Reconstructing the Career of Lil Dagover: Grand Tales, Scant Evidence

On the island of Java, in September 1887, a star was born: a German star who would leave a lasting imprint on the movie industry. She was baptized with the impressive name of Marie Antonia Sieglinde Martha Seubert. In her childhood she was usually known as Lilitt. Her family was living on Java because her father, Adolf Karl Seubert, was employed by the Dutch government there.

Even these simple facts, however, require some clarification: in her autobiography, Lilitt writes that she was born in 1897 — a ten-year difference. Whether this was a simple typographical error or a deliberate deception is not clear.

This family was soon shattered by the death, first, of the mother, in 1897, after which the child was sent home to Germany, and then by the death of the father a few years later.

Again some explanation is needed: an exact, or even approximate, date for the father’s death is not available. Some sources report that Lilitt was orphaned at a young age, but there is also a record of a man named Adolf Seubert dying in 1941. How many men might have had that name? Could there have been an estrangement between the father and the daughter? There is no known record of such an estrangement. The date of the death or estrangement would be important for understanding the personal development of Lilitt.

Back in Germany at age ten, she lived for approximately ten years in Tübingen. Apparently, she attended a school in the Münzgasse there.

Prior to her mother’s death, accounts indicate that she spent time in England, France, and Switzerland. Precise details are elusive.

She married an actor, Fritz Daghofer. Again sources vary: the wedding was either in 1907 or 1913. The couple had a daughter, either in 1909 or 1914. The couple divorced sometime in 1919 or 1920.

The pattern is clear: There is little data about the early life of Lilitt, and the small amount of information which is available is ambiguous and dubious. It is reasonable to ask whether this is by design. Did she herself, or someone else, work to keep her life in the shadows? Or to keep the details pliable, in case someone wanted to adjust the narrative of her biography?

It was probably in 1913 — again, accounts vary — that a cinematographer made a short film of Lilitt, probably dancing. The film may have been an experiment, a sort of screen test, rather than a movie intended for commercial release. This happened in Weimar, where she and her husband lived for several years. This film, and probably several other early ones, are almost certainly permanently lost.

Accounts of her later life are more plentiful, detailed, and reliable. It was at this time that she took on the stage name by which most readers will know her: Lil Dagover.

In her autobiography, published in 1979, she gives many stories or vignettes from both the early and the later years of her life. The data is uneven: for example, she might give an exact location of an incident, but fail to give even the vaguest indication of when it might have happened. It is clear that the episodes in her book are not in chronological order, but rather self-contained stories, designed to highlight some theme in her life. Her memoirs may not be an entirely reliable source for the historian.

She relates an undated narrative, which must have happened prior to early 1919, and may have happened in the mid-1910s. Given the location of the story in her book, 1917 seems probable. It tells of a turning point in her career:

Es war an einem Nachmittag, mitten auf der Schillerstraße in Weimar. Ich hatte es eilig, denn ich war mit meinem Mann am Abend zu einem Künstlerfest eingeladen und mußte noch Besorgungen machen. Da trat plötzlich ein Herr auf mich zu, zog den Hut und sagte: »Verzeihen Sie, gnädige Frau, wenn ich Sie so einfach anspreche. Darf ich Sie etwas fragen?«

Wortlos ging ich weiter, erschrocken über das unglaubliche Benehmen eines Mannes, der sich — in Weimar! — soviel Frechheit erlaubte. Der Unbekannte aber blieb kühn an meiner Seite. »Ich beobachte Sie schon eine ganze Weile«, sprach er weiter. »Sie haben ein ausgesprochenes Filmgesicht. Hätten Sie nicht Lust, bei mir zu filmen?«

Das war nun allerdings ein starkes Stück. Ich nahm meinen ganzen Mut zusammen und herrschte ihn an: »Halten Sie es für besonders originell, auf diese Weise eine Dame anzusprechen?«

This story gives the feel of the social expectations of the time and place. Does it capture the dynamic of the exchange between Lil Dagover and the stranger? She had, after all, probably already done some film work.

In addition to the probable short test film around 1913, there is evidence that she made at least two films in 1916, and these were theatrical releases. Would she have been so shocked by the incident she recounts, even if it had happened prior to 1916? Did she feign surprise? Or did she add her surprised reaction to the narrative years afterward? Or did the social customs of the day shape her reaction?

