Ludwig Erhard

Erhard was a Protestant economist with no particular religious politics, which is the point: he shows how the CDU absorbed ordoliberal ideas from outside Catholic social teaching. His 1948 currency reform and abolition of price controls launched the "economic miracle", and the "social market economy", competition protected by the state plus social insurance, became Christian democracy's economic brand. Catholic trade unionists in the party wanted more co-determination than he did.