• 1 Oehler (1981, 27): “The outbreak of World War I abruptly broke off the development of the pragmatis (...)

4Peirce visited Germany several times and he was in personal and professional contact with German mathematicians, scientists and engineers. Still more important was his actual influence on Ernst Schröder, which was acknowledged by Schröder in the very first page of his Algebra der Logik (1891). Schröder stated that the work done by Peirce was crucial for the idea of a logical algebra or “exact logic.” Therefore, with Cantor, Boole, Peano, Russell and Frege, Peirce was listed as one of the creators of modern relational algebra and logic. Given the scientifically oriented Neo-Kantian philosophical domination at the time, the reception of Peirce’s philosophical work looked promising. However, he underwent an almost total omission for several decades. Klaus Oehler called this fact, which included Pragmatism and American Philosophy as a whole “the most significant lacunae” in the history of modern German philosophy.1 Strangely enough, one of the reasons for the ignorance towards Peirce was his association with Pragmatism, which was known via William James’ lectures, which had a huge impact but negative, and even hostile, reactions. The reason was that James’ concept of truth was seen as unscientific and dangerous.

• 2 Hans Joas described the reception of Pragmatism in Germany pointedly as “A History of Misunderstand (...)
• 3 Of course it thus remained poorly understood, when taking into account that’s founder was not read (...)
• 4 Whereas there existed translations of James, Schiller and Dewey from early on; the first translatio (...)

5Peirce’s own reactions towards the popular understanding of Pragmatism of course went unheard and his semiotics were not known at all. When he died in 1914, the year in which World War I began, the philosophical scene in Germany began to change according to the dramatic historical events. Socio-economic and political changes that intervened after World War I moved the philosophical interest from Neo-Kantianism to the so-called Philosophy of Life bringing more kulturkritische, existentialistic, and psychological themes (like mood, will, place in the world, etc.) to the fore. Peirce’s early fame was worth almost nothing anymore. With Bateson we could say that his work got stuck in a double bind situation – a mixture of ignorance and ill reception. Moreover, as in other countries the reception of Peirce was delayed due to the state of publication of his philosophical works. What was known in Germany of Peirce at the time came almost exclusively from James. Afterwards, it was understood only under the heading of “Pragmatism,” a philosophical perspective which was strongly misunderstood for a long time in Germany, often reduced to a concept of truth as cash-value.2 Whereas Pragmatism began to find at least a small audience in the changing philosophical climate3 the work of its founder was forgotten or never read at all.4

• 5 Significant in this respect is the fate of Wind’s book, which appeared 1934 after he emigrated with (...)

62. A nationalistic isolationism in philosophy, which began with World War I, was decisive for this situation as well. Although the Third World Congress for Philosophy held in 1908 in Heidelberg helped to spread discussions about Pragmatism in Germany, after the war the interest in reviving, revising or continuing the debate was gone. Who afterwards wrote on pragmatism either wanted to finish this debate (like Max Scheler in his otherwise very interesting study Erkenntnis und Arbeit) or went to know American philosophy first hand, as Gustav Müller and Edgar Wind did. They both went to the USA in the twenties. Wind was a student of Ernst Cassirer and Erwin Panofsky, and later worked at the famous Warburg Institute. In the introduction of his book Das Experiment und die Metaphysik. Zur Auflösung der kosmologischen Antinomien (Experiment and Metaphysics. Towards the Solution of the Cosmological Antinomies), which was a challenge of (Neo-) Kantianism by pragmatist methodology, Wind emphasized his Peircean point of departure. Leaving aside the works which wanted to apply Pragmatism within limited fields (as pedagogy and sociology in W. Jerusalem and philosophical anthropology in Arnold Gehlen), Wind’s work was the first philosophical attempt of an independent adoption of a pragmatistic logic of research. Nevertheless, all these exceptions to the mainstream ignorance did not have any significant impact.5

• 6 It is important to note that semiotics played almost no role in this early reception of Peirce. Alt (...)
• 7 In his memoirs Klaus Oehler recounted, that Adorno confessed giving the doctorate to von Kempski, b (...)
• 8 To be more precise: this was the beginning of West German reception, whereas the situation in East (...)

7Even when in 1934 and 1936 a couple of reviews of the first volumes of the Collected Papers appeared by Heinrich Scholz, the situation did not change. It would be more precise to say that it was not a good time for such a philosophical change. Nevertheless, in 1937 a short article on Peirce and Pragmatism appeared in the Journal of the German nobility (Deutsches Adelsblatt). The author, Jürgen von Kempski, relied heavily on Scholz’s review and agreed with Scholz in saying that there was a vast potentiality in Peirce’s writings.6 After the World War II, during which he served in the foreign ministry, Kempski kept writing a dissertation under Adorno’s supervision.7 This dissertation (finished 1951) became the first monograph on Peirce and an inspiration for the future reception of Peirce. Kempski pointed out the relevance of the relation between Peirce and Kant, the consensus theory of truth, the logic of research, and abduction. In retrospect, he was not right on everything and his work on Peirce remained only as a first step; but it was a very important one. The publication of Kempski’s monograph marks the beginning of a continuous German reception of Peirce.8

• 9 This had influence also on the reception of pragmatism as a whole, with other main figures pushed i (...)

93. In the first three decades after World War II the recognition of Peirce grew exponentially and the interpretations improved significantly.9 The German philosophical reception of Peirce afterwards can be distinguished in roughly four, sometimes interrelated, approaches: a sociological approach understood in the broadest sense of the word, which includes communication, society, law, politics; a mathematical approach that implies logics, cybernetics, and the concept of a unified science; a metaphysical approach oriented towards the history of philosophy and ontology; and a culturological approach, which includes linguistics and media theory.

• 10 Given the international orientation of researchers dealing with Peirce, there is probably no need f (...)

15Nowadays Peirce is seen as a classic philosopher. In respect to Pragmatism and Semiotics Peirce’s contributions are recognized as crucial for their understanding (and development).10 However, it does not mean that these perspectives constitute the mainstream of German Philosophy in any way. In 2008, a volume on the different approaches to pragmatism and its future potentialities was issued. The title of the volume opens a significant and still provocative question: Pragmatismus – Philosophie der Zukunft?