Hans Staudinger

Hans Staudinger (born 16 August 1889 in Worms, Germany; died 25 February 1980 in New York City, NY) was a politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and an economist, as well as a secretary of state in the Prussian trade ministry from 1929 to 1932. From November 1932 to June 1933 he was a Social Democrat member of the Reichstag.

Staudinger was born to the gymnasium teacher Franz Staudinger and his wife Auguste Staudinger, née Wenck, and was baptised as a Protestant. He had two brothers and one sister. His father was a leading theorist of the cooperative movement and was connected to prominent Social Democrats such as August Bebel and Eduard Bernstein. His friendship with the latter lasted his whole life.

Hans Staudinger acquired his Abitur at the Ludwig-Georgs-Gymnasium in Darmstadt. He started an apprenticeship as a carpenter while still at school, but did not pursue this. He also temporarily worked as an engine stoker. The incentive for this came from his father, who wanted his son to have insight into the world of the working classes. His brother Hermann Staudinger, who received the 1953 Nobel Prize for Chemistry, followed a similar path at the request of his father.

From 1907 to 1908, Staudinger studied at literature and German philology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. In 1908 he transferred to the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg. Here he studied economics and sociology. His most significant university teachers were the brothers Alfred and Max Weber. In 1913 he received his Dr. phil. for a thesis on entitled Individuum und Gemeinschaft in der Kulturorganisation des Vereins (The Individual and the Community in the Cultural Organisation of the Society), being supervised by Alfred Weber. In this thesis, Staudinger investigated the change in musical societies from the Middle Ages to the middle-class community choirs of his time. The underlying claim was that the alienation of the individual would in the near future be overcome by the community life of the workers. What Staudinger saw as the natural form of community life in the Middle Ages would thus be renewed.

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