Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann

Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann coined the term spiral of silence. This theory, laid out in her 1984 book The Spiral of Silence, seeks to explain how people's opinions change or go unspoken to fit in with popular ideologies and avoid being singled out for holding opposing ideologies. The top of the spiral is those who express their opinions and thoughts, while those who are unwilling to speak out for fear of being isolated or ostracised are at the bottom of the spiral.

Due to the lack of accounting for human agency and rationality, the theory is controversial. Christopher Simpson, professor of communications at American University, writing in an article for the Journal of Communication, found the theory to be "riddled with totalitarian ideology."

She was married to the Christian Democratic politician Erich Peter Neumann (1912–1973) from 1946 until his death. She was married to the physicist Heinz Maier-Leibnitz (1911–2000) from 1979 until his death.

In an interview in the German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel, Noelle-Neumann said that while holding a scientific point of view, she also believed in angels and predestination.

In 1991, Leo Bogart criticized Noelle-Neumann, accusing her of antisemitic passages in her dissertation and articles she wrote for Nazi newspapers. As a young woman, she had "superb credentials as an activist and leader" of Nazi youth and students' organizations, he wrote. In fact, when she published her 1940 dissertation in Germany, entitled "Opinion and mass research in the USA", having spent a year at the University of Missouri researching George Gallup's methodology, Joseph Goebbels called the 24-year-old woman as an adjutant and intended her to build up, for the ministry of propaganda, Germany's first public opinion research organization. She declined, having fallen ill, which angered Goebbels; she later became a newspaper journalist with Nazi publications where she wrote some articles on Jewish influence over U.S. news and elite opinion.

Bogart's article appeared just weeks before Noelle-Neumann took up a visiting position in the Political Science Department at the University of Chicago, where she had held similar appointments since 1978. Michael S. Kochin, then a graduate student at the university, noticed the article and circulated it on campus prior to her arrival, igniting a vigorous debate on Noelle-Neumann's past. While the administration and students at the university, the local Jewish defense groups, and Chicago newspapers remained disengaged from the issue, John J. Mearsheimer, then chairman of the university's political science department, spoke with Bogart, met for over three hours with Noelle-Neumann, and called a departmental meeting about her on 16 October. Some at the university claimed Noelle-Neumann was being slandered, and Mearsheimer's colleagues were not of one opinion about the case. Mearsheimer, however, widely publicized his views concerning the allegations themselves and as they related to academic freedom and opposition to bigotry. "I believe Noelle-Neumann was an anti-Semite," Mearsheimer stated, "and was not forced to write the anti-Semitic words she published. Moreover, I believe that the anti-Semitic writers and publicists of Germany – to include Noelle-Neumann – jointly share some responsibility for the Holocaust. For this, she owes an apology." "The thing to remember about the killing of the Jews," he said, "is that it was not done by a handful of people.... It was also a result of the Reich of normal – or of average – German citizens. Like Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann."

In private letters and in written responses, Noelle-Neumann acknowledged being in a Nazi student organization but denied being a Nazi. "I am anguished by the suffering of Jews in Nazi Germany," she wrote. Bogart, Mearsheimer and others remained dissatisfied with her response.

Noelle-Neumann completed her visiting position in Chicago in mid-December 1991 and returned to Germany. When some University of Chicago students learned that she was to return there on 13 March 1992, they called a rally to protest against her return. Reached by telephone at her office in Allensbach am Bodensee, Germany, on 10 March, Noelle-Neumann told a reporter she was unaware of the proposed rally but intended on coming to the university as planned. That day, her hosts at the National Opinion Research Center announced that she had cancelled her appearance "in light of serious threats".

Several years later, Noelle-Neumann's Nazi connection again came under scrutiny from Christopher Simpson, another American acedemic, but she never explicitly apologized for her past. Interviewed on the subject in 1997, she said, "I did my duty and would do my duty again in a second life. I'd even say I was proud of what I did back then because I opposed the Nazis by working from within."

In a letter to the Editor, Mearsheimer wrote in The New York Times on 16 December 1991:She has admitted she was not hostile to the Nazis before 1940. She says she was anti-Nazi after 1940, but has produced no evidence that she criticized the Nazis then. She wrote anti-Semitic words in 1938–41, and there is no evidence she was compelled to write them. Queried on her anti-Semitic writings, she told me: "I have never written anything in my life that I did not believe to be true."