The West German economic statesman who shaped currency reform and the social market economy
On 21 June 1948, he announced by radio the abolition of price controls and compulsory rationing for selected manufactured goods.
Ludwig Erhard was an economist and politician who conceived West Germany’s postwar order as a combination of competitive markets and social security. As director of the Bizonal Economic Administration in 1948, he helped prepare monetary reform and, alongside the introduction of the Deutsche Mark, began a staged relaxation of price and production controls that opened the institutional path to recovery. He is often mythologized as the sole architect of the economic miracle, although Allied reform, international conditions, and the recovery of production by workers and firms all mattered, while price liberalization initially raised living costs and provoked working-class resistance. As economics minister and later chancellor, he helped make that order part of West Germany’s political identity, but resigned in 1966 amid recession and the collapse of his coalition.
Career Timeline
- 1919–1922Studied business administration at Nuremberg Business School
- 1925Received a doctorate in economics from Frankfurt University
- 1947Led the Bizonal Special Office for Money and Credit
- 1948–1949Director of the Bizonal Economic Administration
- 1949–1963West German Federal Minister of Economics, also Vice-Chancellor from 1957
- 1963–1966Second Federal Chancellor of West Germany
- 1966–1967Chairman of the Christian Democratic Union
- 1949–1977Member of the Bundestag