Albert O. Hirschman: A ‘Beamish’ Social Scientist for Our Grandchildren

Abstract

The story of Albert O. Hirschman might be read as a collective memory in the form of a personal tale, a re-encounter with a social science that finds hope in disappointment, solutions in tension, and liberty in uncertainty, a style of regarding the social world as a source of possibilities that the intellectual can help summon with a different combination of humility and daring. (Adelman, 2013a: 15) Otto Albert Hirschmann (1915–2012) was born to well-educated Jewish parents in Berlin. His name was changed to Albert Otto Hirschman in the USA (the first and middle names switched and one of the n's in the sur-name dropped). Before leaving Europe for the US in early 1941, Hirschman completed his pre-career education in the most cosmopolitan way possi-ble. His involvement in anti-fascist struggles in Europe during the 1930s provided him with a down-to-earth background, upon which he built his ground-breaking intellectual career in the US, where he became a distin-guished expert in development economics, political economy and history of economic thought. Having fought against General Franco's nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War, Hirschman also worked for the so-called Emergency Rescue Committee in 1940. The Committee was led by Varian Fry, an American activist journalist who, as a foreign correspondent in Berlin in 1935, had witnessed the Nazi purge of the Jews. While in New York, Fry brought together many anti-fascists and collected US$ 3,000 to be used in a clandestine rescue operation. The objective of the operation was to save 'especially the better-known intellectuals and artists who were known to be in danger' in southern France. As Fry arrived in Marseilles to lead the rescue operation, Hirschman became his 'right-hand man'. Impressed by Hirschman's 'irrepressible smile and charm', Fry nicknamed him Beamish. Indeed, Hirschman's 'smile and can-do approach to even the thorniest problem earned him the nickname Beamish among everyone involved in the rescue operation'. Fry and Beamish worked together intimately in an Development and Change 45(5): 1111–1133.