Rainer Fremdling

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Rainer Fremdling (born January 16, 1944 in Laasdorf ) is a German economist and economic and social historian .

Life

Fremdling studied economics at the University of Münster between 1964 and 1973 and received his doctorate in 1974. rer. pole. Between 1970 and 1981 he was a research assistant at Richard H. Tilly's Institute for Economic and Social History , where he completed his habilitation in 1983. From 1987 to 2006 he was a full professor of economics (economic and social history) at the economics and humanities faculties of the University of Groningen . From May 2004 up to and including April 2013 he was a research professor at DIW , after which he became a research fellow there.

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Above all, stranger's climometric works on railway history are of great importance , especially his dissertation on "Railways and German Economic Growth" published in 1975, which was reprinted in an updated and expanded edition in 1985. Due to its methodology - Fremdling was the first to introduce the New Economic History in Germany and at the same time checked the hypotheses of Albert O. Hirschman and the national economic infrastructure theory - this work, which is located at the boundary between economics and history, is considered methodologically groundbreaking. In it, Fremdling confirmed quantitatively the previously expressed finding that the railways had decisive impulses for the implementation of industrialization in Germany . At the same time he refuted Robert Fogel 's counterfactual thesis for Germany that the economic development of a country could have been similar to the actual development even without the construction of railways using waterways and carts; an opinion now shared by the vast majority of historians.

Publications (selection)

  • with Ruth Federspiel : Statistics of the railways in Germany 1835 - 1989 . Sources and research on the historical statistics of Germany, Vol. 17, St. Katharinen 1995, ISBN 3-89590-004-4 .
  • Technological change and international trade in the 18th and 19th centuries of the iron industries in Great Britain, Belgium, France and Germany , writings on economic and social history Vol. 35, Berlin 1986, ISBN 3-428-06042-3 .
  • Railways and German Economic Growth, 1840-1879. A contribution to development theory and the theory of infrastructure Studies on economic, social and technological history , Vol. 2, 2nd exp. Edition, Dortmund 1985, ISBN 3-925227-25-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Wilfried Reininghaus , Transport and Region. An introduction , in: Ders., Karl Teppe (Hrsgs.) Verkehr und Region im 19. und 20. Century. Westphalian examples , research on regional history, Vol. 29, Paderborn 1999, pp. 1-45, 19.
  2. ↑ See e.g. B. Verena Winiwarter , Martin Knoll: Environmental history. An introduction Stuttgart 2007, 230ff.
personal data
SURNAME Stranger, Rainer
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German economist and economic and social historian
DATE OF BIRTH January 16, 1944
PLACE OF BIRTH Laasdorf