Robert Wilbrandt

Emil Stumpp Robert Wilbrandt (1926)

Robert Wilbrandt (born August 29, 1875 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary , † February 24, 1954 in Marquartstein ) was a German economist. He represented socialist ideas, was a theoretician of the cooperative system and is considered a representative of cooperative socialism .

family

Robert Wilbrandt was a son of the poet and director of the Burgtheater Adolf Wilbrandt (from 1884 by Wilbrandt). His mother was the Hofburg actress Auguste Wilbrandt-Baudius (née Däumel). He was married twice, from 1899 to Lisbeth Koller, from 1919 to Ilse Hess. He had five children, including the agricultural scientist Hans Wilbrandt and the pharmacologist Walther Wilbrandt .

Life

education

After attending grammar school in Vienna and Rostock , Wilbrandt studied in Tübingen , Marburg , Strasbourg and Berlin . He attended lectures in many subjects (natural sciences, philosophy, economics, history, philology). He belonged to the Alemannia Marburg fraternity .

In 1899 he did his doctorate with Wilhelm Dilthey on "Plato's theory of ideas in the criticism of Aristotle". Then he studied from 1900 social and economic sciences. Between 1901 and 1904 he lived as a freelance writer. In 1903 and 1904, Wilbrandt went on an economic study trip through Germany.

Wilbrandt completed his habilitation in the field of economics in 1904. Gustav Schmoller and Max Sering were the reviewers .

Pre-war period

Then he was a private lecturer in Berlin and also held courses at the local adult education center. In 1905 he became a deputy chair. In 1908 he became a full professor for economics and finance in Tübingen.

As a member of the civil association for social policy , he increasingly turned to social democracy. His public commitment to this political direction caused a certain public stir in 1911, whereupon Wilbrandt took a leave of absence. On a study trip around the world, he visited the United States and East Asia, among others . After his return, there were several official complaints about Wilbrandt because he allegedly endangered the reputation of the University of Tübingen . A prosecution of the allegations did not take place in view of the outbreak of the First World War .

First World War and Revolution

Between 1916 and 1918 Wilbrandt did military service with the Deputy General Staff in Berlin with interruptions. At the beginning of November 1918 he moved to the Reich headquarters for homeland service under Matthias Erzberger . After the beginning of the November Revolution he belonged to the Reich Office for Economic Demobilization . He was also a member of the Coal Mining Socialization Commission since December 1918 . He turned down multiple requests from Württemberg to resume teaching in Tübingen because he considered the work in Berlin to be more important. He only returned to Tübingen in February 1919.

Weimar Republic

There he campaigned for a reform of economic education. In 1923, his proposals finally resulted in a sample examination regulation for all economic study regulations at German universities.

Wilbrandt is considered a Katheder socialist who campaigned for cooperative socialism. With this he came into contradiction to the Christian consumer cooperative movement and its most important representative Peter Schlack , who described this as enthusiasm.

In 1920 he signed an appeal from university teachers who called for participation in the Reichstag election ("Weimar Appeal"). In 1925, after a lecture by Emil Julius Gumbel to the working group of socialist academics entitled "Four Years of (Political) Murder", riots broke out in which nationalist students, Reichsbanner people and other people were involved (" Lustnauer Battle "). Wilbrandt was essentially involved in the events as a spectator, but was held responsible for the events by the then university rector, among others. Since then he has been isolated from the majority of university teachers. His fraternity, Alemannia, also distanced itself from Wilbrandt in this context.

In 1929 he moved to the Dresden University of Technology as a professor of economics and social policy .

time of the nationalsocialism

Like his son, the agricultural scientist Hans Wilbrandt , he was dismissed from university service after the beginning of the National Socialist era on the basis of the law to restore the civil service . Since 1934 he lived in Marquartstein in Upper Bavaria . An appointment to the USA failed. In the following years he lived under difficult financial conditions as a freelance writer.

plant

Wilbrandt dealt early on with the topic of women and the economy. To this end, he worked closely with Helene Lange and Gertrud Bäumer . In 1902 he wrote Die deutsche Frau im Beruf . In 1906, female workers' protection and home work followed . Above all, he had the weavers in Silesia in mind. Also in 1906 he published the work Women’s Work, a Problem of Capitalism .

Wilbrandt initially belonged to the historical school of economics . He gave his inaugural lecture in 1909 on “ Karl Marx . The history of his worldview ”. Starting with the topic of women's work, Wilbrandt came up with decidedly socialist theories. In doing so, he tied in with Karl Marx, but deviated from him in some areas, such as the issue of the cooperative system. In 1913 he published The Importance of Consumer Cooperatives . In 1918 he wrote the book Karl Marx - An Attempt at Appreciation , which was to be one of the burned books after 1933. It was followed in 1919 by the writing socialism . In 1924 his Introduction to Economics appeared in four parts. A year later, Lines of Development of Socialism appeared . There were also numerous other smaller contributions, for example for the International Concise Dictionary of Cooperatives . After his discharge from university he wrote his main work. This appeared in 1937 under the title Vom Leben der Wirtschaft . He also wrote a biography of his father and an autobiography.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See Fritz Klein: Self-help from Christian Responsibility , Kommunal-Verlag Recklinghausen, 1967, p. 63.

literature

• 200 years of economics and political science at the Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen. Life and work of the professors. Stuttgart , 2004, ISBN 978-3-515-06657-0 , pp. 389ff
• Ralph Lange: From the 'Gumbel Affair' to the 'Wilbrandt Case'. The 'Lustnau Battle': a contribution to the political culture of the University of Tübingen in the Weimar Republic . In: Building blocks for the history of the University of Tübingen , Volume 9 (1999), pp. 29–54
• Munzinger: International Biographical Archive 26/1954 of June 21, 1954
• Robert Wilbrandt: Your happy eyes. Memoirs , Stuttgart 1947

Web links

• Literature by and about Robert Wilbrandt in the catalog of the German National Library
• Seven articles by or about Robert Wilbrandt in the work , in the search Wilbrandt enter. [1] , accessed September 23, 2009