic rights and the parliamentary form of government of the Weimar Constitution were thus suspended. The dictatorship began to establish itself. The constitutional and international law expert Carl Schmitt, who until then had been fighting for his version of saving the Weimar Constitution through a national presidential system, reacted with one of the most notorious about-faces in political thought of the 20th century. Until 1936 he developed extensive journalistic activities to underpin the Nazi regime in terms of constitutional and international law.

The volume documents these treatises, written in the first four years of the Third Reich, by the internationally controversial and influential lawyer Carl Schmitt, thus placing the ongoing discussion about his involvement in the consolidation of National Socialist rule on a secure source basis. The dependent essays and articles published during this period as well as the monographs »Das Reichsstatthaltergesetz«, »State, Movement, People« and »National Socialism and International Law« were included. The volume is supplemented by some titles published after 1936 that are otherwise inaccessible. The volume concludes with references to individual writings and a bibliography of all of Schmitt’s works in the period from 1933 to 1944.

Further information and instructions for ordering the book from Duncker und Humblot.

Annual Edition 2022

The fifteenth Annual Gift of the Plettenberg Miniatures has the theme “Carl Schmitt and the Film of the Weimar Republic”. The literary scholar and editor Angela Reinthal and the film and literary scholar Matthias Hurst illuminate for the first time the connection between Carl Schmitt and film based primarily on diary sources. One of Schmitt’s great experiences as a moviegoer was the silent film “The Passion of the Maid of Orleans” by Carl Theodor Dreyer in 1928.

ISBN 978-3-9820020-4-6

The 15th annual edition can be ordered from the Carl-Schmitt-Gesellschaft just like the annual editions published to date for EUR 10.00 plus EUR 2.00 postage.

Carl Schmitt Society eV
c/o Duncker & Humblot
Carl-Heinrich-Becker-Weg 9
12165 Berlin
postmaster@carl-schmitt.de

Overview of previous years
ISBN 978-3-9820020-4-6
Schmittiana. New episode. Contributions to the life and work of Carl Schmitt

Hinweise: Schmittiana – Band III [pdf]

Hinweise: Schmittiana – Band II [pdf]

Hinweise: Schmittiana – Band I [pdf]

Bestellungen können an jede Buchhandlung oder direkt an den Verlag gerichtet werden.

More information about the Carl-Schmitt-Foundation

Carl Schmitt (1888-1985)

The constitutional and international law expert is one of the most influential German scholars of the 20th century, is attracting increasing attention worldwide and is considered a classic of political thought. At the same time, his work and person have been “controversial” for decades. This adjective is for many the only possible common point where they can meet. Some consider the statement euphemistic, others disparaging. Thomas Nipperdey’s maxim for later generations when assessing Carl Schmitt could be “to give back to past generations what they once owned, just as every present has: the fullness of the possible future, the uncertainty, the freedom, the finiteness , the inconsistency”.

More information about Carl Schmitt