She explains that her family and upbringing were shaped by a hierarchy of officers and officials; that Weimar society was filled with aristocrats, privy counselors, and professors; and that the man’s behavior was an impudent effrontery.

Later that same day, she and her husband attended the aforementioned party:

Ausgelassen ging es auch wieder auf diesem Künstlerfest zu. Ich hatte gerade einen langen Tanz hinter mir und saß erschöpft am Tisch einer Freundin, als quer durch den Saal mein Mann auf mich zukam, von einem Herrn begleitet. Ich erschrak fürchterlich: Denn sein Begleiter war kein anderer als der Rüpel aus der Schillerstraße.

In bester Laune sagte Fritz zu mir: »Darf ich dir einen guten Freund vorstellen? Herr Doktor Wiene!« und zu dem Mann sagte er triumphierend, den Arm um meine Schulter legend: »Meine Frau.«

Der Mann war fassungslos. »Das ist nicht wahr!« rief er, küßte mir verlegen die Hand und entschuldigte sich für sein Verhalten.

»Es ist wahr!« sagte Fritz mit dem ganzen Stolz des Besitzenden.

The comic element is undeniable, and one can easily imagine that Lil Dagover could not resist perhaps adjusting the details to make the story more amusing.

She goes on to explain that her husband and Robert Wiene knew each other, but hadn’t seen each other in a long time. They met by chance on the other side of the large room. As they spoke, Wiene’s eye happened upon Lil, and he mentioned to Fritz Daghofer that he’d seen that woman before and offered to get her into the movie business. Fritz said that he would introduce Wiene to the woman, but didn’t tell Wiene that the woman was his wife!

As she tells it, Wiene explained that her face was perfect for the cinema, and he wanted her to come to Berlin, the center of the German film industry. Her husband Fritz, on the other hand, said that Lil probably wasn’t interested in making movies. She writes that she tried to dissuade Wiene from the idea. Later, however, she sent a few still photos to Wiene.

She waited for a response, but after more than six months, she assumed that no response from Wiene would arrive.

Und eines Tages, als ich längst nicht mehr damit gerechnet hatte, traf es ein: das schicksalsschwere Telegramm, das mich kurz und bündig nach Berlin zu Probeaufnahmen bestellte. Der Absender Robert Wiene hatte die ›Weimarerin‹ also nicht vergessen.

Sofort erzählte ich Fritz davon; dann blickte ich ihn etwas ratlos an.

Er lachte nur und zuckte die Achseln. »Na, nun mach man, mach man!« rief er, und es hörte sich an wie: Da siehst du, was du dir eingebrockt hast! Jedenfalls hatte er nichts dagegen, daß ich in die Kaiserstadt zu Robert Wiene reiste. Offenbar war er überzeugt, daß ich wenige Tage später kleinlaut nach Weimar zurückkehren würde.

Wiene’s letter, written to Lil Dagover in reply to the photos she sent him, must have arrived in Weimar in late 1917 or early 1918. Dagover writes that she arrived in Berlin to explore her options in the film industry in 1918. The project for which Wiene had invited her dissolved, and Wiene sent her instead to work with Fritz Lang; Lang’s plans, however, suddenly changed, and Lang sent her to Ewald Andre Dupont. Finally, Dupont sent her to Alwin Neuß, who ultimately hired her.

Neuß gave her a prominent role in the film Das Lied der Mutter, which appeared in 1918, and Lil signed an ongoing contract with the production company.

In her memoirs, Lil Dagover gives the impression that this was her first film. She does not mention, but records clearly show, that she had starred in several other films prior to 1918. The wording in the book is vague; she makes no explicit claim that this was her first film, but she lets the reader draw that conclusion all too easily. Her goal in writing seems to be to tell engaging anecdotes, not chronicle events precisely.

The next year, her career took a major turn. Lil Dagover went from stardom to superstardom, propelled by her appearance in a film which, over a century later, is still carefully studied by cinema scholars.

Im Spätsommer des Jahres 1919 passierte es, daß der Mann, der mich in Weimar auf der Schillerstraße so kühn angesprochen hatte, daß Dr. Robert Wiene mir eine Hauptrolle in einem Film anbot, der ›Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari‹ hieß.

