author
Goetz A. (Goetz Antony) Briefs
1889–1974
A German-born economist and Catholic social thinker, he wrote about labor, industry, and the moral limits of modern capitalism. Forced out of academic life under Nazism, he rebuilt his career in the United States and became an important voice in social ethics.
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, Götz Anton Briefs studied history, philosophy, and economics in Munich, Bonn, and Freiburg. He earned his doctorate with highest honors and went on to teach economics at Freiburg, Würzburg, and the Technical University of Berlin, where he also founded an institute for industrial sociology.
Briefs is remembered as a Catholic social theorist, social ethicist, philosopher, and political economist. His work focused on labor, industry, unions, and the social responsibilities of economic life, and later writers have described him as an important bridge between Catholic social teaching and ideas that shaped the social market economy.
After the Nazi rise to power, he left Germany and moved to the United States in 1934. He taught first at Catholic University and then at Georgetown University, where he served as professor of economics from 1937 until his retirement in 1957. He died in Rome in 1974.