Doctor Conze?

Conze presented himself to the world as Dr Conze. In the introduction to his recent translation of Conze's pre-Buddhism magnum opus, Holger Heine gushes that Conze "In 1928, he received his PhD from the University of Cologne" (2016: xiii). But did Conze ever receive a PhD? There is a lot of ambiguity in the use of terms like "doctorate" and "professor", they meant very different things in Germany and England. 

In the German university system of the time, a student who completed course of study produced an Inaugural dissertation and was awarded a "doctorate". In order to become a professor (i.e. a university lecturer) one had to complete the Habilitation process, which involved completing a second thesis, the Habilitationsschrift, based on personal research, and giving a public lecture based on it. Having passed Habilitation, a person was allowed to become a privatdozent (a private teacher) or a professor (a university teacher). Note that Holger Heine incorrectly says that Conze was a privatdozent but since he never passed his Habilitation, he could not have been.

Completed after 4 years of independent research, Der Satz vom Widerspruch was intended to be Conze's Habilitationsschrift. Following German tradition, the work had to be published. This was no doubt funded by Conze's wealthy family.  However, not long after the publication, the Nazis burned books by communists (amongst others). Conze's explicitly Marxist book was amongst them. As Holger Heine tells the story, "almost all of the five hundred copies of the first edition were destroyed [and] Conze's hopes for an academic career in Germany had come to naught" (xiv). Shortly afterwards, Conze fled Germany for England. 

It is difficult to get a clear idea of German academia in the 1920s, but from what I can gather, Conze completed a course of study and wrote an inaugural dissertation in 1928. The University of Hamburg library catalogue gives the following information about this dissertation: 

Der Begriff der Metaphysik bei Franciscus Suarez : Gegenstandsbereich und Primat der Metaphysik / Eberhard Conze. Köln, Univ., Diss., 1928. 38 S. 

What I want to draw attention to is the annotation "38 S." In German, this means thirty-eight pages. His doctoral dissertation was just 38 pages long. At roughly 500 words per page, the dissertation is approximately 19,000 words. An English doctoral dissertation is a book-length project of about 80,000 words. What Conze submitted was a long essay akin to an MA thesis. Despite granting him the title "doctor" the dissertation did not include the years-long independent research program resulting in a book-length publication that, say, an English PhD candidate would undertake. This research aspect of the English PhD was included in the Habilitation. Conze's Der Satz vom Widerspruch represented his PhD dissertation, but he never submitted it. And therefore he never graduated. 

Note that this arrangement has since changed. The modern German doctorate is equivalent to the English PhD and the Habilitation is seen as an extra (I have a friend whose Husband is German academic at working at Cambridge).

As such Conze's formal education level is about the same as a traditional English MA. He may have been granted the title of Doctor in Germany, but this was not equivalent to an English PhD, not by a very wide margin. And this helps to make sense of a story which otherwise just seemed racist, i.e. that the Oxford Dons he met insisted on calling him "Mister Conze". Whether the Oxonians were racist is moot, but it seems more cogent to assume that they were aware that Conze had failed to complete his formal studies and and that his qualification in no way equated to a PhD. This also explains why he could not get an academic position in England and instead ended up teaching philosophy for evening classes. 

Conze could rightfully claim the German title "Doctor" but the significance of it was not the same in Germany as in the English speaking world. It is not commensurate with a PhD. Conze's degree was on a par with an MA. He was not the wunderkind that Holger Heine (or Conze himself) made him out to be. 

References

• Conze, E. 1932. Der Satz vom Widerspruch: Zur Theorie des Dialektischen Materialism. Hamburg. (Reprinted 1976 by Frankfurt: Neue Kritik.)
• Conze, E.  2016. The Principle of Contradiction. Translated by Holger Heine. Lanham MD: Lexington Books.
• Heine, Holger. 2016. "Aristotle, Marx, Buddha: Edward Conze's Critique of the Principle of Contradiction." In Conze (2016: xiii-lxiii).