Wiene rief mich an: »Spinnen Sie noch immer bei Fritz Lang mit? Auch im zweiten Teil?«

Ich sagte: »Leider nicht, ich sterbe schon im ersten Teil.»

Darauf er: »Wie schön! Dann kann ich ja über Sie verfügen!«

Daß dieser Stummfilm in die Filmgeschichte eingehen würde, hatten wir damals beide nicht geahnt. Am wenigstens Produktionschef Erich Pommer, der Leiter der Decla-Bioskop-Filmgesellschaft. Er wollte diesen Stoff vor allem deshalb produzieren, weil er hoffte, es könnte ein billiger Film werden, und seine Rechnung ging auf.

A line attributed to Wiene above contains a pun. Lil Dagover had been working with Fritz Lang on a film titled Die Spinnen.

Nobody working on the Caligari film had an inkling that it would outlive hundreds of other films made in the decades before and after it.

Being part of such a historic and magnificent movie was both a blessing and a curse. The Caligari film would not only shape the movie industry; it would shape Lil Dagover’s career and her public image.

She can be forgiven for dwelling at length on this film in her book: several chapters are devoted to it. The book is a fascinating read, filled with reminiscences of film production and insights into the movie industry. Although sometimes vague, lacking the details a scholar might want, and sometimes revisionist to the point of being factually incorrect for the sake of a good story, the book still gives the reader the impression, if not the data, both of the film industry and of the making of a landmark film.

Remembering Germany’s Glory Days: Can the Wirtschaftswunder Be Resuscitated?

The German economy has been the standard for economic success since the 1948/1949 postwar “economic miracle” which Ludwig Erhard produced — although Erhard himself was quick to note that it was not a miracle, but rather the reproducible and predictable result of certain economic principles. In any case, not only Europe, but the rest of the world, admired the successful and productive German macroeconomy throughout the 1950s and even later.

By the 1970s, the German economy was still a global leader, but at some point, it began to run more on its inherited momentum than on its entrepreneurial initiative.

Germany remained an international powerhouse well into the twenty-first century, when Angela Merkel was able to explain to Barack Obama that economies were about producing products and selling them. She was right, but historian Wolfgang Münchau suggests that already by that point in time, the German economy was really good at manufacturing the products that the previous generation wanted.

Even as military officers are sometimes guilty of preparing to fight the last war rather than the next one, macroeconomic leaders can sometimes be really good at producing and selling the products which were in high demand a decade ago, rather than the products which will be demanded a decade into the future.

The German economy seemed strong, and was strong, right up to the point at which it lost its grasp on global market trends. From the 1970s to the early 2000s, Germany was a manufacturing powerhouse. Münchau recalls his childhood in the city of Mülheim in those days:

The town in which I grew up in Germany was not very large, but it had large companies. Mülheim is situated at the western edge of the Ruhr basin, and today has a population of 170,000. On my daily tram journey to my high school in the center of town, I passed two factories located next to each other. They were surrounded by large gray apartment buildings, characteristic of industrial towns in Germany and other parts of central Europe at the time. The first of the factories made pipelines. The second one made nuclear power reactors. The parents of several of my friends used to work in those factories — some as engineers or managers, and one as a nuclear physicist. Pipelines and nuclear reactors were the gears that powered the German economy. They were the life force of Germany’s industrial model.

A bit gritty, but successful: the German economy allowed middle-class families to own cars and take vacations. Other western European nations envied the German standard of living, and eastern European nations — the Warsaw Pact — saw West Germany as the gold standard which the Soviet Union and the Cold War kept ever at bay.

Even though West Germany — unification would happen in 1990 — was technically an occupied territory, given the presence of American, French, and British troops, the United States was eager to pay for products imported from West Germany. In American retail businesses, “made in West Germany” was a selling point: high quality at a low price.

But the transition from a manufacturing economy to a service economy to an information economy to a cyber economy was underway, even if only in its embryonic stages. The strength of the German macroeconomy was being slowly undermined, and its business leaders and political leaders were perhaps not quite aware of the transition.

This was in the 1970s. Back then, Germany was the world’s leading producer of nuclear plants, and opted for nuclear power for its future energy needs. Pipelines, too, played an important role in German energy policy, especially after the first oil crisis in 1973. It was these pipelines that would later give Germany access to Norwegian oil and Russian gas.

