Gerhard Merk

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Gerhard Merk (born May 8, 1931 in Mannheim ) is a German economist, social ethicist and textbook author.

Life

Gerhard Ernst Merk graduated from the Tulla-Realgymnasium in his hometown and initially studied economics in Heidelberg , but also attended courses in history , Latin , sociology and theology . Graduating with a degree in economics in 1955 and doctorate in the subject economics in 1956, he completed a degree in business education in the University of Mannheim , where he in 1957 the level of a diploma commercial teacher earned.

From 1958 to 1964 Gerhard Merk was in the market research department of the Fried Group management . Krupp works in Essen . He also taught economics at the company's own vocational school. During this time, Gerhard Merk wrote several papers on market research. His book Scientific Market Research (1962) tried for the first time to establish market research as an independent discipline within the framework of economics ; today this work is widely regarded as the birth certificate of academic market research in German-speaking countries.

Gerhard Merk then worked as a lecturer in economics at the Siegen University of Applied Sciences and its successor, the Siegen-Gummersbach University of Applied Sciences. In 1972 he was taken over as a professor at the newly founded University of Siegen . He taught there until his retirement and continued to stay connected to the teaching without payment.

Gerhard Merk had been with the pharmacist Dr. rer. nat. Martha Merk-Jansen from Aachen († June 30, 2010) married. The couple have two children and six grandchildren.

Services

In teaching and research, Gerhard Merk repeatedly dealt with the logical foundations of the social sciences . His textbook Basic Concepts of Epistemology for Economists , published in 1985, was received with approval throughout and was widely used.

Encouraged not least by attacks against the basic statements of economics on the part of many students around 1968, Gerhard Merk examined the meaning of the term " prosperity " and its purely quantitative measurement in the national product . He proposed to distinguish goods from bad and classified the latter as those which now or later cause harm to people.

Another focus of Gerhard Merk's academic work was monetary theory and ethics. From 1977 to 1980 he edited the yearbook Acta Monetaria , written in German and English, together with two German-speaking and two English-speaking colleagues. Here Gerhard Merk showed in his own contributions that inflation has different causes as well as different effects, which he worked out specifically using individual monetary functions.

Since 1978 Gerhard Merk has dealt in detail with the life and work of the Siegerland polymath Johann Heinrich Jung-Stilling (1740–1817). He founded the Jung-Stilling-Gesellschaft eV, which from now on bundled several personalities who worked at Jung-Stilling. He himself published a biography about Jung-Stilling entitled Jung-Stilling. An outline of his life (the fifth edition appeared in 2017 and has also been translated into Dutch and Russian) and published fifteen writings by and about Jung-Stilling. In addition, Gerhard Merk summarized the economic ( Jung-Stilling-Lexicon Economy ) and theological ( Jung-Stilling-Lexicon Religion ) thinking of Jung-Stilling in two collections of quotations .

Honors

Gerhard Merk was honored on his 50th birthday in 1981 with a festschrift, to which twelve experts from seven countries contributed: Gold. Raw material - hoarding object - currency metal . For a long time, this specialist book remained a widely used reference work on all aspects of the international gold market .

In 1991 Güter und Ungüter appeared. A friend's gift for Gerhard Merk on his 60th birthday . In this anthology, ten authors from different disciplines investigate the question of whether and to what extent the distinction introduced by Gerhard Merk and expressed in the main title is sensible, appropriate and necessary.

In the same year, Blick auf Jung-Stilling appeared. Festschrift for Gerhard Merk's 60th birthday . Experts involved in Jung-Stilling research dealt with several aspects of the person and work of Jung-Stilling.

Fonts (excerpt)

  • Scientific market research . Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1962.
  • Introduction to monetary theory . Fritz Knapp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1974, ISBN 3-7819-2900-0 .
  • Programmed introduction to economics , 4 volumes. Betriebswirtschaftlicher Verlag Dr. Gabler, Wiesbaden 1973–1975.
    • Vol. 1: Basics
    • Vol. 2: Households, Companies and the Market
    • Vol. 3: Money, Macrobalance, and Forces of Growth
    • Vol. 4: Growth, State and Distribution
  • Basic teaching of political economy , 2 vols. Fritz Knapp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1975.
  • Microeconomics . Verlag Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1976.
  • To limit offensive advertising . Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1977, ISBN 3-428-03958-0 .
  • Basic concepts of epistemology for economists . Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-428-05891-7 ( digitized, free of charge )

In addition, Gerhard Merk worked as the editor of several works and published around 70 articles in scientific journals on economics, market research, social ethics and business education. Several literary works appeared from his pen under a pseudonym .

Since 1995, Gerhard Merk has put his financial lexicon on the Internet for free use . In addition to an English translation, the lexicon also contains references to publications by the Deutsche Bundesbank and the European Central Bank for the respective keywords . Rare expressions from financial history are also included in this collection.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Merk, Gerhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German economist
DATE OF BIRTH May 8, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH Mannheim