German sociologist Alfred Vierkandt is hardly remembered today. This may seem surprising. Several prominent sociologists from the German-speaking countries contributed to the Handwörterbuch der Soziologie (1931), which Vierkandt edited and published. However, Vierkandt did not interact with any of them significantly, and this publication brought no recognition of the importance of his sociological oeuvre in Germany, the United States, or elsewhere. His key notion of the social group found no acknowledgment among other contemporary or later sociologists, even though several of them used this notion and discussed social groups in their own writings. Moreover, those who paid close attention to his writings, like Abel and Hochstim, evaluated them quite critically. Both before and after World War II, Vierkandt remained a solitary and relatively unknown author.

德国社会学家阿尔弗雷德·维尔康特 (Alfred Vierkandt) 今天几乎不为人所知。这似乎令人惊讶。来自德语国家的几位著名社会学家为《Handwörterbuch der Soziologie》（1931 年）做出了贡献，由 Vierkandt 编辑和出版。然而，维尔康特并没有与他们中的任何一个有显着的互动，而且这份出版物也没有承认他的社会学作品的重要性在德国、美国或其他地方。他关于社会群体的关键概念没有得到其他当代或后来的社会学家的认可，尽管他们中的一些人在他们自己的著作中使用了这个概念并讨论了社会群体。此外，那些密切关注他的著作的人，如 Abel 和 Hochstim，对他们的评价相当批判。二战前后，维尔康特一直是一位孤独且相对不为人知的作家。