Obituary: Dr. Peter J. Opitz

It is with great sadness that we bid farewell to the founder and long-standing president of the Eric Voegelin Gesellschaft, Prof. Dr. Peter J. Opitz, who passed away on January 15, 2025 at the age of 87.
After his habilitation in 1972 at the University of Munich, Peter J. Opitz was a professor of political science at the Geschwister-Scholl Institute of the Ludwig Maximilians University Munich from 1978 to 2003. He studied political science, sinology and philosophy in Freiburg i. Br. and Munich. From 1964, Mr. Opitz was a research assistant to Eric Voegelin in Munich, and in 1966-67 he was a research fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. From 1976 to 2003, Prof. Opitz was a member of the board of directors of the Geschwister-Scholl Institute. He was also a member of the Senate and the teaching staff at the Hochschule für Politik München. He has published extensively on issues of political theory, international relations and, in particular, the history and present situation in China. In 1989, he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit.
Prof. Opitz founded the Eric Voegelin Archives at the University of Munich in 1990, the predecessor of today’s “Eric Voegelin Gesellschaft” and the “Voegelin Center for Politics, Culture and Religion”. The aim of both institutions was to make Voegelin’s works accessible to a wider readership in Germany through publications and conferences. This work resulted in the translation of numerous English-language essays and the new edition of German-language studies by Voegelin that were no longer available, including, among others, the writings The Political Religions (1938), The New Science of Politics (1952/58), and the 10-volume German edition of Order and History (1956-87). An important initiative was the founding and continued expansion of the so-called Voegeliniana – Occasional Papers series, which comprises a total of 111 individual studies by and about Voegelin and documents the international interest in Voegelin and his work.
The Eric Voegelin Gesellschaft owes Prof. Opitz a great debt of gratitude. In Peter J. Opitz we have not only lost a great scholar, but also a highly educated person who was always willing to help and was a competent and reliable point of contact for many people seeking advice.
Our condolences go out to his family and all his loved ones.
On behalf of the board and the members of the Eric Voegelin Gesellschaft,
Dr. Harald Bergbauer and Prof. Dr. Giuliana Parotto
(1st and 2nd Chairpersons of the Eric Voegelin Gesellschaft)
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Harald Bergbauer is a Board Member of VoegelinView and has worked for many years as Associate Professor at the Bavarian School of Public Policy at the University of Munich. He is President of the German "Eric Voegelin Gesellschaft" and Lecturer of Business Ethics and Social Policy at the University for Applied Sciences. His publications include the books, Eric Voegelin’s Critique of Modernity (2000), Cultural Theorists Think the State: The State in the Work of Selected Cultural Thinkers of the 20th Century (2013), Reshaping the World of States in the 21st Century: How Secession Creates New Political and Economic Structures (2020); the article, "The West and the Rest - Reissue or Metamorphosis of Friend-Foe-Thinking in the Work of Samuel P. Huntington and Roger Scruton" (2020), and the book on Climate Policy and Economic Growth. Analysis of a Reciprocal Relationship of Tension (2024). All his works are published in German.

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