Hans Peter (economist)

Hans Peter (born May 17, 1898 in Raguhn , † June 24, 1959 in Tübingen ) was a German economist .

Life

After his Abitur at the humanistic grammar school Hammonense , which he passed in 1917 together with Joachim von Spindler , Hans Peter studied mathematics , philosophy and economics from 1918 mainly with Leonard Nelson in Göttingen and with Robert Wilbrandt in Tübingen , where he wrote his dissertation “ Basics on the problems of the law of the poor from the point of view of the Fries school ”by Ludwig von Köhler . From 1925 to 1927 he taught at the Nuremberg Commercial College and worked with Eugen Altschul , head of the Frankfurt Institute for Business Cycle Research . During this time Peter was a member of the SPD.

1928 Peter was in Tübingen with the work critical to the mathematical treatment of the theory of value for Economics habilitation . This is where his scientific discussions with his friend Erich Preiser about problems of the cycle theory became significant. In 1933 his Venia legendi was expanded to include statistics .

Peter's university career was interrupted because he had a technical controversy with the national socialist Göttingen economics lecturer Klaus-Wilhelm Rath about the theoretical orientation, the alleged "racial and ethnic" foundations and the need for an exact mathematicization of the national economy, which at the end of 1938 made him his assistant and private lecturer lost because the Nazi lecturers' association blocked him. At the instigation of Ministerialrat Paul Josten he was hired in 1939 in the Reich Ministry of Economics . From 1940, at Robert Ley's request, he did not change to a university, but to the " Ergonomics Institute " AWI of the DAF , a subsidiary organization of the NSDAP. At the end of 1940 he took over the management of Heinrich von Stackelberg's department of economic theory until he was hired in 1944 . Here he was the superior of Leonhard Miksch and Woldemar Koch . In 1940 he joined the NSDAP in order to promote his career by his own admission. After completing his probation at AWI, Peter managed to get an adjunct professorship in Tübingen. The previously defamed mathematical methods turned out to be indispensable for the tasks of the AWI. In the AWI he participated in the concept development for the economic exploitation of the conquered eastern areas. There are clearly anti-Semitic statements from Peter from this period.

After the war, Peter was able to activate his contacts to Erich Preiser and Gerhard Weisser and, as the French zone commissioner for southern Württemberg, take part in the expert conference on basic issues of economic management and planning on June 21 and 22, 1946 in Hamburg. Here he advocated a planned economic policy. In 1947 Peter was appointed associate professor for economics at the University of Tübingen , and in 1953 full professor. There he founded the "Econometric Working Group" in 1953.

Honors

In 1956 he was awarded the Fellowship of the Econometric Society , of which he had been a member since 1935.

literature

• Harald Hagemann:  Peter, Hans. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 20, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-428-00201-6 , p. 233 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Helmut Marcon and Heinrich Strecker: Article 68. Ferdinand Albert Hans (eigtl. Johannes) Peter . In: 200 years of economics and political science at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen . Life and work of the professors. Volume I. Steiner, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-515-06657-8 , pp. 509-515.

swell

1. ^ Karl Heinz Roth : Intelligence and Social Policy in the "Third Reich". A methodological-historical study using the example of the Ergonomic Institute of the German Labor Front. Saur, Munich 1993 ISBN 3111999882 p. 36
2. ↑ Andrea Albrecht : "Scientific tools". On the production of economic knowledge under the conditions of National Socialist rule using the example of Hans Peter (1898–1959), 2010 ( PDF )
3. ↑ Inventory number: UAT 189/2602, 189/2593, Ökonometric Arbeitsgemeinschaft / Institute for Applied Economic Research: 1953–1962