Hildegard Bartels was born in Duisburg on 23 December 1914. After obtaining her university entrance qualification, Hildegard Bartels studied in Marburg, Leipzig, Cologne and Berlin from 1934 to 1944, first mathematics and natural science and then economics; in November 1944 she obtained a doctor’s degree (Dr. rer. pol.) in Berlin.
After a short activity at the Reich Ministry of Economics, she started her career in official statistics by joining the Hessian Land Statistical Office in 1946, which had been set up just before. Under difficult conditions, she conducted the first housing census in the new Land of Hessen, which had been created by the Allied Powers. Like Gerhard Fürst she was one of those designing the Statistical Law for the United Economic Territory, which was the basis for setting up a central Statistical Office for the three zones.
In the new Office, Dr. Bartels worked in the Department on “General Subject-Related Co-ordination, National Accounts” from April 1948. In 1949, she was appointed Head of that Department and in 1967 she was appointed Vice-President. In 1972, she became President of the Federal Statistical Office and Federal Returning Officer. The economist was the first woman to be the head of a federal authority in the Federal Republic of Germany.
Since the beginning of her statistical work, Dr. Bartels committed her whole energy to setting up a system of national accounts. Despite the difficult conditions after World War II, Dr. Bartels and her team succeeded in presenting a “System of accounts for national accounting in the Federal Republic of German” already in 1960. About 30 years later, on the occasion of a revision of their System of National Accounts, the United Nations recommended a similar system of accounts at the international level. From 1972 to 1976, Dr. Bartels was Vice-President, and from 1976 to 1980 President of the German Statistical Society. She had been active in that institution since 1948.