Winfried Reinhard (Fred) Dallmayr was born in Germany in 1928. Fred's first experience of life in the United States came in 1955 when he undertook a master's degree at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. He completed a PhD from Duke University and in 1979 accepted an invitation from the late Fr Ted Hesburgh to join the faculty at the University of Notre Dame. Fred was a professor emeritus in the Department of Political Science at Notre Dame at the time of his death in June 2024 at the age of ninety-five.
A prolific scholar, Fred published over forty books, editing or coediting fifteen others. The list of contributions to academic journals and edited books runs across pages of his CV.
Fred served on the editorial board of the Review of Politics for thirty years and routinely agreed to provide anonymous peer review of relevant submissions. He also published reviews of nearly a dozen books for the journal during these years. Six of his articles appeared in the journal, on topics ranging across hermeneutics, historicism, pragmatism, Heidegger, Gadamer, political theology, and secularism.
Fred's pioneering role in the subfield of comparative political theory is also evident in his contributions to this journal. In 1997 he coedited a special issue on non-Western political thought and in 2008 provided a foreword for another special issue on comparative political theory. That second special issue was convened in part to recognize Fred's important contributions to the burgeoning field of comparative political thought.
Fred's was a long life, well lived. He did what he loved—teaching, writing, and traveling the world to connect with old colleagues and meet new ones as he attended conferences and meetings of professional associations and took visiting positions. And he did what he loved with immense success, being an engaging and supportive teacher, a scholar whose mastery spanned a spectacular array of thinkers and topics, and a highly esteemed colleague and member of the profession.
Receiving the news of his death, members of the current ROP editorial board commented on Fred's prodigious and distinguished scholarly record, his warmth, kindness, and generosity, and his genuine concern for other people. One described him as “a great scholar and, more importantly, a great man. One of the first advocates of comparative political theory and a friend of many so-called ‘non-Western’ scholars, someone who understood that there is political theory/philosophy outside of the Western hemisphere.” Another summed it up by saying that “Fred was a mensch. A wonderful person, a wonderful scholar, and someone who brought energy and light to everything he did.”
Those associated with the Review of Politics agree that Fred will be very much missed and remembered with great fondness and deep respect. A donation has been made to Médecins sans frontières to honor Fred's global sensibility, compassion for suffering, and staunch advocacy for peace and nonviolence.
