Promenade along the northern bank of the Wupper becomes Hans-Singer-Weg

Economist Hans Frambach commemorates the Elberfeld-born global economist Hans Wolfgang Singer, whose research throughout his life focussed on combating poverty and social disadvantage. the fight against poverty and social disadvantage

Mr Frambach, on 26 February 2006, the economist Hans Wolfgang Singer died in England, a Jewish scientist born in Wuppertal, after whom a path is currently being named in Wuppertal. Highly esteemed in professional circles, he is nevertheless unknown to many Wuppertal residents. Who was this man?

Frambach: Hans Wolfgang Singer was born on 29 November 1910 in Elberfeld and died on 26 February 2006 in Brighton. His father Heinrich was a respected doctor and pharmacist in Elberfeld. Hans Singer studied economics at the University of Bonn under Joseph Schumpeter and Arthur Spiethoff, among others, and emigrated to England via Turkey after the Nazis came to power in 1933. Through Schumpeter, he was awarded a scholarship at Cambridge University, where he completed his doctorate in 1936 on the subject of "Materials for the Study of Urban Ground Rent" in the immediate vicinity of John Maynard Keynes (British economist). From 1936 to 1938, he was involved in a comprehensive pioneering study on unemployment in Great Britain. The lessons and experiences he learnt from this study were to have a major influence on his future academic career. At the beginning of the war, Singer was interned, like all German immigrants, but was released after just six weeks following the personal intervention of John Maynard Keynes and Archbishop William Temple. In the following years, he worked as a lecturer at the University of Manchester, and after the end of the war also briefly at the Ministry of Town and Country Planning and then at the University of Glasgow. In 1947, Hans Singer moved to the United Nations in New York, initially to help set up the section for economic and social affairs. An initial two-year agreement turned into 22 years, during which Singer played a leading role in representing the UN. In addition to this main activity, he also taught as a visiting professor at the New York School for Social Research in the evenings. In 1969, Hans Singer left the UN to work as a Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex in Brighton, which was founded in 1966. He was also appointed full professor there in 1975. After his retirement in 1985, Singer remained associated with the Institute throughout his life, as is impressively demonstrated by the 97 books and reports as well as 61 further reports for the UN and 176 essays that he published there.

Singer married his fiancée Ilse Lina Praut in Hildesheim in 1934 on his way from Istanbul to Cambridge. The marriage, which produced two sons, was to last 67 years, until Ilse Lina's death on 13 March 2001.

He graduated from today's Wilhelm Dörpfeld Grammar School and emigrated in 1933 at the age of 22.

Frambach: Yes, Hans Singer did his Abitur in 1929 at what was then the Humanist Grammar School in Elberfeld, now the Wilhelm Dörpfeld Grammar School, and began studying medicine at the University of Bonn at his father's insistence. Already in the second semester, inspired by Joseph A. Schumpeter's lectures, he switched to studying economics, which he completed in 1931 with a diploma. He then intended to do a doctorate on urban housing construction and property prices. However, when the Nazis came to power in 1933, the living conditions for Jews changed dramatically. Singer's father, who had been wounded in the I. Singer's father Heinrich, who had been wounded in World War I, was sentenced to 18 months in prison in a dubious court case that took place in Elberfeld from 18-20 July 1933 and died in Münster prison on 17 December 1933. Hans Singer emigrated to Turkey via Switzerland in the summer of 1933. However, he was to leave Turkey in March 1934 and take up a scholarship in Cambridge (England).

Throughout his life, Singer tried to rehabilitate his father. Did he succeed?

Frambach: From 1949 to 1966, Hans Wolfgang Singer and his brother Walter made various attempts to legally rehabilitate their father. Although small partial successes were achieved in court, a complete rehabilitation failed to materialise. The almost complete disappearance of the judicial file and the death of the main witness for the prosecution can be cited as the most significant obstacles. A great deal of information could only be reconstructed with difficulty from, for example, fragments of files from the public prosecutor's office, witness interviews and other sources. From the correspondence between Hans Singer and the Wuppertal historian, headmaster and city councillor Ulrich Föhse, who died in 2012, we know of Hans Singer's disappointment at the lack of at least political and moral rehabilitation that he had expected during his visit to Wuppertal in 1983. The good news: on the occasion of the inauguration of the Hans Singer Way on 21 August 2024, the city leadership under the direction of Mayor Schneidewind decided to carry out this long overdue act of rehabilitation.

Singer initially wanted to study medicine in Bonn, but came into contact with the Austrian economist Prof Joseph Schumpeter, after whom the Faculty of Economics at the University of Wuppertal is named. This encounter had a lasting effect on his career. How?

