Günter Schmölders

From 1968 till 1970, Schmölders presided Mont Pelerin Society and got member of Vaduzer Institut, a libertarian think tank. He received various honorary doctorates and orders of the Großes Bundesverdienstkreuz in 1969 and with star 1979. His archive is maintained by the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

After the war, he found a new home and university post in Cologne. The Marshall Plan and the Europäische Zahlungsunion (European Currency Union) made him aware of international financial instruments and institutions and their scientific role. In Cologne, he founded the Zentralarchiv für empirische Sozialforschung, the first European archive collecting economical empirical data and opinion polls. His later works includes as well studies on the psychology of taxing and tax evasion, e.g. Das Irrationale in der öffentlichen Finanzwirtschaft (the irrational aspects of public finances) in 1960. His grandfather Franz August Schmölders was professor for orientalism in Breslau.

He became a NSDAP member in 1933 and received a tenure (Lehrstuhl) at Breslau university. He dealt with Staatswissenschaften, the Prussian equivalent of macro and state economics and spatial planning. He had some contacts with the Kreisauer Kreis later. Military service and the effects of Allied air bombing raids interrupted his university activities.

Günter Schmölders (29 September 1903 in Berlin – 7 November 1991 in Munich) was a German economist at Breslau and Cologne universities.