Gus

Gus Mattersdorff (1926 - 2012)

Guenter Hans “Gus” Mattersdorff, an emeritus professor of economics and public administration at Lewis and Clark College, died of natural causes on April 12 at his home in Portland.

Bankhaus S. Mattersdorff

He was born in 1926 in Dresden, Germany, to a family of Jewish bankers. His father, Hans Mattersdorff, was the fourth generation in his family to own and manage the Bankhaus S. Mattersdorff, which had been founded in 1849, and,

Gus, at left, his father Hans, and his brother Werner, circa 1934

though comparatively small, was locally well known for small business finance in Dresden. His mother, the former Hertha Sluzewski, was from a family of lawyers in Berlin. Gus’s first few years in Dresden were privileged and very pleasant. In 1933, however, at the depths of the global depression, the Nazi government was elected to power. The persecution of Jews in Germany began shortly thereafter. Hans Mattersdorff resisted selling his bank and emigrating, despite the pleas of others in his family and social circle. He was a patriotic German, and felt that Nazis were an aberration in an otherwise highly civilized society, who would soon fall from power. His mind was changed for him in 1938, by the Kristallnacht, and after he was arrested and detained for three days by the German secret police, the Gestapo. The bank was sold, the proceeds turned over to the German government, and the family left Germany in 1939, almost penniless. Gus was twelve. World War II began just a few months later.

Gus, at right, Werner, and their cousin Steven Schaefer, 1942

Upon arrival in the United States, the family's fortunes turned for the better. With the assistance of family members who had emigrated earlier, the parents settled in Beverly Hills, and rebuilt their lives there. Gus's mother, who until that point had never worked a day in her life, became a successful Avon lady. His father found work as a bookkeeper. Through the recommendations of friends, Gus and his brother, Werner, were placed in private boarding schools. Gus attended The Fenn School, in Concord, Massachusetts, followed by four years of high school at Holderness, in Plymouth, New Hampshire. Though never much interested in athletics, at Holderness he played ice hockey and was equipment manager for the football team. He graduated with scholarship offers from Harvard and Yale.

He enlisted in the army in 1944, where he was assigned to study Japanese, in preparation for a post-war stint in Japan. After choosing not to reenlist, however, he left the army in 1946, and entered Harvard, where he studied Economics, receiving his bachelor’s degree in 1948, a master’s in Public Administration in 1951, and his doctorate in Economics in 1958. While working on his doctorate, he embarked upon a teaching career at Yale, the University of Massachusetts, and Connecticut College.

Marriage - September, 1960

In 1958, while attending a summer seminar at MIT, he met Eleanor Anne Maclean, one of the secretaries in the Economics department. On the evening of their first date, she feigned illness and stood him up. He persisted. They married in 1960 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and settled in New York, where he worked as an economist for McGraw-Hill Publishing.

Family - 1965

After the birth of their second son in 1963, the family moved to Portland, where he became Professor of Economics at Lewis and Clark, a post which he held for the next 35 years. A liberal and a doctrinaire Keynesian, he taught that economies operating under free markets did not always reach full-employment equilibrium by themselves, and that governments had an important and appropriate role to play in the management of the economy. The tide of politics in this country moved against him. He despaired at the election of Ronald Reagan and, more recently, of George W. Bush. He was active in the City Club, for which he sat on numerous committees, and served as a founder and executive secretary of the Pacific Northwest Regional Economic Conference.

A life-long traveler, he spent extended periods in Western Europe, making several return visits to Dresden. In his later years he also visited Africa and Asia: in 1995 he taught for four months in Lusaka at the University of Zambia as a visiting professor, and starting in the mid-eighties he made five visits to Japan as well as an expedition to western China and northern Pakistan.

He is survived by his wife of 51 years, Ellie; his sons, Donald and Peter; two daughters-in-law and four grandchildren. His ashes will be interred at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In accordance with his wishes, a memorial concert will be held at 2 pm on Saturday, August 25th, in the Agnes Flanagan Chapel at Lewis and Clark College. The family suggests that contributions in his memory be made to the Hermann Steinhardt Lecture Fund at Lewis and Clark.

Family (Most of It) - 2010