On "Weltwirtschaftslehre": 
 
"The term "world economy" (_Weltwirtschaft_) first appeared in Germany on 
the eve of World War I, when Kaiser Wilhelm II was preparing to challenge 
the political and economic domination of the British Empire.  It was at 
about the same time that the German economist Bernhard Harms, with the 
backing of Germany's newly created steel and heavy-chemical industries, 
founded the Institute for World Economics at Kiel [_Institut fuer 
Weltwirtschaft und Seevekehr_], the first large institution devoted to 
economic research on a global scale.  These two signs of impending change 
proved to be reliable.  Over the next 60 years Germany would lose two wars, 
Britain would lose its empire and the notion of a world composed of self 
sufficient, autonomous national economies would recede into the realm of 
conventional abstractions." 
 
 from Wassily W. Leontief, "The World Economy of the Year 2000", 
_Scientific American_, September 1980. (Leontief spent a couple of years at 
the Institute, where he finished his dissertation.) 
 
Other economists associated with the Institute in the interwar years 
included 
Adolph Lowe (its Director of Research and founder and leader of its 
Department of International Business Cycle and World Industrialization 
Research), Jacob Marschak, Gerhard Colm, Hans Neisser, F. A. Burchardt, and 
Alfred Kaehler. 
 
For more on the Institute in this period, see: 
 
Clark, David, 1984: "Confronting the Linear Imperialism of the Austrians: 
Lowe's Contribution to Capital and Growth Theory", _Eastern Economic 
Journal_, 10, 2, pp. 107-27. 
 
Garvy, George, 1975: "Keynes and the Economic Activists of Pre-Hitler 
Germany", Journal of Political Economy, 83, 2, pp. 391-405 
 
Hagemann, Harald, 1990: "The Structural Theory of Economic Growth", in M. 
Baranzini and R. Scazzieri (eds.): _The Economic Theory of Structure and 
Change_, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 
 
----------------, 1995: "Hayek and the Kiel School: Some Reflections on the 
German Debate on Business Cycles in the late 1920s and Early 1930s", in M. 
Colonna and H. Hagemann (eds.): _Money and Business Cycles: The Economics 
of F. A. Hayek_ Volume I, London: Edward Elgar. 
 
Krohn, Claus-Dieter, 1983: "An Overlooked Chapter of Economic Thought: The 
'New School's' Effort to Salvage Weimar's Economy", _Social Research_, 50, 
2, pp. 452-68. 
 
-------------------, 1993[1987]: _Intellectuals in Exile: Refugee Scholars 
and the New School for Social Research_, Amherst: University of 
Massachusetts Press. 
 
Lowe, Adolph, 1959a: "F.A. Burchardt, Part I: Recollections of his Work in 
Germany", _Bulletin of the Institute of Statistics_, 21, pp. 59-65. 
 
___________________________________ 
 
Mathew Forstater      Department of Economics 
        Gettysburg College     Gettysburg, PA  17325 
 
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