Obituary Prof Dr Heinz Welsch

Heinz Welsch died on 10 May 2025, just a few weeks before his 70th birthday. From 1997 until his retirement in 2016, he was Professor of Economics at our university, specialising in environmental and resource economics. After studying at the University of Bonn, he completed his doctorate at the University of Cologne in 1984, where he also completed his habilitation in 1996 and where he worked at the Institute of Energy Economics until his appointment to Oldenburg. Investigating the economic effects of energy and environmental policy measures was always at the centre of his research. Heinz Welsch later expanded his already broad spectrum to include behavioural economic "happiness research", in which he dealt with the influence of economic and social conditions on subjective well-being. He was an international leader in systematically illuminating the connections between "Happiness, Nature and Morality in Economics" (the title of his last book). The quality and scope of his nearly 100 articles in peer-reviewed, often high-ranking journals are particularly impressive. Despite the severe physical impairment that ultimately forced him into early retirement, Heinz Welsch taught, researched and published tirelessly; even after 2016, he continued to publish extensively. Heinz Welsch will be remembered as a calming influence and, above all, as a "good spirit" by all those who knew him as a colleague, long-standing spokesperson for Economics and member of various economic policy advisory boards.

Hans-Michael Trautwein