Hans H. Landsberg and Sam H. Schurr: Reflections and Appreciation

With some notable exceptions see the accompanying biographies the career paths of Hans Landsberg and Sam Schurr diverged in some significant ways, as I ll note momentarily. (Never mind the personality angle: Hans, the raconteur, with an extraverted side; Sam, more low key and reserved.) Even so, we deem it fitting to commemorate their careers and professional contributions jointly in this dedicated issue of the Journal. There is, of course, the fact that Hans and Sam s life spans both lived well into their eighties were almost entirely overlapping, their deaths just a few months apart. There is also the fact that both found themselves (though by utterly different odysseys) out of work in New York City in the latter part of the 1930s: the Great Depression wasn't always that much kinder to America's unemployed than to its immigrant community. (Hans had not long before experienced a harrowing exposure to and escape from Nazism.) In any case, both managed independently to attract the attention of senior researchers at the National Bureau of Economic Research, then housed at Columbia University and headed by Arthur Burns. This contact led to gainful employment, lasting until close to the outbreak of World War II when again through sheer coincidence each was recruited for wartime duty by the OSS.