A Class with Drucker - Headway | Work on yourself

SELF-CONFIDENCE MUST BE BUILT STEP-BY-STEP ■ 35
Searching for the Source of <strong>Drucker</strong>’s Self-Confidence
What struck me regarding <strong>Drucker</strong>’s background was the wide variety of
different experiences he had had and the range of tasks he had successfully
accomplished by the age of 30. His family were government employees.
Even today, Doris <strong>Drucker</strong> has a document signed by Kaiser Franz Joseph
awarding Peter an order for his services. Visitors to his home in Austria
included famous economists <strong>with</strong> whom he was encouraged to engage in
dialogue even while still in his teens. The family vacationed <strong>with</strong> others
similarly accomplished in their academic or professional pursuits. <strong>Drucker</strong>
himself stated, “That was actually my education.” 1
<strong>Drucker</strong>’s father wanted him to immediately enroll in a university.
Instead, after completing the equivalent of what we call high school (but
in the Europe of that day, this was in many ways equivalent to what was
taught in the U.S. in the first years of college), he left for Hamburg,
Germany. At the age of 18, and on his own initiative, he started and completed
a one-year merchant apprenticeship <strong>with</strong> an established trading
company. This was his grounding in business.
My thought was that he must have identified <strong>with</strong> the theoretical economics
he had discussed <strong>with</strong> his family’s visitors and done this <strong>with</strong> a definite
purpose in mind. Shortly after completing his apprenticeship, he left
for Frankfurt. Clearly, he did not intend to continue the work for which
he had apprenticed. The fact that he completed this year-long apprenticeship,
yet immediately moved on, speaks volumes about what must have
been his principles of self development, of which I will have more to say
in the last chapter.
In Frankfurt, <strong>Drucker</strong> began to write a number of articles on economics
as a freelancer. As a result, he was hired by a well-known Frankfurt
newspaper as a journalist. Gaining an interest in politics, he attended
meetings of a conservative political party in Germany. At the same time he
started and completed his doctorate in law at the University of Frankfurt. 2
Leaving Germany immediately after the Nazi takeover in 1933,
<strong>Drucker</strong> found refuge in England. Here, he obtained work first for an
insurance company as a security analyst, and later as an economist <strong>with</strong> a
private bank. He also published his first book, The End of Economic Man,
which analyzed the rise of Nazism in Germany and was reviewed favorably
by none other than future British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. In
1937, he immigrated to the United States, and again he became a freelance