author
Goetz A. (Goetz Antony) Briefs
1889–1974
A German-born political economist and Catholic social thinker, he built an academic life on both sides of the Atlantic after fleeing Nazi Germany. His work linked economics, social ethics, and the question of how modern society should treat workers and human dignity.
1 Audiobook
Deutsches Leben der Gegenwart
by Paul Bekker, Goetz A. (Goetz Antony) Briefs, Max Scheler, Arnold Sommerfeld
About the author
Born in Eschweiler in 1889, he studied history and philosophy in Munich, Bonn, and Freiburg, then earned his doctorate in 1911 and completed his habilitation in 1913. He went on to teach economics and social policy at Freiburg and Würzburg, and later accepted a post at the Technical University in Berlin.
In 1928, he co-founded an institute in Berlin devoted to industrial sociology and social enterprise studies. After the rise of the Nazi regime, he emigrated to the United States in 1934. He first taught at the Catholic University of America and, in 1937, became a full professor at Georgetown University in Washington.
He published more than 350 scholarly works and is remembered as a Catholic social ethicist, social philosopher, and political economist whose writing focused on labor, society, and social order. He received several honors, including major awards from the Federal Republic of Germany, and died in Rome in 1974.