Biography

Ludwig Erhard - Biography

Ludwig Erhard was born in Fürth, Bavaria on 4 February 1897. His father owned a shop which sold textiles. After the First World War, he studied at the Commercial College in Nuremberg where he graduated in 1923 and then at the university in Frankfurt where he obtained his doctorate. His main subjects were business administration, economics and sociology.

Then, Erhard spent a considerable time as an academic and worked, among other things, for an institute for consumer research. He refused to come to an arrangement with the Nazis and for that reason he made little progress in his career until 1945. Even during the war, Erhard thought about the economic order of his country and how it might look after the war ended and the national socialists had been removed from every office. In 1945 his studies fell on fertile ground and aroused the interest of the occupying powers. On behalf of the Americans, he was responsible for reconstruction and development in Franconia. Then in 1947, he was entrusted with the task of preparing monetary reform.

On 2 March 1948, Ludwig Erhard was chosen as the new Director of Economic Administration. From 1949-1963 he held the office of Federal Minister of Economics but with no party affiliations. Despite massive resistance from Erhard, who considered social insurance on a pay-as-you-go basis to be unsustainable, Federal Chancellor Adenauer forced through a pension reform in 1957. It was only in 1963 that Erhard finally joined the CDU. His influence on monetary and economic policy in the young Federal Republic is almost inconceivable. Popular with the general public, he was made Vice Chancellor after the 1957 elections.

However, Adenauer was not convinced that Erhard would be capable of following in his footsteps, but Erhard thought differently and became Chancellor in 1963 - one of the more hapless chancellors in the history of the Federal Republic. Three years later, on 1 December 1966, he resigned after a quarrel about the budget with coalition partner FDP, with Walter Scheel at its head. Erhard, aged 80, died in Bonn on 5 May 1977.