Bio: (1906-1992) German sociologist. René König studied philosophy, psychology, ethnology, and Islamic studies at the universities of Vienna and Berlin, where he received his doctorate in 1930. As an opponent of Nazism, he emigrated to Switzerland in 1937. Since then, he has been strongly influenced by Durkheim, Maurice Halbwachs, and Marcel Mauss. From 1949, he taught sociology at the University of Cologne, where he founded the so-called Cologne School (Kölner Schule) and established and was the long-term editor of the journal Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie (Cologne Journal of Sociology and Social Psychology). He was also a co-founder of the International Sociological Society and its president from 1962 to 1966. He was a very influential sociologist in West Germany in the post-war period. In the center of his scientific interest were the fundamental questions of the theory and methodology of sociology, especially the problems of empirical research of society. He was engaged in the study of culture, and his works on the phenomenon of fashion and those in the field of sociology of the family are well known and popular.

Main works

Niccolò Machiavelli: zur Krisenanalyse einer Zeitenwende (1941);

Materialien zur Soziologie der Familie (1946);

Soziologie Heute (1949);

Beobachtung und Experiment in der Sozialforschung (1955);

Soziologie (1958);

Handbuch der empirischen Sozialforschung: I-II (1962-1969);

Soziologische Orientierungen (1965);

The community (1968);

A la mode: on the social psychology of fashion (1973);

Die Familie der Gegenwart: ein interkultureller Vergleich (1974);

Menschheit auf dem Laufsteg: die Mode im Zivilisationsprozess (1985).