Walter Eucken

Walter Eucken (; 17 January 1891 – 20 March 1950) was a German economist of the Freiburg school and father of ordoliberalism. Ordoliberalism was based on the concept of social market economy balancing free markets with regulatory oversight. The Walter Eucken Institut was founded four years after his death and his ideas influenced West Germany’s economic policy.

Early life and education Walter Eucken was born on 17 January 1891 in Jena in the German state of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach (present-day Thuringia), a son of the philosopher Rudolf Eucken, and his wife, Irene née Passow (1863–1941), a painter.

Walter grew up in an intellectually stimulating environment. His father was one of the most influential philosophers of the German Empire and the winner of the 1908 Nobel Prize in Literature. Eucken's father read Aristotle with his sons in the original Greek. Visitors to the family villa included Stefan George, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Edvard Munch and Ferdinand Hodler.

Walter had one sister and one brother, the chemist/physicist Arnold Eucken.

Walter Eucken studied economics in Kiel, Bonn and Jena and was awarded his doctorate at Bonn in 1914 (thesis: Verbandsbildung in der Seeschifffahrt). He served as an officer in World War I on both the western and eastern fronts.

The idea of ordoliberalism was introduced for the first time in 1937 in Ordnung der Wirtschaft (Economic Order), a periodical published by Walter Eucken, Franz Böhm and . From 1948, it was further developed in the journal ORDO.

Nazi Germany During the Nazi era, Martin Heidegger became rector of Freiburg University, imposing the regime's policies persecuting Jews in academia. Eucken was vocal in his opposition of these policies in the university senate. As a result, some of his lectures in the 1930s were protested by the local Nazi student association. One of Eucken's students, was the author of the law that abruptly abolished price controls (Leitsätzegesetz) in June 1948.

Personal life Eucken married the writer and philosopher, Edith Erdsiek (b. 1896), in Berlin in 1920. The couple had two daughters and one son.

Death and legacy

Eucken died of a heart attack on 20 March 1950 during a lecture series at the London School of Economics.

The thinktank, the Walter Eucken Institut, was founded four years after his death in Frieberg. Eucken's ideas were later promoted by his friend, the German politician and economist, Franz Böhm, and found their way into the 1957 German anti-trust law, , the foundation of West-German competition policy.

Eucken papers were initially held by the Walter Eucken Archive in Frankfurt and later moved to the Thuringian State and University Library.

Works Kritische Betrachtungen zum deutschen Geldproblem, 1923 "Nationalökonomie wozu?", in: Wissenschaft und Zeitgeist 10, 1938/1949 Die Grundlagen der Nationalökonomie, 1939/1950 - "Wettbewerb als Grundprinzip der Wirtschaftsverfassung", in: Schmölders, G., ed., Der Wettbewerb als Mittel volkswirtschaftlicher Leistungssteigerung und Leistungsauslese (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1942) "Die Soziale Frage", in: Salin, E., ed., Synopsis, Festgabe für A. Weber (Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider, 1948) "Die Wettbewerbsordnung und ihre Verwirklichung", in: Ordo 2, 1949 "Technik. Konzentration und Ordnung der Wirtschaft", in: Ordo 3, 1950 Unser Zeitalter der Mißerfolge, 1951 Kapitaltheoretische Untersuchungen, 1934/1954 (as editor) Grundsätze der Wirtschaftspolitik (Principles of Economic Policy), 1952