Ossip K. Flechtheim

Ossip Kurt Flechtheim (March 5, 1909 – March 4, 1998) was a German jurist, political scientist, author, futurist, and a humanist. He is credited with coining of the term "Futurology".

Flechtheim was born in Nikolaev (then Russian Empire, now Mykolaiv, Ukraine), into a Jewish family, the son of bookseller Herrmann Flechtheim (1880–1960) and his wife Olga, née Farber (1884–1964). In 1910 the family moved back into the father's hometown of Westphalian Münster, where his relatives had a grain trade business, and later to Düsseldorf. The art dealer Alfred Flechtheim was his uncle.

His family being secular, Flechtheim did not receive religious upbringing. In later life (after Second World War in West Berlin) he became a member (as a non-denominational humanist) of the German Freethinkers Association (later Humanist Association of Germany).

After graduating from the Hindenburg School (now Humboldt-Gymnasium Düsseldorf) in 1927, he became a member of KPD which he left after five years, following a trip to Moscow (his mother's native city) in 1931, and having began to detest the ideological narrowness of the movement. Flechtheim studied law and political science at the universities in Freiburg, Paris, Heidelberg, Berlin, and finally Cologne. From 1931 to 1933 he completed his legal clerkship at the Higher Regional Court of Düsseldorf. He was awarded his Doctorate in Law in 1934 for his work on Hegel's criminal theory, while studying in Cologne under Carl Schmitt.

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