Heinrich Freiherr Von Stackelberg - Biography

Biography

Stackelberg was born in Moscow into a Baltic-German family of nobility from Estonia. His mother was an Argentinian of Spanish descent. After the October Revolution the family fled to Germany, first to Ratibor and later to Cologne. He studied economics and mathematics at the University of Cologne as an undergraduate. He graduated in 1927 with a thesis on the Quasi-rent in Alfred Marshalls work (German: Die Quasirente bei Alfred Marshall). He continued his studies as a Ph.D. student in economics under Erwin von Beckerath. He graduated in 1930 with a dissertation on cost theory (German: Die Grundlagen einer reinen Kostentheorie), which was published in 1932 in Vienna. In 1934 he finished his habilitation on market structure and equilibrium (German: Marktform und Gleichgewicht).

After his habilitation he became a lecturer at the University of Cologne. After one semester he accepted a position at the University of Berlin where he taught until 1941. In 1941, Stackelberg became professor of economics at the University of Bonn. In 1944, Stackelberg left Germany for Spain, where he became a visiting professor at the Complutense University of Madrid. He died of lymphoma in 1946. Stackelberg was a member of the NSDAP since 1931 and a Scharführer (Sergeant) in the SS since 1933. However, his interactions with many German aristocrats opposed to the Nazi regime (some of whom were within his immediate family), led to his increased disillusionment with that movement to the extent that towards the end of his life he no longer supported it.