The ordoliberal network grew from an export-industry lobby group around Rüstow.

Evidence

The world economic crisis unfolding between 1929 and 1932 marked the explicit starting point for ordoliberalism in Germany, at a time when liberal economists in other countries did not have much reason to expect many liberal impulses from German academic economics. “The only influential and active circle of theorists that until 1933 struggled with great effort, yet to no avail, for a free economy” (Hayek 1983, 12) had been the group of the so-called Ricardians in support of “free trade” who were organized in and around the Verein Deutscher Maschinenbau-Anstalten (VDMA), the lobby of the export-oriented engineering industry. This group, which centered around Rüstow, who had led the VDMA’s Department of Economic Policy since 1925, can be described as the nucleus of the new liberalism in Germany upholding free trade perspectives against the rising sentiment of regionalism and autarchy. Scholars like Hans Gestrich, Otto Veit, Hans Ilau, and Friedrich A. Lutz contributed to the reform of economic liberalism and held influential positions both in business associations and academia. They were to become leading representatives of German neoliberalism after 1945. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 521

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader premise of this book: intellectual networks as the causal vehicle of neoliberal thought — echoes the reader’s curiosity about HOW the network formed.