Furth, J. Herbert (Joseph Herbert), 1899-

Austrian-American economist.

Josef Herbert Furth was born on October 12, 1899 in Vienna, Austria. His father, Emil Ritter von Furth (1863-1911), was a lawyer and a member of Vienna's City Council, who pioneered in school and housing reform, while his mother, born Ernestine Kisch (1877-1946), was the founder and leader of the Austrian women's suffrage movement. Furth attended schools in Vienna and graduated from the Gymnasium with honors in 1917, and immediately enlisted as a reserve officer in the Austrian army. After being severely wounded, Furth was discharged in 1918 and entered into the study of law and social sciences at the Universities of Vienna and Heidelberg, Germany, receiving his J.D. degree from the University of Vienna in 1921. After serving as a law clerk for a number of years, Furth was admitted to the Austrian bar in 1929. In the fall of 1938 (shortly after Austria's annexation to Germany), Furth immigrated to the United States. He became a "special student" at Harvard during the year 1938-1939, after which he was appointed professor of economics at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. In the spring of 1943, Furth was asked to join the staff of the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, D.C. as an economic specialist, with the specific assignment of preparing handbooks on money and banking for various European and Asian countries to be liberated by the Allied Forces. Three years later he became a permanent member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Board, and in time advanced to Senior Advisor on international finance and associate economist of the Federal Open-Market Committee, the policy-making body of the Federal Reserve system. In 1966 Furth retired from the Federal Reserve and joined the Foreign Service Institute (whose economic division he had helped to organize) as Faculty Associate in Residence.

Biographical/Historical Note

Austrian-American economist.