Hans F. Sennholz

Who was Hans F. Sennholz?

Hans F. Sennholz was a German-born American Austrian School economist who studied under Ludwig von Mises. He was drafted into the Luftwaffe during World War II but was shot down over North Africa and spent most of the war in a POW camp in the United States. It was during this time that he attended the University of Texas at Austin. He also took degrees at the universities of Marburg and Köln. He then moved to the United States to study for a Ph.D. at New York University. He was Ludwig von Mises' first PhD student in the United States. He taught economics at Grove City College, 1956–1992, having been hired as department chair upon arrival. After he retired, he became president of the Foundation for Economic Education, 1992–1997. Calvinist Political Philosopher, John W. Robbins pointed out in a book printed in honor of Sennholz shortly after his death that "Sennholz, ... rests his defense of a free society on revelation."

Fellow Austrian School economist Joseph Salerno praised Sennholz as an under-appreciated member of the Austrian School who "writes so clearly on such a broad range of topics that he is in danger of suffering the same fate as Say and Bastiat. As Joseph Schumpeter pointed out, these two brilliant nineteenth-century French economists, who were also masters of economic rhetoric, wrote with such clarity and style that their work was misjudged by their British inferiors as 'shallow' and 'superficial'."