Holm Arno Leonhardt


Holm Arno Leonhardt -- sometimes abbreviated to Holm A. Leonhardt, born October 12, 1952 -- is a German scientist in the fields of International Relations and economic history, especially in the realm of cartel history and theory. He was born in Manila the son of Brigitte and Arno Leonhardt. Arno became a German expatriate since 1930, moving up the career ladder from accountant to vice director in the branch office of an American paper machine company in Manila. Brigitte came from a liberal merchant family in Saxony holding critical distance to the Nazi regime.

Education and early scientific work

Leonhardt studied politics, sociology, economic theory and public law at the German universities of Göttingen and Hannover. In 1983, he completed his PhD at University of Bremen with a work on «political conflicts in the European Community 1950–1983». Subsequently, he published a number of subject-related articles.

Professional life as an academic librarian

To make a living, Leonhardt started to be educated and to work as an academic librarian. His professional thesis of 1987 was about the distinction of archival, librarian und museum materials. Since 1989 he was occupied at the Library of Hildesheim University, where he more and more concentrated on subject cataloguing. 2015–2018, he created a new type of library classification for cultural studies to be able to classify books according to a multiple-arts cultural aesthetics.

Later academic research

From 2007 on, Leonhardt continued active research work shifting to the field of economic history and economic organization. Since the 1970s, he became interested in cartels as a special phenomenon of social organization. For this comeback to research, Leonhardt has been advised by the Hildesheim historian Michael Gehler from the Institute of History at Hildesheim University. Since 2008, Leonhardt again published several subject related articles and in 2013 a comprehensive work on «Cartel theory and International Relations» being «theory-historical studies».

Research profile and methodology

Leonhardt has worked interdisciplinary combining social, economic, juridical and cultural sciences. He has applied a structural-functional method of analysis. In his recent studies he additionally used ideology-critical and linguistic methods for the deconstruction of scientific concepts and tenets. In terms of rule and power, he has applied marxist argumentations of class rule, political hegemony and imperialism.
Leonhardt has a favourite research perspective: the competition or rivalry between social actors. Already in his study about the European community, he used the inter-governmental rivalry about power potentials as leading concept. Later. In his engagement for cartel theory, he focused on the internal competition between the cartel members. Particularly for international relations, he gave examples about relevant analytical gaps which other authors had left out of recognition.

Central results and theses

In his 2013 book about cartel theory, Leonhardt had criticized the newer cartel history studies as affected by neoliberal influence. In the broad average, the intellectual level of the formerly famous and brilliant German cartel theory had not been maintained. Analytic and conceptual flaws were to be found in a number of post-war publications. The research perspectives often suffered from an uncritical attitude to the American anti-cartel policy since Second World War.
This criticism became an issue in a counter-critical review by Eva Maria Roelevink, who vetoed strongly. In a response to her utterances, Leonhardt attributed her to a “Bochum school” of business history, which was to him the leading network, which stood for a more or less biased understanding of cartels and cartel history. Causal for this, he contended, was an unreflected proximity to the doctrines of neoliberalism and American scientific leadership.
This dispute led in 2016/17 to a series of five articles by Leonhardt, Roelevink and the three senior scholars Volker Berghahn, Harm Schröter and Martin Shanahan. Several positions of the Leonhardt book were taken up in these articles.

Secondary literature