Friedrich Lütge (21 October 1901 – 25 August 1968) was a German economist, social historian and economic historian.
He taught at the Leipzig Graduate School of Management (HHL) and at Leipzig University between 1940 and 1947, then moving on to the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München where he taught till a few months before he died. Through his research work between 1949 and 1968 he exercised a great influence on the understanding of economic history in West Germany. Together with Wilhelm Abel and Günther Franz he contributed decisively to research into agrarian history in Germany. He was instrumental in ensuring that social and economic history emerged as an alternative strand to the prism of historical materialism that was mainstream in many German universities during this period. From this followed an insistence in his economic research that the subject needs to be studied not simply from a theoretical quasi-mathematical standpoint, but also empirically and in the context of broader historical considerations.Jörg Rode: Die Gesellschaft für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte (1961–1998). Stuttgart 1998, p. 28
Life and works Provenance and early years Friedrich Karl Lütge was born into a Protestant family at the start of the twentieth century at Wernigerode, a midsized town located in the Harz Mountains between Hanover and Halle. He was the older of twin brothers. There were also two younger siblings. His father was a captain in the German merchant navy who was much involved with Kamerun trade, but died in 1905. As a child, Friedrich Lütge suffered from a spinal disease which confined him to bed for three years.Wilhelm Abel, Knut Borchardt, Hermann Kellenbenz, Wolfgang Zorn (Hrsg.): Wirtschaft, Geschichte und Wirtschaftsgeschichte. Festschrift zum 65. Geburtstag von Friedrich Lütge. Fischer, Stuttgart 1966, pp. 1–7 On 23 September 1918, while still at school he found himself recruited into an infantry regiment as a junior officer (Fahnenjunker), but by this time the First World War was nearly over and he was never sent into the fighting of it. However, in February 1919, he found himself taken into the Freikorps ("volunteer corps") of Adolf von Oven in Berlin, and he was involved in the putting down of the Spartacus uprising.Andreas Dornheim: Die deutsche Agrargeschichte in der NS-Zeit und die Lehrstuhl-Berufungen nach 1945 in Westdeutschland. In: Zeitschrift für Agrargeschichte und Agrarsoziologie 53 (2005), p. 49. It was only in 1921 that he passed his Abitur (school leaving exams) which opened the way to university-level education.
In 1921, Lütge enrolled at the University of Freiburg where he studied economics (Volkswirtschaft) and history on a course directed by Georg von Below. That was followed by a term at Marburg University where he was taught by Albert Brackmann and Wilhelm Busch. He concluded his student studies at the University of Jena where he was supervised for his doctorate by Franz Gutmann. Importantly for Lütge 's subsequent academic career, it was Gutmann who awakened his interest in agrarian history. His doctoral dissertation concerned "The Liberation of the Peasantry in the County of Wernigerode" (Die Bauernbefreiung in der Grafschaft Wernigerode). He was obliged to work his way through his university years in order to support himself and his widowed mother.
Unusually, on 1 December 1928 Friedrich Lütge was awarded a second doctorate. This time his dissertation concerned the history of the book trade in Jena, including the impact of the invention of printing. The work was supervised by Georg Menz. While working on this doctorate he was also employed in Jena as a private researcher by the economist-statistician Ludwig Elster. Projects on which he worked with Elster included the fourth edition of the Wörterbuch der Volkswirtschaftslehre ("Lexicon of Applied Economics") and the Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik ("Yearbooks of National Economy and Statistics").Erich Maschke: Friedrich Lütge [Nachruf]. In: Historische Zeitschrift. vol. 208 (1969), section 3, pp. 772–774 He also authored a celebratory booklet in respect of the fiftieth anniversary of the Gustav Fischer Verlag (publishing house): research for this commission supported and influenced the doctorate on which he was working at the same time. In 1929 he obtained a permanent position with Fischer as a literary editor and academic researcher. At Fischer he was entrusted with producing a number of works, mostly concerned with Applied economics (Volkswirtschaft) and Economic History.
It was also in 1929 that Friedrich Lütge married Eva Buchfink, a daughter of General Ernst Buchfinck. The marriage produced one recorded son and two daughters.
