Gestalten statt verwalten? These zu Janusköpfigkeit als Kern des verwalterischen Habitus in NS-Zeit und Gegenwart.

The last fifteen years have seen a burgeoning of historical studies focused on (public) administration, notably during the period of National Socialism. And yet, this research has merely played a marginal role both in sociology and in the current training regime for public servants despite the critical role played by bureaucratic processes under the Naziregime and in the Shoah. Historical studies raise genuinely sociological questions about collective dispositions, however. The author’s hypothesis is that bureaucracy has the basic capacity or even inclination toward ambiguity and contradictory attitudes, and yet that this very Janus-head quality constitutes the bureaucratic trait per se.