Friedrich Behrens

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Friedrich Behrens (1953)

Friedrich Franz Willi "Fritz" Behrens (born September 20, 1909 in Rostock , † July 15, 1980 in Zeuthen near Berlin) was one of the leading economists and one of the main exponents of the New Economic System in the GDR .

Live and act

Friedrich Behrens completed an apprenticeship as a mechanical engineer at the Neptun shipyard in 1924 and worked as a machine assistant in the merchant navy from 1928 . From 1924 to 1928 he was a member of the Socialist Workers' Youth and from 1926 a member of the SPD . He left the SPD and joined a left-wing split, the SAPD . In 1932 he switched to the KPD . He studied economics and statistics in Leipzig from 1931 to 1935 and received his doctorate in 1936 with the thesis The money capital in the changing positions . He then worked as an assistant in the Reich Statistical Office , was drafted into the High Command of the Wehrmacht in 1939 and worked for the Central Statistical Office of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in Prague from 1941 to 1945 , at the same time he taught statistics at the German Charles University there .

In July 1945 he was appointed city councilor for popular education for the KPD in Zwickau . In 1946 he was appointed to teach statistics and political economy at the University of Leipzig and after his habilitation in 1947 became director of the Institute for Economics and Statistics and founding dean of the university's social science faculty. In 1954 he was a co-founder of the Institute for Economics of the German Academy of Sciences and from 1955 to 1957 head of the State Central Administration for Statistics , deputy chairman of the State Planning Commission and member of the GDR Council of Ministers .

His criticism of the state-centralist bureaucratic management style in the economy, his concept of a democratic socialist self-administration and his theory of the withering away of the economic organizational function of the state, formulated in the book manuscript On economic theory and economic policy in the transition period , brought him to the 30th meeting of the Central Committee of the SED raises the charge of revisionism . In 1957 he was relieved of all state functions and since then has worked as a working group leader at the Institute for Economics of the Academy of Sciences . At the university conference of the SED in 1958, he exercised public self-criticism. After he had again expressed doubts about the reformability of state socialism, he was retired early in 1968. He then worked on concepts for pluralism and self-government in socialism and dealt with the causes for the failure of the “socialist variant of state monopoly”.

Behrens was awarded the National Prize of the GDR in 1954 and the Patriotic Order of Merit in 1964.

Fonts (selection)

  • On the method of political economy. A contribution to the history of political economy . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1952.
  • Commodity, value and law of value. Criticism and self-critical considerations on the theory of value in socialism . Berlin 1961.
  • Outline of the history of political economy . Berlin 1962–1981.
  • Causes, characteristics and prospects of the new model of management of the socialist economy . Berlin 1966.
  • H. Loschinski [ed.]: Farewell to the socialist utopia . Berlin 1992.
  • Günter Krause, Dieter Janke [ed.]: You cannot be a Marxist without being a utopian. Texts by and about Fritz Behrens . Hamburg 2010.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Date after obituary in Neues Deutschland v. July 23, 1980, p. 8; the information according to other sources: d. July 16, 1980, July 19, 1980 in Berlin are apparently incorrect.
personal data
SURNAME Behrens, Friedrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Behrens, Friedrich Franz Willi (full name); Behrens, Fritz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German economist, main representative of the New Economic System in the GDR
DATE OF BIRTH September 20, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Rostock
DATE OF DEATH July 15, 1980
Place of death Zeuthen