Frithjof Bergmann: A life for work culture

We bid farewell to an important protagonist of work culture and New Work. Throughout his life, the social philosopher Frithjof Bergmann dealt with these concepts and tracked down, interpreted and set trends. Now the founding father of the New Work movement has passed away at the age of 90 on May 24, 2021. An obituary.

Frithjof Bergmann was convinced that work has a deeper meaning than simply being paid for hours. He wanted to empirically substantiate that finding “one’s own heart’s task” is one of the most important questions in life. The social philosopher, born in former Prussia, looks back on a long history in this regard. Bergmann went through a wide variety of occupations, from dishwasher to factory worker, dockworker and bank clerk, until he finally ended up as an intellectual, or even a philosopher. As such, he played a decisive role in shaping the concept of the “New Work”. He launched an antithesis to the classically hierarchical post-war work model and set up a proverbial monument to himself here over many years.

Maxims Freedom & Realization

Frithjof Bergmann defined work as a piece of integrated quality of life. He understood the concept of freedom not merely as the individual’s freedom to choose between alternatives. Rather, a fundamental freedom of action was crucial. Bergmann’s work celebrated the end of servitude through wage labor. “New Work” – for Bergmann, this still meant “new work” in the classical sense – was characterized by genuine independence, freedom and real participation in the community. He saw this as being realized in equal measure only on the basis of a triad: classic gainful employment. Self-sufficiency at the highest technical level. And work that people actually want of their own free will.

Bergmann came to philosophy more by chance than anything else. In 1949, the Austrian by choice was allowed to take up a scholarship in the USA at the renowned Princeton University. The United States was to remain his final adopted home until the end of his life. At the end of the 1970s, Bergmann traveled to Eastern European and formerly communist countries and witnessed the decline of real existing socialism.

Perhaps it was here that the final idea for his work came to him, the content of which is the foundation of the New Work movement. According to Bergmann, in addition to basic technical and ecological research, people should above all find their own individual vocation. This core idea also included a critique of the capitalism of the 1970s and 1980s. In his view, the concepts that emerged in this way generally contradicted true, genuine self-development. Bergmann’s ideas are still relevant today and are considered and consulted by many companies in the development of their corporate culture.

Image copyright: Richard Hebstreit  https://www.flickr.com/photos/rhebs/3312184779/

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