Smash hit

As a prominent spokesman for reformist liberalism, Dahrendorf was highly influential in preparing his party, and also the German electorate, for the move to the left which came in 1969, when the “social-liberal” coalition led by Chancellor Willy Brandt took office after a substantial victory at the polls. Dahrendorf, himself elected to the Bundestag, was immediately appointed by his party leader Walter Scheel, the new Vice-Chancellor and Foreign Minister, to the post of Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs.

After a few months in office in Bonn he moved on, in July 1970, to become one of the two German members of the European Commission in Brussels. Here he was responsible for the Community’s foreign relations until January 1973 (when his post was taken over by his new British colleague, Christopher Soames) and then, until October 1974, for research, science and education. During his four years in Brussels, Dahrendorf made an important contribution to the European Community’s progress, thanks to the lively and enterprising way in which he carried out part of a commissioner’s functions, namely the devising, negotiating and executing of new policies.

Sometimes this meant the development of closer relations with countries of the Third World, and sometimes the achievement of mutual recognition of academic and professional qualifications between the Community’s member states.

On the other hand, he was clearly impatient with the more bureaucratic duties of his Brussels post (in 1971 he caused a stir by publishing pseudonymous articles in a German weekly, criticising the Community’s ways of working), and in 1974 he returned to the LSE, this time as its director. He later admitted to having been influenced by the opinion of his close friend, the US historian Fritz Stern, that this appointment “would fit very well with your biography”.

Times Archive, 1974: Wunderkind with a vision of Europe

His political opponents sneer at him as an academic manque while his academic detractors put him down as an intellectual poseur

Dahrendorf took over from Sir Walter Adams at a difficult moment in the LSE’s history. The student turbulence of the Adams period, which might have deterred others from accepting the post, had in fact abated, though Dahrendorf displayed tact, patience and physical courage (as he had done in Germany in the troubled 1960s) in dealing with some students who still persisted in histrionic dispute. Under his leadership the school now faced the problems arising from the financial stringency of the 1970s and 1980s, notably the effect on student numbers of the Government’s raising of the fees charged to those from abroad, a sizeable proportion of the LSE’s enrolment.

In some ways, his directorship tended to be cautious rather than adventurous: it would probably have been hard for him to promote new initiatives, against internal opposition, at a time of financial retrenchment when there was little room for manoeuvre. In one controversial episode, his proposal in 1976 to create at the school a centre or institute for policy studies, he gave way to the strong opposition of some of the senior professors, who argued that such an innovation would be contrary to the LSE’s principles of independent academic inquiry, even though others regretted that he did not fight harder for his proposal.

During the the Labour Government of 1974-79 Dahrendorf was close to the country’s centre of power, but this ceased to be the case when the Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher returned to office in 1979.

One feature of his style of leadership at the LSE was that, although he was constantly travelling in Britain and abroad — lecturing, broadcasting, serving on a royal commission or some other body, and generally enhancing LSE’s public reputation — he was always ready to give detailed attention to really important issues facing the school, such as professorial appointments or financial problems.

His life-long commitment to the LSE, even after he left the directorship, was demonstrated in many ways. When he was elevated to the peerage in 1993, he chose the title of Baron Dahrendorf, of Clare Market in the City of Westminster, and in later life he affirmed that his favourite book, among all those he had published, was his monumental history of the LSE, written to mark its centenary in 1995.

In 1984, after a decade at Houghton Street, Dahrendorf returned to the sociology chair in Konstanz which he had left for a political career in 1968, and it seemed for a time that he was likely to re-enter German politics as well. He remained active in journalism and broadcasting, and he continued to preside over the educational foundation linked to the Free Democratic Party, the Friedrich Naumann Stiftung.

However, his links with the English-speaking world remained strong too. He was an active member of the boards of the Ford Foundation and the Ditchley Foundation, and he gave vigorous support to the Constitutional Reform Centre established in London in 1985.

Dahrendorf’s friends found it hard to believe that he would remain permanently in Konstanz, and it was no surprise when, after spending the year 1986-87 at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York, he became Warden of St Antony’s College, Oxford, in succession to Sir Raymond Carr. He then spent ten years guiding and developing the fortunes of a still-young academic institution which, despite its extremely high international reputation, suffered from an acute lack of resources. Funds were raised, new buildings were erected and the reputation of the college, as a world-class centre for international and comparative studies, was further enhanced.

At the same time Dahrendorf was playing an increasingly influential role on a wider stage. He adopted British nationality in 1988 (so that the honorary KBE to which he had been appointed in 1982 now made him formally “Sir Ralf”), and in 1993 he was appointed a life peer.

In his early years in the Lords he took the Liberal Democrat whip, but as time went by he came to feel less committed to any party line, and became a cross-bencher. Over the years he contributed to the deliberations of the Upper House in many ways: one of his most significant roles was that of chairman, for several years, of the Lords’ Select Committee on Delegated Powers. He also held directorships in the fields of industry and banking, and continued to produce an impressive stream of books on contemporary affairs, notably on developments in the new Europe which emerged after the end of the Cold War.

Dahrendorf will perhaps be remembered in two ways in particular: first, as the internationally renowned thinker and man of action whose achievements were recognised by decorations and honorary degrees from a great number of countries; and second, in Britain, as the German-turned-Briton whose contributions to British thinking and policy on social affairs, as a BBC Reith Lecturer, television commentator and parliamentarian, were arguably greater than those of any German since Bismarck’s ideas shaped the social policy of Lloyd George.

Dahrendorf married first, in 1954, his LSE fellow-student Vera Bannister, by whom he had three daughters, and second, in 1980, Dr Ellen de Kadt. His is survived by his third wife, Christiane, and his three daughters.

Lord Dahrendorf, KBE, director of the LSE, 1974-84, and Warden of St Antony’s College, Oxford, 1987-97, was born on May 1, 1929. He died on June 17, 2009, aged 80