How to Take Smart Notes

by Sönke Ahrens

One day, he put some of these thoughts together into a manuscript and handed it over to Helmut Schelsky, one of the most influential sociologists in Germany. Schelsky took it home, read what this academic outsider had written and contacted Luhmann. He suggested that he should become a professor of sociology in the newly founded University of Bielefeld. As attractive and prestigious as this position was, Luhmann wasn’t a sociologist. He didn’t have the formal qualifications required even to become an assistant for a sociology professor in Germany. He hadn’t written a habilitation, the highest academic qualification in many European countries, which is based on the second book after the doctoral thesis. He had never held a doctorate or even obtained a sociology degree. Most people would take the offer as a huge compliment, but point out the impossibility of it and move on.