Johannes Agnoli

Johannes Agnoli (22 February 1925 in Valle di Cadore, Eastern Dolomites – 4 May 2003 in San Quirico di Moriano near Lucca) was a German political scientist of Italian descent. He analysed the modern democratic state in a post-marxist and structuralist way, trying to show how modern parliamentarism transforms capital interests into illusionary democratic decisions. The mechanisms of party rule and parliamentary procedures lead to an exclusion of social conflicts from political processes and to pacification of the inherent antagonism within society by manipulation.

Biography Agnoli grew up in Belluno, northern Italy. As a pupil, he became an admirer of Benito Mussolini's fascism and a member of the fascist youth organization. Graduating from school in 1943, he volunteered for the Waffen-SS and served in Yugoslavia to combat Partisans. In May 1945 he was captured by the British near Trieste and became a prisoner of war in the Moascar denazification camp in Egypt. In the re-education classes, he aided in the philosophy course using Wilhelm Windelband's History of Philosophy thus also learning German. Released in the summer of 1948, he moved to Urach in Baden-Württemberg where he worked at a sawmill. Agnoli received a veteran's scholarship to study at the University of Tübingen. Naturalized as a German in 1955, Agnoli did his doctorate in political science about Giambattista Vico's philosophy of law under the supervision of Eduard Spranger. From 2000, his grown-up children cared for him, as he started losing his health. He died there in 2003. In 2004, his wife Barbara published a biography of Agnoli titled Johannes Agnoli: Eine biografische Skizze (Johannes Agnoli: A biographical sketch).