Gustav von Schmoller

Dzieła

• 1879Die Straßburger Tucher- und Weberzunft (Strasburski cech sukienników i tkaczy)

  Monografia z historii gospodarczej, napisana w Strasburgu, o cechach sukienników i tkaczy; Neue Deutsche Biographie nazywa ją najważniejszą monografią Schmollera z historii gospodarczej.

• 1900Grundriß der allgemeinen Volkswirtschaftslehre (Zarys ogólnej ekonomii)

  Systematyczny wykład ekonomii Schmollera w dwóch częściach (1900, 1904), wielokrotnie przedrukowywany: jego centralnym zadaniem jest historyczne badanie struktur i instytucji gospodarczych.

Stanowisko

Schmoller is on the map as the head of the Younger Historical School of economics. In 1872 he gave the programme speech at the Eisenach meeting of socially engaged scholars, the so-called socialists of the lectern; the Verein für Sozialpolitik that followed in 1873 became the leading association of German-speaking economists, and he chaired it from 1890 until his death. He held that the historical study of economic structures and institutions is the central task of economics, and he expected a state social policy to integrate workers into society. When Carl Menger demanded a deductive, abstract theory in 1883, Schmoller defended the priority of historical-empirical work in the Methodenstreit. His reputation fell as neoclassical theory advanced, but recent scholarship values his work on economic, legal and administrative history and sees in him a precursor of institutionalism. For the early Max Weber he was a mentor, and the Verein commissioned Weber’s survey of East Elbian rural labour; Werner Sombart took his doctorate with him. Durkheim’s survey of German moral science of 1887 is reported to discuss Schmoller’s work among those of the German ethical economists, a link that has not been checked in the text and is marked as disputed.

Życie i kontekst

Gustav Schmoller was born on 28 June 1838 in Heilbronn and studied political science, philosophy and history in Tübingen from 1857 to 1861, where he took his doctorate in 1861 under Karl Schüz with a prize essay on economic views in Germany during the Reformation. He worked at the Württemberg Statistical Bureau under his brother-in-law Gustav Rümelin and became associate professor in Halle in 1864 and full professor in 1865. In 1872 he was called to Strasbourg (rector 1874–75) and in 1882 to Berlin (rector 1897–98), where he taught until 1913; he was ennobled in 1908 and sat in the Prussian Academy, the State Council and the House of Lords. He died on 27 June 1917 in Bad Harzburg.

Dalsze główne dzieła

• The Strasbourg Guilds of Weavers and Tailors (Die Straßburger Tucher- und Weberzunft, 1879)
• Outline of General Economics (Grundriß der allgemeinen Volkswirtschaftslehre, 1900–04)
• Outlines and Studies on the Constitutional, Administrative and Economic History of the Prussian State in the 17th and 18th Centuries (Umrisse und Untersuchungen zur Verfassungs-, Verwaltungs- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte besonders des Preußischen Staates im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert, 1898)
• Political Economy, Economics and Their Method (Die Volkswirtschaft, die Volkswirtschaftslehre und ihre Methode, 1893)