Wie Es Eigentlich Gewesen Ist-History As It Actually Happened.

 One of the most enduring questions in economic history, which historians still debate today, is, “what caused the Great Depression?”  There are competing schools of thought regarding the Great Depression, and the two major views are the Keynesian theory, based on the views of British economist John Maynard Keynes, and the monetarist view, espoused by Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz.  In this blog post, I want to focus on the monetarist view, which Friedman and Schwartz outlined in their seminal work, A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960 , which they published in 1963. In his article, “The Macroeconomics of the Great Depression: A Comparative Approach,” Ben S. Bernanke explains Friedman and Schwartz’s monetarist position as follows: “in their classic study of U.S. monetary history, Friedman and Schwartz (1963) presented a monetarist interpretation of these observations, arguing that the main lines of causation ran from monetary contraction-the result o...

When one thinks of influential people in business in the first part of the 20 th century in the United States, one name that inevitably will come to mind is Henry Ford.   As the founder and driving force behind the Ford Motor Company, Henry Ford demonstrated innovation, business acumen, and forward thinking to create one of the most influential and profitable automobile manufacturers in the United States.   Henry Ford was born in Greenfield Township, Michigan, outside of Detroit on July 30, 1863, the oldest of six children of an immigrant Irish family.   After completing a basic education at home and at the local school, Ford became an apprentice at a machine shop as well as with a watch and jewel repairer.   At sixteen years old, he demonstrated an aptitude for this type of work and moved on from Flower Brother’s machine shop to the Dry Dock Engine Company of Detroit; building steam engines.   By the age of 21, Ford began working for Westinghouse as a “road ...

  Blog Post-Railroads in Kentucky and Kansas   The Civil War brought immense changes to the social, political, and economic landscape of the United States.   America had to heal after four bitter years of war in which brother fought brother, battles had largely destroyed the landscape of the southern states, and the United States saw more deaths than any other war (including non-battle injuries and disease). [1]     In the aftermath of such a terrible conflict, President Lincoln’s vision, also held by his successor, President Johnson, was to heal the nation.   One area which required attention was the economy, and it is important for historians to understand how the economy experienced growth in the postbellum era.     One can measure economic growth in different ways. The 1960s saw a shift in how historians typically had written economic history.   Robert Fogel was one of these new economic historians, and in his work, Railroads and...

  Reinstatler Family: German Connections               As a proud German-American, I’ve had a strong desire to study where in Germany my ancestors came from.   This desire drove me to seek out an assignment in Germany, and I’ve been stationed in Wiesbaden, Germany in the state of Hesse with my wife and 9 children since October, 2020.   My family’s story began in Germany, and the connections to Germany are fascinating to me; and I hope you will enjoy my brief recounting of what I know of them.   I’ve sought out information about where I came from in a serious way since 2016, tracing the Reinstatler lineage as far back as I could, and what amazes me is the connections I have to Germany.   My great, great, great grandfather Peter Reinstadler emigrated from Germany in 1851.   My grandfather, Sylvester Anthony Reinstatler, was captured in Germany during WWII 94 years later, and I am now living and...

  In the history of the early United States, religion plays a prominent role.   In many cases, this history is that of various Protestant denominations, including Methodists and Presbyterians.   However, Catholicism also played a vital role.   Catholics first came to America and settled in Maryland, a colony which Lord Baltimore, a Catholic, founded.   Maryland allowed religious freedom, to the benefit of Catholic immigrants to America.   This is of course, exempting French and Spanish Catholics in the colonies or territories of those nations in America, in which Catholics and Catholic clergy were numerous.   However, when it comes to Catholicism in the English colonies, Maryland is its center.   Baltimore became the first Catholic diocese in America and Father John Carroll, a former Jesuit priest, became her first bishop in 1789. [1]               As settlers expanded westward in the U...