Röpke’s Nazi persecution drove him toward an international liberal alliance

Evidence

In the months preceding the publication of Lippmann’s book, the German economist Wilhelm Röpke wrote separate letters to Lionel Robbins, Karl Brandt, and Friedrich Hayek all lauding the apparent “convergence” of their respective views. Röpke was eager to fi nd allies: he had risen rapidly to a chair at the University of Marburg at the age of thirty, but his forthright criticism of the Nazis had cost him his job soon after the implementation of their Law to Restore the Professional Civil Ser vice. After a short stay in Turkey, he had recently joined the faculty of William Rappard’s nascent Institute for International Studies in Geneva. Although Röpke had been more open than his colleagues at the LSE to public investment as a means of combating the Great Depression, he substantially agreed with their diagnoses of the causes of the crisis and shared their anxiety about the global drift toward authoritarianism. — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 165

Categorization

• XREF: Röpke lost his Marburg chair to the Nazi civil service law, echoing the anti-fascist exile origins of other MPS founders — connects to the broader story of Interwar liberal networks reformed by coerced migration. — connects to: Röpke fled Nazi Germany and later shaped the MPS’s founding — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1345; Ordoliberalism’s Christian moral turn was a response to its leaders’ Nazi entanglement — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 537

Broader Connections

• Röpke fled Nazi Germany and later shaped the MPS’s founding #corroborates (0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1345
• Ordoliberalism’s Christian moral turn was a response to its leaders’ Nazi entanglement #complicates (0.75) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 537