Jena in the 1930s During the early 1930s, he pursued his career with the publisher in parallel with his academic researches, publishing several essays on social policy and agricultural history. In 1934, he published a significant piece of work in which he pointed out that in central Germany as early as the early modern period a form of landlordship and tenancy existed which was based not on service obligation, but simply the handing over of produce. That contrasted with he versions of manorialism that was normal in the northern and southern parts of Germany. He followed this up in 1937 with a broadened study of the German agrarian economy, taking his research back to the middle ages and, in particular, to the Carolingian era. This meant that there had been fundamental regional variations in land tenure arrangements in Germany far earlier than had hitherto been believed. That same year he saw to the posthumous publication of the "Outline of the History of the German Rural Economy in the Middle Ages" (Geschichte der deutschen Landwirtschaft des Mittelalters in ihren Grundzügen) by his former tutor, Georg von Below, using manuscripts that von Below had left behind when he died ten years earlier.Georg von Below: "Geschichte der deutschen Landwirtschaft des Mittelalters in ihren Grundzügen". Aus den hinterlassenen Manuskripten herausgegeben von Friedrich Lütge [produced posthumously from von Below's manuscripts by Friedrich Lütge]. Fischer, Jena 1937.
1933 was the year of the National Socialist take-over. It was also the year in which Lütge joined the German National People's Party (Deutschnationale Volkspartei, DNVP), though this party had dissolved itself by the end of that year. He also had close connections with the anti-government Confessing Church. He would later insist that his various longstanding memberships of associations connected with the army, notably Der Stahlhelm, afforded him a measure of independence in his interactions with the National Socialist state. When Der Stahlhelm was forcibly merged into the party's own Sturmabteilung (SA) paramilitary organisation, Lütge was one of many who responded by resigning from Der Stahlhelm. Unlike many of the scholars who preserved their university careers through the Hitler years, Lütge never found it necessary to join The Party itself. Nevertheless, he did join the party's "People's Welfare" (Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt, NSV) organisation in 1934. In 1937, he joined the party's "Teachers' League" (Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Dozentenbund, NSDDB). And in 1944 he added the Altherrenbund ("Old Men's League"), a party organisation for university academics, to his portfolio of memberships.Andreas Dornheim: Die deutsche Agrargeschichte in der NS-Zeit und die Lehrstuhl-Berufungen nach 1945 in Westdeutschland. In: Zeitschrift für Agrargeschichte und Agrarsoziologie 53 (2005), pp. 39–55
In January 1936, he received his habilitation degree from the University of Jena, which opened the way to a university teaching career in respect of Applied economics (Volkswirtschaft) and Economic history. Because of the amount of relevant research work that he had already undertaken, he was awarded the habilitation without any requirement to write a habilitation-dissertation. The faculty deemed the two dissertations he had already completed in respect of his doctorates sufficient. Receipt of his teaching permit (venia legendi) was delayed till the next year due to differences with government authorities. There is speculation that he only received it at all because of his longstanding personal friendship with the nationally respected economist Jens Jessen who at this stage was still a committed party member (though he would later be executed by hanging). In 1937 Lütge began working as a teacher in his disciplines at the University of Jena Law and Economics faculties.
Leipzig in the 1940s In 1940, Lütge was offered and accepted a junior professorship in economics (Volkswirtschaft), with a particular focus on settlement and housing at the Handelshochschule Leipzig (HHL; "Commercial Academy") – as it was known at that time, in Leipzig. He had already been taking a quasi-scientific approach to the housing issues which was at the time innovative. His specialities included housing-market pricing and statistics. In 1940, the year of his appointment, he was in a position to publish a systematic introduction to settlement and housing, which was republished in 1949. it can be seen as the first comprehensive academic monograph on the subject.Karl Bosl: Friedrich Lütge 21.10.1901–25.8.1968. In: Jahrbuch der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. 1964, pp. 202–205, He was conscripted into the army in August 1941, but was released on health grounds in May 1943 after being assessed as unsuitable for service on account of a spinal condition. He returned to the Leipzig and was promoted to a full professorship. Jointly with Erich Preiser he took on responsibility for the annual production of the Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik ("Yearbooks of National Economy and Statistics"). The compendium was banned in 1944 but returned, still produced by Lütge and Preise, in 1949.
War ended in May 1945 and the western two thirds of what had been Germany was divided into four military occupation zones. Leipzig had been liberated from National Socialism in April 1945 by the US army, but a different division of Germany had already been agreed between the leaders of the victorious powers whereby Leipzig should be administered as part of the Soviet occupation zone. The American military commanders agreed that Friedrich Lütge, as a "non-party comrade" and a member of the anti-Nazi Confessing church should be appointed post-war rector of the Handelshochschule Leipzig. There were additional curatorial responsibilities. When the American troops withdrew from Leipzig in July 1945 the Soviet commanders who moved in were content to confirm his appointment. In 1946 the academy was merged into the University Faculty for Economics and Social Sciences and Lütge, now on the Leipzig university payroll, was appointed dean.