INGEBORG ESENWEIN-ROTHE

Ingeborg Esenwein-Rothe (* 24 June 1911 in Chemnitz; † 7 December 2002 in Roth) passed the state examination for graduate economists in Leipzig in 1936 and was awarded a doctorate with Prof. Dr. H.J. Seraphim in 1937 with the thesis "Mensch und Wirtschaft im erzgebirgischen Dorf. Der sächsische Wirtschaftsraum" (Man and Economy in the Ore Mountain Village. The Saxon Economic Area).

She habilitated with the Faculty of Law and Social Sciences in Münster in 1954 and received the venia for economic policy and statistics. Her habilitation thesis "Die Verkehrseffizienz. Versuch einer Erfassung und Messung der raumwirtschaftlichen Leistung von einseitig angeschlossenen Nebenbahnen" was published in 1956 in the Sozialwissenschaftliche Abhandlungen. After being appointed as an adjunct professor by the Lower Saxony Minister of Education in 1961 and appointed to an associate chair of economics and economic statistics at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Professor Dr Esenwein-Rothe held the chair of statistics in the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg from 1963 until her retirement in 1976.

Professor Ingeborg Esenwein-Rothe was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Trier on 7 April 1986.

The scientific life's work of Ingeborg Esenwein-Rothe was based on interdisciplinary achievements; concerning the field of regional research, economic statistics and demography.

She was a co-founder of scientific economic statistics. With her book "Allgemeine Wirtschaftsstatistik" (1962), she presented the first summarising presentation of the problems of official statistics in the form of a category theory, which was novel in many sub-areas.

Another focus of her scientific work was demographic research. Her monograph "Introduction to Demography - Population Structure and Population Process from the Perspective of Statistics" (1982) is also counted among the standard works internationally.

She has also received great recognition in her third main area of research, regional research, with which she began her scientific work and on which contributions can be found again and again throughout her scientific career.

Her great commitment to the education of numerous generations of students at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, her work in the education committee of the German Statistical Society and, last but not least, her uncompromising political stance during the Third Reich contributed to her being awarded the Bavarian Order of Merit.