Overview
Administrative Information
Biographical/Historical note
Overview
Call Number: SC0697
Creator:
Eulau, Heinz, 1915-2004.
Title: Heinz Eulau papers
Dates: undated
Physical Description:
42 Linear feet
Language(s): The materials are in English.
Repository:
Department of Special Collections and University Archives
Green Library
557 Escondido Mall
Stanford, CA 94305-6064
Email: specialcollections@stanford.edu
Phone: (650) 725-1022
URL: http://library.stanford.edu/spc
Administrative Information
Information about Access
The materials are open for research use. Audio-visual materials are not available in
original format, and must be reformatted to a digital use copy.
Ownership & Copyright
All requests to reproduce, publish, quote from, or otherwise use collection materials
must be submitted in writing to the Head of Special Collections and University
Archives, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, California 94305-6064. Consent is
given on behalf of Special Collections as the owner of the physical items and is not
intended to include or imply permission from the copyright owner. Such permission
must be obtained from the copyright owner, heir(s) or assigns. See:
http://library.stanford.edu/depts/spc/pubserv/permissions.html.
Restrictions also apply to digital representations of the original materials. Use of
digital files is restricted to research and educational purposes.
Cite As
[identification of item], Heinz Eulau Papers (SC0697). Dept. of Special Collections
and University Archives, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, Calif.
Biographical/Historical note
Heinz Eulau (1915-2004), the William Bennett Munro Professor of Political Science,
Emeritus, was a major figure in American political science and a leading scholar in the
fields of legislative research, political representation and electoral behavior.
He was born in Offenbach, Germany, on October 14, 1915 into a German Jewish family whose
wide-ranging lineage he and his brother Frank (“in cooperation with cousins of all
sorts”) documented in a book on “The Mishpokhe from Eulau-Jilové: Discovering a
Remarkably Unremarkable Jewish Family from Germany” (2001). After immigrating to the
United States in 1935, he earned his degrees in political science at the University of
California in Berkeley: A.B. 1937, M.A. 1938, PhD 1941. Following engagements at the
Library of Congress, the U.S. Department of Justice, and The New Republic, he started
his academic career at Antioch College in 1947 and joined in 1957 the Stanford
Department of Political Science which he chaired twice, 1969-74 and 1981-84, and from
which he retired as the William Bennett Munro Professor of Political Science, Emeritus,
in 1986. He has held visiting appointments at the University of California at Berkeley,
the Institute of Advanced Studies in Vienna, and Erasmus University in Rotterdam.
Eulau was president of the American Political Science Association 1971-72; he founded
the Legislative Studies Quarterly in 1976, was active in the behavioral sciences
division of the National Research Council (1969-73), chairman of the board of overseers
of the National Election Studies (1977-84), and associate director of the
Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (1975-78). Awards in his
name and honor were created by the American Political Science Association (1986) and the
Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society (2002).
Heinz Eulau is considered one of the founding scholars of what came to be known as the
behavioral movement in political science which brought the analytical tools of sociology
and psychology to bear on the empirical study of the linkages between individual
behavior and political processes. The focus of Eulau’s work was on the patterns and
determinants of electoral and legislative behavior and on the politics of political
representation. His extensive published work in this area (including Legislative
Behavior, 1959; The Behavioral Persuasion in Politics, 1963; Political behavior in
America: New Directions, 1966; State Officials and Higher Education [with Harold Quinley
and David D. Henry], 1970; Labyrinths of Democracy [with Kenneth Prewitt], 1973;
Politics, Self, and Society, 1986) is considered part of the classics of modern
political science and has shaped research as well as teaching in the discipline over the
past fifty years. He was one of the founders of the influential journal, The American
Behavioral Scientist. Many of his students have moved into positions of leadership in
the discipline in their own right, including Stanford faculty members Norman Nie and
John Ferejohn and Kenneth Prewitt at Columbia, who credit Eulau with directing their
early work and with the equally important role of mentoring their entry into the
profession.
His 1972 Presidential Address for the American Political Science Association represents
one of the discipline’s early reflections on the impact of modern technology and the
resulting “skill revolution” on the nature and functioning of political systems. His
search for “political processes better adapted to the requirements of a rapidly changing
technological society than are participative, representational, and bureaucratic
processes alone” led him to the vision of a “consultative commonwealth” where
professionalized consultation becomes “the linkage mechanism between democracy and
bureaucracy”.
In his later years, Heinz Eulau allowed his impish sense of humor free reign in taking
on some of the “fads, foibles and fables” of his colleagues in his 1998 book on “The
Politics of Academic Culture”, chapters of which are devoted to such topics as “The
Faculty’s Fallacious but Felicitous Faculties, or Nemesis and When Not to Love Thy
Colleague as Thyself” or “The Rating, Ranking and Baiting Game, or Don’t Believe All You
Read about Yourself Even if True”. The book’s epilogue is entitled “De Mortuis Nil nisi
Bonum, or Better Write Your Own Obituary before It Is Too Late” – which Heinz Eulau,
forever a man of his word, promptly proceeded to do.
Heinz Eulau’s wife of 58 years, Cleo, passed away shortly after her husband at Stanford
Hospital after a long illness. They are survived by their children Peter and Lauren, and
three grandchildren. Family, friends, and colleagues gathered for a memorial celebration
of the lives of Heinz and Cleo Eulau on March 2, 2004, in Stanford Memorial Church.