Fritz Redlich (economic historian)

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Fritz Leonhard Redlich (born April 7, 1892 in Berlin ; died October 21, 1979 in Newton (Massachusetts) ) was a German-American economic and corporate historian. He is considered a representative of the youngest historical school of economics .

Life

Redlich was born into a wealthy, upper-class Berlin textile merchant family. His father was Moritz Silvius Redlich and his mother Emma Redlich, b. Laborious. After graduating from high school in 1910, he began studying chemistry in Berlin and Munich and passed the chemical association examination at the TH Charlottenburg in 1912 . Redlich then changed his field of study and studied in Berlin economics among others, Ignaz Jastrow and Gustav Schmoller and graduated in 1914 with the exam in. Through his academic teachers, his thinking was strongly influenced by Max Weber , Walter Troeltsch , Werner Sombart and Wilhelm Dilthey . At the same time he studied history and political science with Otto Hintze and Gerhard Anschütz, among others . In 1914 he received his doctorate under Heinrich Herkner with a thesis on the economic importance of the German tar paint industry . He took part in the First World War as a volunteer and took part in the suppression of revolutionary uprisings in Berlin in 1919. He had been a member of the German People's Party since 1919 , but later despised their rapprochement with the National Socialists.

After the turmoil of the revolution, against his inclinations, Redlich took over the management of his parents' company, which he left again in 1927 and which subsequently did not survive the global economic crisis . From 1931 he was head of the "Fellverwertungsgenossenschaft Deutscher Furztierzchter". After his habilitation on a commercial history topic had failed in 1930 due to the resistance of the faculty, he worked on a study on advertising as a historical and economic phenomenon , which he completed in 1933. However, after the National Socialists came to power, he withdrew the application for a habilitation that he had made at the Berlin University with this research; the book was published in 1935.

In March 1936, the professionally and politically isolated Redlich left Germany and emigrated to the United States . This was followed by six difficult years full of privation, difficulties getting used to, professional disappointments and isolation. After brief stints as a teacher in Pennsylvania and Michigan , he was a lecturer at Mercer University in Georgia from 1937 to 1942 , a mediocre, secluded Baptist college in the deep south of the USA. When the USA entered the war in 1942, the demand for government employees increased. Redlich seized the opportunity, acquired US citizenship and found a job with the Federal Public Housing Authority in Boston. As an “economic analyst”, he deals with problems of housing management. The following years were characterized by changing employment without security and perspective (in the academic year 1947-48 he was associate professor at the prestigious Massachusetts State College and from 1948 to 1950 director of the Housing Authority of the State of Massachusetts ). Nevertheless, alongside his professional activity, he researched the personal element of economic development and examined the role of the company in economic history. His History of the American Iron and Steel Industry appeared in 1940, and his two-volume work The Molding of American Banking in 1947 and 1951 . He wrote the works as a blatant scientific outsider without financial security or support from a scientific institution. Nor was his type of historical economic history, which put the actions of the individual at the center of the considerations, not popular at the time.

In 1952 the economic historian Arthur H. Cole brought him to the "Research Center in Entrepreneurial History" at Harvard University as a Senior Associate, to which he was a member until it closed in 1958. The general conditions changed suddenly and he developed an enormous scientific productivity. During this time his main work The German Military Enterpriser and his Workforce (1964/65) was created. He had a strong influence on the work of the Center until 1958 and interfered in the methodological debate of the 1960s on the New Economic History with widely acclaimed contributions. This was accompanied by a growing interest in Redlich in Germany; however, he refused to return to Germany. After his retirement he lived and researched in the local libraries, especially in the Kress Library, to which he was very attached. Honestly died in a Boston nursing home.

Works

  • The economic importance of the German tar paint industry . Duncker & Humblot, Munich / Leipzig 1914.
  • Advertising. Concept, history, theory . Enke, Stuttgart 1935.
  • De praeda militari. Looting and booty 1500-1815 . Steiner, Wiesbaden 1956.
  • The German Military Enterpriser and his work force. A study in European economic and social history . 2 volumes. Steiner, Wiesbaden 1964/1965.

literature

  • Jürgen Kocka: On the death of Fritz Redlich . In: Geschichte und Gesellschaft Vol. 5, 1979, Issue 1 (Workers' Culture in the 19th Century), pp. 167–171.
  • Walther Herrmann: Fritz Redlich, 1892–1978. Obituary . In: Zeitschrift für Unternehmensgeschichte Vol. 24, 1979, Issue 1, pp. 1-9.
  • Kenneth E. Carpenter, Alfred D. Chandler, Jr .: Fritz Redlich. Scholar and Friend . In: The Journal of Economic History Vol. 39, 1979, No. 4, pp. 1003-1007.
  • Charles Gaston Arcand Jr .: Fritz Redlich, 1892–1978. The Man and the Scholar . In: The American Journal of Economics and Sociology Vol. 40, 1981, No. 2, pp. 217-221.
  • Hans Jaeger: Honest, Fritz Leonhard. 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. 553-555.
  • Werner Röder; Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933-1945 . Volume 2.2. Munich: Saur, 1983 ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , p. 946

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Honest, Fritz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Redlich, Fritz Leonhard (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American economic and corporate historian
DATE OF BIRTH April 7, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH October 21, 1979
Place of death Newton (Massachusetts)