Carl Ballod

Carl Ballod (Latvian Kārlis Balodis ) (born June 20, 1864 in Koknese , † March 14, 1931 in Riga ) was a Latvian economist and statistician . He worked and taught at times in Germany.

Life

Carl Ballod studied theology , geography and economics in Dorpat , Jena , Munich and Strasbourg . He then went on a study trip to Brazil . Between 1893 and 1895 he was a Protestant clergyman in a German-speaking community in the Urals . There he dealt intensively with statistics. After his return from Russia he gave up theology, moved to Germany and devoted himself entirely to economics and statistics. From 1899 he was a private lecturer in Berlin. In 1905 he became a member of the Prussian State Statistical Office and from 1908 he was an employee of the Reich Treasury . In 1914 he became an honorary professor in Berlin and in 1919 a member of the Socialization Commission . At times he was close to the USPD . Ballod was also a leader in the Pro Palestine Committee , which campaigned for the settlement of Jews in Palestine. He then took over a professorship at the new University of Riga . Between 1928 and 1930 he was a member of the Latvian parliament .

plant

Ballod was a specialist in urbanization and demographic developments. Among other things, he advocated the thesis that the urban population would continue to need an influx from the countryside in order to maintain or increase the population.

In 1898 he published his book “Der Zukunftsstaat. Economic ideal and economic reality. ”This work appeared in three editions up to 1927 and was also published in Russia in 1903 and 1906. In his book “Zukunftsstaat” he advocated an economic system in which the state's vital needs should be generated through general compulsory labor service. Luxury production should continue to be organized privately. Those who ended their compulsory labor service by five to six years should receive a pension sufficient to live on. The state should also have colonies at its disposal, for whose population there should be compulsory labor service. The Social Democrats rejected these ideas as utopian and colonialist.

Publications (selection)

• The state of Santa Catharina in southern Brazil . Stuttgart, 1892
• The mean lifespan in urban and rural areas . Leipzig, 1899
• The future state. Production and consumption in the welfare state . Stuttgart, 1898 (Verlag JHWDietz Nachf., Berlin 1919)
• The mortality of the big cities , 1903
• Mortality and Lifespan in Prussia . Berlin, 1907
• Outline of the statistics containing population, economic, financial and trade statistics . Berlin, 1913
• The population movement of the last decades in Prussia and in some other important European states. Berlin, 1914
• Palestine as a Jewish settlement area . German Committee for the Promotion of the Jewish Settlement in Palestine, 1918
• Soviet Russia . Freedom Publishing Cooperative, Berlin 1920
• The bankruptcy of the free economy and the necessary financial and economic reforms . Jena, 1923

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Rainer Mackensen / Jürgen Reulecke (eds.): The construct “population” before, during and after the “Third Reich” Wiesbaden, 2005 p. 126f.
2. ^ Helga Grebing (Ed.): History of social ideas in Germany. Essen, 2000 p. 183

literature

• Reinhold Zilch (edit.): The minutes of the Prussian State Ministry 1817–1934 / 38. Vol. 10. Olms-Weidmann, Hildesheim, 1999, ISBN 3-487-11007-5 , p. 359. ( Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences (Ed.): Acta Borussica . New series. )
• Peggy Burian: The Guaranteed Basic Income - Foundations and Origin of an Idea from Antiquity to the Beginning of the 20th Century . Diploma thesis University of Leipzig, 2006 p. 88 digital version (PDF; 662 kB)

Web links

• Frank Gordon: Latvians and Jews Between Germany and Russia (engl.)
• Literature by and about Carl Ballod in the catalog of the German National Library