 He spent his childhood on his parents' farming estate in Döschütz (a locality of Großweitzschen since 1994), office captaincy of Döbeln, Saxony, which was expropriated immediately after the war.In Göttingen he attended the from 1949 to 1958 and studied economics and economic history at the Free University of Berlin and at the University of Uppsala from 1958 to 1964.In 1973 he became professor of general economic theory with a focus on monetary theory and macroeconomics at the University of Bremen.