Frambach: Singer's interest in medicine had probably never been particularly pronounced. He began studying medicine at his father's request, perhaps also with a view to taking over his father's practice one day. Hans Singer was also always characterised by a very strong interest in major social issues. During his time at the University of Bonn, Joseph Schumpeter's lectures and his captivating way of imparting knowledge were not only known across faculties, but also far beyond the Bonn area. Singer was immediately enthusiastic, dropped out of his medical studies after the first semester and switched to studying economics.

In 1947, the newly founded United Nations offered him a position in development planning. The so-called 'Prebisch-Singer thesis' played a decisive role in this. What is this about?

Frambach: Singer had been involved in the major unemployment study in Great Britain from 1936-38 and wrote the final report together with Walter Oakeshott and David Owen, which was published under the title "Men without Work". David Owen had been appointed Head of the Economic and Social Affairs Section at the United Nations and hoped for the support of Hans Singer, who promptly accepted the offer.

Having dealt with the problems of unemployment, poverty and social disadvantage, Singer's eye was particularly sharpened for the problems of people who lacked the necessities for daily survival and who were also present in the industrialised nations at that time, but in even greater numbers in the economically less developed countries. Singer focussed all his attention on them, not least against the background that the problems of economically less developed countries were hardly taken into account in the standard models of economic theory. Singer began to investigate the causes of the increasingly unequal distribution of income and wealth in the world. In several publications at the end of the 1940s, he observed a rapid rise in the standard of living for a shrinking proportion of the world's population, while that of a growing majority of the world's population had risen much more slowly or even remained constant. Singer had observed that the increasing inequality of world income was at least partly due to an important structural change in international economic relations, namely the change in price relations between raw materials and industrial goods. In a study carried out for the United Nations, he showed that the development of massively falling commodity prices over long periods of time (before the Second World War) was particularly striking, while in industrialised countries the prices of industrial goods remained the same and increased wages and the monetary prices of production factors were more than compensated for by increases in efficiency. Furthermore, according to his observations, increases in efficiency in the production of raw materials in developing countries were only exchanged for larger quantities of industrial goods, but not expressed in higher prices. The exchange ratios between the exports of developing countries (agricultural goods) and those of developed countries (industrial goods) have systematically changed over time to the detriment of the former, he argues (while prices for agricultural goods remain constant, developing countries have to pay relatively more and more for industrial goods from developed countries). In short, the conditions for the commodity-exporting (underdeveloped) countries are deteriorating, while those of the rich industrialised countries are improving. Independently of Singer, the Latin American economist Raúl Prebisch had made similar discoveries. The Singer-Prebisch thesis had emerged, recognising a structural tendency towards a deterioration in the terms of trade for developing countries. From this, a policy was derived (at least for data up to the beginning of the Second World War) to support developing countries in building up their own industry and to prevent the import of industrial goods from developed countries with the help of protective tariffs (import substitution strategy). This argument contradicted the classic textbook view, which had always assumed rising raw material prices and falling industrial goods prices.

In 1969, he finally took up a professorship at the University of Sussex. Singer was even here at the University of Wuppertal once, wasn't he?

Frambach: Yes, that was in 1983. Prof Dr Bernd Biervert, an economist at the University of Wuppertal who died in 1996, had met Singer at a conference and invited him to give a lecture at the Faculty of Economics. In the early 1990s, Bernd Biervert told me several times about the meeting, Singer's moving lecture to students and the visit to the places of his childhood and youth.

Singer was raised to the peerage by the Queen and received honorary doctorates from seven universities. He was also made an honorary citizen of the University of Freiburg in 2004. Throughout his life, the problems of developing countries and the decline in trade relations with industrialised nations were close to his heart. But the world didn't listen to his recommendations for a long time, did it?

Frambach: Hans Singer was raised to the peerage by Queen Elizabeth II in 1994. Over the years, he has received seven honorary doctorates, including one from the University of Freiburg in 2004. His research has always centred on the fight against poverty and social disadvantage. Singer advocated clear positions aimed at change, which naturally generated a great deal of resistance. Even after the end of the Second World War, Singer was a strong advocate of the new, tax-funded social security system, the so-called Beveridge system, and argued in favour of massive public debt in Keynesian fashion in order to implement it. In general, he was a staunch advocate of a Keynesian demand policy to generate economic growth and ultimately reduce unemployment. With the aforementioned Prebisch-Singer thesis, he opposed the view of orthodox doctrine and thus provoked opposition from famous advocates of the free world trade thesis. An academic dispute about the appropriateness of basic theoretical positions and their empirical relevance broke out and was to continue for decades. This is not the place to go into this in detail. But perhaps just this much: Hans Singer emerged from the whole discussion as a pioneer and co-designer of development economics, whose work also had a significant influence on the development policy of the United Nations for decades. He always took account of changes in the framework conditions and adapted his findings to the changes. In this respect, it can be said that he has certainly influenced the "fate of the world" and development economics in particular within the scope of his possibilities and fields of action.

