Prof. Dr. Werner Wilhelm Engelhardt passed away on 9 September 2021 at the age of 95. An obituary by Prof. Dr. Frank Schulz-Nieswandt (Chair for Social Policy and Methods of qualitative Social Research):

Werner Wilhelm Engelhardt was one of the outstanding minds of the circle of the Cologne direction of social policy theory and public economics around Gerhard Weisser, who, like Werner Wilhelm Engelhardt, taught in the Faculty of Management, Economics and Social Sciences of the University of Cologne. These heads advocated a liberal ethical direction of socialism, influenced among others by Kant and by New Kantian directions, as a conception of the social market economy "left of centre" on a personalist basis beyond individualism and collectivism, capitalism and totalitarian communism.

He completed his doctorate and habilitation in Cologne and taught in the Seminar for Social Policy and the Seminar for Co-operatives from 1971 until his retirement. In addition to several monographs, he has published well over 400 essays, papers in anthologies, and contributions to handbooks and dictionaries. At Duncker & Humblot he is, together with Theo Thiemeyer, founding editor of the "Schriften zum Genossenschaftswesen und zur öffentlichen Wirtschaft" (GÖW).
His heart belonged to the morphological idea of the "Third Way", the (public economic) cooperative idea and "social policy from below".

As a scholar, he was a heterodox, especially interdisciplinary outsider in the mainstream of economics, but in important circles a respectfully esteemed personality, for example in the Scientific Advisory Board of the Society for Public Economics [(Gesellschaft für öffentliche Wirtschaft (GÖW)], later BVÖD, associated with the International Research and Information Centre for the Common Economy[Internationales Forschungs- und Informationszentrums für Gemeinwirtschaf (IFIG)], i.e. the Centre International de recherches et d`information sur l` économie publique sociale et coopérative (CIRIEC) based in Liège, in the Association of Cooperative Research Institutes [Arbeitsgemeinschaft genossenschaftlicher Forschungsinstitute (AGI)] in Germany, Austria and Switzerland as well as in the Committee for Social Policy and the Economics System Committee of the Verein für Sozialpolitik.

Werner Wilhelm Engelhardt was an outstanding scholar, but also a person whom many fellow human beings loved, valued and respected.

What may comfort us somewhat could be the realisation that when a person has died, he is no longer physically among us, but is still "there" in another way: as long as there is a memory of him in the minds and hearts of fellow human beings who are still alive, he is not definitively dead.

The year of his birth, 1926, gives us a clue to a story of how Werner Wilhelm Engelhardt, as a young man, rose from the ruins like a phoenix from the ashes and still managed to move from Halle (Saale) to Cologne in time to be given by fate that fortunate degree of freedom of creative vita activa to leave behind a great work that we are given as a legacy today to continue to think his ideas in a contemporary way.

Univ. Prof. Dr. Frank Schulz-Nieswandt
First Vice Dean of the Faculty of Management, Economics and Social Sciences

• Chair for Social Policy and Methods of qualitative Social Research