Ludwig Erhard
Ludwig Erhard | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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Minister for Economics | |||||||||||||||||||||||
In office 20 September 1949 – 15 October 1963 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Chancellor | Konrad Adenauer | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Preceded by | Position established | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Succeeded by | Kurt Schmücker | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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Personal details | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Born | Ludwig Wilhelm Erhard 4 February 1897 Fürth, Kingdom of Bavaria, German Empire | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Died | 5 May 1977 Bonn, West Germany | (aged 80)||||||||||||||||||||||
Resting place | Gmund am Tegernsee | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Political party | Christian Democratic Union[b] | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Spouse | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Children | 1 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Imperial German Army
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Years of service | 1916–1919 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Rank | Unteroffizier | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Unit | 22nd Royal Bavarian Field Artillery Regiment | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Battles/wars | World War I
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Ludwig Wilhelm Erhard (German:
Early life
Ludwig Erhard was born in
Erhard entered primary school in Fürth at the age of six in 1903 and performed poorly.[4] In 1907, he entered Fürth's Royal Bavarian Vocational High School, where his grades were average.[5] He received his secondary school certificate in 1913.[5] In the following years, he was a commercial apprentice at the Georg Eisenbach textile company in Nuremberg until 1916 [5] and worked thereafter as a retail salesman in his father's draper's shop.
Military service and university
In 1916, Erhard volunteered for the German military.
Due to his injury he could no longer work as a draper and started learning economics in late 1919 at a business college in Nuremberg.
Early career
After his graduation they moved to Fürth and he became an executive in his father's company in 1925. Erhard spent the next three years as a mostly unemployed academic.[9] His father retired in 1928.[9] The same year, thanks to the help of Rieger and Oppenheimer, Erhard became a part-time research assistant at the Institut für Wirtschaftsbeobachtung der deutschen Fertigware (Economic Observation of the German Finished Goods Industry), a marketing research institute founded by Wilhelm Rudolf Mann and de:Wilhelm Vershofen.[9][11][12] Later, he became deputy director of the institute.
During World War II he worked on concepts for a postwar peace; however, officially such studies were forbidden by the Nazis, who had declared 'total war'. As a result, Erhard lost his job in 1942, but continued to work on the subject by order of the Reichsgruppe Industrie. He wrote War Finances and Debt Consolidation (orig: Kriegsfinanzierung und Schuldenkonsolidierung) in 1944; in this study he assumed that Germany had already lost the war. He sent his thoughts to Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, a central figure in the German resistance to Nazism, who recommended Erhard to his comrades. Erhard also discussed his concept with Otto Ohlendorf, deputy secretary of state in the Reichsministerium für Wirtschaft. Ohlendorf himself spoke out for "active and courageous entrepreneurship (aktives und wagemutiges Unternehmertum)", which was intended to replace bureaucratic state planning of the economy after the war.[13]
Post-war Career
When the war had finished, Erhard became an economic consultant. Under the Bizone established by the American and British administration in 1947, he led the Sonderstelle Geld und Kredit ("Special Office for Money and Credit"), an expert commission preparing the currency reform in Germany's western zones of occupation. The commission began its deliberations in October 1947, and the following April produced the so-called Homburg plan, elements of which were adopted by the Allies in the currency reform that set the stage for the recovery of the economy.
In April 1948, Erhard was elected director of economics by the Bizonal Economic Council. On 20 June 1948, the Deutsche Mark was introduced. Erhard abolished the price-fixing and production controls that had been enacted by the military administration. This exceeded his authority, but he succeeded with this step. In July 1948, a group of southwest German businessmen attacked the restrictive credit policy of Erhard as Economic Director. While Erhard had designed this policy to assure currency stability and stimulate the economy via consumption, business feared the scarcity of investment capital would retard economic recovery.
