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The world of political science mourns the passing of Gerhard Lehmbruch

ECPR is saddened to learn of the passing of Gerhard Lehmbruch, a celebrated scholar of comparative politics and one of the attendees at the 1969 meeting in Paris that led to the eventual formation of our organisation.

About Gerhard

Gerhard Lehmbruch

A former protégé of Stein Rokkan, Lehmbruch leaves behind a legacy as a pioneer in his field, his research addressing topics such as the nature of political control systems and the relationships between state and interest groups.

In 1976 he published his seminal work Party Competition in the Federal State in which he explored the structural fracture thesis for the very first time, allowing for a deeper analysis of party competition in the Federal Republic of Germany.

His work was celebrated throughout Europe. During his lifetime he won numerous awards for his love and devotion to the craft, including the 2003 Theodor Eschenburg Prize awarded by the German Association for Political Science as well as our 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award.

Paying tribute

Roland Czada of Universität Osnabrück, a former PhD student and research assistant under Lehmbruch, paid tribute to a 'great scholar' and close friend.

'Those close to Gerhard learned much about his motives and life background as a researcher on amicable political agreement and non-majoritarian politics.

'He explained his interest in social cleavages and non-majoritarian compromise from youthful experiences. He grew up as a son of a republican liberal pastor in an East Prussian region with a sizeable Polish minority in the shadow of terror, as he tells in his intellectual memoirs.

'When his father, who had to service a sprawling parish with Lutheran, Catholic and Mennonite villages, had been imprisoned by Hitler’s Gestapo, his mother told the schoolboy, there is no need not be ashamed, but he could rather be proud of him.

'So he learned early that in his own words “we were ruled by criminal terrorists”. This and the human misery he went through after the war left traumatic memories. As a refugee in the West, he experienced the salience of regional cultural and confessional cleavages, which as he mentioned has never left him since and may have led him to engage in cross-cultural comparative social science.'

ECPR would like to extend its sincere condolences to Gerhard Lehmbruch's family and friends.


Photo was taken as part of Gerhard Lehmbruch's 90th Birthday celebration.

Keywords: Comparative Politics, Interest Groups, Party Systems

24 June 2022
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