Hans Willgerodt

Hans Willgerodt (born February 4, 1924 in Hildesheim ; † June 26, 2012 ) was a German economist of the ordoliberal school .

life and work

Willgerodt was the nephew of Wilhelm Röpke , who died in 1966 and is considered one of the intellectual fathers of the social market economy .

As the successor to the chair of Alfred Müller-Armack , he represented the professorship for political economics at the University of Cologne from 1963 until his retirement and was also director of the Institute for Economic Policy at the University of Cologne. For many years he was editor of the ORDO yearbook for the order of economy and society and a member of the expert commission for the evaluation of previous experiences with co-determination ( Biedenkopf-Commission ), which recommended a transfer of co-determination from the coal and steel industry to the rest of the economy .

In contrast to Friedrich August von Hayek's trust in evolutionary processes, he saw the active state as an indispensable prerequisite for the creation of a liberal order. He turned Hayek's warning against a “presumption of knowledge” into a warning against a “presumption of ignorance”.

From 1982 to 1990 Willgerodt was a member of the Kronberger Kreis and from 2007 of the Wilhelm Röpke Institute .

Awards

• 2004: Alexander-Rüstow-Plakette of the action group social market economy .

Fonts (selection)

• Wealth for everyone. Problems of the formation, distribution and maintenance of the value of wealth in the market economy. A study by the Ludwig Erhard Foundation. Econ Verlag, Düsseldorf 1971. Series of publications by the Ludwig Erhard Foundation, vol. 2.
• (Ed.) In memoriam Fritz Walter Meyer . Speeches given on January 24, 1981 at the commemoration of the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn . Bouvier, Bonn 1981. (with Horst Heinrich Jakobs)
• (Ed.) Basic texts on the social market economy (with Wolfgang Stützel, Christian Watrin and Horst Friedrich Wünsche)
• Values ​​and knowledge . Lucius & Lucius, Stuttgart 2011, ISBN 978-3-8282-0534-5 .

literature

• Rolf H. Hasse: Order in freedom: Festgabe for Hans Willgerodt on his 70th birthday , Stuttgart; Jena; New York: G. Fischer, 1994, ISBN 3-437-50367-7 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Nils Goldschmidt: A liberal lighthouse: Hans Jörg Hennecke pays tribute to the economist Wilhelm Röpke FAZ.net, January 8, 2007.
2. ↑ Stefan Kolev: Prerequisites for Freedom ( Memento of the original from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) 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. (PDF; 786 kB), in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of July 2, 2012, p. 10. 
3. ↑ Action Group Social Market Economy: Winner of the Alexander-Rüstow-Plakette ( Memento of the original from March 26, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 

Web links

• Literature by and about Hans Willgerodt in the catalog of the German National Library