Tönnies, Ferdinand (1855—1936) German sociologist best known for the formative distinction he drew between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft (community and society), for which he is widely considered one of the ‘fathers’ of sociology (along with Durkheim, Émile, Simmel, Georg, and Weber). Born in Nordfriesland in Schleswig-Holstein, then under Danish rule but now part of Germany, Tönnies’s family were wealthy farmers. His family’s money enabled him to remain aloof from the academic world and consequently his professional career progressed rather slowly. He didn’t attain a full professorship until three years before his retirement in 1913. He continued as a professor emeritus at the University of Kiel until 1933 when the Nazi government forced him out because of his earlier criticisms of them. A relatively prolific author, Tönnies is nonetheless remembered for only one work, his first book: the seminal Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (1887), translated as Community and Society (1957), still an essential cornerstone of any introductory course on sociology. The distinction between community and society, which Tönnies treated as ideal types or tendencies rather than actually existing entities, distinguishes between social groups which are held together by mutual bonds of filiation and friendship (community) and those which are bound by mutual self-interest (society). The two types of social group are approximations of village or country life (community) and town or city life (society). Tönnies thought of these two types of social groups as tendencies, which are present to a greater or lesser degree in actual towns or cities. These tendencies were, according to Tönnies, manifest in the way a particular social group oriented itself towards social action. That is to say, is the glue holding the social group together the product of ‘natural’ inclination, or ‘strategic’ calculation.