Emil Lederer (1882-1939)

Though largely forgotten today, Emil Lederer was one of the most important economists and social thinkers of the interwar period. Between 1918 and 1939, he was a leading social-liberal intellectual who sought was a pioneer in the study of business cycles, technological progress, and the rise of fascism and populism.

Born into a Jewish family in Bohemia, Lederer taught economics in Heidelberg between 1912 and 1931, then at the University of Berlin. In the 1920s, Lederer was the editor of the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik and along with Alfred Weber, he was a leading light of the Institut für Sozial- und Sozialwissenschaft. From 1923 to 1925 he was a visiting professor in Tokyo and became one of the leading western commentators on Japan.

 Ousted from his academic position when the Nazis seized power, Lederer became the first dean of the ‘University in Exile’ at the New School in New York. There he helped coordinate the emigration of numerous scholars from central and eastern Europe. Lederer died prematurely following complications of a surgery in 1939.