Minister of Economic Affairs
In the
A staunch believer in economic liberalism, Erhard joined the Mont Pelerin Society in 1950, and used this influential body of liberal economic and political thinkers to test his ideas for the reorganization of the West German economy. Some of the society's members were members of the Allied High Commission and Erhard was able to make his case directly to them. The Mont Pélerin Society welcomed Erhard because this gave its members a welcome opportunity to have their ideas tested in real life. Alfred Müller-Armack, the secretary of state of Erhard's ministry, helped him guide German economy with theories until the beginning of 1960s.[15]
Late in the 1950s, Erhard's ministry became involved in the struggle within the society between the European and the Anglo-American factions, and sided with the former. Erhard viewed the market itself as social and supported only a minimum of welfare legislation. However, Erhard suffered a series of decisive defeats in his effort to create a free, competitive economy in 1957; he had to compromise on such key issues as the anti-cartel legislation. Thereafter, the West German economy evolved into a conventional
Erhard was also deeply critical of a bureaucratic-institutional integration of Europe on the model of the European Coal and Steel Community.
Chancellor
After the resignation of Adenauer in 1963, Erhard was elected
Domestically, a number of progressive reforms were carried out during Erhard's time as chancellor. In the field of social security, Housing Benefit was introduced in 1965.[18]
Foreign policy
Erhard considered using money to bring about the reunification of Germany, which would have broken a diplomatic stalemate that had existed since the end of the Second World War regarding the status of West and East Germany. Despite Washington's reluctance, Erhard envisaged offering
In 1961, while vice president, Lyndon B. Johnson had hosted Konrad Adenauer some two years before the German statesman vacated the chancellorship of the German Federal Republic.[21]
Support for the American role in the
Erhard's fall suggested that progress on German unification required a broader approach and a more active foreign policy. Chancellor
Under Erhard's government the Federal Republic entered into diplomatic relations with Israel in 1965.
Resignation and retirement
On 26 October 1966, Minister
Erhard continued his political work by remaining a member of the West German parliament until his death in Bonn from heart failure on 5 May 1977. He was buried in his living place Gmund at the Tegernsee in Upper Bavaria. The Ludwig Erhard-Berufsschule (professional college) in Paderborn, Fürth and Münster are named in his honour.
Publications
- Wesen und Inhalt der Werteinheit [Essence and content of the unit of value]. Doctoral thesis, 1925
- Kriegsfinanzierung und Schuldenkonsolidierung [War Financing and Debt Consolidation]. 1944
- Deutschlands Rückkehr zum Weltmarkt [Germany's return to the world market]. 1953
- Wohlstand für Alle, Econ Verlag 1957. (Engl. "Prosperity Through Competition"), Thames & Hudson 1958
- Deutsche Wirtschaftspolitik, 1962. (Engl. "The Economics of Success"), Thames & Hudson 1963
- Grenzen der Demokratie? [Limits of democracy?]. Düsseldorf 1973
Citations
- ^ "The Social Market Economy." Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, Federal Republic of Germany. Retrieved 11 September 2015.
- ^ Mierzejewski 2004, p. 2.
- ^ Mierzejewski 2004, pp. 2–3.
- ^ a b Mierzejewski 2004, p. 3.
- ^ a b c d e f Mierzejewski 2004, p. 4.
- ^ Mierzejewski 2004, p. 5.
- ^ Mierzejewski 2004, p. 7.
- ^ a b Mierzejewski 2004, p. 8.
- ^ a b c d Mierzejewski 2004, p. 10.
- ^ Mierzejewski 2004, pp. 8–9.
- )
- )
- ^ Mierzejewski 2004, pp. 18–26.
- ISBN 0-521-83362-0.
- ISBN 9781139053600.
- ISSN 0896-226X.
- ^ "Ludwig Erhard war nie CDU-Mitglied". 25 April 2007.
- ^ The Federal Republic of Germany: The End of an era edited by Eva Kolinsky
- ^ a b c Jan Friedmann and Axel Frohn (4 October 2011). "A 'Half-Baked' Deal Former German Chancellor Considered Buying East Germany". Spiegel. Retrieved 5 October 2011.
