So there we are, guests at the International symposium on Marxist Philosophy and Critical Theories, ably hosted by Professor Zhang Xiaoyi at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou into November. We find ourselves together with others from overseas, Werner Bonefeld, Mario Wenning and Konstantinos Kavoulakas plus a bevy of leading Chinese scholars, young and old, talking about many things, from the usual Frankfurt suspects – Honneth, Habermas, Jaeggi to others, the constant spectre of Lukacs, but also Negri, Horkheimer, Postone, Lefebvre. As we settled into our allocated seats I browsed the event abstracts. To my pleasure and surprise, I saw there was a paper using the work of Claus Offe. Imagine the visceral shock when I also saw dates – 1940-2025. Busy in China, I had missed Claus’ death. I felt both sadness and shame, at the same time numb and lost. Offe, gone?

Claus Offe was a fine scholar, a sharp thinker, and a good person. An extraordinary colleague, and a fascinating example of the marginal Frankfurt thinker. Beginning as assistant to Habermas, he became something else. His first book, 1972, was Strukturprobleme deskapitalistische Staates. In English there were many publications, including ‘Two Logics of Collective Action’, the early paper with Wiesenthal; Contradictions of the Welfare State 1984, Disorganized Capitalism 1985, Rebuilding the Ship at Sea 1996, Modernity and the State 1996; and Reflections on America 2005. Watch out for capital, and watch out for the state. Watch out for the capitalist state.

Claus Offe stepped out of the magic circles of Frankfurt and Berlin, into political sociology; political economy; and politics. He was a founding member of Greens, and a major advocate of Guaranteed Minimum Income, such a compass of radical hope in those years. He was a key reference point in our teaching of Political Economy of the Welfare State at the Phillip Institute in Melbourne in those formative years of the middle eighties. And he was a contributor to Thesis Eleven (see here, here and here). He had strong comparative sensibilities driven in part by early years in the USA. He transversed Route 66 in a kombi van – what a metaphor, half-German, half-American, no convertible Chevy, rather the VW clunker – leading much later to those profound Reflections on America. He was an open personality.

Let me share some small but lasting memories and impressions in memory of Claus Offe.

He was a bear of a man, big of frame and heart. Visiting with my family in our small home in Melbourne way back, he took the couch, which was a foot too short, with grace. Emerging onto the back patio in the morning, where I was sweeping leaves with an oversized industrial broom, best we had to hand, he took in the view and asked me, ‘Are you expecting snow?’ (it never snows in Melbourne, and he knew this). He had arrived from Canberra with a headcold, and had forgotten the only copy of his paper in the process – hard copy days. He delivered his seminar at La Trobe University for the Thesis Eleven Centre for 90 minutes from memory, in good spirits as ever. In 2000, in return, he vacated his Prenzlauer Berg apartment for my family, leaving us with Weisswurst, Weissburgunder, and a bottle of Ballantynes on the bench; a profound sense of hospitality and welcome.

Offe was many things, clear positions but also an open mind. He was one of the few leading German figures to take Bauman seriously. He was the sponsor of Bauman for the Adorno Prize in 1998 (see my Sage collection Zygmunt Bauman 2002 v 1 for his Laudatio…). Claus endorsed my first Bauman book, Dialectic of Modernity, in 2000: “Bauman is the stupendously productive author of writings which are all informed by penetrating critique and a sense of existential seriousness …”. He understood that Bauman was important as a role model precisely because he refused the mould, upset or ignored the protocols of professorial self-importance. Neither of them wanted to be an Emperor. Offe also wanted to step out of the professorial circle. This makes the happy emperors twitch.

There was a moment when I got to be Offe for a day. We used to see each other at the Proceedings of the American Sociological Association. 1997 was an outreach, across the border in Toronto. Jetlagged, I had forgotten my registration papers, and so was unable to enter the convention stadium. Sociology also needs to be policed. Claus descended the escalator at the entrance, unexpectedly to greet me. We laughed, and he gave me his name badge to secure my entry. I was Claus Offe for a day. I am still waiting for the inspiration to wear off.

Last email I had from him he remembered the centrality of the example of Bauman to both of us. ‘… in contrast to our great friend B., I am afraid I am slowly running out of steam as early as at age 80’. He was always ahead of me. We will miss him, and his example. Goodbye, Claus Offe, and thank you, for everything.