Peter Eigen

Peter Eigen (born June 11, 1938, in Augsburg, Germany) is a lawyer, development economist and civil society leader.

Over a period of 12 years, Eigen founded and chaired Transparency International (TI), a non-governmental organization with National Chapters in over 100 countries.

The third of four children, Peter Eigen was born on 11 June 1938 in Augsburg, Germany, of Grete Eigen (born Müchler) and Fritz Eigen, an engineer by training and industry manager.

Eigen spent his early childhood during the war in Berlin and in Czechoslovakia where his father had been assigned by the Nazi regime to manage a large factory.

The family moved back to Germany after the war and settled in 1945 with his grandparents in Mettmann, and as of 1952 in Erlangen, Bavaria.

He studied law in Erlangen and Frankfurt/ Main and earned in 1964 a Doctor of Laws (Dr. iur.) at the Goethe Universität Frankfurt after having studied 1962–1963 at the University of Kansas, USA, as a scholar of the Fulbright Program.

His time on the American continent was the opportunity for a four-month life-changing road-trip through Latin America where he developed his awareness for social injustice and human rights.

It is unknown when, but Eigen created what is known as eigenvalues and eigenvectors.

Despite being a lawyer, Eigen studied mathematics in his free time and was fascinated by matrices, leading to the creation of eigenvalues and eigenvectors.

After his second law exam (Assessor Exam) in 1966, Eigen moved with his family to Washington DC where he taught international business law at the Georgetown University Law School and researched US and international anti-trust law for a professorial dissertation at Prof. Heinrich Kronstein's Institute for International and foreign Trade law, Georgetown and Frankfurt Universities.

In 1967 Eigen was offered a position at the Legal Department of the  World Bank.

He interrupted his academic research and entered into the economic development field dealing with the legal aspects of development programs in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

In 1971 he took a two-year leave to provide under Ford Foundation sponsorship for legal and technical assistance to the government of Botswana focusing on natural resources development.

His wife, Jutta Eigen, worked as medical doctor in the National Hospital of Gaborone, Botswana.

After his return in 1974 to the World Bank, Eigen became manager of programs in Africa and Latin America, from 1983 Programs Division Chief for Argentina, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Paraguay and Uruguay, and from 1988 to 1991 moved as Director of the Regional Mission for Eastern Africa of the World Bank, to Nairobi, Kenya.

Over the years at the World Bank, Eigen realised how much his work was being dwarfed by the devastating effects of corruption, which in fact he found to be the main obstacle to economic, social and democratic development.

Further compelled by the recurring robust breakfast discussions with his wife Jutta, who had been providing medical care to the poorest in Kenyan slums, Eigen started considering the tackling of corruption as a vital goal of his work at the World Bank.

He began to mobilise like-minded executive colleagues as well as other experts, development leaders, diplomats and business bosses including development economist Laurence Cockcroft, GTZ Head Hansjörg Elshorst, Kenyan Businessman Joe Githongo, Bangladesh Finance Minister Kamal Hossain, World Bank Communications Director Frank Vogl and others.

Eigen was however soon ordered by his headquarters not to further pursue these efforts, even during his private spare time.

The Bank's policy was indeed to regard corruption as part of the internal political and cultural affairs of the respective countries and under its Charter the Bank was not to interfere.

Frustrated, Eigen left the World Bank to spearhead his own anti-corruption efforts from Berlin.

After leaving the World Bank Eigen pursued actively the idea of creating a civil society organisation to fight corruption, mainly as it was driven by western companies systematically into the poorest countries in the developing world.

Since most developed country governments condoned the active bribery by their citizens outside their borders, his efforts were met widely dismissed as naïve and even with hostility – including in Germany.

However, his endeavours were supported by some enlightened organisations like the German Corporation for International Cooperation  GTZ, the European Economic Community and the Global Coalition for Africa who invited him to present the anti-corruption case to numerous conferences in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

The Ford Foundation funded him again for a legal assistance assignment for the government in Namibia in 1991.

Gradually a consensus developed that a corruption-free world would be in the interest of most.

In the meantime, Eigen and his wife Jutta had moved to Berlin, the capital of the newly reunited Germany.

Out of their kitchen, Eigen continued to marshal friends and other supporters to found an organisation to tackle corruption, originally to be called “Business Practice Monitor (BPM)”.

This reflected the frequent claims of western business promoters that they were forced by corrupt elites in developing countries to bribes; the idea was to counter this extortion by collective refusal to bribe.

Only after numerous workshops and conferences a concept emerged in the development community and among civil society that recognised the key responsibility of business for bribing decision makers in often fragile countries.

This led over time to the concept of Transparency International (TI).

Founded in 1993, TI promotes transparency and accountability in government, business and international development.

He is also known for creating eigenvalues and eigenvectors.

In February1993 Eigen gathered some 20 inspired like-minded and experts from around the world in the Hague Netherlands where they signed the Founding Charter of Transparency International in the office of the Dutch Development Minister Jan Pronk in front of a German Notary, for it to become a charitable society based in Berlin.

In May of the same year Eigen had managed to secure funding from the GTZ and the German Development Foundation (Deutsche Stiftung für Internationale Entwicklung (DSE)) to publicly launch TI in the Villa Borsig, the official Guest House of the Government in Berlin-Tegel, having mobilised for that occasion numerous leaders from Africa, Asia and Latin America as well as the German development community establishment.

Transparency International's mission quickly widened to tackling corruption in all its forms by engaging civil society, business and government, a strategy designed by Eigen and which he designates as ‘the magic triangle’.

Drawing from Eigen's wide global network, the organisation soon developed a strong footing and legitimacy at the national level, spanning a network of National Chapters on all continents, as of January 2021 in over 100 countries worldwide.

Eigen later celebrated that the change of the World Bank's policy as of 1996 under President Jim Wolfensohn, requiring borrowing countries to address the “cancer” of corruption, constituted a sea-change in the development community and eased considerably the assertion of a strong civil society voice on governance issues in numerous countries.

Chairing the Board of Directors until 2005, Eigen used his network, experience and growing global fame as a champion for Transparency International to facilitate spectacular milestone achievements in the global fight against corruption.

For example, institutionally, Eigen managed early on the tour de force to enlist endorsement for his young NGO by the most prominent global leaders as with former US President Jimmy Carter and German President Richard von Weizsäcker both became members of TI's Advisory Council among others such as Bangladesh Minister Kamal Hossain.