The importance of energy had still not hit home to economists in Germany and in many other countries. When coal was readily available and steel mills seemed to be the primary driver of a nation’s economy, few foresaw that the price of oil or electricity would steer the future.

By the time that Merkel left office and Olaf Scholz became Chancellor, it was clear that a new economic model — based on information, data, and the service sectors — was much more influential than many business leaders in Germany expected it to be.

The woes and travails of the German macroeconomy over the last decade have been this: how to sustain its role as a global leader in manufacturing, and yet additionally assume a role as a leader in software, cybertechnology, and venture capitalism.

This, according to Wolfgang Münchau, is the challenge for Germany in the second quarter of the twenty-first century.

Frida Kahlo and Her German Heritage: Lessons from Her Father

Although Frida Kahlo died in 1954, it was not until the mid-1970s that her art became widely known among the broader public. It had been known, of course, to scholars in the field of art history since the 1930s. Frida herself had a hand in creating her own posthumous legend, inasmuch as she managed and marketed details of her life for the consuming public.

Already the very beginning of Frida’s life is an example of her ability to package and promote her own persona. She was born in 1907, but consistently stated that 1910 was the year of her birth: she did this to link her life with the life of the Mexican nation-state. At birth, she was named “Frieda” but later changed it to “Frida” in solidarity with the German people who were being oppressed by the Nazi government.

Two of the most basic facts about any human being — one’s name and one’s date of birth — were recreated by Frida about herself.

She also sometimes took liberties in telling her family’s history: at times, she described them as Hungarian Jews, whereas they were in reality Lutherans from southwest Germany.

If Frida re-made her life’s story, it may have been because she was following a family tradition. Her father, Wilhelm Kahlo, reinvented himself when he emigrated from Germany and immigrated to Mexico in 1891. Born in the 1870s, he renamed himself Guillermo. Explaining Wilhelm’s life, historian Hayden Herrera writes that “he was a successful photographer who had just been commissioned by the Mexican government to record the nation’s architectural heritage.”

As a photographer, Wilhelm had an eye for things like form, shape, space, line, and texture — the elements of an image. He introduced Frieda to painting. The skill transfer from his photography to her painting was one dimension of their close parent-child relationship, as Hayden Herrera explains:

Guillermo Kahlo was a fastidious technician with a stubbornly objective approach to what he saw; in his photographs, as in his daughter’s paintings, there are no tricky effects, no romantic obfuscation.

For Wilhelm Kahlo — for business purposes using the name Guillermo — to receive a significant contract from the Mexican government “was a remarkable achievement for a man who had arrived in Mexico without great prospects, just thirteen years before.” He’d arrived in Mexico and worked in a variety of small businesses in the German emigre community there. His career didn’t seem to have a strong sense of direction until he got into photography. This was the world into which Frieda was born, as Hayden Herrera reports:

He arrived in Mexico City with almost no money and few possessions. Through his connections with other German immigrants, he found a job as a cashier in the Cristaleria Loeb, a glassware store. Later he became a salesman in a bookstore. Finally, he worked in a jewelry store called La Perla, which was owned by fellow countrymen with whom he had traveled from Germany to Mexico.

Wilhelm was able to nimbly shift from one business to another because he had a good education — although an education which was broken off before it was complete. He’d been a student at the university in Nünberg, but a head injury left him susceptible to epileptic seizures and unable to earn his diploma.

Frida sometimes helped her father when he was experiencing a seizure. Later in life, she faced her own physical health problems — first polio, then injuries from a bus accident — equipped with the example of her father, who dealt with a medical condition and yet excelled in his profession.

At home, Frida spoke German with her father. The Kahlo family sent at least some, if not all, of their children to the “Colegio Aleman Alexander von Humboldt,” a school which functioned in German.

Although professionally successful, Guillermo remained a foreigner:

He never really felt at ease in Mexico, and although he was anxious to be accepted as Mexican, he never lost his strong German accent.

In addition to photography and painting, Guillermo filled the family home with culture, giving his children exposure to literature and music.

As befitted a cultured European of that period in Mexico, he also had a small but carefully selected library — mainly German books, including works by Schiller and Goethe, as well as numerous volumes of philosophy.

