Ludwig Erhard educated at Goethe University Frankfurt
Military service and university
In 1916, Erhard volunteered for the German military. During World War I he was referred to the 22nd Royal Bavarian Artillery Regiment and trained as a gun aimer. He first served in the quiet Vosges sector on the Western Front. The regiment was then deployed to Romania on the Eastern Front, where he also saw little combat. Erhard contracted typhus and was sent back to Germany. He recovered and returned to his unit. He was badly wounded on his left shoulder, side and leg by an Allied artillery shell on 28 September 1918 during the Fifth Battle of Ypres. He was committed to a military hospital in Recklinghausen, where he underwent seven operations until June 1919. His left arm became permanently shorter than his right one.Due to his injury he could no longer work as a draper and started learning economics in late 1919 at a business college in Nuremberg. He passed the school's exit examination on 22 March 1922 and received a degree in business administration. During his time at school, he developed a friendship with the economist and professor Wilhelm Rieger, to whom Erhard owed much of his liberal convictions. Thanks to Rieger's intervention, Erhard was able to enroll at the University of Frankfurt in the autumn of 1922. He received his Ph.D. from the university on 12 December 1925, for a dissertation finished in the summer of 1924 under Franz Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer's liberal socialist ideology had a heavy influence on Erhard, especially Oppenheimer's opposition to monopolies. During his time in Frankfurt he married Luise Schuster (1893–1975), a fellow economist, on 11 December 1923. They had known each other since childhood.
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