From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ludwig Erhard (1971)
Ludwig Wilhelm Erhard
(4 February 1897 in
Furth
? 5 May 1977 in
Bonn
) was a
German
politician.
Erhard was born as the son of a salesman. After his middle school exam, he started training to become a salesman himself. He was wounded as soldier in World War I. After World War I, he started to study micro economy at a college in
Nuremberg
.
After that, he studied economy on the University of
Frankfurt am Main
. In 1925 he finished his doctoral thesis. Afterwards, he worked in his father's company. After the
Great Depression
, the company went bankrupt.
From 1928 to 1942, he worked as science assistant, but he could not get a promotion because he did not want to become a member of a
Nazi
organisation. From 1942 to 1945, he was the head of the institute for industrial research.
Until 1949, he worked for the
CDU
, but joined still in 1963.
From 1945 to 1946, he worked for the provisional government of
Bavaria
, afterwards he was an economic organisation official for the British-American administration in West Germany.
In 1949, he became
Minister of Economics
under
Konrad Adenauer
.
From 1957-1963, he was Vice Chancellor.
After Adenauer resigned in 1963, Erhard became the new chancellor.
In 1966,
Kurt Georg Kiesinger
succeeded him.
Erhard died in 1977, aged 80.