His working rooms in the house contained his photographic equipment, including cameras and lenses imported from Germany. “Above his desk and dominating the room was a large portrait of a personal hero, Arthur Schopenhauer.”

Hayden Herrera records Guillermo’s daily routine:

Every evening Guillermo Kahlo returned home at the same hour. Solemn, courteous, a little severe, he greeted his family, then went directly into the room that housed his German piano and shut himself in for an hour. His passions were Beethoven first, then Johann Strauss.

Just as she had changed her name from “Frieda” to “Frida” as a protest to the brutalities which the Nazis inflicted on the Germans, so also Guillermo opposed Naziism.

Frida saw bravery, both in the way that Guillermo lived with his physical handicap, and in the way that he took a stand against Naziism. She wrote: “He suffered for sixty years with epilepsy, but he never stopped working, and he fought against Hitler.”

The mature works of Frida Kahlo manifest that she shared her father’s passion for the visual arts, his perseverance in the face of physical handicaps, and his thoughtful reflection on culture.

Trying to Get Your Dream Job? Let Potential Employers Know That You Are Proficient in German!

The state of the job market in 2024, despite wars, a pandemic, and political and economic upheavals, is in one way still as it was in 2019, when Ross Ibbetson wrote that German is “the most sought-after second language for employers.”

He went on to report that “vacancies for German speakers were up.” Companies are regularly posting openings for professionals who can read and write German — and in some cases speak it, as well. The high demand for German proficiency is accompanied by premium salaries, so not only can you get that dream job, but they’ll pay you more to be in it.

Because Germany is both an “inward investor” in various economies around the globe, and because exports to Germany are high and growing, German is “the most valued second-language for employers” and “job vacancies for German speakers rose.”

Alan Jones confirmed that German is “the language most sought-after by employers.” As a result of Germany’s steady economic policies and growth, “vacancies specifying German language skills increased by more than a tenth over the past three years, compared with only a slight rise in demand for French speakers.”

Demand for professionals in various fields also includes those proficient in Italian, Chinese, and French. German is, however, more central in the global economy and more desired by potential employers.

Frida Kahlo’s Social Life: German Friends, German Family

The reader might be forgiven for thinking it odd to speak of a “social life” in connection with Frida Kahlo. The reader could well have gained the impression that she was a stern and always-serious person. This impression might arise from the oh-so-grim interpretations which some art historians make of her work, and from the often somber subjects in her work.

But Frida was a person who enjoyed the company of friends and family, and who had a lively sense of humor. Despite the fact that she lived in physical and emotional pain, despite the fact that she grieved the death of her child, she made jokes and laughed at the jokes of others.

One of Frida’s friends was Lucienne Bloch. Frida and Lucienne had a number of things in common. Both of them had fathers born in the German-speaking areas of Europe, and both fathers had emigrated from Europe and immigrated to the Americas. Both fathers were photographers. Both Frida and Lucienne learned the methods of imagery from their fathers: lighting, framing, composition, subjects, etc. Both Frida and Lucienne used German when speaking with their fathers.

As a trusted friend, Lucienne was present for some of the pivotal moments in Frida’s life, as historian Elizabeth Carpenter writes:

Perhaps more than any other photographer who came before or after her, Lucienne Bloch had unprecedented access to Kahlo throughout the 1930s, during which time they were very close friends and traveling companions. The daughter of Swiss photographer and composer Ernest Bloch, Lucienne first came to be acquainted with Rivera soon after he and Kahlo arrived in New York City in 1931. A multitalented artist herself, Bloch was invited by Rivera to join the crew of assistants poised to begin work on his Rockefeller Center mural commission. In addition to her artistic labor on the murals, she also faithfully documented Rivera at work and Kahlo’s frequent visits to the site. After Nelson Rockefeller’s controversial declaration that work on the mural must be stopped due to the prominent position held by the portrait of Lenin in the composition, it was Bloch who clandestinely took the only photographs documenting the development of the work, which was ultimately destroyed. It was also Bloch who traveled from New York to Detroit in June of 1932 to keep Kahlo company during the early stages of her pregnancy and to see her through a subsequent miscarriage. Bloch was there for her friend again three months later, when Kahlo received a telephone call that her mother was dying of breast cancer. They boarded a train for Mexico the next day, and their trip was sensitively recorded by Bloch with her Kodak Brownie snapshot camera.

