Oskar R. Lange

Oskar Ryszard Lange ( born July 27, 1904 in Tomaszów; † October 2, 1965 in London) was a Polish economist and politician.

Life

Oskar Lange was born the son of evangelical textile manufacturer Arthur Julius Lange and his wife Sophie Albertine Rosner born on 27 July 1904 in Tomaszów. His ancestors had migrated in the early 19th century from Germany to Poland. From 1918 to 1922 he attended the local Philological Gymnasium. The experience of misery and mass unemployment after the First World War led him early to a political commitment. He joined the Polish socialist movement and founded in 1920 a department of the "Union of Polish Socialist Youth " ( ZPMS ). After leaving school in 1922 he left his hometown and studied economics, economic history and mathematical statistics, first at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan and from 1923 at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, where he in 1928 received his doctorate and then taught statistics. In 1932 he married Dr. Irene Or field.

In 1934, he went first thanks to a scholarship to London and later to New York City. 1938-1945 Long worked at the University of Chicago as a professor. In 1944, he broke off cooperation with the legitimate Polish government in exile in London and now supported the Lublin Committee, one appointed by the Soviet Union Communist counter-government in Poland. In 1945, he was Ambassador of the People's Republic of Poland in Washington. In 1947 he and Lange returned to Poland.

1949-1956 he taught at the School of Planning and Statistics in Warsaw, where he also was rector from 1952 to 1955. 1955-1957, he was Deputy Chairman of the State Council of the People's Republic of Poland 1957-1963 and Chairman of the Economic Council of Ministers.

Oskar Lange developed, as well as Abba P. Lerner, a model of competitive socialism, which differed from the pure planned economy. It was also known as the Third Way.