Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch (1808-1883) was a German economist and contemporary to Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen, both of whom worked to develop different models for financial cooperatives. Schulze-Delitzsch was actually born Herman Schulze, with the Delitzsh added in 1848 to distinguish him from other Schulzes; Delitzsch was the name of the town in which he was born.
After studying law, Schulze-Delitzsh worked in the courts in Berlin and was later appointed to a position in the legislature, where he was acting president of a commission examining working conditions of laborers and artisans. It was during this time Schulze-Delitzsch recognized the problems of finance and credit among workers, and after a dispute resigned his public positions and dedicated himself beginning in 1951 to developing and organizing financial cooperatives in Germany, known as Vorschussvereine, or "people's banks." By 1858 25 such institutions were operating. Like Raiffeisen, the key tenet developed by Schulze-Delitzsh was that the cooperatives could not function on charity and had to be self-supporting.
