René Kuczynski Prize

This prize, donated by the Berlin family of scholars Kuczynski, is named after the German economist Robert René Kuczynski (1876–1947) and has been awarded for outstanding publications on the field of social and economic history.

In 1976, the son of René Kuczynski, Jürgen (the leading economic historian of the GDR), and his wife Marguerite, gave the first 100 000 Marks (and later additional donations) to the then Academy of Science of the GDR, in order to award scholarly publications in the “Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte” (Yearbook for Economic History). The board consisted of experts whose fields of research were ancient economic history, agrarian history of the middle ages, modern industrial history, research on imperialism and demographic history of the Developing Countries: Rudolf Berthold, Parviz Khalatbari (from 1989), Heinz Kreißig (until 1984), Wolfgang Mühlfriedel (from 1990), Peter Musiolek (from 1985), Siegfried Richter (1984–1988), Alfred Schröter, Josef Sonnemann (until 1982).

44 prize winners were awarded 1977 until 1991. An survey over the history of the prize and the topics of the awarded publications was published by the last president of the board, Thomas Kuczynski, grandson of René Kuczynski, in the Hamburg quarterly “1999” (No. 1/97, pp. 154–158).

1996 the Prize was revived with support of the Stiftung für Sozialgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts (Foundation for Social History of the 20th Century, Bremen/Hamburg) and led by Karl Heinz Roth, Marcel van der Linden und Thomas Kuczynski. The jury consisted of Richard J. Evans, Inge Marßolek, Jörg Roesler, Adelheid von Saldern, Peter Schöttler, Heinrich Senfft and Claudia Ulbrich. Prizes had been awarded in 1997 to Hans Medick (“Weben und Überleben in Laichingen 1650–1900. Lokalgeschichte als Allgemeine Geschichte”, Göttingen 1996 – a history of the weavers of the Swabian town Laichingen) und 1999 an Rüdiger Hachtmann (“Berlin 1848. Eine Politik- und Gesellschaftsgeschichte der Revolution”, Bonn 1997 – a history of Berlin politics and society in the revolution of 1848).

Since 2004 the Prize has been awarded in cooperation with the ITH.

Jury
Prof. Gerhard Botz (University of Vienna)
Prof. Rüdiger Hachtmann (Centre for Contemporary History, Potsdam)
Prof. Claudia Jarzebowski (Freie Universität Berlin)
Prof. Andrea Komlosy (University of Vienna)
Prof. Alexander Nützenadel (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
Prof. Jörg Roesler (Berlin)
Prof. Susan Zimmermann (ITH, Vienna & Central European University, Budapest)