Author

Wilhelm Röpke

1899-1966 · German economist in Geneva exile, influential on the West German social market economy

Short biography: Wilhelm Röpke in Great Lives

About Wilhelm Röpke

Wilhelm Röpke (1899–1966) was a German economist who served in the First World War, became a professor at Jena at twenty-four, and later taught at Graz and Marburg. An outspoken opponent of National Socialism, he was dismissed in 1933 and went into exile, teaching at the University of Istanbul and, from 1937, at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, where he remained. His books, including The Social Crisis of Our Time and Civitas Humana, influenced Ludwig Erhard and the postwar West German social market economy. He was an early president of the Mont Pelerin Society.

Notable works

On this site

A Humane Economy

Wilhelm Röpke

1958 · Postwar Contemporary · Political Theory

A Humane Economy is the German economist Wilhelm Röpke's argument that a free market economy depends on moral, social and cultural foundations that the market itself does not create. It was published in German in 1958 as Jenseits von Angebot und Nachfrage, literally 'Beyond Supply and Demand', and in English in 1960 in a translation by Elizabeth Henderson, under the subtitle The Social Framework of the Free Market.

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