The Introduction consists of four parts. It starts with short remarks on the biographical details of Niklas Luhmann. The second part outlines the development of Luhmann’s social theory in three stages and highlights a number of tenets of his social theory. In the third part, the Introduction offers concise summaries of the contributions contained in the Companion. And the last part provides a list of core monographs of Niklas Luhmann in English.

Brief Biographical Facts on Niklas Luhmann

Niklas Luhmann was born on 8 December 1927 in Lüneburg (in the North of Germany) and died 6 November 1998, in Oerlinghausen, near Bielefeld where he was Professor of Sociology for 30 years. He gained a worldwide reputation as a sociologist, philosopher of social science, and a prominent thinker in systems theory, who can be considered as one of the most important social theorists of the twentieth century.

Rather unusually for an academic sociologist, he worked during the first period of his adult life as a lawyer. He gained his legal education in Freiburg in the late 1940s (first state exam in law), followed by an obligatory period of legal training at the appellate administrative court in Lüneburg (second state exam in law). From 1956 to 1962 he was a civil servant in the Ministry of Culture in Lower Saxony, Germany. During this time, he was able to be seconded to spend a year (1960–1961) at Harvard University where he encountered and studied with the leading U.S. sociologist and social system theorist Talcott Parsons.

In 1962 he gained a research position at the College (since 1997 University) of Administrative Sciences in Speyer and moved in 1965 to a social science research institute located in Dortmund. This research institute was associated with the University of Münster where he was awarded in 1966 within one year the obligatory two doctorates for an academic career (Ph.D. and Habilitation). Further details and analyses of Luhmann’s early career can be found in Klaus Dammann’s contribution to this Companion which also reflects on how to write a Luhmann biography.

In 1968, Luhmann became Professor of Sociology in the newly founded University of Bielefeld.