Not only were the 1930s a traumatic time for Frida’s personal life, but world events were also turbulent. Well into adulthood — Frida was around thirty years old at the time — she changed her from “Frieda” to “Frida” to protest the harsh and genocidal dictatorship which Hitler’s National Socialism inflicted on the German people. Appropriately, “Frieda” is a German forename which means peace.

Frida was willing to change more than her first name. She played fast-and-loose with her personal story, changing details for symbolic reasons. Although she was born in 1907, she often gave her birthdate as 1910, a significant year in Mexican history. She also occasionally alluded to ancestors who were Hungarian or Jewish — or both — although she was acquainted with her family’s history which had deep roots in western Germany.

Frida embraced Mexico, the land into which her father had immigrated. Yet she could also see Mexican culture from a distance, given her German roots. She celebrated Mexican culture, and yet could view Mexico analytically, as Elizabeth Carpenter explains:

Kahlo’s interrogation and testing of Catholic, patriarchal, and bourgeois mores was a primary motivation throughout her life, ultimately helping her to define her identity as an artist and informing the art that she produced.

Frida’s heritage included both the Mexican version of Roman Catholicism that she inherited from her mother and a long tradition of German Lutheranism on her father’s side. Her world included Mexican patriarchy, but also a European sensibility which saw women as capable of creating worthy and significant works of art. She lived among the rooted Mexican middle class, but also among her father’s German emigre community in Mexico. Her life’s structure prevented her from being totally shaped by one single culture.

Not only her father, but also both of her grandfathers were involved in photography on a professional level. Images were the family stock-in-trade. It would have been surprising if Frida had not worked in the visual arts.

Not only Frida, but at least one of her siblings, spoke German fluently enough to attend a school in which German was the language of instruction. Later in life, Frida maintained her ability to speak German, but was not comfortable writing it. The letter which she wrote to her distant relatives in Germany after the end of WW2 is in English. She writes enthusiastically about details of the family history, having retained in her memory the stories of previous generations of Kahlo women and men, and is able to furnish details in her letter.

To be multilingual is to be able to think from different perspectives. About Frida, historian Victor Zamudio-Taylor writes:

She spoke German and English but also adored the colloquial forms of her native Spanish spoken in central Mexico.

From the cards and letters she wrote and received, and from casual photographs taken with friends and family, the viewer sees both the serious and even austere Mexican traditionalism, but also a fun-loving personality who grins and laughs.

A solid, middle-class Mexican version of social standards and Roman Catholicism were Frida’s inheritance from her mother. A German Lutheranism, a love of classical music on the piano, and a curiosity about Schopenhauer’s speculative philosophy were her inheritance from her father. Frida could not have been who she was without her father’s German artistic sensibilities. It is for good reason that more than one biographer records that he addressed his daughter habitually as Liebe Frieda.

Social Justice Arises from Ludwig Erhard’s Economic Policies

May 10, 1945 is sometimes called Stunde Null — “zero hour” — in German history. The war had officially ended at midnight. The German people finally had peace and were freed from the tyrannical oppression of Adolf Hitler. Yet it was the most difficult of times.

In German cities, bombs had destroyed homes and workplaces. Rubble filled and blocked streets and sidewalks. Many people had no access to electricity or running water. Subway, streetcar, bus, and railroad transportation were nearly nonexistent. Food supplies were insufficient, and people actually died of starvation.

Those who use the phrase “zero hour” to describe this moment in history see it as a moment when the German people were starting over. The past had been destroyed and they had nothing. They had to rebuild not only physical infrastructure, but the society itself, out of the emptiness.

Other historians argue against using the term Stunde Null, pointing out that the Germans were greatly burdened by the past. They were not starting with a clean slate. The past was real and was inflicting further suffering on them.

From mid-May 1945 onward, Germany was under the military governorship of the four victorious Allies — The United States, Britain, France, and the USSR. Paradoxically, these governors, having defeated the Nazis, left Nazi policies in place. These policies cruelly oppressed the Germans after the war. For twelve years, from 1933 to 1945, the National Socialist government had brutalized the German people. With the Nazis defeated and gone, the vicious policies were left in place.

