The Question of Justice in Taxation the Basics of Tax Reform in Terms of the Solidarity Concept of Heinrich Pesch, S. J.

Abstract

Translator’s Foreward: About Heinrich Lechtape Heinrich Lechtape was born in Recklinghausen in the Westphalian sector of Germany on 31 May 1896. The family moved to nearby Munster in 1914, and when World War I broke out, Heinrich volunteered and served on the Russian front from 1915-1917. His health broke down, and he was returned to Germany. Following studies at the University of Munster, he subsequently served on the social-science faculty until he was dismissed by the Nazis in 1934. He died two years later on 16 January 1936, following recurrence of the lung ailment he had contracted as a soldier. During his brief academic career, Lechtape developed significant competence as a published scholar. He also visited the United States (1929-30), where he came in contact with various leading American sociologists. Meanwhile, the chaotic conditions in Germany following the war and the vindictive Versailles Treaty had a profound impact on his thinking. While some of his countrymen were persuaded by political currents from the Left and from the Right, Lechtape was impressed by the centrist ideas of the great Jesuit economist, Heinrich Pesch, then living in Berlin, with whom he also exchanged correspondence. As a sociologist, he was impressed by the notion of solidarity with its stress on the significance of the interdependence of people at all levels of society, from the family to the nation and beyond. That led to his publication of this work, Die Frage der Steuergerechtigkeit (1920), and also Der christliche Solidarismus nach Heinrich Pesch (1922). He left behind an outline for an impressive treatise on solidarity from the perspective of sociology, which unfortunately he could not complete because of his untimely death.