About us
The Metropolis Verlag has been publishing books in the field of critical economics and social sciences. The publishing house was founded in 1986. The backstory is unusual enough to be worth telling here:
In the 1980s, there was a student initiative at the Department of Economics at the University of Marburg, with over 40 members, who, alongside their studies, operated a "university from below." This means that they tried, for many years, to independently but collectively develop alternative and critical approaches to economics. The later most prominent member of this group was Rainer Baake, who became Secretary of State under Joschka Fischer (Hessen), Jürgen Trittin, and Sigmar Gabriel, Director of "Agora Energiewende," Federal Executive Director of the German Environmental Aid, and currently Director of the Foundation for Climate Neutrality. This system of additional work seemed necessary to us because the economics department largely ignored all forms of Keynesianism, Marxism, and American institutionalism, while the social sciences in Marburg were heavily Marxist in the most dogmatic form (DKP), which didn't appeal to everyone (many of us started with a double degree in economics and social sciences). So we began to take matters into our own hands and organized reading courses (Smith, Ricardo, Ernest Mandel, Elmar Altvater, the socio-economic study texts of Werner Hofmann, Schumpeter, and others), working groups on environmental politics, which were still marginal among economists at the time, on dependency theory (Senghaas, Menzel), Keynesianism, Post-Keynesianism, and sociological theories of business power. We also held events and lecture series on economic theoretical and political topics, including "critical factory visits." So many freedoms were still allowed in the 80s!
As a result of such a lecture series, specifically an "Introduction to Post-Keynesianism" in the winter semester of 1985/86, to which we invited, among others, Peter Kalmbach (who didn’t come but was wonderfully represented by Heinz D. Kurz), Bertram Schefold, Jürgen Kromphardt, Hajo Riese, and Karl Dietrich, and filled in the remaining gaps of the introduction with our own papers, the publishing house was founded in 1986 by four people who had just completed their studies.
The first three titles were published in 1987: this introduction to Post-Keynesianism, a selection from Kalecki by Kazimierz Laski, and an essay collection by Joan Robinson. In 1988, translated textbooks by Amit Bhaduri, Jan Kregel, and Luigi Pasinetti followed. In the subsequent years, production quickly increased. Since the mid-1990s, we have been publishing about 50 new releases annually.
The motivation for founding the publishing house was that the theoretical alternatives to neoclassical economics, which had emerged in the previous decades mainly in the USA, UK, and Italy, were not given enough attention in Germany. Initially, the focus was mainly on Post-Keynesianism in the tradition of Michal Kalecki and Joan Robinson, Monetary Keynesianism (Hyman Minsky, Paul Davidson, Hajo Riese), and Neo-Ricardianism (Piero Sraffa, Luigi Pasinetti, Pierangelo Garegnani, Heinz D. Kurz, Bertram Schefold).
Once underway, other heterodox schools were soon included, such as ecological economics, institutional economics, evolutionary economics, the Austrian school of economics, and later experimental economic research. From 1995, another fortunate development occurred: a critical business administration (Reinhard Pfriem, Josef Wieland, Eberhard Seidel) with a focus on sustainability topics and ethical issues. The history of economic thought became a special focus, particularly the rich German-language theoretical tradition, which is often underestimated and, at the very least, not given enough attention. The first work on the history of economic thought was published in 1993, and today we have around 180 books on the history of economics and philosophy.
Thus, the core of our program was formed early on, but was continually supplemented and updated with new topics: social policy, association sociology, environmental informatics, agricultural economics, economic philosophy, social analysis, sociology of technology, urban planning, real estate economics, digitalization, education policy, and much more.
More than 1500 titles have been published to date. Many of them have been published in additional editions, up to the 9th edition. Contrary to the industry trend and any economic rationale, we place great value on keeping our books available for as long as possible. To this day, 99% of the books we have published remain available.