Frederick Hertz

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Frederick Hertz (until 1946 Friedrich (Otto) Hertz, pseudonym also: Germanus Liber ; born March 26, 1878 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary ; died November 20, 1964 in London ) was an Austro-British sociologist , economist and cultural historian .

Live and act

Friedrich Hertz attended the Franz-Josephs-Gymnasium in Vienna and after graduating from high school (1897) studied law and economics at the University of Vienna . In 1901 and 1902 he continued his studies at the University of Munich , in 1903 he was in Vienna with a thesis on the discount. and foreign exchange policy of the Austro-Hungarian Bank (1892-1902) PhD . During his studies, Hertz joined the Austrian social democracy .

Even before taking his exams, he worked as a freelance writer in Vienna. He continued this after completing his doctorate. In 1905 and 1906 he was editor of the magazine Der Weg. Weekly for politics and culture ( Vienna - Leipzig ). He then worked for a trade association and a Swiss insurance company . In 1914 he married the doctor Edith Hirsch, with whom he had two children.

During the First World War , Friedrich Otto Hertz served in the Austro-Hungarian Army, and in the last two years of the war he served on the Scientific Committee for War Economics of the Austro-Hungarian War Ministry in Vienna. In the first twelve years after the war Hertz worked as a Councilor with the title of Court Councilor at the Austrian Federal Chancellery in Vienna . As a department head, he was particularly concerned with improving Austria's relations with Great Britain and the USA as well as with the successor states of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy.

Hertz was from 1930 to 1933 professor of world economy and sociology at the University of Halle-Wittenberg in Halle an der Saale (today Saxony-Anhalt ). After the seizure of power by the Nazis , he was because of his Jewish origin on the basis of the so-called. Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service from the civil service dismissed (May 1, 1933) and fled to Vienna, where he lived as a private scholar until 1938. The Nazi regime polemicized against Hertz as a "Jew, Freemason and pacifist", the latter because of his publications on "races" and minorities that advocate balance and equality, which make Frederick Hertz a forerunner of modern peace research .

In April 1938 , Hertz emigrated to London with his family . The Greater German Reich made him citizenship in 1939 and the Munich University revoked his doctorate in 1940. In 1946 he became a British citizen as Frederick Hertz. In the war and post-war years he was a leader in Austrian emigrant organizations. Until his death he lived as a private scholar in London and gave lectures and lectures.

Hertz was a member of the Wiener Lodge Zukunft , into which he was accepted on March 11, 1906.

Honor

For his life's work, Hertz was honored at Whitsun 1964 with the Sudeten Germans ' highest award , the European Charlemagne Prize of the Sudeten German Landsmannschaft . At the award ceremony, he said: “You don't need to be assured that the goals of the Sudeten German movement have always been close to my heart. They have always been considered to be one of the main cases of the problem to which I have devoted the greater part of my life and work, namely a just solution of the relations between the nations of Central Europe, which can serve as a model for the world. "

Fonts (selection)

  • Modern racial theories (1904)
  • The Basics of Production in Austrian Industry (1918)
  • Indians, whites and rubber. A question to the League of Nations, in: Berliner Tageblatt weekly edition for abroad and overseas, September 25, 1924, p. 10.
  • Balance of Payments and Viability of Austria (1925)
  • Race and Civilization (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1928)
  • Hans Günther as a race researcher. Philo-Verlag , Berlin 1930.
  • Capital Requirements, Capital Formation, and National Income in Austria (1929)
  • Nationality in History and Politics (1944)
  • The economic Problem of the Danubian States (1947)
  • The Development of the German Public Mind , 3 volumes (1957–62)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Günter K. Kodek: Our building blocks are the people. The members of the Viennese Masonic lodges 1869–1938. Vienna 2009, ISBN 978-3-85409-512-5 , pp. 150f
  2. ^ Sudeten German Council : The Sudeten Germans - an ethnic group in Europe. From the beginning to the present. , Munich, 3rd edition 2010, p. 97. ISBN 978-3-00-021603-9 .
personal data
SURNAME Hertz, Frederick
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hertz, Friedrich Otto; Hertz, Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austro-British sociologist and economist
DATE OF BIRTH March 26, 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH November 20, 1964
Place of death London