His desire for loans for developing countries was rejected for many years by the President of the World Bank, Eugene Black, who also liked to refer to Singer as one of the 'wild men of the UN'. Why?

Frambach: This is probably a story from the 1950s. Hans Singer was instrumental in designing and naming a special international fund for aid grants and low-interest, long-term loans, which was given the name "United Nations Special Fund for Economic Development" (SUNFED). Contributions to this fund were to be voluntary and made by governments according to their own judgement and ability. However, the fund was not to be launched until at least 30 governments had pledged their support and a minimum volume of 250 million US dollars had been secured. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), i.e. the World Bank, whose president from 1949-1962 was Eugene Black, played a key role in the construction of the fund. To set up the fund, Singer proposed a catalogue of measurable criteria for the allocation of money to underdeveloped countries, but this triggered fears at the World Bank of a more or less automatic subsidy system that would, among other things, undermine what they saw as a healthy mix of grants and loans. In the following years, however, the political attitude changed and Singer was commissioned to present detailed arguments in favour of setting up the special fund, which was to take into account factors such as the economic situation of the individual recipient countries, including their poverty levels and specific financing problems, when granting grants and low-interest loans. The other proposals were also rejected by Black. As a compromise option, Singer even suggested that SUNFED should be seen less as a separate mechanism and more as an "international consultation and agreement system for granting soft aid" and that financial support for underdeveloped countries should be implemented at bilateral and multilateral level, but not through international organisations. Ultimately, the problem was that the World Bank wanted to fully manage SUNFED but was not prepared to make the necessary commitments. Singer emphasised the danger that if the fund was fully integrated into the IBRD, supporters who had already been won over could withdraw. A solution was found by setting up the special fund for a limited period (five years) and then re-evaluating the results in the light of the experience gained. With the expansion of the World Bank Group to include the International Finance Corporation (IFC) in 1956 and the International Development Association (IDA) in 1960, the US government and the World Bank finally gave up their resistance to a facility for soft financing for underdeveloped countries. Although SUNFED was to become less important, its efforts were crucial to the establishment of the IDA and the IFC.

Singer shaped many of the ideas behind food aid and the establishment of the United Nations World Food Programme in 1963. Which ones, for example?

Frambach: Hans Wolfgang Singer was active in many United Nations organisations and usually played a leading role in representing them. To name just a few examples: the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the UN Industrial Development Organization, the UN International Children's Emergency Fund, the UN World Food Programme, the UN Economic Commission for Africa, the International Labour Organization and the Asian Development Bank. The Mission to Kenya commissioned by the International Labour Organization, which Hans Singer led together with Richard Jolly in the early 1970s, became very well known. The main features of the so-called "redistribution from growth" approach can be traced back to this study, whereby Singer also considered the consideration of the informal sector, but above all the elimination of wages below the subsistence level, to be central. Last but not least, the roots of the later "basic needs" approach of the International Labour Organisation lie in this study.

Contemporaries say of him that he retained his extraordinary warmth, his gentle manner and his human concern throughout his life. But he couldn't really reconcile himself with Germany because of his biography, could he?

Frambach: Much has indeed been said about his friendliness, helpfulness, reliability and modest demeanour - that is a fact. I am more cautious when it comes to a real reconciliation with Germany, which has probably not been finalised. Firstly, as a Jew, Singer had to emigrate from Germany during the Nazi era, and his father died under mysterious circumstances in a prison. During the Second World War, Singer dealt intensively with the German war economy and published twelve articles on this subject alone in the "Economic Journal" published by John Maynard Keynes. His family reported that they no longer spoke German after his emigration. During his one visit to Wuppertal in 1983, his expectations regarding at least the political and moral rehabilitation of his father Heinrich Singer were disappointed. However, his visits to a congress at the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart in the early 1990s and the award of an honorary doctorate in 2004 on the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of 20 July 1944, together with Albert O. Hirschmann, by the Faculty of Economics and Behavioural Sciences at the University of Freiburg were events that certainly made him very happy and also reconciled him with Germany to a certain extent.

Singer died aged 95 in England. The city of Wuppertal is now naming a path after him in Elberfeld and you, Mr Frambach, will also be giving a speech there. How will you commemorate him?

Frambach: Some people will certainly remember Hans Wolfgang Singer. As a member of the Schumpeter School of Business and Economics at the University of Wuppertal, I will talk about his career as a development economist and his great achievements in the field of economics.

Where can we find the Hans Singer Way in the future?

Frambach: In Elberfeld, of course, on the footpath along the Wupper between Moritzstraße and Robert-Daum-Platz. Of course, a street sign and a memorial plaque will also be installed.

Uwe Blass

Prof Dr Hans Frambach is head of the Department of Microeconomics and History of Economic Thought in the Schumpeter School of Business and Economics at the University of Wuppertal.