Eduard Magnus Mortier Heimann (11 July 1889 – 31 May 1967) was a German economist and social scientist who advocated ethical socialist programs in Germany in the 1920s and later in the United States.
He was hostile to capitalism but thought it was possible to combine the advantages of a market economy with those of socialism through competing economic units governed by strong state controls.
His father, Hugo Heimann was a publisher who served as a Social Democrat (SPD) member of the Berlin City Council, the Prussian House of Representatives and the National Parliament of the Weimar Republic, or Reichstag until 1932.
[3] In Easter 1923 Heimann spoke to a group of young socialists demonstrating against the French occupation of the Ruhr.
[4] From 1930 he was co-editor of the Neue Blätter fūr den Socialismus with Fritz Klatt and Paul Tillich.
[5] He deliberately used terms similar to those of the National Socialists in an effort to gain the support of the Mittelstand, but by confusing ethical socialism with Nazism he probably inadvertently advanced the cause of the Nazis.
The main supporters of the Fellowship in the early days included Heimann, Paul Tillich, Sherwood Eddy and Rose Terlin.
[9] He accepted the value of market pricing, but was committed to introducing a socialist system and had doubts about the compatibility of competition and socialism.
[11]Heimann thought that the true goal of Karl Marx had been to restore the dignity of labor as opposed to abolishing private property.