Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann

Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann
Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann and Otto Schlecht at the Ludwig Erhard-foundation in 1991
Born	19 December 1916(1916-12-19) Berlin, German Empire
Died	25 March 2010(2010-03-25) (aged 93) Allensbach, Germany
Nationality	Germany
Fields	Political science
Alma mater	Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, University of Missouri
Doctoral advisor	Emil Dovifat
Known for	spiral of silence, Institut für Demoskopie Allensbach
Notable awards	Great Cross of Merit (1976), Alexander Rüstow Medal (1978), Baden-Württemberg's Medal of Merit (1990), Helen Dinerman Award (issued by WAPOR; 1990), Gerhard Löwenthal Honor Award (issued by Junge Freiheit; 2006)

Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann (19 December 1916 – 25 March 2010) was a German political scientist. Her most famous contribution is the model of the spiral of silence, detailed in The Spiral of Silence : Public Opinion – Our Social Skin. The model is an explanation of how perceived public opinion can influence individual opinions or actions.

Elisabeth Noelle was born to Ernst and Eve Noelle in 1916. First Elisabeth went to several schools in Berlin and then switched to the prestigious Salem Castle School, which she also left one year later. She earned her Abitur in 1935 in Göttingen and then studied philosophy, history, journalism, and American studies at the Friedrich Wilhelm University, and the Königsberg Albertina University. When she visited Obersalzberg, she by chance had an encounter with Adolf Hitler, which she later called "one of the most intensive and strangest experiences in her life". She stayed in the USA from 1937 to 1938 and studied at the University of Missouri. In 1940 she received her Ph.D. concentrating on public opinion research in the USA.

In 1940 she briefly worked for the Nazi newspaper Das Reich. On 8 June 1941 Das Reich published Noelle-Neumann's article entitled "Who Informs America?" in which she propagated the myth that a Jewish syndicate ran the American media. She wrote, "Jews write in the paper, own them, have virtually monopolized the advertising agencies and can therefore open and shut the gates of advertising income as they wish." She was fired when she exchanged unfavourable photos of Franklin D. Roosevelt for better looking ones. She then worked for the Frankfurter Zeitung until it was banned in 1943.

In 1947 she and her first husband Erich Peter Neumann founded a public opinion research organization—the Institut für Demoskopie Allensbach, which today is one of the best known and most prestigious polling organizations in Germany.

From 1964 to 1983 she held a professorate at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz.

Noelle-Neumann was the president of the World Association for Public Opinion Research from 1978 to 1980 and worked as a guest professor at the University of Chicago from 1978 to 1991.

Allegations of anti Semitism by Leo Bogart

In 1991, Leo Bogart criticized Noelle-Neumann. He made her the center of controversy while she was a visiting professor at the University of Chicago, as he published "The Pollster and the Nazis" in the August 1991 issue of Jewish heritage and cultural magazine Commentary, accusing her of anti-Semitic passages in her dissertation and articles she wrote for Nazi newspapers. In fact, when she published her 1940 dissertation "Opinion and mass research in the USA" in Germany, having spent a year at the University of Missouri to research George Gallup's methodology, Goebbels called the 24-year-old woman as an adjutant and intended for her to build up, for the ministry of propaganda, Germany's first public opinion research organization. She declined, falling sick, and angering Goebbels; she later became a newspaper journalist with Nazi publications where she wrote some articles on Jewish influence over U.S. news and elite opinion.

Bogart suggested there is a direct line from Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels to Noelle's theory of the "spiral of silence" and "public opinion as our social skin," which interpreted the group pressure band-wagon effect and the domination of leading mass media over public opinion. The accused wrote a letter of apology to the magazine, explaining that the passages served alibi functions under the dictatorship and were not meant to be harmful.^{[citation needed]}

John Mearsheimer, Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago wrote in The New York Times on December 16, 1991:

"She has admitted she was not hostile to the Nazis before 1940. She says she was anti-Nazi after 1940, but has produced no evidence that she criticized the Nazis then. She wrote anti-Semitic words in 1938–41, and there is no evidence she was compelled to write them. Queried on her anti-Semitic writings, she told me: "I have never written anything in my life that I did not believe to be true."

Personal life

She was married to the Christian Democratic politician Erich Peter Neumann (1912–1973) from 1946 until his death. She was married to the physicist Heinz Maier-Leibnitz (1911–2000) from 1979 until his death.

In an interview in the German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel, Noelle-Neumann said that while holding a scientific point of view she also believed in angels and predestination.

Awards

• Great Cross of Merit (1976)
• Alexander Rüstow Medal (1978)
• Baden-Württemberg's Medal of Merit (1990)
• Helen Dinerman Award (issued by WAPOR; 1990)
• Gerhard Löwenthal Honor Award (issued by Junge Freiheit; 2006)

Selected work

• Noelle-Neumann, Elisabeth (1984), The spiral of silence. A theory of public opinion – Our social skin, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ISBN 0226589323 .

External links

• Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann in the German National Library catalogue (German)
• Page with Picture and further links
• The Allensbach Institute