Otto Nathan

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Otto Nathan (born July 15, 1893 in Bingen ; died January 27, 1987 in New York City ) was a German - American economist and from 1955 to 1987 the administrator of Albert Einstein's estate .

life and work

Nathan studied economics and law in Freiburg and Munich and completed both courses with a doctorate . He entered the civil service and there reached the rank of senior government councilor. From 1920 to 1933 he was a government advisor on economic issues and in 1927 took part in the World Economic Conference in Geneva as a member of the German delegation. In addition to his work as a civil servant, he also worked from 1928 to 1933 as a private lecturer at the Berlin School of Politics.

After the seizure of power of the Nazis in 1933 emigrated to the US and Nathan taught there at the Princeton University (1933-1935), the New York University (1935-1942), the Vassar College (1942-1944) and the Howard University (1946-1952 ). During his time at Princeton he met Albert Einstein, with whom he quickly became a close friend. He took American citizenship in 1939 and was also an advisor to the US Department of Defense from 1940 to 1941. At that time he also campaigned for German refugees and supported Hermann Kesten and the Emergency Rescue Committee .

Nathan wrote a number of papers on a variety of economic topics, including several on the Nazi economic system. In 1944 he presented what was probably the first comprehensive analysis of the National Socialist economic system. In it he came to the conclusion, among other things, that it is neither a classic capital nor a socialist economic system, but that it has elements from both systems.

Nathan saw himself as a leftist pacifist all his life, which brought him into conflict with the authorities during the McCarthy committees in the 1950s . He lost his job at the university and the State Department refused to issue a passport that he had applied for in order to teach outside the United States. Nathan sued successfully in court, making him the first US citizen to force the State Department to issue a passport three years before the historic Kent v. Dulles (1958) established the right of an American to travel abroad or on a passport. He was later summoned by the Un-American Activities Committee and then sued for contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate with him. However, the process ended in his acquittal. In the 1960s, he took part in vigils in Times Square against the Vietnam War .

Nathan was a long-time confidante and friend of Albert Einstein, who appointed him in his 1950 will, along with his secretary Helen Dukas, as administrator of his intellectual legacy. After Albert Einstein's death in 1955, Nathan devoted himself entirely to the administration of the intellectual estate and the establishment of an Einstein archive, the size of which he tripled. In 1982 he handed over the archive and the rights to the literary estate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem , just as Einstein had provided for in his will. For a long time Nathan did not give the public any insight into the estate; he himself only published the volume Einstein on Peace together with Heinz Norden in 1960 . In 1971 he signed a contract with Princeton University to publish the collected writings. In this context, he granted a few physicists and science historians access to the archive, among them Gerald Holton and John Stachel . John Stachel was appointed editor in 1977, but Nathan only granted him personal access to the originals and denied him to Stachel's collaborators. In addition, Nathan led several legal disputes over Einstein's estate, including with Stachel, whom he mistrusted as editor. An unrestricted evaluation of all archive material by the scientific public was therefore not possible for a long time.

Fonts

  • Basics about the relationship between economics and taxes . 1920
  • Basics about the relationship between economics and taxation . In: Yearbooks for Economics and Statistics , 1921
  • Foreign and global economic observation . In: General statistical archive, ISSN  0002-6018 , Vol. 19 (1929), pp. 174-188
  • Cartels and the state in the light of German experience . In: Government control of the economic order (1935), pp. 55-71
  • The NIRA and stabilization . In: The American economic review, ISSN  0002-8282 , Vol. 25 (1935), pp. 44-58
  • Consumption in Germany during the period of rearmament . In: The quarterly journal of economics, ISSN  0033-5533 , Vol. 56 (1941/42), pp. 349-384
  • The Nazi economic system: Germany's mobilization for war . 1944
    later edition by Russell & Russell, New York, 1971, ISBN 0-8462-1501-2 , ISBN 978-0-8462-1501-1
  • Nazi was finance and banking . 1944
  • Nazi War Finance and Banking Our Economy in War . Cambridge, Massachusetts: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1944.
  • with Heinz Norden: Einstein on peace . 1960
  • with Myron E. Sharpe: Marxismo y capital de monopolio . 1967

literature

  • John F. Oppenheimer (Red.) And a .: Lexicon of Judaism. 2nd Edition. Bertelsmann Lexikon Verlag, Gütersloh u. a. 1971, ISBN 3-570-05964-2 , col. 556.
  • Dr. Otto Nathan, to Economist . New York Times, January 30, 1987 (obituary, English)
  • Leonard B. Boudin: Otto Nathan . The Nation, February 14, 1987
  • Claus-Dieter Krohn: Nathan, Otto. In: Harald Hagemann , Claus-Dieter Krohn (Hrsg.): Biographical manual of the German-speaking economic emigration after 1933. Volume 2: Leichter branch. Saur, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-598-11284-X , pp. 486-488.
  • Werner Röder; Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933-1945 . Volume 2.2. Munich: Saur, 1983 ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , p. 846

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Dr. Otto Nathan, to Economist . New York Times, January 30, 1987 (obituary, English)
  2. ↑ Otto Nathan in the online version of the Edition Files of the Reich Chancellery. Weimar Republic
  3. ^ A b The Morris and Adele Bergreen Albert Einstein Collection at Vassar College - Entry in the Vassar Encyclopedia of Vassar College
  4. ^ Franz Schoenberner, Hermann Kesten: Correspondence in Exile 1933–1945 . Wallstein Verlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-8353-0252-5 , p. 383 ( excerpt (Google) )
  5. ^ Friederike Sattler: Economic Order in Transition: Politics, Organization and Function of the KPD / SED in the State of Brandenburg in the Establishment of the Centrally Planned Economy in the Soviet Zone / GDR 1945–1952, Volume 1 . LIT Verlag, Münster 2002, ISBN 3-8258-6321-2 , p. 61 ( excerpt (Google) )
  6. ^ Leonard B. Boudin: Otto Nathan . The Nation, February 14, 1987
  7. ↑ Otto Nathan at www.hrcr.org, Columbia Law School's Arthur W. Diamond Law Library website on human and constitutional rights (accessed April 14, 2013)
  8. ^ The Albert Einstein Archives at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (accessed April 14, 2013)
  9. ↑ Thumbs on it . Der Spiegel 6/1981
  10. ↑ Dennis Overbye: Einstein, Confused in Love and, Sometimes, Physics . New York Times, August 31, 1999
personal data
SURNAME Nathan, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American economist
DATE OF BIRTH July 15, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Bingen
DATE OF DEATH January 27, 1987
Place of death New York City