Helmut Schoeck (3 July 1922 – 2 February 1993) was an Austrian-German sociologist and writer best known for his work Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior (Der Neid: Eine Theorie der Gesellschaft).

Life

Born in Graz, Schoeck spent his early years in Baden-Württemberg, finishing high school in Ludwigsburg. He then studied medicine, philosophy and psychology at the universities of Munich and Tübingen. With a dissertation on Karl Mannheim, Schoeck would obtain his doctorate under Eduard Spranger. For fifteen years, starting in 1950, Schoeck would work as a professor at various U.S. universities. In 1953, he taught philosophy at Fairmont State College, followed by a two-year stint at Yale. At Emory University he was awarded a full professorship in sociology. During the 1950s, Schoeck published some works in German, and translated Joachim Wach's Sociology of Religion into German. In 1965, Schoeck returned to Germany, where he obtained a chair in sociology at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, which he would occupy until his retirement in 1990. Schoeck, who was also a columnist of the Welt am Sonntag for twenty years, died of cancer in 1993.

Works (selected)