Gunnar Heinsohn (21 November 1943 – 16 February 2023) was a German author, sociologist and economist and professor emeritus at the University of Bremen where he had a chair in social pedagogy from 1984.

Heinsohn published on a wide array of topics, starting from economics, demography and its relationship with security policy and genocide, and revisionist chronology theories in the tradition of Immanuel Velikovsky.

He taught at the management centre St. Gallen, at the Hochschule Luzern, and in demographic studies at the Bundesakademie für Sicherheitspolitik in Berlin, and at NATO Defense College in Rome.

He wrote various books and articles, was a regular in the media and talk shows and published entries at the Axis of good blog[4] and Schweizer Monat.

Instead of money as a medium of exchange to facilitate barter, Heinssohn replaced it with a property based credit theory of money that stresses the indispensable role of secure property titles, contract law and especially contract enforcement, liability and collateral to create secure, transferable debt titles that central banks will accept as collateral for issuing bank notes.

[8][9] Besides promoting their paradigm as an alternative foundation for triggering economic development (much in line with the insights of Hernando de Soto,[10] Tom Bethell[11] and Richard Pipes),[12] Steiger has applied it to an analysis of the eurosystem.

[17][18] Heinssohn proposes a reconstruction of the connection between property, enforceable contracts, interest, credit/money and the banking system and a possible explanation for technical progress and innovation.

In his theory about the "youth bulge",[24] Heinsohn argued that an excess in especially young adult male population predictably leads to social unrest, war and terrorism, as the "third and fourth sons" that find no prestigious positions in their existing societies rationalize their impetus to compete by religion or political ideology.

Heinsohn claims that most historical periods of social unrest lacking external triggers (such as rapid climatic changes or other catastrophic changes of the environment) and most genocides can be readily explained as a result of a built up youth bulge, including European colonialism, 20th century Fascism, and ongoing conflicts such as that in Darfur, The Palestinian uprisings in 1987-1993 and 2000 to present, and terrorism.

[41][42] Heinsohn suggested that Hitler wished to erase—physically, intellectually and spiritually—the meaning and heritage of Judaism and Jewish ethics from Germany and its European allies by literally destroying the Jews as a people.

On the origin of sacrifice and priest kingship in Mesopotamia, Heinsohn suggested an explanatory model based upon a catastrophist view of ancient history and a psychoanalytic interpretation of sacrificial rituals.