Fritz Karl Mann

Fritz Karl Mann (born December 10, 1883 in Berlin ; died September 14, 1979 in Washington, DC ) was a German financial scientist and sociologist of finance . He taught at the Universities of Kiel , Koenigsberg and Cologne as well as at the American University in Washington, DC

Significance for finance

He began his academic career with a law degree, which he completed in 1906 with a doctorate. jur. at the University of Göttingen . The foundation stone was laid in Göttingen for the development of his scientific work in the field of political science . Mann was a student of Adolph Wagner and Gustav von Schmoller ; he obtained his doctorate in 1913 in Berlin. phil. He then continued his studies in London and Paris , worked for French political science journals and discovered the famous “Memoire inedit” by Montesquieu in French archives . In the years before the outbreak of the First World War , Mann's monograph “The Marshal Vauban and the Economics of Absolutism. A Critique of the Mercantile System “ the most important result of his research. The First World War had to hit the internationally oriented scientist particularly hard, as far as Martin Heilmann from the University of Kiel.

After the war, Mann received his first appointment as professor in Kiel. There he worked as a financial scientist, theoretician and dogma historian until his appointment to Königsberg at the beginning of 1922. In the Königsberg years he concentrated on the historical penetration of the economic, political and sociological relationships between finance and the state economy. During this time the young Rudolf Heberle became his colleague and student.

From Königsberg, Mann received the first chair at the University of Cologne, exclusively dedicated to finance, which he held from 1926 to 1935. Here in May 1927 he founded the Institute for International Finance (from which today's Financial Research Institute at the University of Cologne (FiFo)) emerged. During this time, his fundamental findings were reflected in the monographs “Deutsche Finanzwirtschaft” (1929), “The State Economy of Our Time” (1930) and, above all, in the work “Steuerpolitische Ideale. Comparative studies on the history of economic and political ideas and their impact on public opinion 1600–1935 ” (1937), an important contribution to the classics of finance.

After Hitler came to power , Mann - a baptized Jew - was released from teaching at the University of Cologne in September 1935; in February 1936 the license to teach was withdrawn. Together with his family , he emigrated to the USA that same year. From 1936 he taught as a professor at the American University in Washington, DC There he also headed the Institute of Federal Taxes from 1945 to 1956 and from 1948 to 1954 as chairman of the Department of Economics and Business Administration. As a Fellow , funded by the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars , he analyzed the German war economy from 1936–1944 as an economist in the United States War Department .

The next phase of his work in Kiel is his “German Finance” . Here you can see that in the twenties, Mann was still strongly committed to the tradition of his teacher Wagner; his analysis focuses on the tax burden and the dangers of fiscalism. In contrast to his later successor in Kiel, Gerhard Colm , the analysis still predominantly relates to the income side of the budget; public expenditure is simply declared as a deprivation of purchasing power for the economy , without taking into account the repercussions of government expenditure on the economic cycle , as Keynesianism did . By the time Mann was publishing this publication, his colleagues at the Kiel Institute had already taken other paths. However, under the influence of his financial sociological and historical studies, Mann was soon to break away from this tradition and find access to macroeconomically oriented finance.

Significance for the sociology of finance

Mann wrote economic and financial sociological treatises on the tax system of a society. After Erwin K. Scheuch he is the founder of the sociology of finance. Fritz Karl Mann defined the sociology of finance as the science that deals with the following questions: "The financial institutions of a country are to be viewed from a twofold perspective: on the one hand as the product of social forces; on the other hand, as a means of maintaining or transforming the existing social order. (...) The subject of financial sociology is (...) the interrelationship between "financial economy" and social order. Here we understand the financial economy in the usual sense: mostly as the financial administration of states, municipalities and other political associations or as a functional complex: those in the Fundraising and use of funds culminating activities of the ´Fiscal Authority´ " .

His work Finanztheorie und Finanzsoziologie, published by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht in Göttingen in 1959, in which various earlier contributions are printed, offers a good overview of his work in the sociology of finance.

Honors

• 1959 honorary doctorate (Dr. rer. Pol. Hc) from the universities of Frankfurt am Main and Tübingen
• Large Federal Cross of Merit

Publications (selection)

• Marshal Vauban's economic and tax policy . 1913.
• The state economy of our time. An introduction. 1930.
• Tax policy ideals. Comparative studies on the history of economic and political ideas and their impact on public opinion 1600–1935. 1937.
• Finance Theory and Sociology of Finance. 1959.
• The sense of finance. 1978.

A comprehensive list of publications can be found at Julia C. Ahrend: Fritz Karl Mann. A pioneer of the sociology of finance and the theory of parafiski at the interface of German and American scientific culture .

literature

• Julia C. Ahrend: Fritz Karl Mann: A pioneer of financial sociology and the theory of Parafiski at the interface of German and American scientific culture (= contributions to the history of the German-speaking economy. Volume 36). Metropolis Verlag, Marburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-89518-785-8 .
• Brockhaus Encyclopedia, 21st edition . Volume 17, 2006, ISBN 3-7653-4143-6 , p. 614.
• Walther Herrmann:  Mann, Fritz Karl. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 16, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-428-00197-4 , p. 55 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Werner Röder; Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933-1945 . Volume 2.2. KG Saur, Munich 1983 ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , p. 769.
• Karl Weinhard: Mann, Fritz Karl. In: Harald Hagemann , Claus-Dieter Krohn (ed.): Biographical handbook of German-speaking economic emigration after 1933. Volume 2: Leichter branch. Saur, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-598-11284-X , pp. 410-415.

Web links

• Literature by and about Fritz Karl Mann in the catalog of the German National Library
• Newspaper article about Fritz Karl Mann in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
• Entry on Fritz Karl Mann in the Kiel directory of scholars

swell

1. ↑ Information on the homepage of the Financial Research Institute at the University of Cologne, accessed on September 9, 2011.
2. ↑ Classics of Economics
3. ^ Frank Golczewski: Cologne University Teacher and National Socialism. Personal history approaches . Böhlau, Cologne 1988, ISBN 3-412-03887-3 , pp. 447 .
4. ^ German biography: Mann, Fritz Karl - German biography. Retrieved September 3, 2018 . 
5. ↑ Chair of Public Finance, Social Policy and Health Economics at the University of Kiel ( memento from October 19, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on May 16, 2011.
6. ↑ Erwin K. Scheuch: Social change. VS Verlag, 2003, p. 22.
7. ^ Fritz Karl Mann: Financial Sociology. In: Wilhelm Bernsdorf (Hrsg.): Dictionary of Sociology. Enke, Stuttgart 1969, p. 290.
8. ^ German biography: Mann, Fritz Karl - German biography. Retrieved September 3, 2018 . 
9. ↑ Julia C. Ahrend: Fritz Karl Mann: A pioneer of financial sociology and the theory of Parafiski at the interface of German and American scientific culture. (= Contributions to the history of the German-speaking economy. Volume 36). Metropolis Verlag, 2010, ISBN 978-3-89518-785-8 .