Thomas Luckmann

Overview

Early life

Luckmann was born in 1927 in Jesenice, Slovenia which at the time was part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. He had an Austrian father who was an industrialist, his mother was from a Slovene family from Ljubljana. On his mother's side, he was the cousin of the Slovene poet Božo Vodušek. As a child he was exposed to two vastly different cultures, and Luckmann had the advantage of growing up in a bilingual environment speaking both Slovene and German. He attended Slovene-language schools while in Jesenice until the year 1941, when the occupation of Slovenia during World War II forced him to transfer to Klagenfurt high school in Austria. Later in 1943 he and his mother relocated to Vienna, after the death of his father and several other relatives during World War II. Living in Austria during this period automatically granted him German citizenship, and in 1944 he was drafted into the German army, joining the Luftwaffe where he served as a Luftwaffenhelfer. Luckmann was transferred to a military hospital for minor injuries shortly before the end of the war. Luckmann was in the hospital in Bavaria when the United States liberated the region. After liberation in 1945 Luckmann became a prisoner of war where he remained until the end of the war. He then settled back to Vienna and he could finish his high school exit exams, the "Matura."

Educational background

Luckmann attended high school in Klagenfurt, Austria, after he and his family fled Italian occupation in Ljubljana in 1941. After the end of the war, Luckmann could return to school in Klagenfurt and pass his exit exams, the "Matura." Luckmann began studying philosophy and linguistics at the University of Vienna in 1947 and continued in Innsbruck in 1948, studying different subjects in the social science field. He moved to the United States in 1950 with his wife, Benita Petkevic, where he then studied at The New School in New York City.

At The New School, Luckmann began to discern his career as a sociologist. He was taught by Alfred Schütz, Dorion Cairns, Albert Salomon, and Carl Meyer, they later became great influence on Luckmann. This was when he was first introduced to the sociological discipline, and then he got familiarized with Alfred Schütz's work on sociological phenomenology. He went on to meet Peter Berger, where he would later go on to co-author The Social Construction of Reality, which later ended up becoming one of his most notable works. Together, he and his colleagues produced some of the most influential sociological works of the 20th century.

Luckmann never intended to become a sociologist. His initial academic interests resided in linguistics, history and philosophy. At The New School, Luckmann primarily studied philosophy and chose to study sociology as a second subject, influenced by the professors there. For example, Luckmann was introduced to the sociology of religion when his teacher at the time, Carl Meyer, asked him to do field work about churches in Germany after World War II. Captivated by his experience in Germany, Luckmann used his fieldwork to pursue a Ph.D. in sociology. He obtained his first academic position at Hobart College, in Geneva, New York, before returning to teach at The New School after the death of Alfred Schütz. Luckmann was eventually granted a professorship position at the University of Frankfurt in 1965. After publishing two books in 1963 and 1966, and several successful essays, Luckmann worked as a professor of Sociology at the University of Konstanz in Germany from 1970 to his retirement, and later professor emeritus. It is noted that his time in at Konstanz was marked as an intense period of interdisciplinary work, in which he wrote multiple essays concerning communication, linguistics, literature and history.

Life Events

In 1950, Luckmann married Benita Petkevic, who was a Latvian-born sociologist who taught in the United States and Germany. It was said that their marriage was a turning point for his life, among many other factors. The couple had three daughters Maja, Mara, and Metka. On May 10, 2016, Luckmann died of cancer at the age of 88 at his home in Austria.

Legacy

Luckmann's ideas and theories have been influential within the field in sociology and has had a huge impact on the world and intellectual thought.

50th Anniversary Social Construction Thomas Luckmann.