Lowe, Adolph (1893–1995)

Abstract

Born on 4 March 1893 in Stuttgart, Adolph Lowe was educated at Berlin and Tübingen and received the Dr. Juris. from Tübingen in 1918. From 1919 to 1924 he was Section Head in the Ministries of Labour and Economics of the Weimar Republic, and was largely responsible for the practical planning and management of the currency reforms that brought the great hyperinflation to an end. From 1924 to 1926 he was Head of the International Division of the Federal Statistical Bureau, a politically sensitive post in the light of disputes over reparations payments. In 1926 he became Director of Research at the Institute of World Economics at the University of Kiel, where he established an important centre for research into business cycles and their control and regulation through planning. In 1931 he was appointed Professor of Political Economy at the University of Frankfurt, where he joined the leaders of a major renaissance in social and socialist thinking. But in March 1933 he became the first professor in the social sciences to be fired by Hitler. He moved immediately to England, where he held a post at Manchester until 1940, when he moved to the New School for Social Research in New York, where he was Professor of Economics, Director of Research at the Institute of World Affairs, and then Professor Emeritus, remaining active in the Department until his return to Germany, in March 1983, 50 years after his forced departure. In 1984 he was awarded the Dr. honoris causa by the University of Bremen.