Ladies and Gentlemen

The business report of our Society, which I have the obligation to present, essentially ranges over:

The essence of the concept of ‘sociology’ being unstable, it is well for a society (Gesellschaft) with such an unpopular name to define what it wants to be through the wholly concrete specifications of the current constitution; and through the tasks it currently anticipates taking on.

On the first point, the following principles – which I will note briefly – were first expressed in our statutes during the course of last year. First: a principle my esteemed colleague, the previous speaker, has already discussed – that the Society fundamentally and definitively rejects any propaganda of practical ideas that might spring from its midst. The Society is not somehow only ‘nonpartisan’ in the sense that it should be just, that it should understand all, or that it should want to seek to draw that beloved ‘middle line’ between party opinions, between political, socio–political, ethical or aesthetic values, or values of other types. Instead, it should have absolutely nothing to do with such opinions, so that in all areas it is simply party–less (Partien –los). Thus, it is possible to make a purely objective investigative analysis, in which the existence, the individuality, the demands and the successes of political, aesthetic, literary, religious and other party opinions can be discussed; and even the object of the analysis can be discussed as a fact of its existence; and the Society can judge the presumed or real reasons for the opinions, and their success or chances of success, and focus on their ‘principle’ and their ‘practical’ consequences. But never, as is stated in our current Statute §1, can the pros and cons, the value or lack of value, of any such opinion be the object of discussion in our Society.