Der Industriezensus von 1936 als Grundlage einer neuen volkswirtschaftlichen Gesamtrechnung für Deutschland

Rainer Fremdling and Reiner Stäglin

No 41, Thuenen-Series of Applied Economic Theory from University of Rostock, Institute of Economics, Germany

Abstract: The book published by Walther G. Hoffmann in 1965 is still regarded as the standard work on Germany's historical national accounts from 1850 onwards. Economists, economic and social histo-rians as well as political historians have uncritically used its time-series as starting point and basic material for international comparisons and other purposes. For the benchmark year of 1913, Hoffmann estimated the level of net national product or national income and tied this to his volume indices for the time before and after that year. As this level is significantly too low in our view we propose 1936 as an alternative benchmark year. In that year, the Statistical Office of the German Empire for the first time gathered figures in accordance with the Anglo-Saxon concept of gross and net production values for more than 200 industrial branches. As these data served the purpose of war preparation they were kept secret to a large extent. So in 1939 only parts were published with strategic sectors being covered up. We are currently exploiting the original data available in the Federal Archives of Berlin to compile detailed gross and net production values broken down for industrial sectors. At the same time we assemble all inputs in order to construct an input-output-table for 1936. Thereby we take up the original plans of the Imperial Statistical Office, which then had failed. To serve the main purpose of preparing the war economy the data of the industrial census of 1936 had been drawn up as material input-output balances or flow diagrams. We present first results of our input-output-table.

Date: 2003

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