Wilhelm Winkler (statistician)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wilhelm Winkler (born June 29, 1884 in Prague , Austria-Hungary ; died September 3, 1984 in Vienna ) was an Austrian statistician and demographer .

Life

Wilhelm Winkler joined the Bohemian statistical office in 1909. As a war volunteer, he was seriously wounded in 1915 and was a member of the scientific commission for the war economy until the end of the war. In 1918 he found a civil servant position in the Federal Statistical Office. He worked in this federal office until 1938. In 1929 he was appointed university professor in Vienna. In 1934 he was the head of the Austrian census. On June 1, 1938, he retired because he did not want to part with his Jewish wife Klara. After the end of the Second World War he was rehabilitated and appointed to the head of the Institute for Statistics. 1950 to 1951 he was dean at the University of Vienna . In 1965 the University of Vienna awarded him an honorary doctorate .

Wilhelm Winkler was the founder of the Austrian Statistical Society, which he chaired for several years. In his works, Winkler mainly dealt with population statistics and the logic of statistical ratios. He is considered to be the founder of the science of statistics in Austria.

Winkler was also active as a German national folk politician who wanted to bring large parts of East Central Europe "home into the Reich"; To this end, he founded an "Institute for Statistics of Minority Peoples" at the university in 1924, wrote about the "entire Germanness" in the East or about the "protection of national minorities" (by which he originally meant people of German origin) and ran a Southeast German research association in Vienna "Volkish propaganda. Winkler's employees in this irredentist association were Hugo Hassinger , Hans Hirsch , Otto Brunner and Wilfried Krallert ; close relations existed with the Munich counterpart called the Southeast Institute . Travel to the German "Volkstumsgebiet" was intended to underpin the territorial claims.

Attempts to emigrate

As a result of his forced retirement, Winkler got into a tense financial situation (he had five children between the ages of 11 and 17 to look after). He asked several American institutions for help in finding an academic position. Friedrich August von Hayek (who knew Winkler) did not stand up for him.

Winkler wrote in his autobiography after the war:

Right at the beginning of Hitler's career, I had the good inspiration to seek a kind of safe-conduct letter from the dean of my faculty - with regard to my academic achievements and my reputation abroad. The faculty decision also came about and Prof. Ernst Schönbauer , who, as a leading National Socialist, has become acting dean, gave me a very favorable certificate that did not fail to make an impression whenever presented.

Works (selection)

  • German Bohemian economic strength. In: Rudolph Lodgman : German Bohemia . Publishing house Ullstein & Co, Berlin 1919.
  • with Walter Breisky : The world situation of statistics . J. Springer, Vienna 1930
  • Outline of the statistics , 2 volumes. (1931–33)
  • Statistical Handbook of European Nationalities (1931–33)
  • Demometry (1969)
  • The Population of the Austrian Republic

Web links

literature

  • Walter Piesch : Winkler, Wilhelm. 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. 749-751.
  • Alexander Pinwinkler : Wilhelm Winkler (1884-1984) - a biography. On the history of statistics and demography in Austria and Germany. Duncker & Humblot: Berlin 2003 (= writings on economic and social history; 75).
  • Alexander Pinwinkler : Wilhelm Winkler and National Socialism 1933–45 - Aspects of the relationship between work and biography, in: Rainer Mackensen (ed.), Population doctrine and population policy in the “Third Reich”. Leske + Budrich: Opladen 2004, 165-179.
  • Alexander Pinwinkler : The Austrian demographers Wilhelm Winkler and the minority statistics, in: Rainer Mackensen (ed.), Population theory and population policy before 1933. Conference of the German Society for Population Science and the Johann Peter Süßmilch Society for Demography with the support of the Max Planck Institute for demographic research, Rostock; Opladen: Leske + Budrich 2002, 273-296.

Footnotes

  1. ↑ a b Johannes Feichtinger (2001): Science between cultures. Austrian university teachers in emigration 1933–1945 , pp. 221–233 (chapter Austrian economists in the country of refuge England ), p. 226 ( online ).
  2. ↑ Winkler, as ed .: From Austria's border line. Research on German regional and folklore. Series: Annual Geographical Report from Austria of the Geographical Institute of the University of Vienna, Vol. 16f. Deuticke, Leipzig 1933. To the whole complex
  3. ↑ Writing: The Southeast German Research Association 1931 - 1935. Secretary E. Rieger. I.a. with the protocol of the study trip of Viennese and Prague university teachers ... through the Waldviertel and adjacent southern Bohemia from April 28th - 30th, 1935. In the holdings of the Hamburg State and University Library
  4. ↑ a b Johannes Feichtinger (2001): Science between cultures. Austrian University Lecturers in Emigration 1933–1945 , p. 227 ( online ).
  5. ↑ see also Christian Fleck (2015): Establishment in Foreign Countries: Expelled Scientists in the USA after 1933 , p. 390 ( online )
  6. ↑ quoted from Feichtinger (2001), p. 228.
personal data
SURNAME Winkler, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian statistician
DATE OF BIRTH June 29, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Prague
DATE OF DEATH 3rd September 1984
Place of death Vienna