Alfred Lansburgh
Alfred Lansburgh (27 March 1872 – 11 September 1937) was an English-born German bank employee and author, better known by his pseudonym Argentarius. His fundamental works on the monetary system are still in print today, cited in scientific papers[1] and used as technical literature at universities.[2][3]
Biography
Lansburgh came from a Jewish family and, after being born in London, moved with his parents to Berlin as a child, where he soon became an orphan. He attended the renowned French Gymnasium there, although he did not graduate from high school. He was friends with Kurt Tucholsky.
Alfred Lansburgh was initially an employee of the Berliner Handels-Gesellschaft bank before moving to the Ratgeber auf dem Kapitalmarkt as an editor in 1903. In 1907, he founded Bank-Verlag, where he published his magazine Die Bank from 1908 to 1934. As a result of the Schriftleitergesetz (Editorial Control Law) of October 4, 1933, his publishing house was aryanized in 1934.
Werner Lansburgh, who later became known as an author, was his son.
Writings
Alfred Lansburgh was a fierce critic of the big banks and their influence on the country's markets and politics. Beginning in 1910, he unsuccessfully sought to unite small city and provincial banks to create a counter to the powerful big banks.
He wrote over seven hundred texts between 1908 and 1931, some of which still enjoy great popularity today.
His most fruitful years were between 1921 and 1923, when the ever-increasing inflation in the Weimar Republic led to ever greater economic problems. During these years, he published Vom Gelde: Briefe eines Bankdirektors an seinen Sohn ("Letters from a Bank Director to His Son"), Valuta ("On International Monetary Transactions and Foreign Trade"), and Währungsnot ("Causes of Inflation"), a self-contained doctrine of money, as the volume Valuta states. All books are written in the form of fictional letters to his son.
Reception
Lenin repeatedly referred to Lansburgh in his essays, calling him the "most competent of the bourgeois imbeciles". The New York Times referred to him in the 1920s as a well known economist.
At the secret conference of the Friedrich List Society in September 1931 on the possibilities and consequences of credit expansion, to which Lansburgh had been invited by Reichsbank President Hans Luther, Lansburgh argued against the Lautenbach Plan, against credit expansion, and against credit economics in general, putting the deflationary "crisis" into perspective.[4] In this way, Lansburgh supported the policies of Reich Chancellor Heinrich Brüning and Reichsbank President Hans Luther. His son Werner Lansburgh later speculated about self-reproach on his father's part because his "orthodox economic ideas in the sense of the Manchester School" may have involuntarily helped National Socialism to prevail during the crisis. Lansburgh was a classical liberal.[5]
His books, most notably the volume Vom Gelde ("On Money"), have been reprinted since the 1980s and, especially since the financial crisis of 2008/2009, have been widely regarded as the basis for reflections on a healthy monetary system.
Translations into English
- The Essence of Money: Argentarius: Letters from a Bank Director to His Son (Argentarius: Letters of a Bankdirektor to his Son) (2021)
Notes
- ↑ Fohlin, Caroline (2001). "Regulation, Taxation, and the Development of the German Universal Banking System, 1884-1913," SSRN eLibrary.
- ↑ Holtfrerich, Carl-Ludwig (1986). The German Inflation, 1914-1923: Causes and Effects in International Perspective. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter.
- ↑ Feldman, Gerald D. (1993). The Great Disorder: Politics, Economics, and Society in the German Inflation, 1914–1924. New York: Oxford University Press.
- ↑ Borchardt, Knut & Hans Otto Schötz (1991), Wirtschaftspolitik in der Krise. Die (Geheim-)Konferenz der Friedrich List-Gesellschaft im September 1931 über Möglichkeiten und Folgen einer Kreditausweitung. Baden-Baden.
- ↑ Dathe, Uwe (2009). "Walter Euckens Weg zum Liberalismus (1918-1934)". In: Ordo. Jahrbuch für die Ordnung von Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft 60, p. 74.
