Wilhelm Abel

Wilhelm Abel ( born August 25, 1904 in Buetow, † April 27, 1985 in Göttingen ) was a German economic historian.

As a student of the Kiel agricultural economists August Skalweit (1879-1960) and first director of the company founded in 1964 in Göttingen Institute for Economic and Social History Abel worked primarily with issues of agricultural history and politics, the rural social policy and craft policy.

At Abel's students have included Walter Achilles, Friedrich- Wilhelm Henning and Karl Heinrich Kaufhold.

Abel was married since 1933, née Alice Perner.

Services

Methodology, principles and classification

Wilhelm Abel is considered one of the founders of quantitative method in the economic history research. In addition to his extensive and fundamental work on the agrarian history historiography Abel owes decisive impulses for the interpretation of economic history topics, particularly on the agricultural and food crises, as well as a reinterpretation of pauperism and its causes.

Pulses in scientific debates

Causes of pauperism

Wilhelm Abel formulated an antithesis to the concept of Friedrich Engels, after industrialization is the cause of pauperism ( been ). After Abel's view of pauperism was just spur of the old, pre-industrial poverty, exacerbated by the rapid population growth at even low productivity growth. In contrast to Engels he saw industrialization as a solution of the Pauperismusproblems.

Causes of famines in the 19th century

Natural history causes, singular events as triggering moments, the physical destruction of the elements of the reproduction process, the transmission of the crisis from agriculture to urban industry and the: as characteristics of pre-capitalist economic crises (Abel - Labrousse hypothesis therefore also ) apply according to Abel and Ernest Labrousse spatial limitations of the crisis due to lack of integration of markets. Abel saw these features in the Europe-wide hunger crisis in the middle of the 19th century to be established and described it thus as the final crisis of the type of the ancien régime and argues that "the year 1847 still a Notjahr, the old order ' in Germany was ". Recent research see this sophisticated and argue that we already have seen elements of the industrial- capitalist type of economic crises.

Writings (selection )

  • Agricultural crises and agricultural markets in Central Europe from the 13th to the 19th century ( habilitation thesis of Abel, Berlin -Hamburg 1935, 21966, 31978, japan 1972, French 1973, Italian 1976, Eng 1980.. ), ISBN 3-490-30415 - 2
  • The waste places of the late Middle Ages ( = sources and research on agrarian history 1 ) ​​( Jena 1943, 21955, 31976 ), ISBN 3-437-50185-2
  • Agricultural Policy ( Göttingen 1951, 21958, 31967, Spanish 1960)
  • History of German agriculture from the early Middle Ages to the 19th century ( Second volume, edited by Günther Franz plant German agricultural history, Stuttgart 1962, 21967, 31978 )
  • The pauperism in Germany on the eve of the Industrial Revolution ( 1966 Dortmund, Hannover 21970 )
  • Mass poverty and hunger crises in preindustrial Europe. Attempt a synopsis (Hamburg - Berlin 1974, 21977, 31986 ), ISBN 3-490-04315-4
  • Levels of nutrition. A historical sketch, Göttingen 1981, ISBN 3-525-33453-2
  • Structures and crises of the late medieval economy, Stuttgart- New York 1980 ( = sources and research on the Agricultural History 32)
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