Hans F. Sennholz
23 June 2007 (aged 85)
Saint Johns Union Cemetery, Farmers Mills, Pennsylvania
Foundation for Economic Education
(1992–1996)
Grove City College
(1956–1992)
Iona College
(1954–1955)
New York University
(PhD) 1955
University of Cologne
(Dr. rer. pol.) 1949
University of Marburg
(M.A.) 1948
University of Texas
Early life[edit]
World War II[edit]
He was drafted into the Luftwaffe during World War II and became the pilot of a Messerschmitt Bf 109, earning the Iron Cross for valor from his engagements in Norway, France, and Russia. He was shot down over North Africa on August 31, 1942, at a time when the battle for north Africa was intensifying, and spent the remainder of the war in a POW camp in the United States, ultimately located to a POW camp in Wilson, Arkansas, where he worked from 1945 to 1946 at the Wilson dairy farm "milking 20 cows twice a day".[1]
Post-war education and career[edit]
After returning to Germany, Sennholz took degrees at the universities of Marburg in 1948 and Köln in 1949.[6] He then moved to the United States to study for a Ph.D. at New York University. He was Ludwig von Mises' first PhD student in the United States. He taught economics at Grove City College, 1956–1992, having been hired as department chair upon arrival. After he retired, he became president of the Foundation for Economic Education, 1992–1997. Calvinist Political Philosopher, John W. Robbins, pointed out in a book printed in honor of Sennholz shortly after his death that "Sennholz, ... rests his defense of a free society on revelation."[7]
Fellow Austrian School economist, Joseph Salerno, praised Sennholz as an under-appreciated member of the Austrian School who "writes so clearly on such a broad range of topics that he is in danger of suffering the same fate as Say and Bastiat. As Joseph Schumpeter pointed out, these two brilliant nineteenth-century French economists, who were also masters of economic rhetoric, wrote with such clarity and style that their work was misjudged by their British inferiors as 'shallow' and 'superficial'."[8]
Sennholz's influence[edit]
2008 U.S. presidential candidate, Ron Paul, credits his interest in economics to meeting Sennholz and getting to know him well.[9] Peter Boettke, Director of the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, first learned economics from Sennholz as a student at Grove City College.[10]