The people had hoped that the war’s end would bring an end to the persecution, but the Allies continued the same practices. The abusive practices of the Nazi government grew from its name: National Socialism. The Nazis had “nationalized” various industries, confiscating people’s property, and placing businesses under the control of the government. They had introduced aspects of socialism — eliminating the freedom of the marketplace — by controlling wages and prices, by dictating the quantity of products to be manufactured, and by crushing the people with high rates of taxation.

The Nazis occasionally violated their own principles — they presented themselves as saving people from the evils of communism and socialism, while implementing socialist policies — they occasionally privatized industries when it served their purposes, violating their own broad trend of nationalizing industries. But the net effect and overall trend of Nazi policy was to eliminate personal economic freedom and to eliminate political liberty, which amounted to eliminating social justice.

Those National Socialist policies were foundational to fascism, and to be expected from the Nazi party. It was, however, unexpected that the American, British, and French would continue those policies — the same genocidal policies against which they had waged a long and painful war.

Along with the Allied military governors, one German political party, the SPD, also sought the continuation of National Socialist economic policies. These policies were driving Germany down at accelerating rates into misery. Observers inside and outside of Germany feared that the nation would be consigned permanently to a third-world status, or that it would take more than a century to rebuild the country.

The great surprise began in an area known as the Bizone. At the war’s end, most German territory was divided and occupied by four victorious Allies. The Americans and the British coordinated their governance of their respective occupational zones, and so the name Bizone arose. The French, whose occupational zone was defined somewhat later, also joined, and sometimes the area is called the Trizone.

In the Bizone, an innovative economist named Ludwig Erhard saw the problem and proposed a solution. To be anti-Nazi and anti-fascist, he argued, one must do the opposite of what the National Socialists had done, as Lawrence White explains:

Fortunately for ordinary Germans, Erhard — who became director of the economic administration for the U.K.-U.S. occupation Bizone in April 1948 — thought otherwise. A currency reform that he helped to design was slated to replace the feeble old Reichsmark with the new Deutsche mark in all three Western zones on June 20. Without approval from the Allied military command, Erhard used the occasion to issue a sweeping decree abolishing most of the price controls and rationing directives. He later told friends that the American commander, Gen. Lucius Clay, phoned him when he heard about the decree and said: “Professor Erhard, my advisers tell me that you are making a big mistake.” Erhard replied, “So my advisers also tell me.”

Erhard’s mission was to undo what the Nazis had done. His conceptual program included lowering taxes, removing wage and price controls, privatizing industry, and the end of the “command economy.” A command economy is one in which the government dictates how many of each type of product will be manufactured.

The Soviets criticized Erhard’s views. The SPD criticized Erhard’s views. Some American economists criticized Erhard’s views. But Ludwig Erhard had been, prior to his job as economic advisor in the postwar era, a researcher in an economic think-tank, and had been an assertive member of the anti-Hitler underground resistance movement. He was unmoved by his critics. The policy he proposed was not in error, as Lawrence White reports:

It was not a big mistake. In the following weeks Erhard removed most of the Bizone’s remaining price controls, wage controls, allocation edicts and rationing directives. The effects of decontrol were dramatic.

By every metric, the German economy — i.e., the economy in the Bizone and Trizone — began to recover, and it recovered quicker than anyone thought possible. Wages rose. The standard of living rose. Unemployment fell. German industries rebuilt and modernized.

In mid-1945, Germany was starving, had no resources, and was living in primitive squalor. Within a decade, it had the largest, healthiest, and most powerful economy in Europe, and the second most powerful economy in the world.

The free market was the path to social justice. The laissez-faire policies which Erhard introduced opened the path to true democracy: a government of freely-elected representatives.

The Economics of Ludwig Erhard: Applying Simple Principles in Complicated Situations

After May 1945, when WW2 ended, Germany was a physically and economically devastated country. Infrastructure was nonexistent in many places: electricity, running water, and telephone service were rare. Bombs had destroyed both residential and commercial structures. Railroads, highways, streets, and bridges had been wrecked.

Around the world, many economists, historians, and political leaders expressed the view that Germany might find it impossible to rebuild. Many thought that Germany would be permanently relegated to a third-world status. Some observers believed that, if Germany could rebuild, it would take more than 100 years. The country had taken such a terrible beating that recovery seemed impossible.

