August Lösch

Spatial order after Lösch

August Lösch (born October 15, 1906 in Öhringen , † May 30, 1945 in Ratzeburg ) was a German economist . He is considered the founder of regional science .

Life

August Lösch grew up in Heidenheim / Brenz , where he also completed a commercial apprenticeship at the secondary school there after graduating from high school. He studied economics in Freiburg , Kiel and Bonn , where he received his doctorate in 1932. On the basis of a Rockefeller scholarship , he spent twelve months in the USA in 1934/35 and 1936/37. He then worked in Heidenheim and Bonn on his main work, The spatial order of the economy , which appeared in 1940. In the same year he was appointed as a research assistant at the Institute for World Economy at the University of Kiel . After just one year, he was working there as a research group leader, mainly dealing with the preparation of expert reports. In October 1944 the institute was relocated to Ratzeburg due to the bombing.

Shortly after the end of the war in Europe, Lösch died of scarlet fever .

Appreciation

Due to his brilliant scientific abilities, Lösch managed to establish a niche for himself in the structure of the Third Reich, which as a free spirit he actually found deeply repugnant. (Diary 1933: Everything now dances like a fool whistles. 1934: I'm going to America ... I suffocate in this air of violence and want to catch my breath. Freedom! ) With his writings he treads completely independent paths, some of them at right angles to National Socialist ideology, particularly visible in the two-volume work What is to be thought of the decline in the birth rate? (Heidenheim 1932), in which he interpreted the decline in birth rates that began after the First World War as positive for the national economy .

The August Lösch Prize for outstanding regional scientific achievements was launched in Heidenheim in 1971 and awarded every two years from 1972 onwards. After the award was not made in 2004, the prize was awarded for the first time in 2006 at the University of Kiel. The August Lösch Ring of Honor was also awarded until 2000 .

In the inner city of Heidenheim a street is named after August Lösch.

Works

• The spatial order of the economy. A study of location, economic areas and international trade . Fischer, Jena 1940 (3rd edition 1962); English edition under the title "The economics of location", New Haven 1954
• Population waves and changing situations . Fischer, Jena 1936 (articles on research into economic fluctuations, upswing, crisis, stagnation; issue 13)
• (together with Ida Görzel and Hellmut Gottschalk): Technical upheavals, international relocations and protectionism in the post-war period , Junker and Dünnhaupt, Berlin 1934
• What should we think of the decline in the birth rate? Lösch, Heidenheim 1932

literature

• Edwin von Böventer:  Lösch, August. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 15, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-428-00196-6 , p. 59 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Ulrich Blum (Ed.): Space - structure - economy. A tribute to August Lösch, edited to mark the centenary of August Lösch's birthday, October 15, 2006 , Nomos, Baden-Baden 2007 (Karlsruhe contributions to economic policy research, Volume 24), ISBN 978-3-8329-2468-3 .
• Rolf Funck (Ed.): The analysis of regional structure. Essays in honor of August Lösch , Pion, London 1978 (Karlsruhe papers in regional science, Volume 2), ISBN 0-85086-068-7 .
• Rolf Funck (Ed.): Space-structure-economy. A tribute to August Lösch , von Loeper, Karlsruhe 1986 (Karlsruhe papers in economic policy research, Volume 3), ISBN 3-88652-680-1 .

Web links

• Literature by and about August Lösch in the catalog of the German National Library
• Newspaper article about August Lösch in the press kit of the 20th century of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .