Profile Major Works Resources

Eduard Heimann, 1889-1967.

German economist from Hamburg, and Christian Socialist.

Eduard Magnus Mortier Heimann was born in Berlin, Germany, to a prosperous family of Jewish descent.  His father, Hugo Heimann, was a publisher and Social Democratic politician.  After finishing high school in 1908, Eduard Heimann studied economics at Heidelberg, Vienna and Berlin, absorbing a variety of economic schools - Marxist, Neoclassical, Historicist - at each location.  He obtained his doctorate under Alfred Weber.at Heidelberg, although he would later cite Franz Oppenheimer as his biggest influence.  For medical reasons, Heeimann was exempted from military service during WWI, and worked instead in the private sector plants for a few years. 

In 1919, Hemann was elected general secretary of the first socialization committee, that pushed for the nationalization of coal and steel, and also participated in the second committee of 1920.  Returning to academia, he submitted his habilitation thesis at the University of Freiburg in 1922, and lectured there until 1925, when he was appointed to the University of Hamburg.  Heimann continued to be an active public intellectual, participating in nationwide debates on social policy.  It was already early in this period that Heimann grew dissatisfied with the materialism of Marxism, and was drawn into the Christian Socialist circle of Paul Tillich and Martin Buber. Heimann departed sufficiently from Marxian theory to provide it with a "idealistic" edge, almost to the extreme of Manchester School liberalism.

After the Nazis took power in 1933, Eduard Heimann was promptly dismissed from his post.  Heimann emigrated to New York, joining "University in Exile" at the New School for Social Research, where he taught until 1958.  His History of Economic Doctrines is a classic in the HET.  Heimann eventually returned to Germany, and retired in Hamburg.

 

  

top1.gif (924 bytes)Top

Major works of Eduard Heimann

  • Zur Kritik der Sozial-Methode, 1913
  • Die Sozialisiering, ihre Aufgabe und ihre Form : ein Vortrag vor Berliner Arbeiterinnen, 1919 [hath]
  • Mehrwert und Gemeinwirtschaft, 1922 [hath]
  • Walther Rathenau, eine Würdigung zu seinem Gedächtnis, with Max Scheler and Arthur Baumgarten, 1922  [hath]
  • Soziale Theorie des Kapitalismus, 1929.
  • "Kapitalismus, Organwirtschaft, Sozialpolitik und ihre theoretische Effassung", 1931, WWA.
  • Kapitalismus und Sozialismus, 1931.
  • Sozialistische Wirtschafts- und Arbeitsordnung, 1932.
  • Sozialwissenschaft und Wirklichkeit, 1932
  • "Socialism and Democracy", 1934, Social Research
  • "Planning and the Market System", 1934, Social Research
  • "Types and Potentialities of European Planning", 1935, Social Research
  • "What Marx Means Today", 1937, Social Research
  • Communism, Fascism or Democracy?, 1938.
  • "The Revolutionary Situation of the Middle Classes", 1938, Social Research.
  • "Building our Democracy", 1939, Social Research
  • "Franz Oppenheimer's Economic Ideas", 1944, Social Research. [online]
  • History of Economic Doctrines: an introduction to economic theory, 1945.
  • Freedom and Order, lessons from the war, 1947
  • Wirtschaftssysteme und Gesellschaftssysteme, 1954
  • Vernunftglaube und Religion in der modernen Gesellschaft: Liberalismus, Marxismus und Demokratie, 1955 [English 1961 trans. Reason and Faith in Modern Society: Liberalism, Marxism, and Democracy]
  • Theologie der Geschichte. Ein Versuch, 1966
  • Sozialismus im Wandel der modernen Gesellschaft , 1975

 
HET

 
top1.gif (924 bytes)Top

Resources on Eduard Heimann

  • "Eduard Heimann – Sozialökonom und religiöser Sozialist" by Heinz Reiter [pdf]
  •  New School digital archives.

 

 
top1.gif (924 bytes)Top
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

All rights reserved, Gonçalo L. Fonseca