Karl Mannheim

Karl Mannheim (1893–1947), born in Hungary, was a leading sociologist of early 20th century and regarded as founder of sociology of knowledge. He studied at the universities of Budapest, Berlin Paris and Freiberg, and was a student of Georg Simmel and Georg Lukacs, both of whom were important thinkers of the modern era. Mannheim had also worked under a German sociologist, Alfred Weber, the brother of Max Weber, from 1922 to 1925. In 1933, during the rise of the National Socialist Party in Germany, Mannheim, a born Jew, was suspended from his teaching position in Berlin and asked to leave the country. He then spent the next ten years lecturing at the London School of Economics, before being appointed as a professor of sociology of education at the University of London during the Second World War. He died in London at the age of 53. Mannheim’s sophisticated analysis on the role intellectuals, and of the role and history of ideology, continues to be discussed and debated today. Mannheim’s most important contribution to sociological thought was his influential work, Ideology and Utopia (1929). His other works include Man and Society in an Age of Social Reconstruction (1935); Freedom, Power and Democratic Planning (1936); and Diagnosis of Our Time (1943).