Elisabeth Liefmann-Keil

Elisabeth Liefmann-Keil (born June 4, 1908 in Halle (Saale) , † August 16, 1975 in Saarbrücken ) was a German economist . In 1956 she was the first woman to receive a full professorship at Saarland University .

Life

Her father Harry Liefmann (1877–1915), a lecturer in bacteriology and hygiene at the University of Halle , died as a naval staff doctor on the Eastern Front during World War I. His widow Agathe (1889–1969) then moved with her two young daughters to Freiburg im Breisgau , where her husband had relatives. In an air raid in April 1917, Elisabeth was injured by a bomb explosion and suffered lifelong nervous problems. In 1930 she began to study economics at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg , which she completed in the 1933 summer semester with a diploma. After the Nazis came to power, she was subjected to repression as a “ half-Jewish woman ” , but was able to successfully defend herself against being expelled from the German student body , citing her war damage and the war death of her father. On September 20, 1936, she was with the work Organized competitive pricing , a price and market theory analysis of wool and cotton market, PhD . Her doctoral supervisor was Adolf Lampe , and Walter Eucken was the second reviewer . A habilitation turned out to be impossible due to the political circumstances. Although family members like her uncle Robert Liefmann were deported , she refused to emigrate. Unofficially, she was able to give courses at the university from 1942 to 1944, but from 1943 onwards she was no longer able to publish in professional journals. Only after the end of the war was she able to submit her habilitation thesis The Housing Industry in the National Economy and received the Venia Legendi on June 25, 1946 . On November 10, 1949, she was appointed adjunct professor in Freiburg, her first doctoral candidate was Otto Schlecht in the winter semester 1950/51. As a Rockefeller Fellow , she went on research trips to the USA, England and Scandinavia.

In 1956 she accepted a position at Saarbrücken University, but turned down offers from the Universities of Rostock and Halle. In 1961 her book Economic Theory of Social Policy was published , which is considered to be an important theoretical foundation for ordoliberal social policy . From 1961 until her retirement in the 1974/75 winter semester, she headed the Institute for Social and Economic Policy in Saarbrücken. She died at the age of 67 as a result of an accident in January 1974. She remained unmarried and childless.

Publications

• Introduction to Political Economy (1964)
• Present and future of social provision for old age (1967)
• The pharmaceutical market as part of the further development of statutory health insurance (1973)

literature

• Bernhard Külp (Ed.): Contributions to a theory of social policy. Festschrift for Elisabeth Liefmann-Keil on her 65th birthday . Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1973. ISBN 3-428-02939-9
• In memoriam Elisabeth Liefmann-Keil. Speeches on the occasion of the funeral service organized by the Faculty of Law and Economics of the Saarland University on November 29, 1975 in Saarbrücken . Saarbrücken 1976
• Nils Goldschmidt and Wendula Countess von Klinckowstroem: Elisabeth Liefmann-Keil, an early ordoliberal in dark times . Institute for General Economic Research, Freiburg 2004. Online version, PDF; 384 kB

Web links

• Literature by and about Elisabeth Liefmann-Keil in the catalog of the German National Library