Hans Staudinger

Staudinger was born to the gymnasium (high school) teacher Franz Staudinger and his wife Auguste Staudinger, née Wenck, and was baptised as a Protestant. He had two brothers and one sister. His father was a leading theorist of the cooperative movement and was connected to prominent Social Democrats such as August Bebel and Eduard Bernstein. His friendship with the latter lasted his whole life.

Hans Staudinger acquired his Abitur at the Ludwig-Georgs-Gymnasium in Darmstadt. He started an apprenticeship as a carpenter while still at school, but did not pursue this. He also temporarily worked as an engine stoker. The incentive for this came from his father, who wanted his son to have insight into the world of the working classes. His brother Hermann Staudinger, who received the 1953 Nobel Prize for Chemistry, followed a similar path at the request of his father.

From 1907 to 1908, Staudinger studied at literature and German philology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. In 1908 he transferred to the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg. Here he studied economics and sociology. His most significant university teachers were the brothers Alfred and Max Weber. In 1913 he received his Dr. phil. for a thesis on entitled Individuum und Gemeinschaft in der Kulturorganisation des Vereins (The Individual and the Community in the Cultural Organisation of the Society), being supervised by Alfred Weber. In this thesis, Staudinger investigated the change in musical societies from the Middle Ages to the middle-class community choirs of his time. The underlying claim was that the alienation of the individual would in the near future be overcome by the community life of the workers. What Staudinger saw as the natural form of community life in the Middle Ages would thus be renewed.

In his first semester as a student, Staudinger joined the SPD. Until 1914 he also took on a leading role in the Südwestdeutscher Wandervogelbund, and was the leader of a Wandervogelgruppe. From 1913 to 1914 he was the secretary of the Revisionsverband Südwestdeutscher Konsumvereine. He served as an officer in World War I, and received the Iron Cross Second Class in 1916. In the last year of the war Staudinger was severely wounded and lost his sight in one eye.

After his recovery, in Spring 1918 he was made a head of division in the Kriegsernährungsamt (War Office of Food, based in Berlin), where he remained until July 1919. He then moved to the Ministry of Economics, where he stayed until 1927. From 1920 he was a Vortragender Rat (Expert Councillor). With some economy ministers, he served as their personal advisor. In addition, he functioned as the liaison with the Reichswirtschaftsrat (Economy Council). In the 1920s Staudinger aspired to drive forward the cartelisation of the extractive and energy industries under state control. This policy would make possible a form of social economy, which was supported in the ministry by Rudolf Wissell (SPD) and Wichard von Moellendorff. However, hardly any state direction of these industries came about. The only result of Staudinger's efforts was the publication of a comprehensive study of structural problems of the German economy after the First World War, which was presented by a corresponding committee of inquiry, as proposed by Staudinger in 1925.

In 1927 Staudinger became a civil servant in the Prussian trade ministry. There he was responsible for port, transport and electricity industries, from 1929 as a state secretary. The political situation in the democratic Prussia under Otto Braun and the tradition of state-directed economy in this state offered better chances for social economic plans to be realized. The Preußenschlag of the German government under Franz von Papen in 1932 put an end to Staudinger's government career; he was put on leave whilst his salary continued to be paid.

In the government bureaucracy, Staudinger was known since the end of the 1920s as a leading specialist in matters of social economy, and is seen by historians as one of the few distinguished senior civil servants with republican sympathies. In 1932 he published a text in which he presented his thoughts on the economy to a wider audience. This underlined his reputation as an expert on public enterprise.

Staudinger held posts in the boards of directors of various state-run businesses. He was for example chairman of the board of the company Preussag, the creation of which he had instigated, and held the same position at VEBA, which he had also worked towards creating. He was deputy chairman of the boards of the Aktiengesellschaft für deutsche Elektrizitätswirtschaft in Berlin and Obere Saale AG in Weimar. He was a member of the board of Elektrowerke AG in Berlin, Duisburg-Ruhrorter Hafen AG, the Thüringische Gasgesellschaft, and the Hamburgisch-Preußischen Hafengemeinschaft GmbH. He also taught at the Deutsche Hochschule für Politik.

After the Preußenschlag, Staudinger intensified his contacts with the Social Democrats Carlo Mierendorff and Theodor Haubach, who were determined to answer the increasing political violence in the early 1930s with strong social-democratic fighting units for the defence of the Republic. In this context Staudinger was invited by Hamburg Social Democrats around Hans Carl Podeyn and Karl Meitmann to succeed Peter Graßmann in the Hamburg Reichstag constituency as candidate for the elections in November 1932. After initially hesitating, Staudinger agreed, and won the seat for the SPD. He was not able to exert any great influence in the Reichstag, however, as the National Socialists came to power on 30 January 1933. In the following weeks, Staudinger worked hard to organise the Social-Democratic resistance, particularly in Hamburg. In Berlin, he got Fritz Naphtali and Fritz Tarnow released from Gestapo arrest. He did this by impersonating a senior Prussian official, and ordering their release. Hermann Göring tried to persuade him to take a coordinating role of the integrated economy in the Third Reich, but Staudinger rejected this.

On 16 June 1933 Staudinger was arrested in Hamburg, along with leading Social Democrats of the city. He remained in "protective custody" until 22 July 1933. Then he fled to Belgium, where he remained until September 1933. Danny Heinemann, the head of the Belgian energy group Sofina, employed him as an adviser. Staudinger's reasons for fleeing Germany were his opposition to National Socialism, his experience of being arrested and his concern for his Jewish wife. After he was forced to return to Germany, he finally emigrated to the United States via Belgium, France and Britain. At the same time, he was offered a post in Ankara advising the Turkish government on matters of economic policy; this he rejected, however.