Gemeinschaft community and gesellschaft society ian hughes a a major contribution to the discussion of community was made in the 1920s by ferdinand tonnies who used the german words . His fame rests largely on his first book gemeinschaft und gesellschaft published in 1887 which went through seven editions in german and was published in english in 1957 as community and society according to tonnies social clubs and religious sects for example result from mutual sympathy habit or common belief these involve . Now outfitted with a brilliant new opening essay by john samples the author of a recent full scale biographical work on toennies community and society is back in print a welcome reminder of the glorious past of german social science table of contents. Gemeinschaft and gesellschaft are german words that mean community and society respectivelyintroduced in classical social theory they are used to discuss the different kinds of social ties that exist in small rural traditional societies versus large scale modern industrial ones. Tonnies wasnt the first to recognize the differences between a community gemeinschaft and a society gesellschaft durkheim termed it mechanical and organic solidarity cooley primary and secondary groups and spencer militant and industrial but none defined it with the precision as tonnies to describe it today in laymans terms one must