Fritz Burchardt

Fritz Adolph Burchardt , later Frank Burchardt (born January 5, 1902 in Barneberg , † December 21, 1958 in Oxford ) was a German-British economist.

Life

After attending school and studying philosophy and sociology in Magdeburg and economics in Marburg, Heidelberg and Kiel, Burchardt began working on his dissertation on Joseph Schumpeter's contributions to static analysis at the Economics Seminar at Kiel University. In this he questioned the Schumpeterian view that dynamics in the economy (understood as a development theory) are inevitably less precise than the theory of stationary equilibrium and that they are independent of it.

From 1926 to 1933 Burchardt was Adolph Löwe's assistant at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. Due to his research at that time, which mainly dealt with the cyclical growth processes of modern industrial economies, he is considered one of the co-founders of the Kiel School of Economic Theory. At that time he stood out as a critic of the current theories of the monetary trade-cycle theories. In 1928 he presented a history of the monetary explanations for the business cycle. In 1931 and 1932 two essays followed in which a synthesis of the sector model and the stage model were presented.

Around 1932 Burchardt went with Löwe to the University of Frankfurt, where he submitted his habilitation thesis in 1933 ( Das Tableau Économique as the basis of the business cycle theory ), which has only been partially preserved.

Politically, Burchardt belonged to the Social Democratic Party of Germany and the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold during the Weimar period.

After the National Socialists came to power in spring 1933, Burchardt was ousted from university service. Due to the changed political situation, he was no longer able to complete his habilitation process. Instead, from 1933 to 1935, he worked as an editor for the Frankfurter Zeitung for two years

In 1935 Burchardt emigrated to Great Britain, where he found a job at the Oxford Institute of Statistics, where he worked until his death: first as a librarian, from 1945 as deputy director and in 1948 as director of this institution. While working at the Institute of Statistics, Burchardt coordinated the research work of the staff there and founded the institute's own journal Bulletin of the Oxford University Institute of Statistics . In 1944 he was also the editor of the study The Economics of Full Employment . His own research continued to revolve around economic growth and business cycles and, to a lesser extent, employment, monetary policy, production theory and international trade.

After his emigration, the National Socialist police officers classified Burchardt as an enemy of the state. In the spring of 1940 the Reich Main Security Office in Berlin put him on the special wanted list GB , a list of people whom the Nazi surveillance apparatus regarded as particularly dangerous or important, which is why they would be succeeded by the occupation troops in the event of a successful invasion and occupation of the British Isles by the Wehrmacht Special SS commandos were to be identified and arrested with special priority.

In 1940 Burchardt was interned on the Isle of Man as an enemy alien by the British authorities, since he was still formally a German citizen . Due to the intercession of well-known colleagues, including John Maynard Keynes , he was released in November 1940 and was able to return to Oxford.

In 1948 Burchardt received from Oxford University the rank of Fellow at Magdalen College and in 1950 that of a Reader for Economic and Social Statistics. In 1954 he also became a Faculty Fellow of Nuffleld College.

family

Burchardt had been married to Arne Herren since 1932, with whom he had a son and two daughters.

Fonts

As an author:

• Contributions to the problem of statics in Schumpeter , 1925.
• "Development history of the monetary business cycle theory", in: Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv Vol. 28, 1928, pp. 78-143.

As editor:

• The Economics of Full Employment , Oxford 1944.

literature

• Werner Röder; Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933-1945 . Volume 2.1. Munich: Saur, 1983 ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , pp. 170f.
• Jürgen Kromphardt: Burchardt, Frank A. In: Harald Hagemann , Claus-Dieter Krohn (Hrsg.): Biographical handbook of German-speaking economic emigration after 1933. Volume 1: Adler – Lehmann. Saur, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-598-11284-X , pp. 99-102.
• Harald Hagemann: Burchardt, Fritz. In: David Glaser (Ed.): Business Cycles and Depressions: An Encyclopedia. 2013, p. 59 f.
• Mehmet Odekon: Booms and Busts: An Encyclopedia of Economic History from the First Stock Market Crash of 1792 to the Current Global Economic Crisis. 2015, p. 104 f.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Entry on Burchardt in the special wanted list GB (reproduced on the website of the Imperial War Museum) .