Alfred Müller-Armack

Müller-Armack was professor of economics at University of Münster and University of Cologne. He was a central figure of the "Cologne school". He always pointed out that the economy had to serve humanity. A regulatory environment should provide the basis for a form of competition that was to the best for all people.

His 1929 article Supplement to the Handbook of Political Science received attention for its discussion of the business cycle. In 1933 he published a book with some praise of Nazism, entitled Ideas of the State and Economy Order in the New Reich. The Nazis did however not like the book and a second edition was refused in 1935. He worked as an advisor to the Nazi regime and the German army, and contributed to discussions about the post-war economic order. When he became more and more disillusioned with the Nazi regime, he withdrew to his academic research and turned towards religious sociological studies. This resulted in a big volume entitled "Das Jahrhundert ohne Gott" (Century without God), published in 1948.

After the war, he joined the CDU and he coined the phrase “Social Market Economy” in his book “Wirtschaftslenkung und Marktwirtschaft” (Economic Steering and Market Economy), written in 1946 and published in 1947. In his understanding, the Social Market Economy combined the power and dynamism of a free market economy with a limited social equilibration and social security system. In 1950, he got a position as full professor at the University of Cologne.

Müller-Armack was a member of the Mont Pelerin Society an organization of free market economists and classical liberal thinkers established by Friedrich Hayek although Müller-Armack was less libertarian oriented than Hayek.