E.F. Schumacher

At the age of 10, Ernst “Fritz” Schumacher would queue for bread with his sister, clutching a paper bag stuffed full of billion mark notes. Each time they prayed that when they reached the front of the queue, prices would not have risen again, forcing them to return home empty-handed. This was the Weimar Republic, and a kind of economic insanity had beset Germany, the government printing banknotes in ever more meaningless denominations in an attempt to keep ahead of unsustainable and crushing war reparations. It was a very personal demonstration of economics that would leave a lasting impact on the young boy, who would go on to become one of the most brilliant economists of the 20 Century, and eventually one of the most trenchant and influential critics of modern economics.

Ernst Friedrich Schumacher was born on August 16, 1911 in Bonn, the son of Hermann and Edith Schumacher. His father was a distinguished professor of economics, his mother a modest, unassuming woman, devoted to her family, but also intellectually gifted—as a student she had solved a mathematical problem that had puzzled mathematicians for