Editing Ludwig Erhard (section)

== Minister of Economic Affairs ==
[[File:Bundesarchiv B 145 Bild-F004214-0033, Konrad Adenauer und Ludwig Erhard.jpg|thumb|[[Konrad Adenauer]] and Ludwig Erhard in 1956]]
In the [[1949 German federal election|first free elections]] of the federal parliament in September 1949, Erhard was elected in a [[Baden-Württemberg]] district as candidate of the Christian Democratic Union. He was appointed [[Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action|Federal Minister for Economic Affairs]], a position he would hold for the next 14 years; from 1957 to 1963 he was also the [[vice-chancellor of Germany]]. Erhard's financial and economic policies soon proved widely popular as the German economy made a miracle recovery to rapid growth and widespread prosperity in the 1950s, overcoming wartime destruction and successfully integrating millions of [[Expulsion of Germans after World War II|refugees from the east]].<ref>{{citation |last=Van Hook |first=James C. |year=2004 |title=Rebuilding Germany: The Creation of the Social Market Economy, 1945–1957  |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=0-521-83362-0}}.</ref>

A staunch believer in economic liberalism, Erhard joined the [[Mont Pelerin Society]] in 1950, and used this influential body of liberal economic and political thinkers to test his ideas for the reorganization of the West German economy. Some of the society's members were members of the Allied High Commission and Erhard was able to make his case directly to them. The Mont Pélerin Society welcomed Erhard because this gave its members a welcome opportunity to have their ideas tested in real life. [[Alfred Müller-Armack]], the secretary of state of Erhard's ministry, helped him guide German economy with theories until the beginning of 1960s.<ref name="cht">{{cite book |last1= Caciagli|first1=Mario |title=The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Political Thought |date=December 4, 2006 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=9781139053600 |page=179}}</ref>

Late in the 1950s, Erhard's ministry became involved in the struggle within the society between the European and the Anglo-American factions, and sided with the former. Erhard viewed the market itself as social and supported only a minimum of welfare legislation. However, Erhard suffered a series of decisive defeats in his effort to create a free, competitive economy in 1957; he had to compromise on such key issues as the anti-cartel legislation. Thereafter, the West German economy evolved into a conventional [[welfare state]] from the basis that had been already laid in the 1880s by [[Otto von bismarck#Welfare state|Bismarck]]. According to [[Alfred Mierzejewski]] the generally accepted view is that Germany has a social market economy, that the post-war German economy has evolved since 1948, but the fundamental characteristics of that economic system have not changed, while in his opinion the social market economy had begun to fade in 1957, disappearing entirely by the late 1960s.<ref>{{citation |first=Alfred C. |last=Mierzejewski |title=1957: Ludwig Erhard's Annus Terribilis |journal=Essays in Economic and Business History |year=2004 |volume=22 |pages=17–27 |issn=0896-226X}}.</ref>

Erhard was also deeply critical of a bureaucratic-institutional integration of Europe on the model of the [[European Coal and Steel Community]].