FRANKFURT (AFP) — A leading German economist apologised on Monday for comparing current criticism of business leaders with stigmatisation of Jews during the 1930s financial crisis.
Hans-Werner Sinn, head of the influential economic research institute Ifo, said in a letter to the leader of Germany's Jewish community that he "deeply regretted" any offence caused by his remarks in an interview published on Monday.
"I had no intention of equating the fate of the Jews after 1933 (when the Nazis took power) with the situation of executives today," he said in the letter addressed to Charlotte Knobloch, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany.
"I ask the Jewish community for forgiveness and retract the comparison."
Sinn drew a firestorm of criticism for the remarks to the Berlin daily Der Tagesspiegel in which he said that Germans should not search for "scapegoats" behind the current market meltdown but rather look to systemic problems.
Referring to the 1930s crisis which led to the rise of the Nazis, Sinn said: "At the time it (the search for scapegoats) focused on the Jews, today it is the managers."
The general secretary of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Stephan Kramer, immediately called on Sinn to "apologise unconditionally."
Government spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm told reporters that the remarks were "unacceptable and wrong" while an economy ministry spokeswoman demanded that Sinn retract his statement.
Citing his friendship with Jewish colleagues around the world, Sinn said in the letter to Knobloch that equating the persecution of the Jews and the criticism of business leaders would be "absurd" and that his "shame and horror over what the Germans did to the Jews" had indelibly affected his world view.
"It was my intention to create understanding that the true causes of global economic crises are systemic and must be uncovered and corrected," he said. "The search for the supposed villains always leads astray."
Nazi leaders seized on the 1929 stock market crash and the ensuing global economic crisis to whip up anti-Semitic hatred. During World War II, Hitler's Third Reich systematically slaughtered some six million European Jews.
Ifo publishes one of the most widely-watched monthly surveys on German business confidence. On Monday, it reported that confidence in Europe's biggest economy had dropped to the lowest point for more than five years in October.
Copyright © 2010 AFP. All rights reserved. More »
