Enduring Enmity: The Story of Otto Kirchheimer and Carl Schmitt

To date, the relationship between Otto Kirchheimer and Carl Schmitt has invariably been described as friendly, despite their political differences. Kirchheimer has even been attributed the role of the godfather of today’s left-Schmittianism. With reference to previously unknown archival materials, conversations with personal contacts, and through a new reading of the theoretical works of both authors, including an analysis of the Nazi vocabulary used by Schmitt, Hubertus Buchstein exposes this view as a politically motivated legend. Buchstein claims that the best way to characterize their relationship from their first meeting in Bonn in 1926 up until Kirchheimer’s death in 1965 is as enduring enmity - in a political, a theoretical, and even a personal sense.

Hubertus Buchstein, born in 1959, works as a professor for political theory at Universität Greifswald, Germany. He did his doctorate at Freie Universität Berlin and has taught at the New School for Social Research in New York. His research focusses on modern democratic theory, Critical Theory and the history of political ideas.