FROM BERLIN TO CHICAGO AND FURTHER - SIMM EL,GEORG AND THE VOYAGE OF HIS STRANGER

It is argued here that Georg Simmel's essay on the stranger resonated with or directly influenced all major German sociologists of his time: Max Weber, Werner Sombart, Ferdinand Tonnies, and Robert Michels. Soo n thereafter, the Chicago School, in particular Robert Park and Everet t Hughes, transposed Simmel's idea as ''marginal man'' into American s ociology. In contrast to Simmel, however, who defined the stranger as one who ''comes today and stays tomorrow,'' and also in contrast to th e American literature, his German contemporaries saw the stranger as a temporary and unassimilable intruder. After the Holocaust, beginning with Lewis Coser, and mostly in Germany, Simmel's essay and Simmel's b iography experience a reading which construct Simmel as a Jewish stran ger isolated from his surroundings. In light of Simmel's actual, highl y integrated, social position in the Germany of his time, this view is untenable.