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The Principle of Hope, Vol. 1 (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought)

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Ernst Bloch (1885-1977) was a professor for philosophy at the University of Leipzig from 1949-1956. But September 20, 1961, Associated Press reported: "The internationally admitted philosopher professor Ernst Bloch did not return from a visit in the Federal Republic (BRD, West-Germany) to the Soviet Zone (GDR, East-Germany)." One of his reasons: The building of the wall between the two German states August 13, 1961.

In his suit-case Bloch did not have no more possession than a crime-book of Agatha Christie. A typical nonchalant gesture of the philosopher of hope and progress. He wrote to the GDR-administration: "I am no longer determined to offer my work and myself to unworthy conditions."

His peerless magnus opus, "The Principle of Hope", he wrote in the years 1938-1947 in the "Public Library" in Manhattan at the 42nd street - after he had been driven out of Germany by the Nazis, who burned books and terrorized jews and socialists. His wife Karola earned the money, working as an architect in New York.

Back in Germany (1949) he at first helped to evolve Marxian thinking. But it did not last long, then he wrote: "Now chess must be finally played - instead of Bingo." "Nowadays one can select between dull or wrong. With a wrong shoe however no one is able to walk far. A cloudy glass also makes anything cloudy, which is poured in..." With such aphorisms Ernst Bloch very soon became a mentor in the epicenter of the 1968 student movement in Tuebingen, a famous university in West-Germany.

Bloch often tried to convince via small anecdotes, for example the description, how Stephenson, the inventor of the steam engine, managed not to lose HOPE: "In vain he followed the first boiler on wheels running behind. The steam machine more and more rapidly approached a curve. The mother of all railway engines drove straightforward and exploded at the wall of a house. Stephenson now everything had understood completely. He built a new machine, equipped with a steering-wheel, using an iron-track."

Like the art of engineering philosophy should never forget, that to proceed is an important component. This still has been the reasonable message of Bloch's philosophy - though, in the meantime, some states (i.e. hammers and sickles) have had to change their doctrines fundamental ...