 |
Link to original German Version
tran. by M.Terpstra |
| 1927 | Niklas Luhmann born on 8 December as a son of an owner of a brewery in Lueneburg. |
| 1944 | At the age of 15 years of age served in German Air Force as an aid. |
| 1945 | At 17 years of age he is captured by American troops. |
| 1946-49 | Study of the jurisprudence in Freiburg and legal internship. |
| 1952-53 | Luhmann begins with the structure of his famous Zettelkaesten. |
| 1954 | Civil servant at the high administrative court in Lueneburg. |
| 1955-62 | Federal state parliament adviser in the ministry for education and culture, Lower Saxony, later he became a upper government adviser. |
| 1960 | Marriage to Ursula von Walter. |
| 1960-61 | Given time off to study at Harvard University with Talcott Parsons. |
| 1962-65 | Adviser at the research institute of the university of administrative sciences in Speyer. |
| 1964 | Publication of his first book Functions and Consequences of Formal Organization. |
| 1965 | Luhmann is appointed by Helmut Schelsky as a department manager to the social research center Dortmund. |
| 1966 | The book of 1964, tapes, and transcripts in public administration are accepted as thesis and he is granted a academic position at the University of Cathedral under Helmut Schelsky and Dieter Claessens. |
| 1967 | Under the title "Solutions to the Sociological Crisis" holds his first lecture series at Cathedrals. |
| 1968 | Luhmann becomes a professor of sociology at the again-created reform University of Bielefeld. Habermas and Luhmann publish together their controversy theory covering the society or social technology - what is the mechanism that maintains a system? |
| 1971 | Death of his Mrs. Ursula. Since then he lives with his three children (geb. 1961, 1963 and 1963) in his house in Oerlinghausen. |
| 1984 | Luhmanns seminal work, Social Systems appears. |
| 1986 | The book, Ecological Communication documents Luhmann's application to current problems of the real world. |
| 1988 | Hegel prize of the city Stuttgart. |
| 1998 | Untimely death due to cancer. November 6th |