Education
In the early days, Conrad dedicated himself to agriculture, studied on that, by physical suffering to giving the practical activity up in a forced manner, to natural sciences, finally in Berlin and Jena political sciences. From 1851 to 1857 he attended grammar school in Gdansk, but due to serious illness and he prematurely had to leave school.
Career
Johannes Conrad was a Professor of economics in Halle (Saale), Prussian Germany. Late in his career, in 1911, he became the director of the newly established Institute for Company-operative Studies at the University of Halle. Conrad was an expert in political economy (Nationalökonomie) and became the editor of the influential Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik in 1870.
Conrad"s father was landowner in west Prussia.
Beginning 1861, he was with the University of Berlin in order to study natural sciences. In 1862, Conrad moved on to the University of Jena, where he completed his 1864 doctoral thesis and his 1868 habilitation thesis entitled, (The statistics of agricultural production Criticism of their performance, as well as proposals for their promotion).
A highly successful and fast career followed. He obtained his habilitation in 1868 in Jena, and in 1870, Conrad became Adjunct Professor at Jena.
Two years later he was appointed professor at the University of Halle, as successor to the famous Gustav Schmoller.
He refused an offer to work at the University of Göttingen, remaining at the University of Halle until the end of life. During 1885-1886, he was rector (vice-chancellor) at Halle and dealt primarily with issues of agricultural statistics and policy. He founded the State Academic (Staatswissenschaftliche) Seminar, at which a large number of students trained, including many students from Japan.
His books were very common, especially the principles and guidelines of the national economy and economy policy and a plan of economic and financial statistics.
Even practical-political issues investigated, he said the importance of cereal import duties for the then very vulnerable German agriculture. The Americans, Richard T. Ely, Simon North. Patten, Edmund J. James, and Joseph F. Johnson studied under Conrad at Halle in the late 1870s, thus profoundly influencing the Harvard University Department of Economics.
Membership
Conrad was a member of the Commission on the advice of the second draft of the Civil Code.