Herbert Franz Schurmann (June 21, 1926 – August 20, 2010) was an American
sociologist and
historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the st ...
who was best known for his research and writings about
Communist China during the
Cold War period.
Schurmann taught at the
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
, in the departments of Sociology and History for 38 years. He also served a term as the head of the Center for Chinese Studies. He was an early opponent of the
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (also known by other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam a ...
, and was the first American professor to visit
Hanoi
Hanoi or Ha Noi ( or ; vi, Hà Nội ) is the capital and second-largest city of Vietnam. It covers an area of . It consists of 12 urban districts, one district-leveled town and 17 rural districts. Located within the Red River Delta, Hanoi is ...
during the bombing raids there. He co-founded the
Pacific News Service
Pacific News Service (PNS) was an American nonprofit alternative news media organization. PNS ceased operations in 2017.
The organization was located in Berkeley, California.
History
PNS was founded in 1969 by historian and sociologist Fr ...
in 1970 together with author
Orville Schell, serving as editor and commentator, and wrote the weekly "Predictions" column.
[Egelko, Bob]
"Historian and China expert Franz Schurmann dies"
''San Francisco Chronicle
The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and Michael H. de Young. The ...
'', August 23, 2010. Accessed August 27, 2010.
Early life and education
Schurmann was born on June 21, 1926, in
Astoria, Queens
Astoria is a neighborhood in the western portion of the New York City borough of Queens. Astoria is bounded by the East River and is adjacent to three other Queens neighborhoods: Long Island City to the southwest, Sunnyside to the southeast ...
, New York, and grew up in
Bloomfield, Connecticut. He developed fluency in as many as 12 languages, acquiring them from his
Slovenia
Slovenia ( ; sl, Slovenija ), officially the Republic of Slovenia (Slovene: , abbr.: ''RS''), is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the west, Austria to the north, Hungary to the northeast, Croatia to the southeast, an ...
n father who spoke five languages himself, his mother who was an immigrant from
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
, and from the dialects spoken in the
melting pot community where he was raised. He briefly attended
Trinity College in nearby
Hartford, Connecticut.
He was drafted by the
United States Army
The United States Army (USA) is the land warfare, land military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight Uniformed services of the United States, U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army o ...
during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
and was assigned to learn
Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
, serving as a newspaper censor during the American
occupation of Japan. He befriended
Stefan Brecht
Stefan Sebastian Brecht (November 3, 1924 – April 13, 2009) was a German-born American poet, critic and scholar of theatre.
Life and career
The son of playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht and actress Helene Weigel, Stefan Brecht was born in Ber ...
during his Army service and met
Thomas Mann
Paul Thomas Mann ( , ; ; 6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novell ...
and other German émigrés at the California home of Stefan's father
Bertolt Brecht. After completing his military service, Schurmann attended
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...
where he was awarded a Ph.D. in
Asian studies, which he was able to attend using his
G.I. Bill
The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the G.I. Bill, was a law that provided a range of benefits for some of the returning World War II veterans (commonly referred to as G.I.s). The original G.I. Bill expired in 1956, bu ...
benefits as a veteran.
[Weber, Bruce]
"Franz Schurmann, Cold War Expert on China, Dies at 84"
''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'', August 26, 2010. Accessed August 27, 2010.[Staff]
"PNS Co-founder Franz Schurmann Dies"
New America Media
New America Media (NAM) was a multimedia ethnic news agency and a coalition of ethnic media. Founded in 1996 by the nonprofit Pacific News Service, NAM was headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in Los Angeles, New York and Washington, ...
, August 23, 2010. Accessed August 27, 2010.
Career
During the late 1950s, Schurmann spent two years exploring
Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...
on horseback, where he documented a blue-eyed, blond-haired tribe that descended from the invasions by
Genghis Khan, a history that he recounted in his 1962 book ''The Mongols of Afghanistan: An Ethnography of the Moghôls and Related Peoples of Afghanistan''.
He was an early opponent of the Vietnam War, founding the Berkeley Faculty Peace Committee in 1965 and visiting
North Vietnam
North Vietnam, officially the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV; vi, Việt Nam Dân chủ Cộng hòa), was a socialist state supported by the Soviet Union (USSR) and the People's Republic of China (PRC) in Southeast Asia that existed f ...
with author and political activist
Mary McCarthy in 1968. In 1967, Schurmann signed a letter declaring his intention to
refuse to pay taxes in protest against the U.S. war against Vietnam, and urging other people to also take this stand.