Yet within a single decade, Germany would be the most powerful economy in Europe, and by many metrics, the second most powerful economy in the world. Commentators from other nations were amazed, as Lawrence White writes:

Germany became a role model for recovery from a very different crisis. In the aftermath of World War II, Germany’s cities, factories and railroads lay in ruins. Severe shortages of food, fuel, water and housing posed challenges to sheer survival.

In 1945, the situation was so desperate that many Germans starved to death. Millions of young German men had died in the war, and now their families were dying from a lack of food at home.

In the immediate postwar situation, the armies of the winning countries (The United States, France, Britain, and the USSR) had political and civil control over Germany. The Germans were not allowed to have their own government until late 1949.

At first, the postwar military occupational powers enforced the economic policies which were on the books at the end of the war — the Nazi policies. The word “Nazi” is short for “National Socialist,” and the Nazis lived up to that name.

The Nazis nationalized industries — the government seizing an individual’s property. This was the case, e.g., for two major aircraft companies, Junkers and Arado, and for two railroad systems, the Lübeck-Büchener Railway and the Brunswick Landes railway. The Nazi government also created the massive Reichswerke Hermann Göring, a government-owned and -operated industrial conglomerate. State-owned companies were a central part of the fascist control of Germany.

The other part of “National Socialist” is the socialist economic programs which the Nazis implemented. Although in their propaganda, the Nazis portrayed themselves as rescuing the German people from the evils of communism and socialism, the reality was that the Nazis imposed regulations which choked the free functioning of markets. Opposing laissez-faire economic systems is a cornerstone of socialist economics.

Accordingly, the Nazis imposed wage and price regulations. Only the government could set prices for merchandise, and only the government could determine how much workers would be paid. In this way, the Nazis controlled nearly every aspect of the economy.

The Nazis also imposed significant taxes on all Germans, which amounted simply to the confiscation of the property of ordinary working-class people.

Finally, the Nazis engaged in a “command economy.” They dictated how much of each product might be manufactured — no more, and no less, was allowed.

As strange as it may be, the four powers who controlled Germany after the war initially decided to keep the genocidal Nazi economic policies in place. After fighting a war to defeat National Socialism, the victorious Allies kept Nazi economic regulations in effect, as Lawrence White reports:

Unfortunately, occupation policy makers actually perpetuated the shortages by retaining the price controls the Nazi government had imposed before and during the war. Consumers and businessmen battled against the bureaucratic regime of controls and rationing in what the German economist Ludwig Erhard described as Der Papierkrieg — the paper war. Black markets were pervasive.

The downward death spiral of the German economy continued to worsen. The great recovery began only when Ludwig Erhard persuaded the military governors to allow the dismantling of Nazi policies. Erhard worked systematically to undo fascism: his policies reduced regulations, reduced taxes, and reduced government ownership of industries. People could freely negotiate wages and prices, and could decide for themselves how much of any given product they wanted to manufacture.

Ludwig Erhard was simply the anti-Nazi and anti-fascist economist. Whatever the Nazis had done to the economy, Erhard would do the opposite.

Within a year, the growth of the German economy was significant. Unemployment fell, wages rose, and the standard of living rose. German companies became more innovative than their European competitors. Economists coined the word Wirtschaftswunder — “economic miracle” — to describe the turnaround.

Erhard commented that there was no miracle, but rather merely the consistent and sound application of economic policies and principles. He explained that prosperity and freedom were coextensive. The undoing of the fascist control of the economy was simultaneously the introduction of social justice and the beginning of an economic rebirth. He wrote:

Das, was sich in Deutschland in den letzten neun Jahren vollzogen hat, war alles andere als ein Wunder. Es war nur die Konsequenz der ehrlichen Anstrengung eines ganzen Volkes, das nach freiheitlichen Prinzipien die Möglichkeit eingeräumt erhalten hat, menschliche Initiative, menschliche Energien wieder anwenden zu dürfen. Wenn darum dieses deutsche Beispiel über das eigene Land hinaus einen Sinn haben soll, dann kann es nur der sein, aller Welt den Segen der menschlichen Freiheit und der ökonomischen Freizügigkeit deutlich zu machen.

The rebirth of the German economy was also the rebirth of a truly democratic society. Justice demanded the undoing of Nazi policies, which brought about personal freedom and political liberty, as well as prosperity.