Hans Bayer

Bayer, the son of a Viennese Hofrat (court councillor), took his doctorate in political science in 1924 and became an assistant to Mayer. In 1929 he obtained a doctorate in law at the University of Innsbruck and, in the same year, was able to gain his habilitation in Vienna with a work on Die Lausanner Schule und die Österreichische Schule der Nationalökonomie (The Lausanne School and the Austrian School of Economics). He then served as legal consultant at the Lower Austrian Trade Association, as secretary-general of the Hoteliers' Association and, from 1934, as secretary in the Chamber of Workers and Employees. In 1937 he attained an associate professorship in Innsbruck, but immediately after the Anschluss he was compulsorily placed on leave and transferred to the ministry. After the war he returned to Innsbruck as a professor and in 1956 moved to take up the leadership of the Social Academy in Dortmund. As early as the early 1930s, Bayer increasingly distanced himself from the research programme of the Austrian School, occupied himself with questions of economic and labour-market policy and came to terms with the corporative state (Ständestaat). He continued to show sympathy for the Austrian School, but kept his distance in substance and followed the Keynesian mainstream.