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Textbook Lucky Boy in The Lucky Country The Autobiography of Max Corden Economist 1St Edition Warner Max Corden Auth Ebook All Chapter PDF
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LUCKY BOY IN THE LUCKY COUNTRY
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MAX CORDEN, ECONOMIST
Series editors
Avi Cohen
York University and University of Toronto
Toronto, Canada
G.C. Harcourt
University of New South Wales
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Peter Kriesler
University of New South Wales
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Jan Toporowski
School of Oriental and African Studies
London, United Kingdom
Thank You
Alex Millmow
Belinda Nemec
Daryl Stevens
Francesco Mongelli
Joe Isaac
John Creedy
John Nieuwenhuysen
Jonathan Thong
Hal Hill
Henryk Kierzkowski
Peter Dixon
Philip O’Brien
Prema-Chandra Athukorala
Rick Batzdorf
Sisira Jayasuriya
Sarath Rajapatirana
Tamar Gazit
vii
viii Thank You
Norbert Conrads
Geoff Harcourt
John Martin
John Black
Peter Oppenheimer
Ross Garnaut
Foreword by Martin Wolf
he is. And this, more than any particular bit of economics, was the most
important lesson he imparted to me. He is an outstanding teacher and
economist, because he is determined to perform his tasks to the very best
of his abilities.
I drew two more lessons of great importance from Max. Since my
background at Oxford had been in classics and then Politics, Philosophy,
and Economics, I lacked the mathematical skills that were increasingly in
demand. As a result, I wondered whether I could find my own niche in
economics. Max, who eschewed mathematics in his theoretical work,
showed me that I could hope to do so. Economics, it was clear, had many
houses. In one of them I could hope to thrive.
The second lesson was his ability to underline something I already
believed. Economics was a political subject. Its proper aim was to make
the world a better place. With his deep interest in practical questions,
Max taught me that this was an altogether reasonable ambition. He also
taught me something else: as he puts it in the book, “one’s choice of mod
els must depend on circumstances”. Economics is not a religion; it is a
toolbox.
At the time I met him, Max was in the middle of what was arguably
his most intellectually creative period, when he did his seminal work on
protection and trade policy. The interest in trade I learned from him has
stayed with me ever since. His book, Trade Policy and Economic Welfare,
published in 1974, shortly after I left Oxford is, I believe, his master
piece. It has had a huge influence upon me and many others.
Subsequently, Max moved to work on problems of the international
monetary system. In this area, too, his writings were marked by those
characteristics of clarity and rigour. He sorted things out and so, when
one read his work, one learned how to understand the issues, too.
In this fascinating book, Max tells of his entire life journey, starting
with Breslau, the arrival of the Nazi in 1933 and his father’s imprison
ment in Buchenwald, to the family’s very lucky escape to England and
then Australia. He puzzles, rightly over the mystery of the demented and
murderous anti-Semitism he managed to escape.
Max goes on to explain how he became who he is—an Australian and
a great economist. Here, too, he enjoyed much luck. As is usually the
case, great success requires the timely help of a number of kind and
Foreword by Martin Wolf
xi
decent people. Max received this. And he repaid this help, over and again,
to his country and the world.
In a sane world, Max would now be a celebrated German scholar. As it
is, he was indeed lucky to survive the wreck of the twentieth-century
Europe. But his new country was lucky, too. By virtue of its far-sighted
generosity, Australia gained an economist who contributed vastly to the
domestic policy debate and added to his country’s global reputation. And
I, as a result, gained my foremost teacher and a lifelong friend.
1 Breslau Boy 3
xiii
xiv Contents
Appendix 213
Index 227
Part I
The Early Years
1
Breslau Boy
A Journey to England
On 19 April 1938 at the Breslau railway station, a small boy with coal-
black curly hair arrived with a lady, presumably his mother. He was ten
years old, though he probably looked younger. It was in the afternoon.
He was carrying a raincoat over his arm and a small case. His mother,
who seemed a bit weepy, told him not to lose the raincoat and case, and
to remember two words, namely “Thank you” and Danke Schön, which
means “Thank you” in German. He took up his seat in the train to Berlin.
Of course he was alone. The trip lasted about five hours. At the Berlin
railway station, he got out with his coat and case and met his Aunt Siddy,
who brought him to her home by taxi. There he met his cousin, Peter,
who was nine years old, and they all had supper together. But then some-
thing strange happened. Peter just disappeared!
After supper Aunt Siddy took the little boy into their living room,
where she had made up a bed for him on a big couch. He took his pyja-
mas from his case and got dressed for going to bed. And Aunt Siddy
pulled the curtains together and the room was dark, ready for his sleep.
Then she left the room.
his Uncle Henry and, more important, their dog, Jacky. He was then
allowed to take Jacky for a walk to the end of the street, where it met the
main road (Abbey Road).
Hans
Ernst
*murdered by Nazis (Holocaust) #Proskauer
Emigration: Gerhart and Werner Emigrate 9
Please note that in the family tree, the three oldest sons of Louis, namely
Martin, Hugo, and Franz, all died before the first impact of the Nazi take-
over in 1937 (dates of death: 1922, 1932, and 1934 respectively).
Bibliography
Ascher, Abraham (2007) A Community Under Siege: The Jews of Breslau under
Nazism.
Davies, Norman and Roger Moorhouse (2002) Microcosm: A Portrait of a
Central European City, Jonathan Cape, London.
2
Why Do They Hate Us So Much?
The central feature of my early life and its consequences was German
anti-Semitism. Without such anti-Semitism, we would never have left
Germany for Australia. I have never ceased being aware of our luck in
getting out in time. And even though I left so early in life—and have
never personally suffered as so many others have – the experience has
affected me permanently. The Holocaust and paranoia are always there.
Therefore, I greatly welcomed a book I discovered recently which thor-
oughly analyses the big question. Its title poses the issue: Why the Germans?
Why the Jews? Götz Aly (2014). The author is a German historian. A large
part of my chapter here draws on this book. His main point, supported
by much evidence, is that anti-Semitism was already strong in Germany
in the nineteenth century, well before Hitler.
But Stop! Stop! This is an autobiography you are writing, and not a
book of history. You have left your family in Southampton while waiting
to take the ship to Australia. Yes, but this history is, indeed, important
because it is about the deep background to what happened to my family,
kicked out of our country for no good reason. Or, if there is a good rea-
son, there is a need to study it.
It is well known that anti-Semitism in Europe has a long history and
has certainly not been unique to Germany. For many years in many
countries, the motive was essentially religious, as can be seen most clearly
in the Spanish case, where the ascendency of Catholic rulers brought
about the mass expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492. Earlier, the
Crusades also led to the persecution of Jews, again motivated by religion.
Jews lived in ghettos not because of their choice but because of restric-
tions imposed by rulers. And they engaged in limited activities, notably
trading and money-lending, because of restrictions, such as on owning
land, engaging in agriculture, or joining the military, and so on. But what
kept them going and united was their religion and especially the study
(obsessive, I would say) of their religious literature—the Torah.
The religious motive for anti-Semitism weakened with the
Enlightenment (which began in France in the second half of the eigh-
teenth century) and a new, uniquely German motive developed, namely
the focus on “race.” The view became prevalent in Germany that the Jews
were a distinct and undesirable race, inferior to the very superior German
race. Religious anti-Semitism went into the background (though not dis-
appearing), so that Jews could not avoid anti-Semitism by converting to
Christianity.