His major work ''
Ideology and Organization in Communist China'' was published in 1966, just as Mao's
Cultural Revolution
The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a sociopolitical movement in the People's Republic of China (PRC) launched by Mao Zedong in 1966, and lasting until his death in 1976. Its stated goa ...
was starting, and was revised and enlarged in 1968 and 1971. A widely influential analysis, the book applied the sociological insights of
Max Weber to interviews Schurmann conducted in
Hong Kong
Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta i ...
with refugees and wide reading in Chinese newspapers and documents. The book demonstrates how
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong pronounced ; also romanised traditionally as Mao Tse-tung. (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC) ...
's "dialectical conception of Chinese society" structured his organizational approach to the
Chinese Communist Party
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), officially the Communist Party of China (CPC), is the founding and sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the CCP emerged victorious in the Chinese Civil ...
and the government. The book argued that a "consistent yet changing ideology" created a web of organization which covered and penetrated all aspects of Chinese society, building from the 1930s.
[''Ideology and Organization in Communist China'' (Berkeley: ]University of California Press
The University of California Press, otherwise known as UC Press, is a publishing house associated with the University of California that engages in academic publishing. It was founded in 1893 to publish scholarly and scientific works by facult ...
, 1966; revised and enlarged, 1968, 1971 He edited the three-volume series ''The China Reader'' with
Orville Schell, a student of his who became an author and China expert in his own right. Together with Schell, he established the Pacific News Service in 1970, with the goal of providing Americans with more detailed coverage of news from Asia and Latin America. The service created
New America Media
New America Media (NAM) was a multimedia ethnic news agency and a coalition of ethnic media. Founded in 1996 by the nonprofit Pacific News Service, NAM was headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in Los Angeles, New York and Washington, ...
in 1996, a multimedia ethnic news agency and a coalition of
ethnic media
Ethnic media is media fashioned with a particular ethnic minority group or ethnic minority community in mind.
Definition
Academic Yu Shi tenders an operational definition for ethnic media: “Ethnic media are often regarded as media ''by and fo ...
organizations.
His 1974 work ''The Logic of World Power'' provided a summary of international relations following World War II. ''The Foreign Politics of Richard Nixon'', a book he wrote in the 1970s about the U.S. President's role in foreign affairs, was published in 1987.
Schurmann wrote hundreds of columns for Pacific News Service about the development and goals of
militant Islam.
[ He was able to read written Arabic and would refer to Arabic-language press in his reporting.]
Death
He died at age 84 on August 20, 2010, at his home in San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...
due to complications of Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease
Parkinson's disease (PD), or simply Parkinson's, is a long-term degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that mainly affects the motor system. The symptoms usually emerge slowly, and as the disease worsens, non-motor symptoms becom ...
. He and his wife of 42 years, journalist Sandy Close
Alexandra Close is an American journalist and the founder of Ethnic Media Services. She was the executive director of Pacific News Service from 1974 to 2017 and of New America Media from 1996 to 2017.
Early life and education
Close received ...
, had two sons.[
]
Publications
* ''Economic Structure of the Yuan Dynasty'', 1956
*''The Politics of Escalation in Vietnam,'' with Peter Dale Scott and Reginald Zelnik. Fawcett, 1966.
*''Ideology and Organization in Communist China'', 1968
*''Imperial China: The Decline of the Last Dynasty and the Origins of Modern China, the 18th and 19th Centuries''. 1967. (with Orville Schell). First in The China Reader series.
*
Republican China: Nationalism, War, and the Rise of Communism, 1911-1949''
(with Orville Schell). 1967 Second in The China Reader series.
*''Communist China: Revolutionary Reconstruction and International Confrontation, 1949 to the Present'' (with Orville Schell) (1968). Third in The China Reader series.
* ''China: An interpretive history, from the beginnings to the fall of Han'', with Joseph R. Levenson, 1969
* ''People's China: Social experimentation, politics, entry onto the world scene 1966 through 1972'', (1974).
*
The Logic of World Power: An Inquiry into the Origins, Currents, and Contradictions of World Politics
'' Pantheon, 1974.
*''The Foreign Politics of Richard Nixon: The Grand Design'', Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1987.
*
American Soul
' (a personal narrative). 2001.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Schurmann, Franz
Historians from New York (state)
American sociologists
American tax resisters
Mongolists
American foreign policy writers
American male non-fiction writers
News agency founders
American anti–Vietnam War activists
University of California, Berkeley faculty
Harvard University alumni
Trinity College (Connecticut) alumni
United States Army personnel of World War II
United States Army soldiers
Writers from San Francisco
People from Astoria, Queens
People from Bloomfield, Connecticut
Neurological disease deaths in California
Deaths from Parkinson's disease
Deaths from dementia in California
Deaths from Alzheimer's disease
1926 births
2010 deaths
Asian studies
Activists from California
Historians from California
Historians from Connecticut