Making of the German Post-war Economy

Christian L. Glossner is Teaching Fellow and Assistant Lecturer in Political Economy and European History at the University of Oxford. He previously held a Europaeum Research Fellowship at the Institut Universitaire de Hautes Aetudes Internationales (HEI) in Geneva and worked for the Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs (ECFIN) of the European Commission in Brussels. He is a graduate from the Universite de Fribourg as well as the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and received his D.Phil. on economic theory and political history from the University of Oxford.

'Christian Glossner analyses convincingly how West Germany came to adopt an economic recovery programme leading to the 'economic miracle' of the 1950s. He traces the struggle of ideas and concepts between economic theoreticians and politicians in an exemplary way. Glossner's work shows how a country suffering heavily from the destructions of the war was able to opt for the successful 'Social Market Economy'. This is a groundbreaking contribution to the understanding of the wider post-war European recovery which laid the foundation for political stability on the continent.' - Hartmut Pogge von Strandmann, Professor of History, University College, University of Oxford; '[This book] seeks to explain why and how the Soziale Marktwirtschaft (Social Market Economy) came to prevail as "the" socio-economic model for what became West Germany in the years between 1945 and 1949. There is an extensive literature on the Social Market Economy, both as model and reality in the West Germany of the 1950s and 1960s, but there has so far been little investigation of the manner in which this model became identified first with the economic policy of the CDU/CSU, and then subsequently with the post-Bad Godesburg SPD. This book aims to demonstrate that the success of the "Social Market" model - its adoption by the German Economic Council, its presentation to the public as a programmatic model, and the political support it gained in the first elections of the new Federal Republic - was owed primarily to the effectiveness with which the model was promoted in the public arena and reported on in the Press. [This book] is a significant contribution to the existing literature on the Social Market Economy.' - Keith Tribe, Visiting Senior Research Fellow, Department of History, University of Sussex; 'The book's strength is its extensive use of German public and private archival papers and contemporary published periodicals, to examine how various economic models were articulated by the CDU/CSU, SPD and KPD and their presentation to the wider German public. It highlights the importance and effectiveness of the political campaign that led the Soziale Marktwirtschaft to be adopted as a winning political programme.' - Patricia Clavin, Fellow and Tutor in History, Jesus College, University of Oxford