Alfred Kähler

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Alfred Kähler (born May 8, 1900 in Lübeck , † September 12, 1981 in Little Rock , Arkansas ) was a German economist. He dealt with the question of the extent to which technical progress promotes unemployment and at the same time compensates for it by creating new jobs.

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Kähler completed his school days in Lübeck. He then trained as a lathe operator and locksmith . In 1924 he took the substitute matriculation examination and was able to begin studying political science in Kiel and Berlin in the winter semester of 1924/25 . As his first academic degree, Kähler received the diploma for economics at Kiel University at the end of 1927 . In the corresponding diploma thesis he dealt with Alfred Weber's wage theory and Henry Ford's theses on wages and purchasing power .

From 1929 to 1933, he succeeded Erwin Marquardt as head of the workers' college in Harrisleefeld near Flensburg . Kähler received his doctorate in Kiel in 1932 with a thesis on the layoff of workers as a result of technical progress . This work was considered a pioneering achievement in both methodological and theoretical terms. It was supervised by the sociologist and economist Adolf Löwe , who taught at the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel at the Institute for World Economy . Kähler was involved in the research work of this institute during his doctorate.

Löwe, who emigrated to Great Britain after the National Socialist seizure of power , suggested a scholarship for Kähler at the University of Cambridge from Arthur Cecil Pigou . This endeavor failed, however, because of John Maynard Keynes , who pointed out that Kähler could earn a living from his learned profession.

Kähler emigrated to the United States in 1934 . Until his retirement he taught at the New School for Social Research in New York . There Kähler had intensive contact with a number of social democratic emigrants, for example as part of the German Labor delegation . In contrast to his colleagues at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, however, he did not succeed in being noticed by a broad specialist audience. The emigration forced by National Socialism in Germany is considered to be the uprooting of this scientist.

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personal data
SURNAME Kähler, Alfred
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kähler, Alfred E.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American economist
DATE OF BIRTH May 8, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Lübeck
DATE OF DEATH September 12, 1981
Place of death Little Rock , Arkansas