Perpetrators and victims: Austrian economists under the Nazis

This paper reports on the preliminary results of a research project (supported by the Oesterreichische Nationalbank) about Austrian economists under the Nazi regime from 1938 to 1945. The biographies of nearly 200 economists were collected who had close relations to Austria and who were affected in some way or another by the politics of the Third Reich: some as perpetrators, followers or opportunists, others as victims who were persecuted, forced to emigrate or who even lost their lives. To illustrate the diverse fate of Austrian economists after the Anschluss, a brief account is given of three economists who belonged to different economic "schools" and who were affected by the Nazi regime in very different ways: Friedrich Gottl-Ottlilienfeld, an NS party member and adherent of the German Historical School; Friedrich Otto Hertz, a sociologist and economist, who was forced into emigration twice; and Karl Schlesinger, a banker with remarkable theoretical contributions to economics who committed suicide on the day the German Wehrmacht invaded Austria.