Morgenthau, Hans J. (Hans Joachim), 1904-1980

Political scientist, educator, and author. Born in Germany, emigrated to the United States in 1937.

Biographical Note

German-born American political scientist, historian, and a leading analyst of the role of power in international politics. Born February 17, 1904, in Coburg (Germany), died July 19, 1980, New York, NY (USA)

Educated at the universities of Berlin, Frankfurt, and Munich, Morgenthau trained as a passed to bar and practiced in Munich from 1927 to 1930, when he became a teaching assistant at the University of Frankfurt. From 1931 to 1933 he served as acting president of the Frankfurt labor court. In 1932, he went also to Geneva to teach public law for a year, but because of Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Germany in 1933, he stayed on until 1935. In 1935/36, he taught in Madrid, where he was professor of international law at the Madrid Institute of International and Economic Studies. Morgenthau immigrated to the United States in 1937 (naturalized 1943).

He served on the faculties of Brooklyn College (1937-39), the University of Kansas City (1939-43), and from 1943 to 1971 taught international politics at the University of Chicago. In 1950 he became the director of the Center for Study of American Foreign and Military Policy. From 1968 to 1974 he was professor of political science at the City College of New York. Furthermore Morgenthau taught at the New School for Social Research from 1974 to 1980 and also served as consultant to the U.S. Department of State and Defense, as well as commentator on U.S. current affairs.

Morgenthau was a predominant figure in the post-World War II effort to refocus the study of international relations on the observed regularities of human conduct, rather than the idealistic pursuit of abstract norms. This political realism gained wide influence with the publication of his Scientific Man vs. Power Politics (1947) and especially Politics among Nations (1949), a highly regarded study that presented a modern realist approach to international politics, which became the leading text in field. Central to Morgenthau's theory was the concept of power as the dominant goal in international politics and the definition of national interest in terms of power. He called for recognition of the nature and limits of power and for the use of traditional methods of diplomacy, including compromise.

A contributor to numerous scholarly periodicals and journals of opinion, Morgenthau was also the author of In Defense of the National Interest (1951), Dilemmas of Politics (1958), The Purpose of American Politics (1960), Politics in the Twentieth Century, 3 vol. (1962), and Truth and Power (1970). Many of Morgenthau’s writings were translated into foreign languages.

Hans Morgenthau was married to Irma Morgenthau (neé Thormann). Their son Matthew was born in 1942, when Hans Morgenthau was 38 years old. In 1944, a daughter Susanna was born.