Gerhard Colm

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Gerhard Colm (actually: Cohn; born June 30, 1897 in Hanover ; † December 26, 1968 in Chevy Chase , Maryland , USA ) was a German-American economist and financial scientist.

Colm came from a Jewish family. He affirmed the Weimar Republic and was involved as a democrat. In 1933, he was by the Nazis from his office at the Institute for World Economics marketed at the University of Kiel and forced to emigrate.

Colm went to the United States and became an American citizen. Colm was also very successful in the USA. Among other things, he worked in the budget office of the American President from 1940 to 1946. Under the American President Harry S. Truman he worked on the "Colm-Dodge-Goldsmith-Plan" for the currency reform of 1948 in post-war Germany .

Gerhard Colm at the presentation of the Bernhard Harms Prize (1964)

Life

War effort and training

After graduating from high school in 1915, he volunteered for the First World War . For his services he was awarded the Iron Cross, First and Second Class.

From 1919 he studied economics with the sociologist and economist Franz Oppenheimer in Frankfurt am Main . In the same year he joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany .

Kiel time

From 1922 to 1926 he worked as a consultant at the Reich Statistical Office in Berlin . Bernhard Harms , founder of the Kiel Royal Institute for Shipping and World Economy (today Institute for World Economy) noticed him and brought him to the institute in Kiel as a private lecturer .

In 1927 he completed his habilitation at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel with the text "Economical Theory of State Expenditures" , with which he broke the previous narrow scientific framework, which until then in the analysis still predominantly concentrated on the income side of the state budget , while public Expenditure was declared as depriving the economy of purchasing power . Gerhard Colm, on the other hand, pointed to the repercussions of government spending on the economic cycle.

In 1930 he was promoted to head of department at the institute and became an associate professor at the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel . He gave lectures in the field of “finance” . As little state as possible, as much as necessary, in order to still steer the market economy politically in a goal-oriented manner, was his plea.

Together with Adolph Löwe and Hans Neisser , Gerhard Colm soon belonged to the so-called "Kiel Group" , which made significant contributions in the early days of economic cycle and business cycle research and also represented the Kiel Institute for World Economy.

Emigration to the USA

When the National Socialists came to power in 1933, the heyday of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy came to an abrupt end. When an SS troop stormed the institute in early April, Colm was driven out like many other unpopular scientists. Since Colm belonged to the SPD - at times also to the USPD - and the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold , he was given leave of absence on April 25, 1933. His classification as a Jew within the meaning of the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service was probably responsible for this. In August he emigrated to the USA with Hans Neisser . One month later he was accused of being unreliable because of his emigration and he was formally dismissed from civil service.

In the USA he founded the exile university New School for Social Research in New York City with others and taught at it as a professor of economics. His former colleague Adolph Lowe from Kiel followed him there in 1940 . In 1938 Colm was elected dean by the college.

In 1940 Colm moved to Washington, DC, as finance officer in the budget office of the White House , and stayed there until 1946. In May 1946, together with others, he presented a well-founded plan for currency reform in Germany , which was destroyed after World War II , according to its authors also called the "Colm-Dodge-Goldsmith Plan" . In 1946 the American President Harry S. Truman made Gerhard Colm his personal economic advisor and played a key role in the conception of Trumann's “ Fair Deal ” . In 1952, he was by McCarthy and his " Senate Committee on Un-American Activities " forced out of this office and in 1952 Chief Economist of the "National Planning Association" - an office which Gerhard Colm until his death on December 26, 1968 in Chevy Chase, Maryland , exercised .

meaning

In the “Kiel Group”, Gerhard Colm developed economics into a general economic cycle theory. In America, he influenced the "functional economy" of Abba Lerner and Neo-Keynesians in the post-war period. He played a decisive role in the currency reform in Germany. He recommended to American economic policy the use of corrective measures to self-regulate the macroeconomic cycle mitigate excesses and stabilize the cycle itself. He countered fears of national debt that “a balanced economy is more important than a balanced national budget” . He differed from the Keynesians in that long-term development and growth were more important to him than short-term successes.

Honors

Works (selection)

  • Contribution to the history and sociology of the Ruhr uprising from March-April 1920 . Essen, 1921.
  • Economics lessons at the adult education center . Adult Education Archives, 1925.
  • Economic theory of government spending. A contribution to finance theory , 1927.
  • The financial aspect of the disarmament problem . 1927, In: Handbuch des Disarmungproblem, 1929.
  • Wages, interest, unemployment . 1930.
  • with Hans Neisser : The work, capital formation and tax system . 1930.
  • with Hans Neisser: German foreign trade under the influence of global economic structural changes . 1932.
  • The Ideal Tax System . Social Research, 1934.
  • Theory of Public Expenditures . AAPS, 1936.
  • with Fritz Lehmann: Public Spending and Recovery in the United States . Social Research, 1936.
  • Is Economic Planning Compatible with Democracy? In: Max Ascoli, Fritz Lehmann (Ed.): Political and Economic Democracy . 1937.
  • with Fritz Lehmann: Economic Consequences of Recent American tax policy . 1938.
  • Comment on Extraordinary Budgets . Social Research, 1938.
  • The Revenue Act of 1938 . Social Research, 1938.
  • Is economic security worth the cost? Social Research, 1939.
  • From Estimates of National Income to Projections of the Nation's Budget . Social Research, 1945.
  • Fiscal Policy . In: Harris, editor, New Economics, 1947.
  • Can we afford additional programs for national security? 1953.
  • Developments in Business Research and Policy in the United States of America . 1954.
  • Essays in Public Finance and Fiscal Policy . 1955.
  • (Co-author): Plan for the Liquidation of War Financing and the Financial Rehabilitation of Germany , 1955.
  • On the question of an economic and growth-adequate financial policy . Economic Policy, 1956.
  • with Theodor Geiger : The Economy of the American people . 1961.
  • Economic Planning in the United States . World Affairs, 1964.
  • Integration of National Planning and Budgeting . 1968.

literature

  • Wolfram Hoppenstedt: Gerhard Colm. Life and Work (1897–1968) . Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-515-06661-6 .
  • Ralph Uhlig: Expelled scientists from the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel (CAU) after 1933. On the history of the CAU under National Socialism. A documentation , In: Kieler Werkstücke, Series A - Contributions to Schleswig-Holstein and Scandinavian history, Volume 1. Frankfurt am Main a. a. 1991.
  • Harald Hagemann: Colm, Gerhard. In: Harald Hagemann , Claus-Dieter Krohn (Hrsg.): Biographical manual of the German-speaking economic emigration after 1933. Volume 1: Adler – Lehmann. Saur, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-598-11284-X , pp. 104-113.
  • Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss (Hrsg.): Biographical manual of the German-speaking emigration after 1933. Volume 1: Politics, economy, public life . Munich: Saur, 1980, p. 116

Web links and sources

Commons : Gerhard Colm  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Professor Dr. Gerhard Colm. uni-kiel.de , accessed on July 7, 2013 .
  2. ↑ Bernhard Harms Prize. (No longer available online.) Ifw-kiel.de , archived from the original on June 14, 2013 ; Retrieved June 15, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ifw-kiel.de
personal data
SURNAME Colm, Gerhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American economist and American presidential advisor
DATE OF BIRTH June 30, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Hanover
DATE OF DEATH December 26, 1968
Place of death Chevy Chase , Maryland , USA