Knut Borchardt

Knut Borchardt ( born June 2, 1929 in Berlin ) is a German economic historian.

Life and work

Knut Borchardt was laid in 1948, the High School in Berlin- Spandau. Subsequently, he studied German, history, business and economics in Berlin and at the Ludwig- Maximilians- University of Munich. In 1954 he was graduated in Economics, 1956 in Munich Dr. oec. publ. doctorate. From 1954 to 1961 he was a research assistant at the Economics Institute of the LMU Munich. After his habilitation in 1961 he became the representative of the Department of Economic and Social History at the University of Tübingen. 1962 he was appointed professor of economic history and economics at the University of Economics and University of Mannheim, where he from 1967 to 1968 held the office of rector. From 1969 until his retirement in 1991 he was professor of economic history and economics at the University of Munich. In 1987 he was awarded the Leibniz Prize and in 1999 the Bavarian Maximilian Order for Science and Art. Borchardt was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit 1st class. Borchardt received honorary doctorates from the Universities of Innsbruck and Mannheim.

His research focuses on form, among others, the economic history of the period between the world wars, the person Max Weber as an economist and his early work and teaching activities as well as specific aspects of the long-term economic development in the 19th and 20th centuries.

1974 Borchardt was elected as a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. There he heard as a representative of the philosophical- historical class of the Budget Committee and is chairman of the Commission for Economic and Social History and Deputy Chairman of the Commission for Cultural Anthropological Studies. He is a member of the Economic Committee of the Historical Association for Social Policy and since 1970 of the Scientific Advisory Council to the Federal Ministry of Economics. 1981-2007 he was a member of the Historical Commission of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences.

Together with other figures such as Alfred E. Ott and Heinrich Strecker he was in the period 1968-1982 yearbooks for Economics and Statistics out. From 1980 to 2007 he was associate editor of the Historische Zeitschrift. In recent years, Borchardt also dealt with economic and socio- political aspects of globalization.

The " Borchardt hypothesis" and the subsequent controversy

Borchardt's theses on economic policy in the final phase of the Weimar Republic were the subject of fierce controversy in the 1980s. 1979 attacked Borchardt to the then prevailing view that the deflationary policy of the Cabinet Heinrich Brüning 1930-1932 bear the main responsibility for the severity of the Great Depression in Germany. Borchardt argued that Bruning's policy was no alternative in view of the indebtedness of the public sector, which had been cut off in the Great Depression by the credit. This debt problem had at least been the result of too generous wage and social policy in the Weimar Republic before 1929 in part.

In the following period ignited an extensive and often passionate debate about this hypothesis, which was attended by leading economic historians in Germany and abroad. Especially decidedly attacked the Berlin economic historian Carl -Ludwig Borchardt's thesis Holtfrerich to high wages in the Weimar Republic. Holtfrerichs counter-arguments, however, were later pulled even in doubt. More recently, the Borchardt - pupil Albrecht Ritschl Borchardt has further expanded hypothesis. Ritschl argues that Germany was in 1930 placed in a balance of payments crisis, which was caused by high foreign debt and the tightening of the Reparationsregimes by the Young Plan and in the had been impossible a policy of economic stimulus.

The debate about Borchardt's thesis has come up today to no definitive conclusion. Undeniably, however, Borchardt has lasting doubts sown at the once popular view that results in an expansive, "Keynesian " fiscal and monetary policy, the global economic crisis in Germany earlier and with less damage could have quit.

Works (selection)

• The Industrial Revolution in Germany. London 1969. ISBN 3-492-00340-0
• Growth, crises, room for maneuver in economic policy. Göttingen 1982. ISBN 3-5253-5708-7 (English 1991)
• Floor plan of the German economic history. Göttingen 1985. ISBN 3-5253-3421-4
• Economic policies in the crisis. The (secret ) conference of the Friedrich List Society in September 1931 about the possibilities and consequences of credit expansion. ( with Hans Otto Schötz published ) Baden -Baden 1991. ISBN 3-7890-2116-4
• Max Weber's writings Exchange. Mystery of an overlooked work. Munich 2000. ISBN 3-7696-1610-3
• Globalization in Historical Perspective. Munich 2001. ISBN 3-7696-1614-6