Rolf Wagenführ

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Rolf Karl Willy Wagenführ (born November 5, 1905 in Langewiesen , † April 15, 1975 in Heidelberg ) was a German statistician. He was the first Director General of the Statistical Office of the European Communities . He wrote fundamental works on international statistical comparisons and developed an economic cycle-oriented system of economic and social statistics.

Life

The son of a merchant attended secondary school in Jena after his parents moved there. He passed his Abitur at Easter 1924 at the secondary school in Neustadt an der Orla . In the summer semester of 1924 he began to study economics in Jena and listened to Professors Kessler , Röpke , Pape and Gutmann . In the summer semester of 1925 he studied in Geneva and listened to William Rappard . Back in Jena, he passed the diploma examination for economics in 1927. With Wilhelm Röpke he received his doctorate in 1928 on the "History and theory of the economy in Russia".

He began his professional career at the Institute for Business Cycle Research. Under the leadership of Ernst Wagemann he was a consultant for industrial statistics. In the late 30's he became a department head. In the autumn of 1942 Wagenführ was appointed head of the main planning statistics department in the Planning Office of the Armaments Ministry under Albert Speer . With this alliance, the institute, which had operated as the Institute for Economic Research since 1941, was again the controlling authority of the state economic observation as it was before 1933. Under Wagenführ as head, the industrial department worked almost exclusively for Speer from 1943 onwards. The main contribution of Wagenführer and the Planning Office for the War Economy was that for the first time coordinated plans of the individual control areas were drawn up. Wagenführ wrote the manuscript of his fundamental work on the German war economy "German Industry in War" at the beginning of 1945 as an employee of the planning office. After John K. Galbraith , he was the chief economist and statistician at Speer's Ministry. His colleagues called him a "Roast Beef Nazi" who was brown on the outside and red on the inside.

After the liberation in 1945 Wagenführ remained in the eastern part of Berlin and was commissioned by the Soviet military administration in Germany to set up a statistical service for the Soviet zone. In the summer of 1945, the Americans kidnapped Wagenführ in a secret operation from East Berlin for the United States Strategic Bombing Survey . He was returned to the Soviet zone a few days later due to diplomatic complications. From the founding of the Statistical Office for the British Zone in July 1946, Wagenführ was Head of Department C, in which all statistical results were brought together. The department was merged with the Economic Institute of the Trade Unions in Cologne in 1949 and he became deputy director of the institute and head of the department for economic observation and statistics. He was the founder of the institute's journal Wirtschaftswwissenschaftliche Mitteilungen . In 1954 he set up a statistical department at the High Authority on behalf of the European Coal and Steel Community .

From 1957 he held the newly established chair for statistics in Heidelberg and at the same time founded the university's institute for international comparative economic and social statistics. In 1958 Wagenführ was appointed Director General of the Statistical Office of the European Communities and remained its director until 1966. He taught at the College of Europe for three years . He was a member of the International Statistical Institute .

Honors

Fonts (selection)

  • The business cycle theory in Russia. Diss. Jena 1929.
  • The industrial economy - development tendencies of the German and international industrial economy 1860–1932. 1932.
  • Statistics made easy, multiple editions. Hamburg 1934, 1940, Cologne 1952, 1971.
  • War economy. Berlin 1935.
  • 戦 争 経 済 の 理論 と 政策 Sensō keizai no riron to seisaku. Tokyo 1941 (for example: “Theory and Politics of the War Economy”).
  • The aircraft industry of the others: World war experience, current status, economic mobilization. Berlin 1939.
  • People and the economy: a national economy for everyone. Cologne 1952.
  • German industry in the war 1939–1945. 1954, 1963 (ND 2006).
  • Labor incomes of the industries of the community in real terms. 1956.
  • The international economic and social statistical comparison. Freiburg im Breisgau 1959.
  • La statistica in Europe. Milan 1967.
  • Economic and social statistics , 2 volumes. 1970-1973.
  • System and organization of education statistics. Villingen 1971.

Festive and commemorative writings

literature

  • Adam Tooze : Statistics and the German State 1900-1945: The Making of Modern Economic Knowledge. Cambridge 2001, pp. 262, 273f., 284f.
  • Ingeborg Esenwein-Rothe : In memory of Rolf Wagenführ 1905–1975. In: Statistische Hefte 1975, pp. 227–232.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Adam Tooze : Theses on the history of the IfK, DIW 1925 - 1945, DIW Discussion Papers, No. 82 (1993), pp. 18f. ( PDF ).
  2. ↑ Jonas Scherner: Report on the German Economic Situation 1943/44, VfZ 2007, p. 500. ( PDF ); Richard J. Overy: "Blitzkrieg Economy"? Financial policy, standard of living and employment in Germany 1939-1942, VfZ 1988, p. 379ff. ( PDF ).
  3. ↑ a b Ina Drescher: Knowledge generation between science and politics - a comparison of union-related research institutes in France, Great Britain and Germany, Diss. Bochum 2008, p. 288 ( PDF) .
  4. ^ John K. Galbraith : A life in our times. Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1981, pp. 235f .; Hans von der Hagen: " " The most powerful indicator in human history " " Süddeutsche Zeitung from April 8, 2014.
  5. ↑ after Deutsche Biographische Enzyklopädie, Volume 10 (Thies - Zykan), p. 338 , 1952.
personal data
SURNAME Wagenführ, Rolf
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wagenführ, Rolf Karl Willy (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German statistician
DATE OF BIRTH 5th November 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Langewiesen
DATE OF DEATH April 15, 1975
Place of death Heidelberg