Geiger grew up in Landshut, Bavaria, showing an interest in Scandinavia and a talent in Scandinavian languages from an early age.
At the same time he edited the information magazine of the newly founded Berlin Volkshochschule (adult education centre) where he had begun to work as a teacher.
Geiger taught at Volkshochschule during a time when the institution was largely for the basic academic and cultural education of working class adults.
Here he used the opportunity to focus on the social and political consequences of adult education by promoting critical thinking and intellectualism in his students.
[2] When German troops entered the city in 1940 he was forced to leave, escaping to Odense where he lived with his parents-in-law for the next few years.
When the war ended in 1945, Geiger immediately returned to Århus, taking up his position as professor of sociology once more.
[citation needed] From 1948 to 1952, Geiger published the series Nordiske Studier i Sociologie (Nordic Studies on Sociology) with Torgny Torgnysson Segerstedt, Veli Verkko and Johan Vogt.
[citation needed] On 16 June 1952, Geiger died on the return trip from Canada to Denmark on board the ship Waterman.
[2] According to this view, society is divided into an indefinite number of social levels or groups, defined according to attributes such as profession, education, upbringing, living standard, power, dress, religion, race, political opinion and organisation.
[1] Geiger believed that sociology can only be a true scientific discipline if it establishes this consistent methodology and a rejection of the idiographic approach.
[3] Ranulf alluded in his textbook that the methodologies of some sociologists, among them Theodor Geiger, could lead to a new Nazi movement.
[3] In this book, Geiger outlined very carefully what his methodologies were, emphasizing that empirical sociology is built on concepts but is a quantitative study of social processes and phenomena.
[3] In response to Ranulf's opposition to qualitative data and interpretation, Geiger argued that these were okay for analysis as long as the researcher maintained a value-free approach.
[1] Geiger argued that the Marxist ideology of class was a decent generalization but that it was also a "type concept" and described only a partial view of reality.
[3] Geiger developed a complex model and typology of social stratification, which was published in Wörterbuch der Soziologie (1955).
[2] In many ways, Geiger defended Marxism but he also agreed with arguments that many predictions made by Marxist class theory were not carried out.
[1] In his analysis of the data, he classified the population into five groups, more complex than capitalists and proletariat as used by Marx, to determine the objective economic criteria of class.
[1] Geiger was very concerned with Value Freedom, or the difference between value and fact, and the belief that Science cannot be valid when making Value-judgements.
[2] Geiger's Value Nihilism refers to his advocacy for the illegitimacy of social norms made by moral claims.
[2] In his last work, ""Demokratie ohne Dogma"" published after his death in 1960, Geiger calls for "intellectual humanism", "enlightenment of the masses," "democratization of reason," "asceticism of emotion," and "abstinence from value judgement.
[1] After giving lectures in Sweden at Uppsala school on Intelligentsia in 1943,[1] Geiger wrote about their position in society, their functions and their origin in 1944.