- ^ S2CID 153597101.
- ^ Matthew D. Tippens, "When Bratwurst Met BBQ: West German Chancellors in LBJ's Hill Country," West Texas Historical Association, annual meeting in Fort Worth, Texas, 26 February 2010; the paper was actually presented by Rob Weiner of Texas Tech University in Tippens' absence.
- JSTOR 1433086.
Notes
- ^ Due to the division of Germany, Ludwig Erhard was only the Federal Chancellor in West Germany. The term West Germany is only the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 October 1990. The office of chancellor has no longer existed in East Germany.
- ^ Erhard never formally joined the CDU and so was de jure an independent politician. However, Erhard spent his entire career with the CDU, and was believed to be a member by both the party and the public; his lack of party membership was not widely known until decades after his death.
References
- Berghahn, Volker R. "Ordoliberalism, Ludwig Erhard, and West Germany's "economic basic law"." European Review of International Studies 2.3 (2015): 37–47. online
- Goldschmidt, Nils. "Alfred Müller-Armack and Ludwig Erhard: Social Market Liberalism" (No. 04/12. Freiburg discussion papers on constitutional economics, 2004). online
- Gray, William Glenn (2007). "Adenauer, Erhard and the Uses of Prosperity". German Politics and Society. 25 (2): 86–103. .
- Henderson, David R. "German Economic Miracle." The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics (2008).
- Mierzejewski, Alfred C. Ludwig Erhard: A Biography (Univ of North Carolina Press, 2005).
- Schwarz, Hans-Peter. Konrad Adenauer: A German Politician and Statesman in a Period of War, Revolution, and Reconstruction - Vol. 2 (1995) online edition
- Thiemeyer, Guido (2007). "The 'Social Market Economy' and Its Impact on German European Policy in the Adenauer Era, 1949–1963". German Politics and Society. 25 (2): 68–85. .
- Van Hook, James (2004). "Ludwig Erhard, the CDU, and the Free Market". Rebuilding Germany: The Creation of the Social Market Economy, 1945–1957. New York: ISBN 0-521-83362-0.
In German
- Berwid-Buquoy, Jan: Der Vater des deutschen Wirtschaftswunders – Ludwig Erhard. BI-HI-Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-924933-06-5.
- Karl Hohmann: Ludwig Erhard (1897–1977). Eine Biographie. Bonn 1997 (PDF-Datei, ca. 3 MB).
- Hoeres, Peter: Außenpolitik und Öffentlichkeit. Massenmedien, Meinungsforschung und Arkanpolitik in den deutsch-amerikanischen Beziehungen von Erhard bis Brandt. De Gruyter Oldenbourg, München 2013 (Studien zur Internationalen Geschichte, Bd. 32).
- Hentschel, Volker (1996) Ludwig Erhard: Ein Politikerleben. Berlin: Ullstein. ISBN 3-548-26536-7
- Löffler, Bernhard: Ludwig Erhard. In: Katharina Weigand (Hrsg.): Große Gestalten der bayerischen Geschichte. Herbert Utz Verlag, München 2011, ISBN 978-3-8316-0949-9.
- Roth, Karl Heinz: Das Ende eines Mythos. Ludwig Erhard und der Übergang der deutschen Wirtschaft von der Annexions- zur Nachkriegsplanung (1939 bis 1945). 1. 1939 bis 1943. In: 1999. Zeitschrift für Sozialgeschichte des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts 10, 1995, Nr. 4, ISSN 0930-9977, S. 53–93.
- Roth, Karl Heinz: Das Ende eines Mythos. Ludwig Erhard und der Übergang der deutschen Wirtschaft von der Annexions- zur Nachkriegsplanung (1939 bis 1945). II. 1943 bis 1945. In: 1999. Zeitschrift für Sozialgeschichte des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts 13, 1998, Nr. 1, ISSN 0930-9977, S. 92–124.
External links
Media related to Ludwig Erhard at Wikimedia Commons