File:Franz Gehrels.1991.jpg

English: Franz Gehrels, the son of the physician Frank Gehrels (1885-1974) and his wife Marie, b. Barsoe (1901-1974) was born in 1922 in Eckernförde, Northern Germany. His parents emigrated with their two-and-a-half-year-old son to the United States in March 1924 to San Mateo, California. Franz Gehrels was married to Katharine (Kathy) Gehrels, b. Fechner (1914-2007). Gehrels taught 22 years of economics with a focus on foreign trade at Indiana University (1955-77), a year before that at the University of Minnesota and a year at Johns Hopkins University. Shortly after the end of the Second World War, Gehrels traveled as a professor of the Fulbright program in Mainz and Frankfurt Germany occupied by the Allies Germany on behalf of the US Military Administration (OMGUS). It was necessary to take stock of the available and unpolluted German economists for the reconstruction, at a time when many scientists occupied the reorganized chairs solely because of their pro-Frankeich or anti-Nazi stance instead of their scientific skills. He moved back to Germany at the age of 55. From 1977 to 1990 Gehrels was a full professor of economics with special emphasis on international economic relations at the Economics Faculty of the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich (LMU). His research interests were in the fields of foreign trade, macroeconomics and economic growth. Thereafter, he was an emeritus at the Seminar for International Business Relations of the LMU.