Heinrich Liepmann

Heinrich Liepmann (born August 3, 1904 in Stettin , † October 3, 1983 in Caterham , Surrey ) was a German-British economist .

Life and activity

Liepmann was the son of a bank director. His older brother was the economist Leo Liepmann . After attending a grammar school in Jena , which he graduated with the final exam in 1923, in the same year he began studying German, philosophy, modern history and economics at the university in the same city. In his spare time he worked in an academic bookstore. His teachers in Jena included u. a. Emil Lederer and Alfred Weber , with whom he also attended lectures on economics.

In the summer semester of 1925, Liepmann moved to Heidelberg, where he kept his old combination of subjects except for German studies. Instead of this subject, he added sociology to his table of subjects. In 1931, he put his supervised by Weber thesis on economy and revolution of 1848 in Germany, with which he to Dr. rer. oec. PhD. The work received the grade summa cum laude. During his studies in Heidelberg Liepmann also founded the DDP- affiliated Academic Democratic Student Group, which he also headed from 1926 to 1929.

Liepmann spent the summer semester of 1932 as a scholarship holder at the Graduate School of International Studies in Geneva . He then returned to Heidelberg, where he was employed as a research assistant until 1934 as part of the research program "On the Economic Fate of Europe" initiated by Weber and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation.

In 1936 Liepmann, who had been exposed to increasing harassment and hostility since the National Socialists came to power in the spring of 1933 because of his Jewish descent - according to National Socialist standards - went to Great Britain. There he published his only publication in the field of economics in 1938, a comprehensive quantitative comparative study of the development of customs tariffs in the most important European trading nations and their economic effects. Due to the increasing protectionism shortly before and during the Great Depression, the work, which contained extensive data for the period between 1927 and 1931, met with widespread interest. The book was widely discussed in the British business press. In order to be able to compare the average tariff levels in different countries, Liepmann chose - independently of the goods and quantities actually traded - fictitious bundles of goods, for which he calculated country-specific 'potential tariff levels'. With the help of the statistical material, he was able to prove that the tariffs for all product groups, but especially in the agricultural sector, had risen sharply in the fifteen most important European countries after the failed World Economic Conference in 1927. However, the assessment of the British protective tariff policy in his host country met with strong criticism.

In the meantime, the National Socialist police officers classified Liepmann as an enemy of the state after his emigration: In the spring of 1940 he was placed on the special wanted list by the Reich Security Main Office , a list of people who would be left by the occupying forces in the event of a successful invasion and occupation of the British Isles by the Wehrmacht Subsequent SS special commands were to be identified and arrested with special priority.

In the spring of 1940 Liepmann was granted a research fellowship from Queen's University in Kingston / Ontario, which he was unable to take up because of his internment in May 1940 as a member of a hostile power by the British authorities. After his release in February 1941, the further pursuit of the Canada plans failed because he was unable to obtain a visa or ship passage. Another scholarship enabled him to work at the Royal Institute of International Affairs / Chatham House in Cambridge in 1942 , before he was hired by the BBC as a monitor from April to September 1943 because of his language skills.

From January 1944, Liepmann then worked as a German teacher at the County Grammar School for Boys in Beckenham in Kent.

Fonts

• Economy and revolution in Germany in 1848. Economics and sociological contributions to the history of their mutual relationships , 1931.
• Tariff Levels and the Economic Unity of Europe. An Examination of Tariff Policy, Export Movements and the Economic Integration of Europe, 1913–1931 , (Translated by H. Stenning, Introduction by Sir Walter Layton), Allan & Unwin, London 1938. (Reprinted in Philadelphia 1980)
• Memories of Karl Jaspers from 1925–1936. In: Klaus Piper, Hans Saner (eds.): Memories of Karl Jaspers , Piper, Munich / Zurich 1974, pp. [47] –52.

literature

• Hans Ulrich Esslinger: Liepmann, Heinrich. 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. 384f.
• German Biographical Encyclopedia , Vol. 6 (Kraatz – Menges), Munich 2006, pp. 444f.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Entry on Liepmann on the special wanted list GB (reproduced on the website of the Imperial War Museum in London) .