We Mourn for Joerg Huffschmid (1940-2009)

Commemoration 20 February in Berlin.

The details of the Memorial Meeting for Jörg in Berlin have now been finalised.

*Dinner*

The Memorial Dinner will be on Friday, 19 February. Admission will be from 7 pm, and the event will begin at 8 pm. There is a charge of €20 (drinks extra) which will be collected on the evening. You need to register for this. You can do this using the attached flyer, but as this is in German it will probably be easier if you let me know, and I will register the names of those wishing to attend.

*Conference*

The Scientific Conference in Memory of Jörg will be on Saturday, 20 February from 10 am to 5 pm. There will be a plenary from 10 am to 1 pm, then Workshops (including the EuroMemo Workshop) from 2 to 4 pm, and a final plenary from 4 – 5 pm. Please note that the time for the Workshops is slightly shorter than in the original plan. There is a €20 contribution towards the cost of the conference.

*Hotel*

Both the dinner and the conference will take place in the national headquarters of ver.di, the united service workers’ union. There is an Ibis Hotel directly across the bridge from the ver.de headquarters, and a block or rooms has been provisionally reserved. Single rooms cost €75 with breakfast. This will be by far the most convenient place to stay. The attachment to this mail headed Ibis has a reservation form on the second page, and it is in English and German. I would recommend that you fill this in and send it off as soon as possible, before the contingent of reserved rooms is taken.

*How to get there*

The Ibis hotel is very convenient for people arriving by cheap airlines (Easyjet, Ryan if you must) at Schoenefeld Airport. On leaving the airport terminal, go left and take the covered walkway to the station (3-4 minutes). Buy a ticket for Zones A,B & C (€2.80) and take the S-Bahn to Ostbahnhof (East Station). You can also take a regional main-line train, which will stop less and is a little quicker. At Ostbahnhof, on leaving the station at the front entrance, you should turn right, and then left at the end of the station entrance road (but you will already see the hotel!)

From Tegel Airport, the quickest way is to take the TXL bus to the Hauptbahnhof (Main station) and then take the S-Bahn to Ostbahnhof (any east-bound train). A little slower, but avoiding the very large main station, you could also take the 109 or X9 bus from Tegel to Bahnhof Zoo (the end of the bus line) and then take the S-Bahn to Ostbahnhof (any east-bound train). For both you need a ticket for zone A and B, Euro 2.10, available on the bus or from the machine before getting on the bus.

By train its very easy: nearly all mainline trains stop at Ostbahnhof! Some from the east stop at Lichtenberg, but it is then just a few stops on the S-Bahn to Ostbahnhof.

*What you must do*

· Fill in the second page of the Ibis form to reserve a hotel room and fax it off

· Let Trevor Evans (EuroMemo-Group /// Email: evans@hwr-berlin.de) know, if you wish to attend the dinner and/or the conference. He will send the information to the organisers. (German speaking people may fill in the attached form and send it directly to the organisers).

Warm regards,

Trevor and Diana

- on behalf of the Steering Committee of the EuroMemorandum Group -

On the morning of 5 December 2009, Joerg Huffschmid passed away. With him we lose one of the world’s most important economists of the post-war era.

In 1975, Joerg Huffschmid founded the “Workgroup on Alternative Economic Policy / Arbeitsgruppe Alternative Wirtschaftspolitik”, together with Rudolf Hickel and Herbert Schui, and for more than 35 years set its discourse on economic policy. For many decades he contributed to developing its political orientation in the drafts outlining the annual memoranda, for the last time in February 2009.

Already in 1969, Joerg had presented the book “Die Politik des Kapitals. Konzentration und Wirtschaftspolitik in der Bundesrepublik / The Policy of Capital. Concentration and Economic Policy in the Federal Republic”, published by Suhrkamp, which is an analysis still worth reading today and is by many regarded as a predecessor of the later memoranda.

In 1995, Joerg was a founding member of and driving force behind the “Workgroup of European Economists for an Alternative Economic Policy in Europe”, who will present their EuroMemorandum 2009 in a few days.

In 2000, Joerg Huffschmid was a member of the Enquête Commision on “Globalisation of the World Economy – Challenges and Answers” of the German Federal Diet. He was also the co-editor of the political scientific monthly “Blaetter fuer deutsche und internationale Politik / Sheets on German and International Politics” and was a member of the monthly journal “Wissenschaft und Frieden / Science and Peace”, of the “Bremische Stiftung für Rüstungskonversion / Bremen Foundation for Arms Conversion”, of “Z. Zeitschrift für marxistische Erneuerung / Z. Journal for Marxist Renewal” and of the anti-globalisation network Attac.

In recent years he helped the members of Die Linke hone their positions on the financial market crisis and on their demands for concrete measures of bank and financial market regulation.

Joerg’s death should spur us all to increase our efforts of fighting mass unemployment and poverty, ecological destruction and social insecurity and to be instrumental in bringing about concrete measures in favour of social justice and social security.

(Translated from a text by Axel Troost, abr.)