Marie Dessauer
| Marie Dessauer | |
|---|---|
| Born | 28 April 1901 Bamberg, Germany |
| 19861986 | |
| 💼 Occupation | |
Marie Dessauer (28 April 1901 – 1986), later Marie Meinhardt or Dessauer-Meinhardt, was a German-British economist. Her doctoral study of the five large English joint-stock banks, Die Big Five (1933), described the English system of specialized deposit banking on the eve of the Glass–Steagall Act. After emigrating to Britain in 1934 she worked at the London School of Economics (LSE) as a research assistant to Friedrich Hayek and Theodore Gregory, and collaborated with Richard Titmuss on early studies of social factors and health. She left a large bequest to the LSE that funds students and research in social policy.[1][2]
Early life and education
Marie Dessauer was born on 28 April 1901 in Bamberg, Germany.[1] In the 1920s and early 1930s she worked for the Chamber of Commerce in Frankfurt, and in 1929 she spent several months at the London School of Economics.[1] She received her doctorate from the University of Frankfurt in 1933 under Eugen Altschul, with a dissertation published that year as Die Big Five: Zur Charakteristik der englischen Depositenbanken (The Big Five: On the Characteristics of English Deposit Banks).[1]
Die Big Five
Die Big Five described in detail the development and activities of the five English joint-stock banks formed in the merger wave of 1918 – Barclays, Lloyds Bank, the Midland Bank, the National Provincial Bank and Westminster Bank – which dominated deposit and short-term lending business in the United Kingdom.[1] Written shortly after Britain left the gold standard, it presented English specialized banking as the outcome of a competitive process in which joint-stock banks had prevailed over private banks and the Bank of England, producing a system segmented between City and country banks and between deposit and investment banking.[1] The economist Hans-Michael Trautwein notes that this system proved more resistant to contagious bank failures in the 1920s and 1930s than German universal banking or American mixed banking, and that the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933 introduced a similar separation in the United States.[1] Dessauer doubted, however, that the English system could be transferred elsewhere, concluding that it could not be imported into Germany without disrupting the long-term credit relations between banks and industrial firms.[1]
Emigration and the London School of Economics
In 1934 Dessauer emigrated to the United Kingdom.[1] She attended the seminars of Friedrich Hayek and Lionel Robbins at the LSE, and from July 1937 worked as a research assistant to Hayek and to Theodore Gregory, who held the chair of banking and currency.[1] At the LSE she published a review of the German Banking Act of 1934 in the Review of Economic Studies, in which she warned that the German system of universal banking remained susceptible to "the authoritarian influence of the government",[1][3] and two studies of nineteenth-century English unemployment records, in the Economic History Review and Economica (1940).[1]
During the Second World War she worked with Richard Titmuss on pioneering studies of the relationship between social conditions and health.[2] Her work at the LSE ended when the school was evacuated to Cambridge in 1941 because of the bombing of London.[1]
Later life and bequest
In August 1940 she married and took the name Meinhardt.[1] She later lived in Bournemouth, and in the 1960s published, for German readers, a long study and a short article on the law and accounting practices of British joint-stock companies.[1] She left a large bequest to the LSE, which funds students and research in social policy through the Titmuss–Meinhardt Fund.[2]
Selected works
- Die Big Five: Zur Charakteristik der englischen Depositenbanken. Stuttgart: C. E. Poeschel, 1933.
- "The German Bank Act of 1934". Review of Economic Studies 2 (1935): 214–224.
- "Unemployment Records, 1848–59". Economic History Review 10 (1940): 38–43.
- "Monthly Unemployment Records, 1854–1892". Economica 7 (1940): 322–326.
- (as Dessauer-Meinhardt) "Der Jahresabschluß von Aktiengesellschaften in Großbritannien". In Ausschuß für wirtschaftliche Verwaltung (ed.), Der Jahresabschluß von Aktiengesellschaften in Europa und USA, part 1. Berlin, 1965, pp. 59–105.
- (as Dessauer-Meinhardt) "Das neue Aktienrecht in Großbritannien". Außenwirtschaftsdienst des Betriebsberaters 13 (1967): 433–435.
Further reading
- Trautwein, Hans-Michael (1999). "Dessauer, Marie". In Harald Hagemann and Claus-Dieter Krohn (eds.), Biographisches Handbuch der deutschsprachigen wirtschaftswissenschaftlichen Emigration nach 1933, vol. 1. Munich: K. G. Saur, pp. 122–123. ISBN 3-598-11284-X.
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 Trautwein, Hans-Michael (2000). "Dessauer, Marie (b. 1901)". In Dimand, Robert W.; Dimand, Mary Ann; Forget, Evelyn L. A Biographical Dictionary of Women Economists. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. pp. 138–140. ISBN 978-1-85278-964-0.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Oakley, Ann (2019). "Legacies of Altruism: Richard Titmuss, Marie Meinhardt, and Health Policy Research in the 1940s". Social Policy and Society. 18 (3): 383–392. doi:10.1017/S147474641800009X.
- ↑ Dessauer, Marie (1935). "The German Bank Act of 1934". Review of Economic Studies. 2 (3): 214–224.
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